Speaker 1: People love to play the blame game in a relationship,
Speaker 1: and we're projecting all the time. Will blame a partner
Speaker 1: for not making us feel enough, when not enough is
Speaker 1: how we felt entering the relationship. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Jillian Tareki, a certified relationship coach, teacher
Speaker 1: and writer who, for twenty years has taught others how
Speaker 1: to transform their relationships with themselves. Jillian is also the
Speaker 1: host of the new podcast Jillian on love. I love
Speaker 1: this quote from the Buddha. The mind hard to control, flighty,
Speaker 1: a lighting where it wishes. One does well to tame
Speaker 1: the disciplined mind brings happiness. Happiness can often feel like
Speaker 1: an elusive goal everyone seems to strive for and never
Speaker 1: quite achieves, because we seek it outside of ourselves rather
Speaker 1: than going inward, which is something mindfulness teaches us to do.
Speaker 1: And Jinny, yes, Eric, this idea of taming the mind
Speaker 1: is why you named your program the well trained mind. Right, YEP,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to announce that it's open for enrollment
Speaker 1: now through October eight. In my live virtual six week
Speaker 1: introduction to mindfulness program, whether you're new to mindfulness and
Speaker 1: meditation or you're looking to strengthen your existing mindfulness practice,
Speaker 1: I'll teach you the foundations of mindfulness so that you
Speaker 1: can live with more ease, create a nourishing and fulfilling
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, discover how to be a friend to yourself
Speaker 1: and strengthen your ability to live in a more grounded,
Speaker 1: connected peaceful way. To learn more about the program, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash mindfulness. That's one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash mindfulness before October eight. I
Speaker 1: hope to meet you there. Hi Jillian, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. You have a new
Speaker 1: podcast called Jillian on love, which is all about relationships,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to dive into your work in relationships
Speaker 1: and communication and lots of different things. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, we'll start, like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they
Speaker 1: say in life there are two wolves inside of us
Speaker 1: that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second and looks up at
Speaker 1: their grandparents says, well, which one wins, and the grandparents
Speaker 1: says the one you feed. So I'd like to start
Speaker 1: off by asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 1: in your life and in the work that you do. Wow,
Speaker 1: there's so much I can say about this right now.
Speaker 1: I think that in many ways our minds are like
Speaker 1: battle fields and if we believe all our thoughts, which
Speaker 1: is what we usually do, we suffer immensely. But if
Speaker 1: we were to not believe all our thoughts, and you know,
Speaker 1: as Corny as it sounds, but listen more to our hearts,
Speaker 1: are instincts, or intuition, however you want to call it,
Speaker 1: then we will lead much more content lives. I also
Speaker 1: think that there's darkness that lives inside of all of
Speaker 1: us and that darkness is reflected by the quality of
Speaker 1: our thoughts, of a lot of our thoughts, not all
Speaker 1: our thoughts. You know, the mind, like I said, can
Speaker 1: be a battlefield. It can be a very dark place.
Speaker 1: And if we were to which we do. This is
Speaker 1: what we do, believe a thought, which then turns into
Speaker 1: a narrative, which then becomes a chapter, which then becomes
Speaker 1: a story, which then becomes an entire saga. We can
Speaker 1: believe that the stories and the Sagas that tell us that,
Speaker 1: you know, we suck or we're not good enough, for
Speaker 1: that person is not good enough, you know, playing the
Speaker 1: blame game. Or we can believe a story that is
Speaker 1: looking at the same situation or the same person or
Speaker 1: the same circumstance through a different Lens and see a
Speaker 1: completely different story. And we decide which story or which
Speaker 1: narrative we're going to give more energy to. So the
Speaker 1: feeding is our attention and our energy. That's how I
Speaker 1: see it. And as far as the work that I do,
Speaker 1: I'm always helping people do basically one of two things.
Speaker 1: Overcome the negative stories and thoughts that they have about themselves,
Speaker 1: and also overcoming and negative thoughts and stories they have
Speaker 1: about their partner, if they're in a relationship, or about
Speaker 1: men or about women or about just relationships in general.
Speaker 1: So I'm always helping people to gate the dark and
Speaker 1: the light sides within themselves, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: really the perpetual battle. It's almost like the cane enable
Speaker 1: that lives within all of us. So that's how I
Speaker 1: see it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm struck by you saying that.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a thought that becomes, I don't
Speaker 1: remember your exact sequence, but a thought that becomes a narrative,
Speaker 1: which becomes a chapter, which becomes a book, which becomes a,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole series of books. Right, this idea
Speaker 1: of how, in the Buddhist tradition, I think the word
Speaker 1: for this is Paponcha, right, you start with a thought and,
Speaker 1: like popcorn. But the more we think these things, the
Speaker 1: more embedded they become. And it is very true that
Speaker 1: a lot of our dynamic in relationship is driven by
Speaker 1: what the beliefs we have about ourselves and about other people.
Speaker 1: To your point, whether it's about men in general or
Speaker 1: women in general or our specific partner, you know, it
Speaker 1: does get very embedded and trying to determine the difference between, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm actually seeing the truth here and looking out for
Speaker 1: myself and taking care of myself, or I am imposing
Speaker 1: a story that's not true on a relationship is difficult
Speaker 1: to sort out. I think, Oh yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1: Hence why people hire coaches on there, exactly because we're
Speaker 1: objective and we can look at it. But that being said,
Speaker 1: I think that it's very illuminating when we recognize in ourselves,
Speaker 1: whether that's through the help of someone else or not,
Speaker 1: when our minds really get the best of us and
Speaker 1: where where we get caught in this whole story. Man,
Speaker 1: how many times have you like? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: I've been in this position many times where it's like
Speaker 1: maybe I'll be like not in a great state right,
Speaker 1: maybe I will be insecure about something that's going on
Speaker 1: in my life, or I'm tired right I'm just not
Speaker 1: like I'm not feeling great. It's like emotionally, physically. And
Speaker 1: then someone will look at me a certain way and
Speaker 1: I'll interpret it to be like Oh, they don't like
Speaker 1: me anymore, or they're thinking this or they're thinking that,
Speaker 1: and then we go into like you said, like the
Speaker 1: popcorn going out. Say, this is within the context of
Speaker 1: a relationship, and then you don't communicate about it, so
Speaker 1: then you start to stew in your own soup of
Speaker 1: a story about it and really that interpretation that you
Speaker 1: had was totally wrong. We're actually so off the mark,
Speaker 1: and I think that when we have that recognition of
Speaker 1: Oh my God, my mind, like I really create so
Speaker 1: many stories, that's a huge breakthrough moment because that's when
Speaker 1: we can actually for ourselves, be able to mitigate when
Speaker 1: our minds are getting the best of us. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, I might be in a story right now,
Speaker 1: I might be totally misreading this right now. What is
Speaker 1: this really about? So that's ultimately what we have to do.
Speaker 1: Have to do, have to become very practiced and skilled
Speaker 1: to doing especially if you want to be in a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship like you better really work on that skill. Yep, Yep.
Speaker 1: Two things come to mind. One is there was a
Speaker 1: communication program style book called Crucial Communications that came out
Speaker 1: a number of years ago. I loved it, but there
Speaker 1: was one thing about it that I thought was really great,
Speaker 1: and what it said basically was, when it comes to
Speaker 1: what your partner did, you want to start by what
Speaker 1: could actually be captured on a camera or on a
Speaker 1: tape recorder. What would anybody observe in it? Actually see
Speaker 1: everything past that, now you're in the land of interpretation, right,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a really great way of saying okay, well,
Speaker 1: the fact is he didn't take out the trash. Right.
Speaker 1: Like I see it, I can see it on camera.
Speaker 1: The trash did not go out. Okay. Now from there
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into interpretations like you so forgetful
Speaker 1: and Oh, no big deal, or she just doesn't respect
Speaker 1: me and care about me. I mean, you're right, we
Speaker 1: branch off from there. And then the second thing that
Speaker 1: came to my mind is you were talking, as I
Speaker 1: was thinking, about how, and I've been here, by the
Speaker 1: time a couple decides they need help, there has been
Speaker 1: such an entrenchment of these stories and patterns. It's like,
Speaker 1: if we were to start working on that, not telling
Speaker 1: ourselves stories way earlier in the game. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to fix and I'm in a relationship now that is
Speaker 1: really wonderful and we've done that from the beginning. We
Speaker 1: both were very clear, but I've been in other relationships
Speaker 1: where we didn't and by the time we were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this thing is kind of broken. Right, it was so
Speaker 1: hard to not believe the story and our dynamic reinforced
Speaker 1: it right, and our dynamic reinforced it over and over.
Speaker 1: That's spot on. Sometimes the web is so incredibly complicated and,
Speaker 1: like you said so times, city is about not taking
Speaker 1: out the trash. Oftentimes the trash is a metaphor for
Speaker 1: years of hurt and maybe feeling slighted or betrayed or
Speaker 1: unheard or unseen, and it can be, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: be incredibly tricky to unravel and I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to that kind of situation, that's when you really
Speaker 1: need third party help. You said that you and your
Speaker 1: partner do this sort of preemptively, which is great, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason why I do what I do,
Speaker 1: is that whether you're single or not, you want to
Speaker 1: go into a relationship with a many tools in your
Speaker 1: toolboxes you possibly can have so that you can start
Speaker 1: to work preemptively, because people, they get annoyed, they don't
Speaker 1: say anything, or they say anything and maybe it's not
Speaker 1: met with the response that they're hoping from their partners.
Speaker 1: So then they learn well, next time I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to say anything whatever. Ever, then they build a
Speaker 1: whole lot of resentment and then once you build resentment,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of resistance, right. So it's like those
Speaker 1: couples where it's gotten to the point where it's broken.
Speaker 1: They're in such a state of resistance towards one another,
Speaker 1: like they're not in any way opening their hearts, they're
Speaker 1: not open. Everything is like a big stop sign. There's
Speaker 1: like a stop sign in front of their heart, in
Speaker 1: their minds that are like, I do not enter right,
Speaker 1: and so they become so resistant to one another and
Speaker 1: the only way that a couple would be able to
Speaker 1: find themselves, to find each other again, is if they
Speaker 1: really really wanted to and then if they got third
Speaker 1: party help. But you really have to want to. But
Speaker 1: it's hard because you know usually these couples they come
Speaker 1: into the room and, even though they're not saying this,
Speaker 1: what they're subconsciousness saying for sure is, you know, fix them,
Speaker 1: fix them so I can continue to be in a relationship,
Speaker 1: change them so I don't have to leave this Ye,
Speaker 1: and it's always the biggest and roughest pill to swallow
Speaker 1: when it's like no, actually, the problems also you totally.
Speaker 1: And that's something you talk about in your first episode
Speaker 1: of your show. Is this idea that the common thread
Speaker 1: through all of our past relationships. Is US say a
Speaker 1: little more about that. Yeah, so sometimes you'll be in
Speaker 1: a relationship with someone who liked just quite frankly, sucks.
Speaker 1: But it's not your pattern. Like you don't have a
Speaker 1: pattern of just having tough relationships. You don't have a
Speaker 1: pattern of like dating people who are mean to you.
Speaker 1: You just have, you know, you have a one off,
Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't last that long. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: in that situation there's always something you can find responsibility for,
Speaker 1: but that situation you could be like, okay, like chemistry
Speaker 1: get the best of me. I got attracted whatever I
Speaker 1: was going through a hard time him, I was lonely. I,
Speaker 1: you know, lowered my standard and here we are. But
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, even if you've been
Speaker 1: in a relationship or a marriage for thirty years, anything
Speaker 1: that's not working in that relationship has a hundred percent
Speaker 1: to do with each person. It's not even it's and
Speaker 1: then if you have a pattern, like, let's say you're
Speaker 1: chronically single or you keep dating the wrong people, you
Speaker 1: keep having these hurtful situations, you can continue to blame men,
Speaker 1: you can continue to blame women, you can continue to
Speaker 1: blame your mom or your dad, you can blame your
Speaker 1: childhood all you want. It's not that you would necessarily
Speaker 1: be wrong, but that's not going to get you what
Speaker 1: you want. I love that change. That's really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. Is Not that it's wrong, it's
Speaker 1: just not a very useful strategy. It's not very skillful strategy.
Speaker 1: Right and recognizing the horror ms that have been done
Speaker 1: to us, the things that have impacted us, is useful
Speaker 1: to recognize what they are, to learn them. But to
Speaker 1: your point, you know it can't end there. No, it
Speaker 1: can't end there. And you know, it's interesting because I've
Speaker 1: I've worked with so many different people. Um, you know
Speaker 1: some people I've worked with like, for example, they'll just
Speaker 1: keep dating the mentally ill drug addict who doesn't do
Speaker 1: any work on themselves, like isn't in therapy, isn't medicated
Speaker 1: for that, isn't actually like on a on a good path,
Speaker 1: you know. And then people think, Oh, you know, poor you, you,
Speaker 1: you're in these relationships with these horrible people, and it's
Speaker 1: like no, when you look more carefully, like most quote
Speaker 1: unquote toxic, unhealthy relationships, both people are behaving pretty badly
Speaker 1: within it. So you know they'll they'll keep dating that
Speaker 1: person and then they'll they'll make the discovery, like in therapy.
Speaker 1: You know your mom had postpartum when when she had
Speaker 1: you say she was depressed for there, you know, two
Speaker 1: years of your life which is so important, and she
Speaker 1: was an alcoholic. So you make these like connections and hopefully,
Speaker 1: if you're with a skilled enough therapist, you're actually working
Speaker 1: to make peace with your past, not just to understand
Speaker 1: your past, not to just have insight into your trauma,
Speaker 1: not just to be aware of your trauma, but to
Speaker 1: actually make peace with it. But then those people then
Speaker 1: come to me because they're like, okay, I know all this,
Speaker 1: but I'm still doing this, and it's like okay, well
Speaker 1: then you need to take responsibility. You keep choosing them.
Speaker 1: It's not mom's fault anymore. You know, you're not a
Speaker 1: traumatized little child anymore. You are attracted to them and
Speaker 1: you have to recondition yourself to be attracted to other people.
Speaker 1: You have to make it absolutely non negotiable that you
Speaker 1: don't date anyone, let's say, I'm just using an example,
Speaker 1: who's a drug addict or something like that, and the
Speaker 1: people who really invested their time and their emotions and
Speaker 1: their money in themselves and in me and our work
Speaker 1: together take my advice. And guess what? They're all happy now.
Speaker 1: But most people, actually, no, that's not true, not most,
Speaker 1: but a fair amount of people will. They don't want
Speaker 1: to do what it takes to change. So they keep
Speaker 1: repeating the same cycle with the same kind of partner,
Speaker 1: feeling more and more like they'll either think, oh, there's
Speaker 1: just something wrong with them or, just to bring this
Speaker 1: full circle to the narratives that we have in our head,
Speaker 1: they'll just chalk it up to I'm damaged, I'm broken.
Speaker 1: This is how I am, and it's like both their
Speaker 1: copouts and because taking responsibility for your love life is
Speaker 1: not about blaming yourself, because then you're you're not actually
Speaker 1: taking responsibility. If you're like, I'm broken, that's literally you
Speaker 1: saying I'm not going to do anything about this. And
Speaker 1: so my job and what my passion is is to
Speaker 1: help people to feel empowered, to understand that they can
Speaker 1: make a change, if it means you have to, like,
Speaker 1: date different types of people, or a lot of people
Speaker 1: have to learn how to love themselves so that they
Speaker 1: can actually be with someone who wants to love them too,
Speaker 1: because if you don't love yourself, you're just going to
Speaker 1: push that person away. And I think what you're saying
Speaker 1: there is really important, is we can go to therapy
Speaker 1: and get a lot of insight, and I really like
Speaker 1: what you say. It's not just understanding why, it's making
Speaker 1: peace with the past, healing what we can from the past.
Speaker 1: My experience is even after that work is done, there
Speaker 1: is still the moment of the thing happening. So the
Speaker 1: example I often use is I know why, if I'm
Speaker 1: around an older man and an authority figure, I want
Speaker 1: to hide under the table. Right. I know why because
Speaker 1: I had a very angry father, right, he just was
Speaker 1: not in the best period of his life and got it,
Speaker 1: I made pace with it, healed it. I still find
Speaker 1: myself in that situation and the conditioning is still there.
Speaker 1: I find myself the fear starting to come up. Now
Speaker 1: I've gotten a little bit better where I can now
Speaker 1: in the moment. No, okay, settle down, you're okay. But
Speaker 1: it's those moments that we have to sort of dig
Speaker 1: into and I think that's what coaches can do well.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's done well, what do you do
Speaker 1: in that moment? Because that's when it happens. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like if you've got to tie yourself to the mast,
Speaker 1: you know, so you're not dragged off by the drug
Speaker 1: addicts sirens. Right, you've got to find a way to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, so like, for example, it would just
Speaker 1: be like in that moment, so the self awareness, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is happening, and then you want to go directly
Speaker 1: to your body. Okay, this is what's happening in my
Speaker 1: body right now, like my stomach feels tight, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to perspire a little bit, I'm feeling stressed, and then
Speaker 1: you can actually just start to use your breath to
Speaker 1: relax your body and be like, okay, there is a
Speaker 1: conditioned neural pathway response right now that my nervous system
Speaker 1: is reacting to, but it's not real. So that would
Speaker 1: be like sort of like a self soothing moment. When
Speaker 1: it comes to, though, attraction and relationship, this is where
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different because it requires what requires
Speaker 1: two things. Like anything else, human beings are much more
Speaker 1: motivated to make change once they've been in enough pain.
Speaker 1: We're very motivated by pain. So that's like the whole
Speaker 1: concept behind a rock bottom. It's like when the pain
Speaker 1: of being this kind of relationship or this kind of partner,
Speaker 1: when that pain becomes so overbearing that you would rather
Speaker 1: be like alone for the rest of your life than
Speaker 1: with that person or in that kind of relationship, that's
Speaker 1: when you're really right to make some changes. But it's
Speaker 1: practice and it's also the wisdom and it takes a
Speaker 1: certain level of maturity and growing up inside and wanting
Speaker 1: better things for your life to say, yeah, I'm actually
Speaker 1: really attracted to someone who says who does what they
Speaker 1: say they're going to do, versus the person who's always
Speaker 1: letting me down. Like, for example, there there could be
Speaker 1: lots of people that I'm you know, lots of men
Speaker 1: for example, that I'm attracted to but I register it
Speaker 1: is trouble, so I don't even go there because I
Speaker 1: don't want the trouble. But also when you change yourself inside,
Speaker 1: when you really recondition yourself, when you let yourself be
Speaker 1: around certain people who treat you well or who are
Speaker 1: more aligned with you, then over time you start to say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm more attracted to this now. And so there is
Speaker 1: a part of growing up that tends to happen. And
Speaker 1: you know, people come to me because they're ready, and
Speaker 1: if they're not ready, then not much change happens. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just like the bottom line, and some
Speaker 1: people change really quickly and some people are really slow
Speaker 1: to change and sometimes they just have to go through it,
Speaker 1: they just have to get burned really bad until they
Speaker 1: say okay, no, not another moment, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an interesting phenomenon I've noticed is you have a bad
Speaker 1: relationship that ends and you're in a lot of pain
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, I'm gonna do a lot of
Speaker 1: inner work on myself, I'm going to change this so
Speaker 1: it never happens again. And what's happened with me is
Speaker 1: I do that and I do make progress, but there's
Speaker 1: only so much of what I can do out of relationship.
Speaker 1: I think I'm not gonna fall for that one again,
Speaker 1: or I'm not going to do that again, or I'm
Speaker 1: not going to react like that again. And it's easy
Speaker 1: to say that when I'm sitting in my therapist office
Speaker 1: around I'm sitting at home writing in my journal. Then
Speaker 1: throw me into a relationship and I'm like, okay, now
Speaker 1: this is a little different, because I think your pain
Speaker 1: point is a really good one. We're in pain, so
Speaker 1: we start doing this work, then we meet somebody and
Speaker 1: we're no longer in pain, we feel great and then
Speaker 1: slowly the normal patterns subtly reassert themselves and you find
Speaker 1: yourself kind of back in the same place again. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I was just grateful that this time around
Speaker 1: for me, with my partner, we both kind of from
Speaker 1: the very beginning we're like, okay, we both have screwed
Speaker 1: this up in the past a bunch of times. Let's
Speaker 1: really talk about each other's patterns and understand what they
Speaker 1: are and, you know, really try and work with them
Speaker 1: from the beginning. And it has made a tremendous difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. It's an interesting paradox. It's like sometimes some
Speaker 1: people really need to take a time out and to
Speaker 1: work on themselves, because that's like that moment where you're like,
Speaker 1: Oh boy, maybe it is me. That's the moment it's like,
Speaker 1: maybe it is me, and look, everyone's different. It depends
Speaker 1: on the severity of the pattern, depends on the severity
Speaker 1: of the pain. Like you might have to get yourself
Speaker 1: to a therapist or you might just have to you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just like watching a bunch of people on
Speaker 1: instagram or reading a bunch of books or listening to
Speaker 1: people's podcast, whatever it is. But there is no greater
Speaker 1: education than the education of a relationship, and single is
Speaker 1: really easy. I mean there's so many people who want
Speaker 1: obviously they want love, they want to be in a relationship,
Speaker 1: but that's when the work begins. It's easy to be
Speaker 1: on top of your game when you're single, but when
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship, it's a giant mirror and it's
Speaker 1: going to show you where you're like, there's that thing again,
Speaker 1: but the difference is that you always have a choice
Speaker 1: to react or respond differently. And then when you become
Speaker 1: more accountable. You will mess up like your inner teenager,
Speaker 1: your inner three year old will come out, or you'll
Speaker 1: be totally selfish or totally insecure, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You'll cling or you'll be cold, whatever it is, but
Speaker 1: you own it much more quickly and you say, Oh
Speaker 1: my God, I am so sorry, that is me, that
Speaker 1: is not you. I'm not going to do that again.
Speaker 1: And like really owning it is so huge. Some people
Speaker 1: will have to take a time out from being in
Speaker 1: a relationship because they have lost themselves so much that
Speaker 1: they have to rediscover the self. But then this is
Speaker 1: the paradox. It's like you want to find yourself and
Speaker 1: connect to yourself so that you can learn how to
Speaker 1: lose yourself again, but more appropriately, like in a relation,
Speaker 1: to not lose yourself in the codependent way, but make
Speaker 1: it so that it's not just all about you and
Speaker 1: developing the self, but now it's about you and figuring
Speaker 1: out how to be in relationship. So let's talk about relationships.
Speaker 1: There are some different things that you talk about, and
Speaker 1: one is you talk about medicine for relationships. You've got
Speaker 1: a few different points that you think are really important
Speaker 1: in a relationship. Well, accountability, is medicine for a relationship,
Speaker 1: and that's really just owning your part. I mean people
Speaker 1: love to play the blame game in a relationship and
Speaker 1: we're projecting all the time. Will blame a partner for
Speaker 1: not making us feel enough, when not enough is how
Speaker 1: we felt entering the relationship. Will blame them for not
Speaker 1: paying attention to us, when really we're not paying attention
Speaker 1: to ourselves. So accountability, being responsible for our lives, being
Speaker 1: responsible for how we act, that's medicine. I mean it
Speaker 1: really really is. You're in a long term relationship and
Speaker 1: it's last thing you is, like we unconsciously break each
Speaker 1: other's hearts all the time, like we're gonna do that.
Speaker 1: So that's really, really important that we're accountable. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I wrote this in the blueprint, but forgiveness
Speaker 1: is also medicine for a relationship. You know, obviously there's
Speaker 1: some things that are unforgivable and that's for certain people
Speaker 1: to have to figure out. But what's they're like personal standard. But,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're going to mess up with each
Speaker 1: other a lot, so we have to be able to forgive,
Speaker 1: because if there's nothing worse than being with someone who's
Speaker 1: constantly holding a grudge for everything you know. So forgiveness
Speaker 1: is medicine. The truth is medicine. And this is what
Speaker 1: I mean, and this goes back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about in the beginning of this conversation, which is
Speaker 1: that things get so messy, to the point of broken,
Speaker 1: because of the elephants that have been in the room
Speaker 1: for so long that no one is talking about no
Speaker 1: one's having the difficult conversations, people are internalizing stuff, they're
Speaker 1: creating stories. Then all of a sudden you're in a
Speaker 1: situation where throwing out the trash is a metaphor for
Speaker 1: ten years of struggle and pain, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: throwing out the trash, and so that's so important. But
Speaker 1: also because I work with a lot of people who
Speaker 1: struggle with their self worth in relationships. So they struggle
Speaker 1: to actually say the truth because they're so scared to
Speaker 1: rock the boat. And even if you don't necessarily struggle
Speaker 1: with your self worth, like people are really afraid that
Speaker 1: if they tell the truth that their relationship will dissolve,
Speaker 1: or if they tell the truth to the person that
Speaker 1: they've been on two dates with, that person will no
Speaker 1: longer want to be with them. And yet it's the truth.
Speaker 1: That's medicine for a relationship, because if you're dating someone
Speaker 1: and you're honest with them about something in your life
Speaker 1: and they then decide they don't want to be with you,
Speaker 1: that's actually medicine, because you don't want to end up
Speaker 1: with that person. It's going to be a disaster. So
Speaker 1: you never want to have to lie to keep your
Speaker 1: relationship and you have to have the tough conversations. You
Speaker 1: can't avoid the elephant in the room. You gotta like,
Speaker 1: look at it, point out it, pointed out, name it
Speaker 1: and make it go away. What you just said Struck
Speaker 1: me is you know how much in my life I
Speaker 1: tried to be somebody else in order to get the
Speaker 1: partner that I thought that I wanted, you know? So
Speaker 1: I'd meet somebody I'm attracted to and I would think
Speaker 1: in my mind, well, what is it that they're going
Speaker 1: to like? And so I'm going to be that, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do more of that. And that is a
Speaker 1: losing bargain because either, a, it doesn't work because you're
Speaker 1: not authentic, or, even worse, it does work and now
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship where you're expected to be a
Speaker 1: way that you're not, and that's a tough road to
Speaker 1: go and you know, as I got a little bit older,
Speaker 1: just starting to realize like wait, you know what what
Speaker 1: I want is somebody who likes me, loves me, but
Speaker 1: the only way they're going to do that is if
Speaker 1: they see me, the actual me, right, and so I
Speaker 1: love that line. Don't ever lie to save your relationship, right,
Speaker 1: because it's causing trouble for yourself and your partner. You
Speaker 1: say that it's possible to be kind and truthful, be both.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it seems like it's hard to do both. Are
Speaker 1: there any circumstances in which you are untruthful? Yes, okay, so, Um,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, obviously this, this could ruffle
Speaker 1: some people's feathers, but sometimes a white lie is actually compassionate.
Speaker 1: This is would be an example. Honey, do I look
Speaker 1: fat today? No, Babe, you look great. But maybe that
Speaker 1: person is thinking, yeah, maybe you did gain a few pounds,
Speaker 1: but like, do they really have to tell right? Let's
Speaker 1: pause there, though, because I think there's something important in this, right,
Speaker 1: which is I agree. And yet let's change gender so
Speaker 1: we ruffle less feathers. A man says, honey, do I
Speaker 1: look fat? To you today, right, and she says no,
Speaker 1: you look great, but she's thinking, yeah, you know, really,
Speaker 1: you've kind of let yourself go the last five years
Speaker 1: and I'm just not as attracted to you as I
Speaker 1: used to be, you know, like. So there's a little
Speaker 1: white lie. That's also there's a bigger thing growing underneath that. Potentially.
Speaker 1: Now maybe there's not, but let's let's talk about where
Speaker 1: there is. What do you do in a situation like that? Okay,
Speaker 1: so I believe that people are saying, I want this
Speaker 1: amazing relationship, I want a conscious relationship. We don't live
Speaker 1: in a time anymore where it's like I stay home,
Speaker 1: I cook and I clean and they go out and,
Speaker 1: you know, make money and come home like those sort
Speaker 1: of roles. That's considered now moral fashioned in these days.
Speaker 1: So people are looking for like these incredible connections and relationships,
Speaker 1: and I always say, okay, you want that, hold each
Speaker 1: other accountable, and what I mean by that is, if
Speaker 1: you find that your partner is straying from their path,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's the path of physical health mental health,
Speaker 1: I think that what you would say is you wouldn't
Speaker 1: say the white lie. would be you withholding. I'm not
Speaker 1: that attracted to you anymore. But the truth would be
Speaker 1: they like I know that, or honey or whatever that
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you call your significant other. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: by their name. But I know you're not feeling that
Speaker 1: great about yourself, but I think it's because used to
Speaker 1: really like eat. Well, I think it's time we should
Speaker 1: get a little healthier. I'll do it with you, but
Speaker 1: you know, you're kind of like, come on, let's get
Speaker 1: it together, let's get healthy again. It's like it's important,
Speaker 1: and you could even depending on the conversations that you've
Speaker 1: had in the beginning of the relationship. Is like no,
Speaker 1: like physical fitness is really important to me. You know this.
Speaker 1: You agree with me. Let's get back on track. So
Speaker 1: that's how you would bring it up, instead of, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be really, really, really honest with you, like your
Speaker 1: belly is grossing me out, or like I'm just not
Speaker 1: attracted to you because you're overweight. Like yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be really honest. Is it necessary? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: What about situations where a partner has a behavior that
Speaker 1: you don't like? Let's just a your partner is a
Speaker 1: cigarette smoker and you have hit a point in your
Speaker 1: life where you're really focused on health and you recognize
Speaker 1: like chiefs that's really destructive and I mean I'm really
Speaker 1: scared for you. And you've had conversations with that person
Speaker 1: in a respectful and kind and decent way and that
Speaker 1: person just doesn't really want to change. How do you
Speaker 1: make peace with that sort of thing? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's a particularly tricky one. If you're a mother
Speaker 1: and you've got two kids and your husband is a
Speaker 1: smoker and you're like he's increasing the chances that he's
Speaker 1: going to have lung cancer and not be here exactly.
Speaker 1: So I'm not ready to like blow the marriage up
Speaker 1: over this thing, right. How do I make peace with
Speaker 1: something like that? I think that we're going to have
Speaker 1: to make peace with a lot of things about the
Speaker 1: person we're in a relationship over the years, because we
Speaker 1: cannot change someone. And I think, no, I know that
Speaker 1: the biggest problems come from two things that are related
Speaker 1: to each other. One, people trying to change each other
Speaker 1: and two, and this is all unconscious, mostly unconscious, people
Speaker 1: over relying on their partner to make them happy. So
Speaker 1: it's like people are always like come into the therapy office,
Speaker 1: the coach's office, whatever, and they say, change them. Change
Speaker 1: them so I can be happier, change them so that
Speaker 1: I can be more content, change them so I can
Speaker 1: feel more secure. There's always going to be things that
Speaker 1: we're going to have to live with in someone else,
Speaker 1: and if it's something that you decide you cannot live with,
Speaker 1: then it can turn into an ultimatum and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But then know that you're going to be blowing is
Speaker 1: it worth it? You are, you gonna be blowing the
Speaker 1: relationship up. I really do think that you can enter
Speaker 1: a relationship with the expectation that there's going to be
Speaker 1: growth and that you want your partner to be able
Speaker 1: to go and you want to grow together and all
Speaker 1: of that. But some people grow at different speeds. It's
Speaker 1: very tricky territory when you get into relie sationship with
Speaker 1: someone thinking, but they'll change, they'll grow. You No, like,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't fall in love with potential. You
Speaker 1: have to really fall in love with the person as
Speaker 1: if they're never going to change. But if the relationship
Speaker 1: is long enough, there's going to be certain you change
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you're like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was okay with the cigarette smoking, now I'm not, but
Speaker 1: you can't change him or her. You cannot change him.
Speaker 1: You can say like I really don't like this, but
Speaker 1: at some point you're going to have to say, I
Speaker 1: am going to accept this. I don't like it, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna accept it. Or if it's another behavior like
Speaker 1: that's really like dysfunctional for the relationship, you say this
Speaker 1: has to change. Tell me what you need from me
Speaker 1: to help you change. How can I help you help yourself?
Speaker 1: And I think that that's a question that a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't ask the person they're in a relationship with.
Speaker 1: Like you want them to change a behavior. Well, guess what?
Speaker 1: Off in times, that behavior is largely dependent on something
Speaker 1: that you're doing, that they're reacting to. So if you
Speaker 1: want them to change your behavior, this is this is
Speaker 1: other than cigarette smoking. This would be something, you know,
Speaker 1: something that they do. Maybe they shut down, or maybe
Speaker 1: they get clingy, or maybe they yet whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's like you're part of a dynamic. So if they're
Speaker 1: doing something, rest assured they're doing it in response is
Speaker 1: something that you're doing. So ask them how can I
Speaker 1: change to help you change? Yep, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think in any relationship you are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what things can I live within, what things can't
Speaker 1: I you know. So, you know, a question a lot
Speaker 1: of people have is a lot of people stay, stay
Speaker 1: in this place for a long time, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a really painful place to be, which is should
Speaker 1: I stay or should I go? I feel like that
Speaker 1: that state on its own is a purgatory to be there,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it seems like a better approach
Speaker 1: would be to get clear on okay, this is okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't. At least am, you know, making the best
Speaker 1: decision I can make now, and for now it's stay
Speaker 1: or but I know you have some questions to ask,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're in that phase. Well, first, before
Speaker 1: I get into the questions, it's like some things are
Speaker 1: just wrong, like, obviously, if you're any in any kind
Speaker 1: of abusive situation, you need to get out. I also
Speaker 1: think that sometimes it's very clear when to end something.
Speaker 1: It's like you're just with someone. You guys are not
Speaker 1: right for each other. So sometimes it's very, very obvious.
Speaker 1: But if you're in a longer term relationship or you're
Speaker 1: in a relationship that's been very important to you, you've
Speaker 1: invested a lot of your time, a lot of your energy.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have kids together, like you love this person,
Speaker 1: it's an important relationship to you, but it's been painful.
Speaker 1: The question is to ask yourself is it's alarming to
Speaker 1: me the amount of people that I have met with
Speaker 1: when they're talking about the person that they're in a
Speaker 1: relationship with, and I asked them, do you know what
Speaker 1: it is that they need, like what they're really like,
Speaker 1: their core needs are like? What is it? What is
Speaker 1: it that they need that maybe you're not giving them,
Speaker 1: or what is it that they need in general? They
Speaker 1: have no idea how to answer that question and I
Speaker 1: think you, if you're like, in a very, very bonded
Speaker 1: relationship where, in other words, breaking up will have a
Speaker 1: lot of consequences, like it's a big decision, it's a
Speaker 1: big decision emotionally and all that, like, you better not
Speaker 1: be leaving that until you can answer that question and
Speaker 1: until you actually try to meet their needs, because when
Speaker 1: a relationship goes south, there are very few things other
Speaker 1: than like health, money and relationship. When those things go south,
Speaker 1: they create a tremendous amount of stress. Like work could
Speaker 1: be amazing, your health could be amazing, your relationship not
Speaker 1: going well, you are going to be waking up in
Speaker 1: a cold sweat. They're gonna be unhappy, like really really,
Speaker 1: almost impossible to be unhappy when your relationship is in
Speaker 1: dire straits. So when that happens, we go into sort
Speaker 1: of like a fight or flight and so we become
Speaker 1: obsessed with ourselves, and what I mean by that we
Speaker 1: get obsessed with our own needs. We're in survival mode.
Speaker 1: We're constantly judging and evaluating our partner based on how
Speaker 1: well or how not well they're meeting our needs, and
Speaker 1: we're never really evaluating how we're meeting their needs. And
Speaker 1: this goes back to the accountability part. If you can't
Speaker 1: see your part in what has broken down, then that's
Speaker 1: a problem and also, like you have to really try
Speaker 1: to repair it. But a lot of people try to
Speaker 1: repair their relationship but they don't know how to. Well,
Speaker 1: the first step is owning and acknowledging your role in
Speaker 1: the dysfunction and then learning how to meet their needs,
Speaker 1: like figure out what their needs are. What do they
Speaker 1: need to feel love like? What what are they missing
Speaker 1: from you? And and and give that and if you don't
Speaker 1: get anything in return, then you have, like some answers
Speaker 1: for you first like step out of that survival mode,
Speaker 1: ego state and just start to give. So that's really important.
Speaker 1: This is under a large umbrella of accountability, which is
Speaker 1: like the main you know why I that the first
Speaker 1: episode of the podcast was based on that. You know,
Speaker 1: ask yourself, like what are the psychological and emotional barriers
Speaker 1: that I have that's preventing me from being close with
Speaker 1: this person, like what resistance have I had? How have
Speaker 1: I had the like do not enter sign at my
Speaker 1: heart all this time? You know, what are my barriers?
Speaker 1: What's my fear of intimacy? You know, how have I
Speaker 1: actually have I actually communicated? Have I told the truth,
Speaker 1: or have I been just carrying around this resentment or
Speaker 1: this lie or the series of lies? So those are
Speaker 1: some really important key questions to to ask yourself. And
Speaker 1: a really important one is if everything were to change,
Speaker 1: like if you were to actually get the needs met
Speaker 1: that you weren't getting met in the last year, however
Speaker 1: long you've been having trouble, if it were all to change,
Speaker 1: if they were to say okay, I'm going to change
Speaker 1: and they change, would you still want them? It is
Speaker 1: such a good question. It's such a good question, because
Speaker 1: the cruelest thing, I think, is to be like well,
Speaker 1: I need you to do x, Y and Z, and
Speaker 1: they then start really working to do x, Y and
Speaker 1: Z and you're like not good enough. Like that that
Speaker 1: feels really like. It feels tough. I mean these situations are,
Speaker 1: like you said. I think health, money and relationships, like
Speaker 1: if one of them is way off, it is really difficult.
Speaker 1: There is a dark cloud over a portion of your life.
Speaker 1: For sure, absolutely under this medicine idea. There's a couple
Speaker 1: other ones and a really important one. I just want
Speaker 1: to read something you wrote. You said there's one pattern
Speaker 1: that I see in a dent of all the couples
Speaker 1: I've worked with a lack of genuine appreciate of one another.
Speaker 1: Talk more about appreciation. So we meet someone and we
Speaker 1: start seeing them and we start to fall in love
Speaker 1: and we're in lust and really, when we think of
Speaker 1: them as like we see them as like this miracle,
Speaker 1: this like you know, Angel that's come into our lives
Speaker 1: and kind of see them as a miracle and we
Speaker 1: appreciate them so much and then the law of familiarity
Speaker 1: sets in and all of a sudden that person who
Speaker 1: you once thought was a gift you're taking for granted
Speaker 1: and we stop really appreciating the person for what it
Speaker 1: is that they do for us, what it is that
Speaker 1: they do for others. Whereas like taking each other for
Speaker 1: granted would be the poison, learning to appreciate each other
Speaker 1: is the medicine. But it's not just saying I appreciate
Speaker 1: you and thank you, it's like really feeling it in
Speaker 1: your heart, you know, like really feeling it and acknowledging it.
Speaker 1: And we lose that. And if we lose that or
Speaker 1: we get out, I should say, we get out of
Speaker 1: the habit of appreciation and into the habit of taking
Speaker 1: each other for granted. If that gets deep enough, if
Speaker 1: appreciation is really lacking and lacking for a long time,
Speaker 1: then couples then start to have like contempt for one another.
Speaker 1: And you know John Gottman talks about that a lot.
Speaker 1: But once there's contentment, Monster's contempt, it's over. When you're like,
Speaker 1: I can't appreciate a single thing this person does. In fact,
Speaker 1: everything they do makes my stomach flip in a bad way,
Speaker 1: it's over. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: John Gottman who came up with this statistic I've heard,
Speaker 1: and again, whether it's the statistics exactly accurate or not,
Speaker 1: it's not important. It points directionally to a truth, which
Speaker 1: is for a relationship to flourish, it takes five positive
Speaker 1: things that you say to someone for every negative thing
Speaker 1: that you say to them. Right. So, again, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not five to one, maybe it's three to one, but
Speaker 1: at point too, you need more positive, you need to
Speaker 1: be saying more positive things to your partner than negative. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've been in relationships where that is an exact inverse.
Speaker 1: For every one positive thing there are at least five
Speaker 1: negative things. And Yeah, that's not a good place to be. No,
Speaker 1: but then you have to ask yourself, well, why does
Speaker 1: that happen? Well, it happens because our minds get crazy
Speaker 1: and we start to create stories and then we start
Speaker 1: to project all our stuff where we unconsciously depend on
Speaker 1: our partner to rescue us, to make us happy, and
Speaker 1: then when they don't, we resent them, when we hate them.
Speaker 1: We're unconsciously trying to change each other all the time,
Speaker 1: and then we also become very complacent. We take the
Speaker 1: relationship for granted. So, instead of trying to proactively create
Speaker 1: positive memories together, we are instead just sitting on the
Speaker 1: couch and just letting life happen to US instead of
Speaker 1: actually trying to create a life between us. And then
Speaker 1: all that combined, next thing you know, you're are having
Speaker 1: ten negative moments compared to the one positive moment. That's
Speaker 1: why it happens. You talk about this idea. You say
Speaker 1: we all have an emotional home. It's an emotional destination
Speaker 1: we go to habitually when we've been triggered by a circumstance.
Speaker 1: Even though we all experience all kinds of emotion, there
Speaker 1: is always a place where we go on the regular
Speaker 1: under stress. Talk to me about that idea and why
Speaker 1: that's important in working more skillfully in relationship. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really loved about my
Speaker 1: training under Tony Robbins and my mentor one of my mentors,
Speaker 1: on Colin Madonna's is that the role of emotions. It's
Speaker 1: a huge part in in our story, it's a huge
Speaker 1: part in our relationships. And so in a relationship where
Speaker 1: we have to be responsible for our behavior, regardless of
Speaker 1: what our childhoods were like, but we also have to
Speaker 1: be responsible for our emotional patterns. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is that a lot of us live in chronic states
Speaker 1: of stress and under stress, people usually go into a
Speaker 1: pattern that's been with them for a really long time.
Speaker 1: Some people get angry, some people vacillate between depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: like they go back and forth. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you're stressed out and let's say your pattern when you're
Speaker 1: stressed is to numb yourself with drugs or alcohol, or
Speaker 1: some people like we're always, I mean, you know, we're
Speaker 1: numbing ourselves all the time, you know, or to number ourselves,
Speaker 1: like through scrolling through social media or television or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Let's just say you're like in a Rut
Speaker 1: and you're doing that all the time. Well, the only
Speaker 1: way to get out of that Rut is to understand
Speaker 1: the emotions that are actually leading you to that. So
Speaker 1: that would be sort of like the emotional home. It's
Speaker 1: like you look at something, like a pattern that you
Speaker 1: do and you're like, oh, I realize, like whenever I'm
Speaker 1: triggered or upset or whenever I feel out of control
Speaker 1: in life, I get really anxious. You know, some people
Speaker 1: will always get angry no matter what. So it's so
Speaker 1: important that we understand our psychology and that we understand
Speaker 1: the psychology of the person that we're in a relationship with.
Speaker 1: We can't make our lives better if we don't understand
Speaker 1: the emotional patterns that we get in. You know, like
Speaker 1: that's the root, and I think it's important when you're
Speaker 1: in a relationship, to understand, to be a tuned not
Speaker 1: just to your partner, but also to yourself, and understand
Speaker 1: your psychology and understand like, oh, like my spouse, my partner,
Speaker 1: my lover, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, however you want to
Speaker 1: call it, they're doing that. That has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with me, they're just like doing that thing that they
Speaker 1: always do. It's not that it's an excuse, but it's
Speaker 1: really like understanding them. The only way to really heal
Speaker 1: our lives is to understand the emotional patterns that we
Speaker 1: get ourselves into, and every emotional pattern that we get
Speaker 1: into has a story behind it. It's like, if you're
Speaker 1: experiencing a lot of sadness or a lot of anger,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a whole pattern to that. You're telling
Speaker 1: yourself you're not good enough, you're telling yourself, I'm always
Speaker 1: going to be that way. Like the example that I
Speaker 1: gave of you know, someone saying, well, I'm just broken.
Speaker 1: It's like okay, well, it sounds to me like, you know,
Speaker 1: someone might say, Oh, they're depressed, so that's why they
Speaker 1: say they're broken. It's like, no, that's not how I
Speaker 1: see it. It's they keep saying to themselves that they're broken,
Speaker 1: which leads them into a depression, and then the depression
Speaker 1: actually reinforces that I'm broken and then the more they
Speaker 1: say I'm broken, and more depressed they are. And that
Speaker 1: is a place where they feel really, really comfortable, because then,
Speaker 1: as long as they're like that, they don't have to
Speaker 1: stop dating the drug addict. So it's really important to
Speaker 1: understand that home that you go to that is very
Speaker 1: familiar to you. Maybe you learned it from mom, maybe
Speaker 1: you learned it from Dad, maybe it's just been practiced for,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty or forty years. To understand that, and
Speaker 1: within the context of a relationship is this is why
Speaker 1: single is a lot of times easier, is that we
Speaker 1: can indulge that as much as we want. If we're
Speaker 1: single and we're not in a good state, we could
Speaker 1: Binge Watch netflix all weekend long if we wanted to.
Speaker 1: But guess where that's not going to fly in a relationship. Yep,
Speaker 1: we also don't get triggered alone in the same way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the triggering that, I think, is one
Speaker 1: of the big things. So like my emotional home or
Speaker 1: my strategy is, you know, you list these different strategies
Speaker 1: that people behavioral patterns and relationships, you know, like control
Speaker 1: or pleasing or fighting. I was like, well, I start
Speaker 1: with pleasing. If that doesn't work, I move into fleeing,
Speaker 1: and if that doesn't work, then I freeze. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like I've got a hierarchy, hierarchy, hierarchy of of
Speaker 1: what I go through. Like I didn't work, okay, let's
Speaker 1: try try strategy too. But that desire to please doesn't
Speaker 1: get triggered without someone else around. You know that freezing
Speaker 1: doesn't happen generally in the absence of someone. In my
Speaker 1: last marriage, you know, I think you see this a
Speaker 1: lot in troubled relationships, we had the exact opposite patterns, right.
Speaker 1: Her pattern of triggered was anger, which is the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm most afraid of. So that most triggers my runaway,
Speaker 1: which then most triggers her being angry because she feels abandoned.
Speaker 1: Despite knowing it and working on it. We we were
Speaker 1: unable to fix it and, uh, you know, we ended it,
Speaker 1: which I don't think it is actually a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I think it was a wise thing and we're both
Speaker 1: happy and get along well with each other. And knowing
Speaker 1: that your emotional home and knowing your reaction pattern really helpful,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're so strong. Like you know, for
Speaker 1: me there is a shutdown that happens somebody's angry around me.
Speaker 1: It is completely and totally unconscious. It's like I can
Speaker 1: watch it happen as if the power is just draining
Speaker 1: out of the system, right, like if I am just
Speaker 1: like literally shutting down, like a power draining out of it.
Speaker 1: I can sort of watch it happen and, you know,
Speaker 1: I've gotten better at it, but it is still it's
Speaker 1: so hard when those things are that deeply ingrained. It
Speaker 1: really is a pattern of awareness and continuing to take
Speaker 1: incremental improvement, at least for me, incremental improvement in dealing
Speaker 1: with it and, you know, self soothing like you talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, like okay, what can I do so that
Speaker 1: we don't get there? So there's a couple of different
Speaker 1: directions to go with this, because it's really is very interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: number one, they're saying that goes. We marry our unfinished
Speaker 1: business from childhood. So that's one thing. I'll circle back
Speaker 1: to that. Number two, yeah, it takes incredible amount of
Speaker 1: self awareness to be in a relationship. For sure, the
Speaker 1: heavier our baggage, the bigger our baggage, the more self
Speaker 1: aware you're just gonna have to practice, have to have.
Speaker 1: And then number three is, and this ties into like
Speaker 1: when to leave a relationship. Certainly it's like you can
Speaker 1: find yourself married and you know, it's like, oh, of
Speaker 1: course we found each other. I had the scary father
Speaker 1: who was angry, and then here I am married to
Speaker 1: someone who sees red every time she's triggered, and then
Speaker 1: we're just gonna constantly trigger each other and like yes,
Speaker 1: is it possible that like two people like that could
Speaker 1: work and like figure it out and grow together? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be really profound. But there's also an argument
Speaker 1: for saying, well, you know what, like yes, I understand
Speaker 1: like why this is happening. This is like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going into my pattern that like I learned as
Speaker 1: a child and like then when I do that, she's
Speaker 1: being triggered for abandoned all that, but there's something to
Speaker 1: be said for like, you know what, like we're too
Speaker 1: triggering to each other, and that's okay, but it's like
Speaker 1: maybe we're not a match, like maybe it's like we're
Speaker 1: more of a trauma bond or something like that, or like,
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe it's like and it's a tough call.
Speaker 1: It's like no, it's you have to love each other
Speaker 1: enough to be like no, we're gonna overcome this is
Speaker 1: like our childhood crap. Or you're just like, you know what,
Speaker 1: like it could be a lot easier with someone else.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean I don't take responsibility for it. And the
Speaker 1: next thing I wanted to say is that all these patterns,
Speaker 1: all these emotional homes, everything that I write about, boils
Speaker 1: down to one thing. Like none of us are doing
Speaker 1: any of these things that we don't want to be
Speaker 1: doing in a relationship. It's all fear. Every single one
Speaker 1: of us is afraid that the person that we care
Speaker 1: about is not gonna stay or is gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: like abandon us or is going to reject us. I mean,
Speaker 1: like this is the fear that drives all behavior in
Speaker 1: a relationship, that we're not proud of. So let's spend
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes here and talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about communication. Um, you actually say communication is the glue
Speaker 1: that keeps couples together and it's deficit, as always, the
Speaker 1: force that tears them apart. You know, you talk about
Speaker 1: some winning strategies, some losing strategies, some skills. We're not
Speaker 1: going to get through all of it, but highlight a
Speaker 1: couple important things regarding communication. Either to do or not
Speaker 1: to do. That's so important for this critical thing. We
Speaker 1: could have a whole conversation on your strategies here, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you to do it in five minutes.
Speaker 1: So okay. So, first of all, we're communicating all the time,
Speaker 1: whether we're doing it verbally or nonverbally, like our body
Speaker 1: is communicating all the time. So it's really important that
Speaker 1: when you are having, like any sort of conversation, you're
Speaker 1: turning towards each other, but also that, like, you're present
Speaker 1: with each other, because we can tell when we're talking
Speaker 1: to someone and even if they're looking at us, we
Speaker 1: can tell that they're not with us. Their mind is
Speaker 1: somewhere else or they're strategizing how to reply, you know,
Speaker 1: like what's going to be the thing. So presence is
Speaker 1: really important, and also what's really important is that you
Speaker 1: stop debating. No more debating, because in a debate there's
Speaker 1: a winner and there's a loser, and if you're communicating
Speaker 1: with your partner with the intent to win the argument,
Speaker 1: then guess what, you're gonna walk away feeling validated for
Speaker 1: about a minute. They're going to feel totally invalidated and
Speaker 1: guess what, your problem doesn't go away. You both lose. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, we both lose. That presence thing is funny.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of my current partner, Jenny, and
Speaker 1: I like things, like I said, are so are so good,
Speaker 1: but I have a habit of she'll be talking and
Speaker 1: I really am listening, but I'm also on my way
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and it drives her nuts, you know, because
Speaker 1: I'll be like listening to her and then I'll be
Speaker 1: thinking and I need to go get my sweatshirt and
Speaker 1: I need and so I'm I'm literally walking away, which
Speaker 1: and that's really, really difficult. It's not the signal that
Speaker 1: I want to be sending. What's funny is I found
Speaker 1: if I just say hey, I also, while I listen
Speaker 1: to you, need to go do these couple of things.
Speaker 1: It's fine, right, like it's understood. Then, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's just so, you're right. I mean it's like I
Speaker 1: really am listening, but my body is very clearly saying no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. And the thing is it's like, yeah, you're listening,
Speaker 1: but if you're doing other things, you're not really listening.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as, like the phone. It's like
Speaker 1: you could be like out for dinner. It's like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not looking at my phone, but it's on the table.
Speaker 1: It's like that immediately changes everything. Having the phone on
Speaker 1: the table is not the same thing as putting your
Speaker 1: phone away. It's just not. Or you're like holding your
Speaker 1: phone in your hand and though you're not looking at it,
Speaker 1: it's like it immediately like what you feel, even if
Speaker 1: it's not conscious at that moment, as you feel like
Speaker 1: I am not as important as that, the price that's
Speaker 1: in that person's hand. Listening is so important. I think
Speaker 1: that people speak way more than they should and they
Speaker 1: should be really listening more and there should be more
Speaker 1: of I hear you, I understand you. Tell me more
Speaker 1: and less trying to fix this is actually something that
Speaker 1: happens a lot between male and female relationships is that
Speaker 1: men typically really like to fix and women they just
Speaker 1: typically want to they're like, no, you know, I just
Speaker 1: want to be heard. I want to be heard. So
Speaker 1: that's something that comes up a lot when it comes
Speaker 1: to like repairing a fight. You said something interesting in
Speaker 1: the beginning of a conversation on that book, like if
Speaker 1: there was a camera rolling, what would pick up. And
Speaker 1: so when you want to repair, being able to say
Speaker 1: this is what I saw and really just like be
Speaker 1: the camera like on, like showing the recording, and then
Speaker 1: you can say this was my interpretation. So there you're like,
Speaker 1: you're like you're actually admitting that, like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: what my mind, yes, actually constructed over this. And then
Speaker 1: you say how you feel, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: use the word feel in front of every sentence, thinking
Speaker 1: I'm talking about my feelings. So it's like no, saying
Speaker 1: I feel like you don't care is not a feeling.
Speaker 1: A feeling is I feel really insecure and scared, because
Speaker 1: my perception right now is that you don't care. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got lots of great words in your different courses
Speaker 1: and workbooks that are available on your website. I'll just
Speaker 1: end this with one that I think is so important
Speaker 1: in every type of relationship, which is positive intent. To
Speaker 1: share a little bit about that. So, if you believe
Speaker 1: that the person that you're in a relationship with, whether
Speaker 1: it's a friendship, whether it's a significant other, whether it's family,
Speaker 1: if you actually truly believe that that person's intention is
Speaker 1: to hurt you and to harm you, then that's not
Speaker 1: someone you should be in relationship with anymore. So if
Speaker 1: you can say, okay, I'm hurt, I don't like the behavior,
Speaker 1: I don't even particularly like you write this moment, but
Speaker 1: if you can say to yourself, but I know that
Speaker 1: that's not what they meant to do. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: we'll get stuck in our heads, we'll create a story
Speaker 1: and we'll get so angry with someone, and that's when
Speaker 1: we have to stop and ask yourselves like yeah, but
Speaker 1: do you think that that was their intention, was to
Speaker 1: do this to you right now? That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you don't talk to them about it, doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you don't call them out on it, doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you tolerate behavior here, but it's so important. Two, if
Speaker 1: you're going to be constantly seeing a monster in your partner,
Speaker 1: what you're going to be constantly getting as a monster.
Speaker 1: I certainly think it's the place to start, right. I
Speaker 1: love the phrase assume positive intent. You know, assume that.
Speaker 1: Now again, you may need to update your assumption. Right,
Speaker 1: that may not be what it is and then you
Speaker 1: need to update it, but it's a good place to start,
Speaker 1: because if you always assume negative intent, and we all
Speaker 1: know people who do, they interpret every action through negative intention,
Speaker 1: it's a bitter place to live from. It is it's
Speaker 1: a defensiveness, yeah, you know. And it's back to that
Speaker 1: camera idea, right. Like I find that the place that
Speaker 1: I've gone wrong in relationships and I see people do
Speaker 1: so often, is we think we know why somebody did
Speaker 1: something and you know, if you know somebody long enough
Speaker 1: and you've talked to them enough, maybe you know, but
Speaker 1: the Y is very much an interpretation, you know. I
Speaker 1: find that just really gets us into trouble. It's a
Speaker 1: whole lot better too, as you were just saying. Here's
Speaker 1: the behavior I saw, here's how it made me feel.
Speaker 1: You know, the behavior was a factual thing. My feelings
Speaker 1: are real, they're mine. Now, what you meant or what
Speaker 1: you were trying to do. I actually need to get
Speaker 1: that Info from you. Yes, well said. Well, Gillian, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show. It's such
Speaker 1: a pleasure. Your podcast, again, which is just released and
Speaker 1: has so much great information, is called Jillian on love,
Speaker 1: and listeners can find it anywhere they get their podcasts.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation and I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about healing heartbreak, because you do a lot of work
Speaker 1: in that area too, and there's assuredly some heartbroken people
Speaker 1: listening right now, so we'll do that. Listeners, if you'd
Speaker 1: like access to that post show conversation and all kinds
Speaker 1: of other good things you get from being part of
Speaker 1: our community, check it out at one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash join again. Thank you so much, Jillian. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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