Balance your Brain

James and Catherine discuss why yelling at kids is harmful, except in rare moments of immediate danger, and how parents teach far more through their example than through punishment or harshness. They explore autonomy, emotional regulation, and the long-term impact of parenting, arguing that kindness, respect, and steady growth create “emotional wealth” that can shape families for generations.Catherine Roebuck: https://catherineroebuck.comJames Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaT Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jameslmft Instagram: instagram.com/jameslmft Tiktot: https://www.tiktok.com/@kindcourage

Catherine Roebuck: https://catherineroebuck.comJames Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.comIN THIS EPISODE:Why revealing the messy stuff in your mind builds trust — but only when paired with responsibility and thoughtfulness about timing and impactThe case for telling your partner about an affair: the harm already exists whether you reveal it or not, and secret "cleanup" is just continued deceptionHow apologies become tools for control when you expect instant forgiveness, and why sitting with your partner's reaction IS the real workThe concept of male fragility — James shares how learning he was "fragile" in marriage therapy changed everything about how he handles his wife's criticismCongruence vs. masking: the relief your partner feels when what you say finally matches what they can already senseWhy James steers couples away from "I feel / I need" language and toward specific behavioral requests — and Catherine's pushback on where vulnerability fits inThe difference between sharing your feelings and weaponizing them: "I'm angry right now" vs. "You made me feel this, now fix it"How adult relationships rewire childhood attachment patterns — and why expecting your partner to regulate your emotions doesn't work between equalsA powerful therapy moment: a therapist told James's wife to pull her hand back and let him sit with his own painPractical tools for unmasking: improv classes, self-compassion, learning to restore your own dignity after embarrassmentGrowth model vs. defect model: you're fine as you are AND you can become a better partner

Catherine Roebuck joins me to talk Trauma.James Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comCatherine Roebuck:  https://catroebuck.comListen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeRoseville Couples Counseling300 Harding Blvd suite 108, Roseville CA 916-292-8920Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaTListen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-christensen-podcast/id1757976298Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast in your favorite podcast app https://jamesmchristensen.com/podcast?format=rss Watch to Balance your Brain Podcast on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLev0wDi_D_FKBNguwWm6LhPi711Gs7AVO

A conversation between James Christensen and Catherine RoebuckCatherine: We were talking the other day about pathological demand avoidance — with neurodivergent clients and their partners — and you offered a different term that I just loved.James: Yeah. The other term is persistent drive for autonomy, which I think is just a normal human trait.Catherine: Yes, I agree. And that term is so much nicer because having "pathological" in a term is a little pathologizing, right?James: Just a bit.Catherine: Persistent drive for autonomy — you're right, this is something that we all have, and people can have it to more extreme degrees. Sometimes that can be more difficult to work with, but I love framing it that way. Everyone wants to belong to themselves, and of course they do.James: I think some of us who have it to more extreme degrees had more difficulty finding autonomy in childhood.Catherine: That makes a lot of sense. And there could be other things that make someone's brain more focused on this. Even in the same family, some people may be more focused on it than others. But I really find it helpful to think about it as a healthy drive to be your own person — maybe taken too far at times, but healthy at its core.James: I think it is a healthy drive. What we do with it matters. What I was thinking about this morning is relating to myself with warm acceptance versus cold rejection. I had this dream last night where people were relating to me with cold rejection, and it was so off-putting to be treated that way. I actually woke up in a bit of a panic and was lying in bed thinking, "Can I relate to myself with warm acceptance? Can it be okay for me to be up in the middle of the night with a bit of a panic?" I would obviously rather be relaxed and sleeping, but I just lay there and practiced relating to myself with warm acceptance — that was the phrase that came to mind.And it seems that if I don't want to set my partner's drive for autonomy against me, what I should do is relate to my partner with warm acceptance instead of cold rejection.Catherine: That makes sense. So you're talking about what you do if you have a partner who tends to lean toward autonomy even when it costs the relationship.James: Yeah.Catherine: This comes up in every partnership where you want your partner to do something different. And a lot of times, depending on how you approach them, you might actually get in your own way and work against having the best chance at them being receptive to that request.James: It happens all the time. And I think it happens internally too. The way I think about my brain is that the parts that developed when I was really young are still there, and there isn't anything I can do to make them go away. They're always going to be there.Those parts of my brain also respond with this drive for autonomy. Like, "No, I'm going to be in control." And that has harmful effects for me. When I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, there was a part of my brain convinced that it needed to defend me from something, even though there was nothing to defend me from.The way I relate to that part of my brain has a similar effect to how I relate to my wife. I can relate to it in a way that induces it to push against me harder — to push harder for autonomy — or I can relate to it in a way that induces it to relax and accept that I don't have to push so hard for my autonomy. In a way, I'm already autonomous. I'm already free. Another way of thinking about it is: am I enhancing my partner's sense of freedom, or am I diminishing it?Catherine: And you're saying you could do this with yourself or with another person — that you could enhance your own sense of freedom based on how you relate to yourself.James: Yeah. What I was doing in bed this morning was enhancing my sense of being okay, which is kind of like being free. It's okay for me to feel what I'm feeling right now, even though that feeling is unpleasant. It didn't go away for a while. But my default setting is to get upset about being upset, and it just makes it worse. It's like I'm feeding harsh energy into the feeling, and it just gets bigger and bigger.Catherine: So if you're trying to get either yourself or your partner to engage differently — which plenty of us struggle with — and what your brain produces automatically isn't getting you there, what's the ineffective approach you might need to start noticing? And how do you shift to create conditions for change?James: The most common ineffective approach I see is using judgment or condescension or superiority to try to get someone to change. Another way of saying it is: I'm going to paint a picture that what you're doing is so bad that it's making my life not okay, and that's going to induce you to change.But I usually see that have the opposite effect. If I emphasize the degree to which I'm not okay because of what you're doing, it actually induces the other person to not change — because they feel controlled. If I'm doing that, I'm emphasizing my victim status to induce you to change. I'm claiming victim status to make you feel uncomfortable, and then you're going to do something to stop feeling uncomfortable. But people don't like being controlled that way. My partner is likely to say, at least on a subconscious level, "I can see what you're doing. I can see how you're using your unpleasant emotions to try to control me. I'm not going to be controlled. I'm going to do even more of what you don't like, just to make it clear that you can't control me."Catherine: So you're sending a message that you want your partner to change, but the actual message is: when I'm deciding what you should do and who you should be, I'm pretty hard on you. I can be shaming or judgmental or cold. And so if your partner complies with that request, they're setting themselves up for more of the same treatment. They're reinforcing a pattern where you're going to keep treating them that way, and they don't like how you're treating them. It's like, "I don't want you to run my life because you're not very nice to me." To try to belong to themselves and not be controlled by a mean, critical person, they can't actually do what you're asking. They would be losing if they did that.James: Yeah, that's the way I often frame it. If your partner does what you want, do they feel like they just won, or do they feel like they just lost? And what they're actually losing or gaining is autonomy.The kind of changes that most of us need to make in our relationships have to be driven by autonomy, because the brain doesn't change when it feels controlled and manipulated. It locks itself down. It's like, "This is not a safe environment for me to loosen things up and start rewiring." If I have some behavioral pattern that's really annoying to my wife, for me to rewire and change that pattern, I have to get myself into a state of emotional safety where I feel like I'm going to be okay and I'm in charge. That's when my brain is going to unlock and say, "Okay, I'm in a sufficiently safe place to do some rewiring work."When I work with clients, I would never try to get them to rewire in a state of excessive emotional arousal. I would never get them feeling all defensive and then say, "Okay, now let's rewire your brain." It just doesn't work. The more defensive they're feeling, the less open they are to changing. I think that's just the way we are.Catherine: That makes so much sense. If you're in an interaction where you feel threatened by the people around you, you don't want to accept outside influence. When you're under attack, you're focused on maintaining your own autonomy, your sense of being your own person, while somebody is threatening that. It's just going to reinforce resistance and rigidity and "don't tell me what to do."James: I have some ex-military clients, and in the military we had a concept called threat con — threat condition. How threatened are we right now in this location? It goes through levels. I used that with clients and said, "When your brain's at a high threat con level, it's not going to rewire. So what can you do to help yourself come down into lower threat con so that you can do some rewiring? And what can you do to help your partner come down into lower threat con level so they can do some rewiring too?"Catherine: So what if somebody has a request that really matters to them, and they're trying to figure out how to make it in a good way — where they stand a chance at their partner taking it in, considering their perspective, and making a change?James: I think the best place to start is with warm acceptance. Can I offer you warm acceptance exactly the way you are? My favorite definition of the word "respect" is to accept a person just as they are. Can I offer you warm acceptance just the way you are, and also ask you to change? I'm not going to qualify you as a bad person. I'm not going to make it seem like your behavior is so extreme that it's ruining my life. I'm just going to start from the idea that I'm okay and I'm going to be okay, and I want you to change.Catherine: So if you want to make a request of your partner and set it up so it could be a win-win — where they wouldn't have to give up their autonomy or sense of self to make a change that benefits you — how would you go about that?James: The focus is on what is my emotional state when I make the request. Am I making it from a place of cold rejection, or from warm acceptance? Warm acceptance means I have to go through the work of figuring out whether or not I'm going to be okay if you say no.If I approach you and I've already decided in my mind that you have to say yes, I'm going to be putting a lot of pressure on you. I'm going to be making it seem like my okayness depends on your response, which feels like control — because it basically is a kind of emotional control lever. You're going to be tempted to say no even if you're open to yes, because you don't want your autonomy threatened that way.So if I want to not do that, I need to do the work of figuring out whether I'm going to be okay if you say no. I really need to figure that out for myself. Then I can present it with warm acceptance. I can make this request and I'm prepared to accept a yes, and I'm also prepared to accept a no. There's not this emotional load on it because I'm not putting you in charge of my okayness.Catherine: And I think part of what's tricky is that some people, when they look at that, are going to find that they really don't believe they're going to be okay. That's highlighting some kind of dependence — it could be emotional dependence, it could be financial dependence — but some type of dependence issue.Because we tend to balance each other out in relationships automatically without thinking about it, if one partner is overly dependent, the other partner is going to be overly independent. You might be in the dynamic wanting your partner to come closer and connect with you more, but actually, if you want that, you'd have to address some of the dependency issues on your side. Adults in general can secure their own okayness. It might take some work, but if you're really not okay when your partner says no to a request, your focus probably has to be on getting to where you're okay — not on appealing to someone you can't rely on for support.James: Yes. And most of the couples I work with, it's not really an issue of physical okayness or financial okayness. The issue is more a sense of emotional dependency.Catherine: Yes.James: "I need you to be a certain way for me to be emotionally okay." And my instinct is to ramp up my emotionality more to get you to respond. I think that's a very deep human instinct, because that's how we got ourselves taken care of as infants.When I was an infant, I had no power other than making a fuss. My only lever was to ramp up my emotionality until I got a response. And so deep in my mind is this idea that if my wife isn't doing what I want her to do, the instinctive response is to ramp up my emotionality — to ramp up my performance of distress. "Look how distressed I am because of what you're doing." That worked as a baby. I would put on performative distress and I would get taken care of. But it has the opposite effect as an adult.Catherine: I agree. The intuitive thing is to think the problem is that my partner doesn't understand how upset or hurt I am, so I need to make it more clear, more inarguable. But often your partner does know that you're upset and hurt. They've got a different reason for not wanting to go along with what you're asking. And sometimes that reason is that they have a problem with how much you depend on them or try to control them.James: Sometimes I think we're just both focused on our own distress. If I'm so focused on my distress, my wife might be just as focused on hers. Her strategies might be somewhat different for managing it, but she's probably not as interested in dealing with my distress as in dealing with her own — which is true on my side too. When I'm doing all these things, I'm not really thinking about what my impact is on her. I'm only thinking about what her impact is on me.Catherine: A classic way I see this play out is with a preoccupied-avoidant dynamic. The preoccupied partner is saying, "I'm under so much distress in this relationship. We have to talk about it. Can't you see how upset I am? Have some compassion and talk to me." And the other partner is saying, "I'm under so much distress in this relationship. Can't you give me some breathing room? See how much stress I'm under? Back off for a minute and let me recover." They're at similar levels of distress, but they have opposite strategies for handling it. That's typical — that we partner that way or push each other that way. They're just caught up in their own heads and not really seeing very far beyond their own difficulty.James: And the avoidant person is going to face similar levels of distress when they come into the relationship as the preoccupied person faces when the avoidant person avoids. If I ask my wife to come toward me — especially if I haven't calmed myself down yet — I'm asking her to take on the same level of distress that I already have. The distress that I'm trying to get rid of. I'm basically saying, "Can you take this on for me?" Which isn't really fair if I'm not willing to carry it.Catherine: Yes. I agree with that.James: I tell clients a lot that your partner is never going to give up their drive for autonomy, and your chances of getting what you want are much higher if you can do it within the context of allowing your partner to be autonomous — and making it obvious that you're allowing them to be autonomous. That means you respect them and their choices. You respect that it's their choice and not your choice. Which, once again, is just not instinctive. It's not the way we're built. But we can get to that place.Another way of framing this is: if I want to be more kind to my wife, that lies on a foundation of feeling more strong. This is the idea of differentiation — I have to feel solid in myself before I'm going to be able to reach out with kindness and acceptance to my wife. For me to offer warm acceptance, I have to be okay with who I am first. That's the foundation level.When I'm feeling super insecure, that's going to limit how much kindness and goodness I can offer to someone else. You can't put that cart before the horse. There's no shortcut to becoming more kind if you don't know how to feel like you're going to be okay.Catherine: One way I talk to people about this is that you're in your own company all the time. If the way you talk to yourself is unkind and impatient and harsh, you're wiring that in many, many more hours than you're wiring in something different. Even if you talk to your partner better — some people think they're nicer to other people than they are to themselves — your brain just works on repetition. The more you do something, the more automatic it becomes and the stronger those pathways are. You're creating much stronger pathways around how you treat yourself than around how you treat anyone else, because you're doing it all the time.If you want to be kind and patient and accepting, you're going to have to take on being that way toward yourself, which many people find very difficult. The way we relate to ourselves is usually just however our caretakers related to us when we were young, and many of us did not have caretakers relating to us with patience and warmth and acceptance.James: Yeah.Catherine: So what if you're the person who has more of that persistent drive for autonomy, and you know this about yourself — that you tend to instinctively say "nope" whenever someone wants something from you, and just because somebody wants it means you don't want to give it? How do you work with that?James: I've seen this happen a few times over the past couple weeks with my wife. She's asked me for something and I feel this deep, energetic flood inside me of "I don't want to do that, it's not fair, it's not okay" — not really for any good reason. She's not being unreasonable. But I have this instinct to rebel.There was one moment where she asked for something and I just kind of dismissed her and walked away. Then I came back like ten seconds later and said, "Yeah, I'll do that for you." But I had to take a few seconds to ask myself, "Is this coming from the best in me?" The way my mind had framed it was, "I don't want to over-function. She needs to face this challenge herself." Which, sometimes that's true. But I decided in that moment it wasn't. There are some things that are so much easier for me to do than for her to do — like computer-related things. Some things I can do in ten seconds that would take her ten minutes. And in those instances it really does make sense for me to help.Sometimes it's better for me to allow her to struggle and do it herself, but there's a balance. One indication for me is: if I'm feeling antagonistic toward her in the moment, it's not coming from the best in me. And that's how I knew. This wasn't my inner wise self speaking up. It was some sort of rebellious child saying, "I'm not going to do what you want me to do."Catherine: Yeah. I think it's based on not really trusting anybody who's tried to run your life — parents, maybe teachers or religious leaders — having a sense that these people who tried to control me didn't really act in my best interest.James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: I think the remedy for that is getting in the driver's seat of your life and building more trust with yourself. "I do a pretty good job running this life." You're the captain of the ship. Because then you can approach these situations and make a real decision for yourself. That's how you bring autonomy into it — you choose based on your values.James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: Instead of making a knee-jerk response of "since you want that — no." Because that's not you choosing. That's still submitting to external control, because someone else is deciding what you do. As soon as they put an idea forward, you rule it out.James: You're still just responding to external stimulus all the time. You're not really making your own decisions.Catherine: Exactly. That's the thing that helps — building enough trust in myself that I start to think, "Okay, I have a decision to make. What do I think is the right thing to do here?"James: It helps to slow everything down and actually think about it. My initial response is often not the best response.Catherine: Yes. Another thing I'll do sometimes is push myself to come up with three possible responses and then compare them. Your brain will automatically produce something that's just a coping strategy from childhood — that's very often the first response. But if you make yourself consider more options, you can make a real choice, and it connects you with your own agency again.James: When I challenge clients to come up with a better response to their partner, they often say, "Well, do you want me to just be a doormat?" They'll say that even though they know I'd hate being a doormat. But it's this idea that all I can do is get angry or do nothing.I really like that you said three responses. Because the third response is: I'm not going to be a doormat, and I'm not going to be mean, and I am going to do something else. Which would be, for example, "I'm going to tell you what I think in the kindest way possible." That's way, way harder than getting angry or being a doormat. But it is the way forward.Catherine: Yeah. For me, I usually have to come up with three to come up with one that's mine. Because the first one is, "I could do what this other person wants." And the second one is, "I could not do what this other person wants." In my mind from childhood, it's, "I can do what my mom wants, or I can not do what my mom wants." Those are the first two options.James: Yes.Catherine: And then the third option is, "I could figure out what I actually want."James: Yes. That's so true.Catherine: You have to take on those initial ones first before you get there.James: That's a really good model. The third choice. "I'm going to comply" or "I'm going to rebel" — those are usually not the best options. But to live according to my own desires and values is a third way.Catherine: Right. And it's not the fastest option. Like you said, slowing yourself down is a key part of this.James: I like that. I've never thought of it that way. That's great.Catherine: Yeah.James: All right. Should we leave it there?Catherine: Yeah. Great.James: Thank you, Catherine. That was fantastic. All right. See you soon.Catherine: See you.

https://jamesmchristensen.comcatroebuck.com James: Loving from the heart and loving unilaterally is fundamentally an adult task, not a childhood task.Catherine: When you first told me that, my reaction was, "Well, I know kids can love—I felt a lot of love as a kid. I felt love from my kids." But it's the feeling aspect that matters here. What kids are able to do is take warm, pleasant, affectionate feelings and do actions that align with those feelings. That feels like love.And that's how a lot of adults do it too. Early in a relationship, it's really easy—you have all kinds of warm, affectionate feelings for your partner, so you just line your actions up with your feelings. You don't have to put a lot of effort in. But as the relationship goes on, or anytime someone's not doing what you want, you have to deal with the question: How can I love in the absence of that pleasant feeling?That's the part children are way less capable of doing than adults. It's fundamentally a developed capacity—to act loving when you're not feeling love.James: When we're falling in love, it's the first kind. My biology is doing so much work, pushing me toward kindness and caring and being concerned about my partner. But those feelings fade after a while, and then I'm stuck in adult love—which I probably don't know how to do.That's why relationships fall apart after a couple of years. I was able to get into the relationship with childlike love, but I'm not able to build a long-lived relationship with childlike love. It has to be adult love, which is a capacity I have to develop.Catherine: Right, and not every adult has it. If you're lucky, you had parents who modeled this kind of unilateral love and investment. If you're not lucky, you didn't have that. You're trying to offer something you've never been on the receiving end of.James: I think basically we all have to face this challenge in adulthood. What you're talking about is that it's harder for some of us than others depending on how much of it we saw and received as children. When I was a kid, if I treated my parent poorly, did they respond by treating me well? Or did they just amplify the poor treatment and do the same back to me—or even worse?Catherine: How many people have had the experience of a parent yelling at them, "No yelling!" or hitting them because they hit a sibling? The parent is doing the very thing they're telling the child not to do. That reactivity—that reactive expression where you're just acting out what you're feeling—works so well in the honeymoon phase.But at some point, when the hormones wear off and you can't rely on biology so much, you have to shift from your actions being driven by feelings to your actions being value-driven. You can feel angry at your partner and still figure out how to treat them well.James: It's interesting—I got married right at the two-year point of my relationship. I had known my wife for two years, and we'd been more or less together for almost two years when we got married. That's right at the point where things started to fall apart.Right after we got married, we faced these intense challenges of not knowing how to love each other as adults. We had known how to respond to these amazing feelings we'd had, but those feelings really went away pretty quickly after we got married. Then we were just stuck in this swamp of, "I want to love you. I want to create a good relationship. It just seems impossible."The way my mind put it together was that there was something she was doing that made this impossible. I instinctively blamed her. Realistically, neither one of us knew how to generate love or experience love from a generative place.Catherine: That's that more childlike instinct. When you're a little kid, it's easy to be warm if that's how you're being treated. When those warm feelings go away in childhood, it's easy to give up and think, "There's not much I can do about this until my parents start treating me better again. I'm just not going to feel good."When you start getting upset at your wife, you're playing out the same thing. That makes sense in childhood because you don't have an option to realistically shift this unilaterally from your side. But as an adult, you can. Just because you have the capacity doesn't mean you have any awareness that you have it, or any idea how to use it.The other thing about the timeline is that there's a lot going on biologically and hormonally to drive you into a committed dynamic where you might be able to raise a baby. As soon as the relationship uncertainty is resolved—which marriage is one of the main ways that happens—all of this biological help tends to fall off.For some people, you might get two or three years of hormonally-driven honeymoon euphoric bonding. But it won't last longer than that no matter what. If you're going to have a long-term happy relationship, you have to figure out how to love on purpose when you're not feeling warm or kind.James: It's crazy that I got married without having any idea those feelings were going to fade.Catherine: Was that your first long-lasting relationship?James: Yeah, my first serious one. I'd had relationships before—one that lasted almost a year, a couple of six-month relationships—but they weren't serious. There was no real commitment, no expectation we were going to end up together.My relationship with my wife was much more serious. It was my first experience of that. I had never considered the idea that the way I felt about her would change soon after getting married. If someone had sat me down and said, "Let me talk to you about what's going to happen over the next five years of your relationship and what you can do about it"—that would have been incredibly useful.Catherine: I think that catches most people by surprise. Even if you've had some multi-year relationships, if this is the first time you've ever married someone, lived with somebody, really solidified "you're my person and we're committed"—it's going to play out differently than it ever has before.Ironically, it's the security of the commitment that resolves this biological drive to a great degree. That's not a bad thing, but it is challenging to navigate.Creating a Secure BaseJames: There's another component to this. As a child, I didn't have the kind of secure base from which you can love in an adult way. Children can't guarantee their own safety and security and okayness.As an adult, if I want to really love my wife, I have to create a secure base to start from. I have to feel like I'm going to be okay. In the absence of that feeling, there's very little chance of me reaching out to her with kindness and generosity. It's like I'm living with this idea of scarcity—there's not enough love to go around, not enough safety, not enough okayness.So I'm not going to reach out generously and say, "Let me offer love to you." I feel like it's a scarce resource. I feel like I'm not going to be okay. If I'm fighting a bear, I'm not worried about how the bear is feeling. If I'm fighting with my wife, I'm also not worried about how she's feeling. I'm just thinking about protecting myself.Catherine: This is the biggest difference between how your brain works in childhood versus adulthood. In childhood, there's a real limitation—you can't take care of yourself. By definition, you're dependent. Your happiness, safety, and wellbeing genuinely depend, in a life-or-death way, on maintaining a relationship with your caregiver.But for almost all adults, that's not the case. Most adults really are able to take care of themselves. They might not feel that way. They might not know it yet. They might have practical things to work out—earning their own money, handling logistics. But adults are pretty able to care for themselves.There's real opportunity there to invest more in another person, to do it unilaterally, because you can be unilaterally okay.James: You can make this shift where instead of being primarily concerned about my wife's impact on me, I can be primarily concerned about my impact on her. But that's only going to happen after I believe that I'm going to be okay.I might feel like I'm not going to be okay—anxious feelings, panic. But I can do some work with that panic and say, "Even though I feel like I'm not going to be okay, I have a belief, a faith, an understanding that I actually will be okay."That belief is the foundation for loving action. If I believe I'm going to be okay, that sets me free to be kind and loving and generous toward my wife—to be more concerned about my impact on her than about her impact on me.Catherine: A lot of this comes down to taking in the reality of your circumstances as an adult. Anytime someone starts talking about fear of abandonment—that's such a different thing for an adult than for a child. The intensity of that panic feels very similar. But the reality of what it means to be abandoned as a child versus having your partner leave you as an adult—they're extremely different circumstances.One is a crisis. The other is heartbreak. But it's not a survival-level problem to have a specific other adult decide they don't want to take care of you when you're an adult. You can survive that.Getting Through the FogJames: It's so easy to say what you're saying and so hard to actually believe it.I've thought about this as being like the fog that covers the ground in winter where I live. The ground's still there, but you can't see it. All you see is this white blanket. You don't know where the trees are, where the ditches are, where the rocks are.But if I can get below the fog or come into contact with the ground, now I know what's actually there. You're talking about this idea that I'm going to be okay, that this isn't as dangerous as it seems. But the process of coming into contact with reality to that extent is pretty difficult for most of us. Most of us are used to responding to our emotions—especially anxious emotions—and we end up treating our partners poorly because we're responding to a sense of not being okay, even though that sense isn't accurate.Catherine: So how do you get through the fog? How do you make contact with reality?James: One thing that helps me is to ask the question: Am I going to be okay? And force myself to face it.I feel pretty intense panic quite often. For most of my life, that panic was the primary driver of my behavior—especially how I handled myself in my marriage, and a lot of how I handled myself at work. I have to get my brain to face the idea that I need to decide based on data, not emotions. Am I going to be okay?I look at my life. I have a job, a house, a wife and kids. I live in a safe neighborhood. There's very little data to support the idea that I'm not going to be okay. I have to force myself to look at that.Someone showed up at my doorstep a few weeks ago and served me with a lawsuit I wasn't anticipating. It threw me into this emotional tailspin of panic and despair and anxiety. That was an opportunity for me to ask myself, "Am I going to be okay?"I don't know for certain, but I like to think in probabilities. Even after being served with this lawsuit, there's a 99% chance I'm going to be okay. I don't live in a world where my okayness is really threatened that often. The things I worry about—the way my wife treats me, the way my kids treat me—realistically aren't big enough concerns for me to allow myself to spiral over.Catherine: For some adults, they could look at the data and conclude, "I'm really not going to be okay. I don't know how to support myself financially. I can't handle parenting alone."In that case, you have to start handling those problems. Shift off of "my partner's not treating me well, they don't love me enough" and onto "I want to have a real choice. For me to have a real choice, I have to know I can take care of myself financially. I need a plan."It's fine if your plan takes years. Even having a plan—that's already taking much better care of yourself. It's going to help your nervous system settle down when you start to address the problems in your way.If you look at the data and think, "I've got serious problems—this isn't just in my head, I have logistical issues or safety issues to handle"—that's your reality. That's where you need to focus. Most adults can still solve those problems. They don't have to secure better treatment from a specific other person to solve their own wellbeing.James: When we were children, most of us created an imaginary world where we were a little more secure and better cared for than we actually were. As adults, we tend to do the opposite—we feel like we're not going to be as okay as we really are.Almost everyone I talk to about this, especially someone considering being left by their partner, when I get them to face this reality—I say, "Imagine your life a year after your partner leaves. What kind of life are you going to have?"And they say, "Oh, I'm going to figure it out. I have friends and family and resources. I'm actually a pretty capable person."That's coming into contact with the reality: I have capacity and resources to make a life for myself. It's probably going to be different than what I have now. There will be things that are much less comfortable. But it's not going to be the end of my story.Catherine: A lot of the people I work with are higher income. They really have a lot of options. They might not like the idea of losing half their money, but even in that scenario, they're going to be fine, and they know it. Yet they experience the same level of abandonment panic.Your brain can produce a story to explain why you're so scared. What's useful about looking at the data is peeling back those layers. Each time you peel back a layer, you still have this feeling of being very vulnerable. So there's the practical stuff to handle, and then there's the feeling—learning to tolerate the intensity, giving yourself enough lived experiences of having this feeling and being okay.You start to settle down and think, "I might continue to feel, on and off throughout my life, that it would be the end of the world if this person didn't love me. But I can give myself real experiences of: that person hurt me, disappointed me, and I got through it."Do this enough times, and you become tolerant of the intensity. Either the intensity settles down, or you settle down about the intensity.James: I think it's usually both. When I'm not settling down about the intensity, that feeds back into it. I'm adding fuel to the fire.This was my life for so long—I would spiral. I'd feel panic, then panic about the panic, spiraling into deeper and deeper intensity.I still feel that intensity now. But I'm so much more able to make room for it. "Oh, I'm feeling this intensity, this aliveness, this fear, this panic. I've felt this before. I'm somewhat used to feeling it."I don't let it affect the narrative of my life as much. I don't go from feeling the panic to thinking I'm not going to be okay. I feel the panic and feel like I'm not going to be okay, but I still think in my mind: I'm probably going to be okay. I'm probably going to find a way through this.Even when I got served with that lawsuit, I felt the panic and immediately started thinking, "There's a really good chance this turns out okay."That is such a gift. I didn't used to have that. I used to get enveloped in the panic and my connection with reality would disappear. I'd get lost in the fog.In this valley where I live, there are trees, rocks, ditches, and cliffs—but they're not everywhere. When the fog's in the valley, I can't see where the hazards are, so I can't avoid them. But if I can come into contact with reality, I can see there's a path I can walk that's going to be okay. I just have to stay in touch with what's real to avoid the problems and obstacles.Catherine: This brings to mind my younger son. He stubbed his toe recently, and his reaction was to start running in circles. He gets hurt, has a panic response, and starts acting panicked. Obviously, this isn't helping his toe.I used to have the same reaction as a kid. When I'd stub my toe, I'd just start moving. I couldn't handle looking at it.As an adult, if I stub my toe, it still hurts. I still don't like it. But I can take a deep breath, stay right where I am, handle looking at it to see if the nail's coming off or if it's really serious.There's still the acute experience of something going wrong—I don't know yet if it's as bad as it feels or worse. But there's more capacity to be with that. I've stubbed my toe probably a hundred times. I know I typically get through it fine. So I can settle myself down, take a look, gather more data, breathe through it, give myself a minute, and then it passes.I'm less likely to injure myself that way. If I just feel the pain and start moving without a plan, I'm more likely to make it worse.James: Imagine if you stubbed your toe and spent the next three weeks figuring out how to get revenge on the door. That's what we do in our relationships. The door was just being a door. It's as much my doing that I stubbed my toe as it is the door's. For me to focus on blaming the door for hurting me is not a useful way to focus my energy.Catherine: Or maybe another person got in your way—they were somehow involved in you getting injured. There's often an impulse to get mad at them or hurt them back. You don't have to do it.James: Or you could just say, "I'm not going to walk anymore," because you got hurt while walking. That's also not the best solution. You can walk carefully. You can be kind to yourself. You might limp a little. But you can still keep doing the things that make your life good.Love and Relationship Are Different ThingsCatherine: When we're talking about love, I think people mix it up with relationship. One of the challenges of mature love is figuring out how you can be in relationship with somebody in a way that gives you the best chance of actually being loving to them.It's not that no matter how they treat you, no matter how mad or hurt you are, you just keep saying "I love you" and being affectionate. Sometimes you have to handle what's happening. Sometimes you have to draw a boundary. Sometimes there's a pattern in how this person's treating you—you've talked to them about it, they're not interested in changing, and it doesn't work for you. You have to handle that.You can do all of that in a loving way.This is actually something you challenged me on several years ago. I was justifying what I was doing with how angry I was about how I was being treated. You told me, "I think you can do what you need to do in this relationship without the anger."I did not want to hear that. But you were completely right. It took me a while to implement it and figure it out, but I ended up being able to handle what was happening in that relationship without needing the anger to do it. I actually had a much better resolution than I'd anticipated.The anger was its own thing. I couldn't just bypass it—I had to deal with my anger. But that was a separate process from dealing with the problem in the relationship.James: When we talk about anger, we're so imprecise. Anger is fundamentally an emotion—a feeling with no actions associated with it. But when we talk about anger, we usually mean angry behavior or aggressive behavior, which is completely different from feeling anger.What you're describing is feeling the anger and not letting the anger direct your actions. That's the key.People ask, "Should I just not feel my feelings?" No—please, absolutely feel your feelings. Work on feeling them. And don't let them drive your behavior.That's what you're talking about developing: the ability to choose your behavior based on who you want to be and what impact you want to have, while still being authentic.When I just let my anger drive my behavior and say, "I'm just being authentic"—I'm only going to be angry for a few minutes, maybe a couple of hours. Two hours later, I don't feel that way. Am I just going to treat my partner however I feel all the time? That's not a recipe for a healthy relationship. It doesn't lead to good things.Catherine: You can't even do that toward yourself. If you treat yourself however you feel all the time, you're going to be in a bad relationship with yourself. There's an aspect of discipline here—forcing yourself to treat people decently.It doesn't all have to be affectionate. But have some integrity. If you think something is not a good thing to do—like if your partner just did something that made you really mad—don't let yourself do it back just to show them how it felt or to punish them. If you think there's a problem with them doing this, don't let yourself do it back.I think of anger as a messenger, like a fire alarm. It's good to have a fire alarm. It's helpful that it's intense and hard to tolerate, because it's telling you there's something here that has to be handled.But no matter how loud the fire alarm is or how much you yell back at it, that's not putting out the fire. That's a different process. It takes something other than loud sounds to put out a fire.If you want to handle the fire, stop yelling. Settle yourself down. Gather data. Figure out where it is. Figure out what you need to do to address it.The alarm just tells you: there's a problem here. This isn't sustainable. You're going to have to do something different, or this is really going to hurt you.James: So you're talking about the difference between the fire alarm and the fire extinguisher—completely different things. The anger is the alarm. The anger is definitely not the extinguisher.Catherine: It's a very bad fire extinguisher. It doesn't work. It tends to make things worse.James: It's like using a flamethrower as an extinguisher. Getting the two mixed up. "Oh, I grabbed the wrong canister—they looked similar."Catherine: But if you can handle it more like it's an alarm, and take in what it's telling you... I know some people go too far. You just don't like to deal with anger much. I do think anger's valuable. It's not a bad thing. You don't want to extinguish all your anger or ignore it.You just don't want to put it in charge of your behavior. It's a pretty bad manager. It's a pretty bad soldier. It's a good messenger and not much else.James: I agree with that.Well, I need to let you go because it's pouring rain outside and I have one of my windows open.Catherine: Go!James: I just realized I should probably go shut the window instead of sitting here being angry at it for a while.Catherine: Right.James: It's such a pleasure to talk to you. We'll talk again soon. Thanks, Catherine.Catherine: Great talking to you too.James: Okay, bye.

Audrey Schoen joins me to talk about Relational Life Therapy. Roseville Couples Counseling300 Harding Blvd Suite 108Roseville CA 95648916-292-8920

Transcript:Matt: On today's show, we have James Christensen with Roseville Couples Counseling. He provides therapy for couples—husbands and wives, marriage counseling.1 So James, thanks for being on today. It seems like our society is in a crisis when it comes to marriage. It just doesn't seem like it's a priority anymore, and more marriages than ever have been failing. That's not just amongst non-Christians; that's amongst Christians as well. What's going on? What are you seeing in your counseling sessions as the issues causing marriage not to work out these days?James: I think marriage has always been really hard. Today, people just know that there are other options, so they quit. Maybe a few hundred years ago, that wasn't as much of an option as it is now.Matt: What are those options that you're referring to?James: Well, people get divorced, or they do what I call "quiet quitting," where they don't really participate in the marriage, but they don't really leave either. They leave without leaving, I guess is another way of saying it.Matt: So they are just kind of coasting through their marriage?James: Yeah, checking out, not participating. The way marriage works—I've been married for a long time—is if you focus on it, if it's your primary focus and the most important thing in your life, then you can make it work.Matt: Does it need to be a priority? Is it something that couples should be working on, or is marriage kind of like this old tradition that's not really necessary anymore?James: No, I think it's the most important thing in life. It's the foundation of the family, which is then the foundation of society. When the marriage falls apart, everything else falls apart.Matt: Why is it that more and more younger people are waiting longer to get married or don't see it as something they need to have in their life?James: I think we're scared. We look at our parents and our grandparents and think, "Wait a second, marriage was really hard for them." People think if they wait longer, it's going to work better. I'm not sure that's necessarily true. I got married when I was 25, and if I'd waited until I was 30, maybe it would've been a bit better, but I'm not sure that waiting is better.Matt: We've heard from folks like Charlie Kirk who have said that it's important to get married young and have more kids than you can afford. Do you think that rings true? Is it better to get married younger or older? What are the benefits of getting married younger that you lose out on as you age?James: I don't know that I have an opinion on what age you get married. I do think he's right that getting married and having kids is one of the best things in life, and people do a lot less of that these days. Sometimes, a young couple in their twenties with a couple of kids will come into my office, and it makes my day. I'm just glad that people still do that because, as you were saying, it's becoming less common. I think it's a great thing to do. I had kids in my twenties and don't regret it at all.Matt: Let's talk about Roseville Couples Counseling. Tell us about the kind of services you provide.James: All I do is couples counseling. It's my passion in life. The reason I'm passionate about it is that it's what saved me. I have a history of a lot of psychological problems—narcissism, psychological immaturity—and what saved me wasn't individual therapy; it was couples therapy. There's some power in couples therapy that doesn't exist in individual therapy. So when I'm talking to someone who has some pretty severe problems to work through, I ask, "Do you have a partner, and is your partner willing to come with you?" The worst of me comes out in my marriage, and if I can bring my marriage into the therapy office, then we can deal with that.Matt: We hear from a lot of spouses that the opposite is true—that when they're in counseling sessions, nobody agrees on anything. How do you get couples to a point where they're actually being productive and not just arguing and disagreeing, with the woman blaming everything on the husband and the husband just shutting down and saying, "This is stupid. I told you I didn't want to come here in the first place"?James: It is a whole thing. I've devoted my life to learning how to do exactly what you're talking about. It's quite difficult. I start by saying the way you're treating each other is unjustified; there is no excuse for it. Everybody comes in saying, "Well, I'm only doing it because she did this," or "because he did that." We're making these excuses. But if I go home today and treat my wife poorly, I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for that. It starts with, "This is not justified. It needs to stop." You are the one who's responsible for your behavior; your partner is not responsible. Most couples come in starting from the place that they're not responsible for what they're doing. So we start from the idea that, no, you're responsible for what you do, and they're responsible for what they do. That's the first step.Matt: Do you see a lot of selfishness within partners? Do you have to figure out how to overcome that and teach them that to be successful in a relationship, especially marriage, you have to overcome the idea that it's all about you and that you're there to serve the other person?James: The way I look at it is that the human brain isn't natively capable of marriage. We need to upgrade our brains. It's like my friends who run hundred-mile races. If I really wanted to do that, I probably could if I was willing to put in thousands of hours a year of training. Marriage is kind of like that. When I got married, I was honestly not capable of being a good husband, not even remotely. Now I am. That's something I deliberately learned how to do. I didn't know how to care about my wife, how to be courageous and kind, or how to communicate in any reasonable way. I had to face the fact that I am not capable of being a good husband, and if I want a good marriage, I'm going to have to change that.Matt: For wives listening right now who say, "I'm willing to go to counseling, but my husband is not. He just doesn't seem interested in making this relationship successful," but she doesn't want to quit or say the word divorce—what do you advise her to do?James: It's a tough situation. Sometimes I tell people that you each have 80% of the power in your marriage. If I go home today and treat my wife really well, then she is living in an environment that makes it easier for her to treat me well. And treating her well isn't coddling or pretending. If there's something she's doing that I think I should talk to her about, I will, but I'm not going to be mean about it. That's the difference. If I need to talk to my wife about something she's not going to want to hear, do I care about her enough in that moment to make it easier for her to hear what I'm saying? That's the key.So if I were in a situation where my wife didn't want to go to therapy with me, that would be really hard. But I still have the power to make the relationship better on my own. It's basically always 50/50. Each partner carries about 50% of the responsibility for the problems. If I deal with my side, it makes it a lot easier for my wife to deal with hers.Matt: Tell us about your counseling sessions. How do they work for people who have never been to marriage counseling? Can you paint them a picture of what that looks like when they reach out to you?James: I offer my first session for free because I want everyone to try it out. It's a 50-minute session. Most of the people I work with have never been to therapy before. You just come in, and I get to work right in the first session. We start talking about relationship dynamics immediately. There's no filling out forms, no assessment, and I don't meet with people individually. We start by talking about the biggest problem in your relationship right now. I usually ask, "What do you want to change about your relationship?" People usually say they want to improve communication, which is interesting because communication is usually not the problem. It's usually a behavior problem. The problem is we're being mean to each other, but it feels like a communication problem because you start being mean when you're trying to communicate.Matt: So what are you hoping to achieve in that first session? Obviously, the marriage isn't going to be fixed right away.James: What I hope to achieve is that each of them resolves a blind spot of some kind. I want them each to walk out the door knowing something about themselves they did not previously know. Blind spots cause a ton of problems in marriage. What usually happens is we grow up in a home where our parents did certain things, and we end up doing those same things without knowing it. If I can point out in the moment, "The way you just talked about your wife was full of condescension and dismissiveness, and that's going to be really hard for her to be on the other side of," that person might see something about themselves they weren't aware of. That's key. If I can learn something about myself, I might see it in a way that makes me say, "I actually don't want to be that way anymore."Matt: So they walk away from that first session trying to be a little more observant and aware. Where do you take them from there?James: I usually ask couples to come in for four weeks in a row, and after that, it's every other week or every month as we get into more difficult pieces that take longer to work on. It's always about personal power and personal responsibility. Couples often come in feeling hurt, stuck, and powerless. I'm going to talk to you about one thing you can do right now that will have a positive impact on your relationship, and I'm going to take away your excuses. You're not going to get to say it's your wife's fault or your husband's fault. No, this is on you. This is what you can do.With women in particular, I'll often ask, "Are you physically safe in this relationship?" The answer is almost always yes. I'll follow that up with, "If you are physically safe, then there's room for you to be really courageous and start saying more of what you really think." There are obvious dynamics between men and women where women sometimes have a tendency to not speak up until they're already angry. If I'm already angry, my message is going to have trouble getting across.Matt: Why does it take a counselor like yourself? What are you providing that they can't accomplish by just talking to each other?James: The problem is when we talk to each other, what's usually happening is I feel really bad, and I'm going to talk to you as if it was your fault. If I came to you and said, "Matt, I'm kind of nervous right now, and it's your fault," that's not true. I'm nervous because I've literally never been on a radio show before. It makes sense that I'm nervous, but it's not fair for me to blame that on you. We do that in marriage all the time. I have an anxious attachment pattern, so I have this deep fear of abandonment inside me that's been with me forever, and my instinct is to blame that on my wife. One night, my wife was working late and stopped by Target on the way home. I had an abandonment panic because she stopped at Target. It's not fair for me to blame that on her. But in the moment, it sure feels like it's Target's fault. I need to grow up enough to say, "Okay, my feelings are my responsibility, and the way I treat my wife is also my responsibility."Matt: So if someone has had those issues for a long time, it's like a natural reaction. How do you help them overcome something that has been with them for 20, 30, or 40 years?James: The pathway is often getting used to feeling the thing you don't want to feel. When I have that abandonment panic, it feels really bad, and I want to make it go away. It's like eating a jalapeno; my tongue starts burning, and it feels like something's going really wrong. If I put my hand on a hot stove, my hand burns, and I need to do something because there will be tissue damage. But with a jalapeno, the best thing to do is ask, "Is there actually damage occurring right now?" It feels bad, but how bad is it?That's what I need to do when I have that abandonment panic. I need to say, "Okay, my wife's at Target. I wanted her to come straight home, and I feel like I'm going to die." That's a bit of an exaggeration, but only just. What I need to do is say, "This feels really bad. Is there actually damage occurring to me? Am I going to be okay?" I need to honestly ask myself that question and honor that feeling. If I just say, "This feeling is stupid," it's just going to get louder. If I say, "Okay, this is a real feeling. I really do feel bad in this moment, but is there actual harm?" then I can learn to just sit with my feeling instead of acting on it. When those unpleasant feelings drive our behavior, we end up doing all sorts of bad stuff.Matt: What about people who say, "We don't need a counselor. We've been married for 45 years. There ain't nothing James is gonna tell us that we don't already know"?James: I call that a "marriage tune-up." If your marriage is good enough, come make it better. My marriage was really hard for the first 20-something years, and it took us a long time to find a therapist who was able to help us. Now it's a lot better, and we're still working on it. I do know couples whose marriage is good enough. What I say is, "Would you like to fly first class in your marriage, or would you like to stay in coach?" To be honest, most marriages are not that great. Most marriages are two people kind of tolerating each other for a long time. Then there are some couples where they actually love and appreciate each other and really do make each other happy. But that's not that common. I would love to help you get to that first-class marriage.Matt: How do you know if you need counseling? You're saying everyone could benefit, but what if something is more severely wrong and you're not aware of it? Are there any signs that a husband or wife could notice?James: One sign is if you're avoiding conflict. You think, "I should talk to my wife about this, but I'm afraid to." If there's a lot of arguing going on, or if your sexual relationship isn't doing very well, that's a concern. Whether you need counseling really depends on what kind of marriage you want to have. A lot of couples come to see me after infidelity or some sort of obvious break in the marriage dynamic, but we're better off if we start before that happens.Matt: What's the impact of kids on a marriage? I have three kids, and I know they are my joy, my mission, and my passion, but they can also provide stress in a relationship because the husband and wife focus so much on the kids that they don't spend enough time with each other.James: I have four kids, and yeah, they're a lot of work, but they're my pride and joy too. The way I see children is that the most powerful gift you can give them is to have a better marriage. Your kids are growing up and trying to learn how to love and care about someone. They're looking to you for that example. You provide that example in how you love and care about them, but also in how you love and care about your spouse. That's not something that comes naturally to most of us unless you happened to grow up in a family where that was really modeled for you, which isn't most families. That's a path we have to walk on our own. It's quite difficult. Most of us want to leave some sort of financial wealth to our children, but I think it's even more important to leave emotional wealth to my children. I would love to leave my children with the ability to build and create happy marriages and families of their own.Matt: For the husbands listening who are reluctant to come to counseling because they think, "You're gonna sit me in this chair, she's just going to complain about everything I'm doing wrong, you're gonna take her side, and you guys are gonna beat me up"—can you reassure them that's not the case?James: Sometimes it is. Here's how this works: my focus in the first session, if neither person is being disruptive, is going to be pretty equal. But about 30% of the time, one person is going to be pretty disruptive to the process. If they're actively insulting their partner in the session, I have to deal with that. So it does happen where one person feels like they're getting picked on. I try to balance that out by saying, "I care about you a lot," but sometimes things are happening in the session that are so bad that if I don't deal with them in that moment, I'm colluding in the problem. As far as me taking the wife's side, I think I'm pretty fair. In the end, I really do believe that marriages are equal, where we each contribute half of the problem. It's just that sometimes some problems are taking up so much space in the room that I have to deal with them first.Matt: Real quickly, explain how you got into doing this.James: I actually spent 25 years in the Air Force as a pilot. So this is a bit of a career shift. I got into this because my wife and I had a really tough time being married. We did not want to get divorced; we were very opposed to it. We had four children and a dream of a happy marriage. After my first military deployment, we went to counseling, but it wasn't very helpful. We spent years with different therapists, and nothing was changing. Then we found a therapist who was so different—much more powerful and direct. She took me on. She really laid into me and said, "James, you are treating your wife poorly every day, and it has to stop." She saved me from myself in that moment. I became a therapist because marriage therapy is what saved me individually and what saved my family. It's a passion of mine.Matt: Is there anything you want folks listening to know about Roseville Couples Counseling? Do you have a website?James: Yeah, if you just Google "couples therapy Roseville," I'm right there.Matt: And anything else you want to tell us about?James: My first session's free. Come in and give it a try. If it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. I actually have three or four brand new couples coming in today, which I'm super stoked for. My favorite part of the job is meeting a couple who is courageous enough to take the step and come in and say, "Let's see if we can do something about this."Matt: I love that. James Christensen, thanks for your time today. Appreciate it. Roseville Couples Counseling—check them out.

There are three components to trust in a relationship:1. Trust that your partner will do the right thing2. Trust that you'll be able to read your partner accurately3. Trust in yourself to take care of yoursefl no matter what. Transcript:If you recently found out that your partner has cheated on you, this video is for you. I'm going to talk about the three components of rebuilding trust after infidelity, and I think of these as three legs on a three-legged stool.The first leg is that your partner needs to stop cheating. They need to start behaving in a more trustworthy way. Trust is something that is lost quickly and regained slowly. You will need to observe your partner being trustworthy over an extended period of time, and your trust in them will gradually increase as a result of that.The second leg is about your ability to accurately read your partner and to assess how trustworthy they are. When your partner cheated on you, you lost trust not only in them, but you also lost trust in your ability to not be deceived because you thought that they were being more faithful than they actually were. So there are two components of trust that were lost here: the trust in their behavior being within the normal limits of monogamy, but also your trust in your ability to accurately see what is going on in your relationship. How much does your partner care about me and how faithful are they?Your partner needs to change their behavior, and it's just as important for you to learn to accurately perceive: Is this person being deceptive? Does this person care about me? How important am I to my partner? This loss of trust in your own ability to perceive your partner accurately is just as devastating as your loss of trust in their behavior itself.The third leg of the stool is building trust in your ability to take care of yourself no matter what your partner does. This is critical because you had a certain level of confidence in the solidness of your relationship, that your partner was going to be there for you to a certain extent, which fed into your idea of, "I'm going to be okay." When your partner cheated on you, they broke that agreement. Now, you have to reassess, "Am I going to be okay?" and "What am I going to do to make sure that I'm okay?"When you get cheated on, your brain often goes into an abandonment panic, which is a survival circuit left over from childhood that was designed to keep you from being abandoned by your parents. If you're three years old and you get abandoned by your parents, that becomes a survival situation. It's really important for you to maintain a close and emotional connection with your parents. You need someone to really care about you when you're young or you're not going to survive. So when your partner cheats on you, it activates this abandonment panic circuit.But the difference is that as an adult, you can't really be abandoned because you will never abandon yourself. One way of thinking about this is, what if your partner decides to leave you for somebody else? Are you going to figure out a way to create a life that is rich and rewarding for yourself despite your partner's choices? You have a choice to stay or go, but they also have a choice to stay or go. After infidelity, they've made it clear that, hey, this is a choice that they're considering.You have to face the fact that your future well-being is mostly your responsibility. Obviously, we all want someone to care about us a lot. I want my wife to be devoted to me just like everybody else does. But in the end, it's mostly my responsibility to take care of myself and to ensure that I have a good, rich, and rewarding life. That's up to me.One way you can do this is you can imagine, "Let's say my partner does leave. What does my life look like one year after they leave me? What do I do to take care of myself? How do I manage my living situation? Where do I live? How do I get money? How do I care for my children or whatever other responsibilities I might have? And what am I going to do about trying to create the kind of relationship that I want to have in my life, whether that's with my current partner or, if they leave, maybe with someone else?"This third leg helps you shift out of an attitude of victimhood towards an attitude of, "I'm a person who is powerful. I'm a person who can take care of myself. I'm a person who has choices, and I've decided to choose to try to build something special with my current partner. That's not my only choice; it's just the choice that I'm making." I realize that my partner also has that same choice, and they can choose to leave me basically whenever they want. That's a terrible truth, but it is true. So what I'm facing is that I have a choice about whether or not to stay in this relationship, and my partner also has a choice about whether or not to stay and about how faithful they want to be.So those are the three legs of the stool, and I want to come back to the second leg, which is improving your ability to accurately discern how faithful your partner is. The best indication of that is how much this person cares about you.I want you to think about two different kinds of relationships. The kind of relationship where infidelity happens, and the kind of relationship where infidelity doesn't happen. In the second kind of relationship, you have two people who care about each other a lot more than they do in the first kind. The first kind of relationship I would call a "normal" relationship because most relationships are prone to infidelity, both emotional and physical. Then over here, you have the lucky few who have built relationships where there's so much caring going back and forth that neither one would really consider cheating. It's just not on the agenda because "I care about my wife so much that I'm not really interested in trying to get validation from someone else."I've focused all my efforts on: What does it look like for me to do what I can do to build a better relationship, to have the kind of relationship that I want to have? And what power do I have to change my energetic input into the relationship so that it makes it easier for my wife to be the kind of partner that I want her to be?If infidelity has forced you to face the terrifying reality that you don't have control over your partner, can you find a way to make peace with that reality? Can that be okay? Can you start down the path of doing what you can do to improve your relationship while also remembering the fact that your partner gets to make all of their own choices and they can abandon you for someone else if they really want to?One unfortunate outcome of infidelity is that the person who got cheated on often tends to retreat into a victim place where they start to see themselves as an innocent victim. "I didn't really contribute to the problems in my relationship at all. I'm just a victim and I have no power, and all I can do is try to make my partner behave in a better way or maybe try to punish my partner for what they did." All of those things make it harder for the relationship to recover.So, if I was in the position of being cheated on, the best thing for me to do would be to focus on what I can do to be a better partner and what I can do to improve my ability to accurately assess how much this person cares about me. And paradoxically, one of the things that I can do is ask, "Can I learn to care more about my partner?"When I focus on what it looks like for me to care more about my wife than I do, it makes it easier for my wife to do the same. That is the pathway towards building a relationship that is not susceptible to infidelity.

Transcript:About three years ago, I began to accept that I was unusually narcissistic. I say it that way on purpose because I don't like to use the term "you're a narcissist" or "you're not a narcissist." Realistically, it's more of a spectrum. Everyone is somewhere on that spectrum, and three years ago, I finally accepted that I was way towards the bad side of it.I was more narcissistic than almost all of the people I knew. There were very few people I encountered daily who were more narcissistic than I was. As you can imagine, that was causing all sorts of problems in my life. It was tearing apart my marriage, it was causing problems in both my military and therapy careers, and it was making it impossible for me to have the kind of life I wanted.This has three parts. The first part is how and why a person becomes narcissistic. What does narcissism protect against? What purpose does it serve? Why is it so useful? Why did my brain decide this was the way to handle the world? The second part is the three components of narcissism: fragility, superiority, and indifference. And the third part is my journey out of this narcissistic way of being towards a more kind and courageous way of being in the world.Narcissism is a defense mechanism against the feeling of personal insufficiency. Personal insufficiency just means that I don't feel like I'm good enough. I don't feel like it's okay for me to be me. It's like there's something wrong with me.Most people struggle with this feeling, but for me and for other narcissistic people, this feeling is so intense that my brain is willing to put in a ridiculous amount of effort to get away from it. Different people find different ways of defending against this sense of personal insufficiency, but the way my brain decided to deal with this was by becoming narcissistic and developing these three attributes.As I've worked on becoming less narcissistic, the price of that is I have to feel this sense of insufficiency. I have to deal with the fact that, deep in my soul, there's a sense that it's just not okay for me to be me. There's no solid ground. So, if I have to face the fact that I'm contributing as much to the problems in my marriage as my wife is, theoretically it seems like that should be okay, but it doesn't feel okay. My brain is so used to putting things together as everything is her fault and none of it is my fault. It's really hard for my brain to handle the idea that we're both equally contributing to the problems. It's not just her fault; I have normal developmental challenges just like she does.That's true at work, too. If I'm working with a client and they're not making progress, my brain wants to frame it as the client's fault, not mine. When I was in the military, if I got in some sort of ego battle with another officer, my brain wanted to put it together that it was all the other person's fault.All of this comes down to the idea that my brain really struggles to think of myself as a person who makes mistakes. I really want to think of myself as a person who doesn't make mistakes. It sounds silly to even say that—everybody makes mistakes—but for most of my life, I have not been able to think of myself that way. The only way for me to be okay was to be perfect, to not make mistakes, to be superior to other people. That's how I developed this habit, this pattern of thinking, behaving, and treating people in a narcissistic way.When you're dealing with a narcissistic person, I hope this can help you have some compassion for them. The reason they behave the way they do is they're trying to protect themselves from the feeling of not being good enough. For me, that feeling is so intense it feels like I'm falling into a pit of blackness. It feels like I have no ground to stand on, like I'm just falling backward and I'm going to be falling forever.What I have learned to do in recent years is allow myself to feel that sense of not having ground to stand on, of not having a sense of being okay or good enough. Because if I don't allow myself to feel that, then my brain is going to find a way out of it, which is the same kind of behavior that has caused all these problems in the first place.Now, I want to talk about the three components of narcissism: fragility, superiority, and indifference. You can use the acronym FSI if it helps you remember them. This is important because we use the term narcissism all the time in society, but it's rare for people to actually understand what they're talking about. It's mostly just used as an insult or a way to put somebody down. What it actually is is a complicated defense mechanism against a very real pain that is hard to handle, and it does have a wildly negative impact on other people. So obviously it's something to be dealt with, but I think it's important to understand its components, why a person becomes narcissistic, and what you can do to become less narcissistic or help someone else do so.The first component is fragility, which means that it's really hard for me to handle critical feedback. Any kind of criticism feels like hot lava. It's just super difficult.There were times in my military career where one of my commanders would call me into his office and say, "Hey James, I need to talk to you about something. This is what you've been doing, this is how you've been performing, and it's not good enough. You need to do better." It would hit me so hard I would just crumble inside. I actually broke down and cried several times as a 35-year-old military officer because it would just destroy me to be viewed by an authority figure as not having measured up. I could not handle the idea that I was a normal person who made normal mistakes and needed to improve. That was just not okay for me.My mind was so good at creating a fantasy where that wasn't true. In my fantasy world, I was always doing everything perfectly. I was never making mistakes. When there were mistakes, it was always someone else's fault. But when I had to face the reality of this person in charge of me—and sometimes it was even someone I admired—seeing me in a negative light, it was so devastating that I would break down and cry, or I would make up some story in my mind about how their view wasn't accurate. "There's no way this can be true. It has to be a better explanation. It's not fair," and so on.That's fragility. It's really at the core of narcissism and underlies everything else. So when you're dealing with a narcissistic person, I just want you to remember how fragile they feel all the time. Any criticism you offer them is going to feel like hot lava. This is not an excuse for being fragile—fragility destroys every relationship a person will ever have—but it is a real experience that narcissistic people have. It's really hard to handle feedback.One thing I've done to try to deal with my own fragility is to just sit with the feeling that comes when I get criticized. So if I receive some sort of criticism from my wife or from my therapist, I try to sit with what it feels like. And I'll be honest, it still feels really bad to me. It feels less bad than it used to, but it's still pretty intense. The pathway I see of dealing with that is asking, "Can I sit with that feeling instead of using my old tricks to get out of it? Can I sit in the discomfort of being criticized instead of trying to push it away through some sort of manipulation?"The second component is superiority, which is kind of the flagship component of narcissism. When I think of the word narcissism, the first thing that comes to mind is this idea that I'm better than everybody else. And that has been my experience through most of my life; I have always thought of myself as superior to the people around me.A couple of stories come to mind. One is when I was a young helicopter pilot in Montana in my twenties, assigned to protect a nuclear convoy. I was on guard duty, flying my helicopter to watch out for bad guys, and I was supposed to coordinate my takeoff time to relieve another helicopter crew. There was a person back at base running the whole show, and I talked to this other officer on the phone who said, "Hey, it's time to take off." But I had talked to a member of my crew who said it wasn't time. Realistically, my crew member is not in charge of me; the person on the phone is. This should have been a really easy decision.But I felt threatened by this person on the phone telling me that I was wrong, that my perception of reality was incorrect. He wasn't exceptionally mean about it, but I felt so uncomfortable with the idea that he didn't think my perception of reality was accurate. So I didn't take off. I delayed my takeoff based on this other information.That act of insubordination ended up getting me busted down to copilot for a month, which is what I deserved. In the military, when someone tells you, "Hey, take your crew and take off," you do it. I remember my commander pulled me aside and said, "So, did you hear Captain so-and-so tell you to take off?" And I was like, "Yeah, I did." And he's like, "Okay." That was all he needed to know. I had received the order and I had decided to disobey it.In my mind at the moment, it seemed so important for me to prove that I understood the situation better than the person on the other end of the phone. This was ridiculous because he was on the other end, he knew where all the helicopters were and he knew what was happening. I had very little information. But my brain couldn't handle the idea that someone else understood the situation better than I did. That was a really hard thing for me to handle. So that's an example of how my sense of superiority made it hard for me to do my job.It also caused problems in my marriage. I always thought I was better than my wife, which you can imagine how much fun that was for her. I would try to construct or manipulate reality in a way that made it seem like that was accurate, so I would always try to push her down to elevate my status. In the end, it is just really unpleasant to be around a person like that.I remember when I showed up for my first day on the job as a therapist. I was working in this county mental health clinic and there were maybe half a dozen therapists there, and I was pretty convinced that I was the best therapist on the job, even though it was literally my first day. But that was just the way my brain constructed reality. It seems kind of ridiculous, but it really was my experience. To me it seemed normal at the time. It's the way it had always been since I was a teenager. I was convinced that I was always the smartest person in the room.The third component of narcissism is indifference, which just means not caring about people. This affected me most in my roles as a husband and a father. I've been married for a long time and have four children. To be a good husband and father, I have to care about my wife and children. That was always really hard for me; it just didn't come naturally. I was good at putting on a show and making it seem like I cared, but there was very little actual caring going on under the surface.Over the past three years, I have put a lot of effort into thinking about what would be different. How would I handle myself differently if I cared a lot more about my wife than I did? I've had to really push myself on this because it does not come naturally to me. Performative caring comes naturally to me. I can look good on paper, I can make it seem like I care about her, but she sees through all of that, and my kids see through all of that.So, what does it look like to actually be invested in another person's wellbeing? What does it look like to actually care about a person? It's not codependence; it's not "I'm going to sacrifice all of my happiness for your happiness." It's not that at all. It's, "I am going to care about myself and I'm also going to care about you." It's something I've had to learn by looking at people who do this well, people who are very caring, and trying to emulate that and help my brain adjust to this new pattern.Of the three, this one is probably the hardest to explain. If you are naturally a very caring person, it comes naturally. If you grow up in a family where people care about each other a lot, it probably comes naturally to you. If you didn't, it probably doesn't, and it's going to be hard to learn. As a couple's therapist, I talk to my clients about this constantly because there's an infinite spectrum of caring. I can always learn to care more about my wife than I do. This is a journey I'm very much still on, but I see it as the most important part of creating a better marriage: What does it look like for me to care more about my wife tomorrow than I did today?So fragility, superiority, and indifference are the three components of narcissism. When I'm talking to someone about these things, I don't ever talk to them about being narcissistic. It's not useful. But I do talk to people about being fragile, or superior, or not caring enough, because you can really only work on one at a time. Any one of those topics can be overwhelming all by itself. None of my therapists ever just said, "James, you're narcissistic." That's not helpful. What is helpful is saying, "You know, I noticed that when you talked about your wife, you take a very superior tone and it seems like you're talking about her as if she's not nearly as good as you are." I'm addressing one component of narcissism, and that's what's helpful to someone.That's how my therapist helped me, which is part three: how I became aware of my narcissism and what I've been doing about it since.I'm pretty lucky in this regard because the more narcissistic a person is, the less likely they are to know about their narcissism. Narcissism incorporates a kind of blindness where it's really hard for a narcissistic person to look at themselves and see themselves accurately. That goes along with the components. If I'm fragile and superior, it's going to be really hard for me to receive any kind of critical feedback from anyone, and then to see any other person as worthy to give me feedback in the first place. The indifference plays into that too. If my wife would come to me and say, "Hey, the way you're treating me is really hurtful," because I didn't really care about her very much, her complaints didn't matter enough to me to actually do something about it.My wife and I worked with quite a few couples therapists over the years. Eventually, we ended up working with one particular therapist who established early on that she cared about me as a person and wanted me to get better. She was not hesitant to be critical of me, but she balanced her criticism with a level of caring that was sufficient for me to be able to take it in, just a little bit. And she was super persistent. She would offer me a piece of critical feedback, and I would bat it away or get around it or withdraw. She would just back up, reconsider, and offer it again in a slightly different wrapper. She would never give up.The core component here is that she was basically immune to the ways that I usually manipulated people. To be narcissistic, you have to be good at manipulation because you have to get other people to play along with your narcissism. Most narcissistic people end up living with a group of people who adapt to them because whenever you challenge a narcissistic person, they take that really hard and might react in certain ways or get manipulative. My way of dealing with challenges was mostly manipulation and avoidance. I avoided conflict with my wife. I put on a really good show of pretending to be a good husband, but if she did bring any kind of problem to me, I would find a way to make it seem like she was wrong and I was right.So we ended up with this couple's therapist who was really good at dealing with my particular ways of manipulating people. We had been to other couple's therapists in the past, but honestly, I was usually in charge of those sessions, even though I wasn't the therapist. I was pretty good at manipulating the way the sessions would go to make it seem like my wife was the problem and I wasn't, even though we were both contributing.We ended up with this therapist who didn't fall for that. From the very early days, she focused mostly on me. No matter what I did, I would use all of my tricks and get super manipulative and clever to try to make it seem like my wife was the one with the problem, and she just never fell for it. She would come back over and over and over again to, "James, this is what I see you doing right now. This is the move I see you making." She would talk to me constantly about what I was doing in the session, the ways I was trying to get out of the criticism she was offering, the ways I was trying to make my wife feel bad or back off.Piece by piece, she held up evidence after evidence in a way that was really difficult for me to get around. None of this was pleasant. It was really, really hard for me. I got pushed up against this feeling of falling, of not having solid ground to stand on. But there isn't really any other way. The whole reason I became narcissistic in the first place was to avoid feeling this deep sense of personal insufficiency.One thing she offered me was she would say, "James, can you think of yourself as a normal person who makes normal mistakes? Or can you think of yourself as a person who's facing normal developmental problems?" And the answer was no, I couldn't. But I was eventually able to see that to the extent that I cannot accept that reality, I will never be able to change and have the kind of marriage that I want.That last part is important because the motivation matters. For me to make the changes I needed to make, I had to care deeply about something. I had to want something so bad that I was willing to make the sacrifices necessary to obtain it. What I wanted was a happy marriage, and I wanted to be a good father. I wanted to not pass down to my children these same things that have made my life so hard. Because I had that motivation, I was able to stick to this path of dealing with these really difficult things.This is a path that I'm very much still on. I'm not done with this process; I probably never will be. But I do feel like I have a path. I found a path and I can keep walking on it, and I have found people who can help guide me. So basically, I have motivation, I have guidance, and I can just keep going. What that means is that I have a lot of hope for the future. That I will continue to become more caring, less fragile, and less superior. I will be able to see people as equals, as just like me, instead of trying to constantly construct a reality where everybody is worse than me in some way. I can learn to care a lot more about people. I can be less judgmental and more openhearted.As I've walked away from some of my narcissistic tendencies, I've found that I have a lot more energy left to focus on things other than defending my ego. Narcissism is so intense and complicated, and it takes a lot of energy to constantly spin reality into something that supports my ego. Instead of trying to create a reality that makes me seem superior or innocent or perfect, I can deal with the fact that I'm just a person who makes mistakes like everybody else, and that's okay.I still get these upwellings of feelings of "I'm not good enough." I still feel like I'm falling sometimes. But I've learned to accept that feeling and feel it instead of trying to twist reality into some sort of fantasy that gets me out of it.My brain will probably always have these tendencies to a certain extent. I've been living this way for decades, and it's not likely that these patterns will ever completely leave my brain. But I've become aware of them enough that I can see myself doing it and stop it before it gets too bad—not always, but most of the time. I've made enough changes in my life that my marriage has improved dramatically. I'm better at my job than I used to be, and I don't have to spend so much energy creating a false reality that supports my ego.Instead, when those feelings of insufficiency come up, I've learned to just make room for them and feel them. I've also learned to see myself with a lot more compassion and accept this idea that I'm a normal person who makes normal mistakes. I don't have to be better than everyone. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be innocent. I can be guilty sometimes. Not that I'm trying to do bad things, but just that like everyone else, I make mistakes. That has allowed me to put so much less energy into defending my ego, which leaves me a lot more energy to do the things that I want to do in life.I'm going to end it there. If you have questions, put them in the comments and I will answer them. Thank you for watching.

Catherine Roebuck joins me to discuss Chapter 2 of Bruce Tift’s book “Already Free.”Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comCatherine Roebuck:  https://catroebuck.com Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaTListen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-christensen-podcast/id1757976298Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast in your favorite podcast app https://jamesmchristensen.com/podcast?format=rss Watch to Balance your Brain Podcast on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLev0wDi_D_FKBNguwWm6LhPi711Gs7AVOCouples Therapy in Roseville CA:Roseville Couples Counseling300 Harding Blvd suite 108, Roseville CA 916-292-8920TranscriptCatherine Roebuck: The fruitional view is about how, in every moment and circumstance, you can have access to an experience of freedom or peace. One of the ways to do that is by first committing to your experience. Whatever it is, your reality is what it is. You are anxious right now. Embody it, feel it on a visceral sensation level, and then find a way to be kind to that feeling.James: What I feel right now is a tension and maybe an emptiness in my chest area, and a very slight burning or tingling in my face. My chest feels tight and uncomfortable, and the feeling in my face feels fearful, I guess. They're both unpleasant.Catherine Roebuck: I see the traditional view as connecting with that experience of being the witness. When you connect on an embodied, sensation level, you are the one experiencing it. But when you start practicing kindness toward that experience, you become the witness.James: Okay, so being the witness is an easier place to be.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, there's less of an emergency when you're the witness to something intense and difficult.James: That's a good way to say it. When I feel these kinds of feelings, it does feel like an emergency.Catherine Roebuck: Right. I had an experience last week where some pretty acute attachment panic came up. There's the part of me that is feeling five years old in that moment, sobbing and feeling like the world is ending. Then there is the part of me that is showing up for that five-year-old experience and offering unconditional presence, kindness, and love. That supportive, caring, loving aspect does not have a lot of distress in it. It's a much more settled, relaxed place where the predominant experience is kindness and compassion. Even though there is this intense thing going on, my main experience, as long as I'm relating to the intensity with kindness, is an experience of compassion instead of an experience of panic. They're both happening, but it's about what perspective or position I am taking.James: I used to try a visualization where I would imagine wrapping my discomfort in a warm blanket. The warm blanket has a very particular quality; it's fluffy and very soft, like a cloud. I would imagine wrapping this discomfort, this anxiety, this pain in a warm, fluffy cloud blanket, which represents kindness, and just holding it. It's very similar to what you're saying, but for me, the visual and tactile idea of being warm, white, soft, and fluffy helps me go through the process of offering kindness to the difficult feeling.Catherine Roebuck: Right. I do that on both a psychological level, through what I'm thinking, and also on an embodied level. You're describing some tension in your chest. I would be visualizing that warm, fluffy blanket while breathing warmth into the area that feels tense, tight, and strained. I would imagine that the breath is delivering that warmth and care. There's something happening on a physiological level there as well. When you breathe into an area, you direct more oxygen to that area; you really do help it relax or provide some kind of a gentle stretch. But there's also just a sense of being really kind. If this was your little child coming to you and saying, "I feel really anxious, I don't know why," what would you do? You might offer a hug or some kind words. You probably wouldn't start panicking and saying, "Things will never get better! This is the end of the world!"James: That is what I start doing when it's me, though.Catherine Roebuck: That's what you do to yourself, but you wouldn't do that to your little child, right?James: Hopefully not.Catherine Roebuck: There's a story from Richard Schwartz, the IFS author who wrote No Bad Parts. He tells a story about a near-drowning experience where he thought he might die. In that moment, he committed to his immediate experience. He embodied it and thought, "This is my reality. I might be dying right now." Then, he offered himself warm, compassionate presence. He talked to himself, saying, "If I'm dying, I'll be right here the whole time. I'll hold you. I'll love you. I'll be right here with you the whole time." I feel like that is what this is about: the experience of learning to offer compassionate presence to yourself no matter what's going on.James: I love that. It's interesting; when you were talking about breathing into what I'm feeling, that actually did help. That's not something I normally do, but I tried it in the moment and I do feel a little bit better. It'll be something I'll have to practice.Catherine Roebuck: That's one I use a lot. The view is that our circumstances are what they are, and we can gradually do things to try to change them. But in any given moment, the real question is: if I'm ever going to be free, I have to be able to feel free regardless of what's happening that I can't control or change in real time. You can practice that in any circumstance by relating to your current reality with a sense of ease, compassion, and warmth, and just accepting it as what it is. "I don't like this, I don't want to feel this, but this is what I'm feeling. This is what's happening."James: So one way of expressing it might be that instead of seeking freedom by changing external circumstances, I'm pursuing freedom by changing the way I relate to my life or my reality.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and it's also about wiring in an experience. If you want to feel free, you have to give your brain and nervous system many experiences of being free, which only ever happens in real time. All the things we want to feel only happen in real time. We can work toward future circumstances that we think will make it easier to embody our experience, be kind, and feel free. At the same time, the only way our brain and nervous system ever develop the capacity for it is if we practice that experience in real time with imperfect circumstances—which are the only circumstances we'll ever get.James: There will always be limitations.Catherine Roebuck: That's been my experience. I've found that this has made a larger overall difference in my baseline mood than changing circumstances have. I can say that with some confidence because even when really difficult things hit, my baseline experience is less troubled than it used to be.James: That makes sense. I have an interesting experience along those lines. What I perceived to be the source of my suffering for most of my life has been a difficult marriage. My difficult marriage has improved dramatically over the past couple of years, yet I still experience a lot of anxiety. It's almost like my brain has a certain level of anxiety that it wants to experience, and it will find reasons to experience that anxiety. If you had shown me my marriage today three years ago, I would have thought, "Oh, that would solve all the problems." But guess what? I still feel like there are problems. So there's some wisdom in what you were saying. Do I actually know how to feel free? Because it's fair to say that objectively, there is quite a bit of freedom in my life. Not limitless freedom, but there's plenty of freedom, and I think I very often feel more constrained than I actually am.Catherine Roebuck: Particularly in close relationships. You might have a lot of freedom in other areas. You might be able to feel free if you're out in nature on your own or with friends. I would guess that you've been able to feel free in those circumstances since you were a kid. The thing that would bring up a feeling of not being free is being close to important others.James: Absolutely.Catherine Roebuck: So your brain has all this wiring that says, "Being close to the most important people in my life is a very fraught experience. It's difficult, it's stressful. I have to monitor myself and them all the time." This is about experimenting. Does anything get worse if you try dropping that and experiment with a different way of relating? For instance, "Being close to important people is an experience of openness, which brings up panic in me. This has nothing to do with the other people and a lot to do with my own difficulty tolerating the openness of reality."James: So it's about looking at my response to reality as opposed to the actual difficulty of reality. It could be more beneficial for me to put effort into looking at how I respond to what happens in my life, as opposed to putting that same amount of effort into trying to change the actual circumstances. There could be a better payoff.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and how you think about your position in your life. If you're thinking, "I feel this way because of these problems, and if I can solve these problems, I won't feel this way anymore," that's what you're talking about. If you could go back three years and show that guy what your marriage is like now, he'd say, "Problem solved. I'll feel great when it's like that."James: He would definitely say that, yes.Catherine Roebuck: But then there's the other piece, which has a lot to do with brain wiring. Think of your brain as a giant field of tall grass. How many times have you walked a path where you are walking toward an important person in your life and experiencing freedom at the same time? If you've only done this five times...James: That's a beautiful way of saying it: approaching or getting close to an important person in my life and feeling free. That's really wonderful. My wife and I had an experience like that last night. We had some really good conversations, and then we spent an hour or so just practicing being open with each other and trying to remain calm, just being close in a very calm way. This is not habitual for us; there's usually a ton of anxiety there. But we were both practicing exactly what you're saying. I was practicing opening myself up to her, approaching her, stepping into intimacy with her, and feeling free at the same time. I experienced that for quite a while, and it was remarkable. Like you said, maybe I've experienced that five times before. It felt so unusual, and it really was unusual. But it makes sense that I have a habit or a pattern where my brain is used to feeling a certain way when I'm in proximity or intimacy with an important person.Catherine Roebuck: You've got this one path in that big field of tall grass that you've walked 20,000 times. On that path, you routinely ran into loud noises, snakes, and scorpions. It was a pretty difficult experience. So you've got all of this brain wiring, an easy, intuitive, automatic pattern for your brain to follow, that says when you approach an important person, the path is fraught. It's a very high-anxiety experience, and you're constrained. You have to be really vigilant, on alert, and defensive. Now you're wanting this experience of freedom and being relaxed. The more times you walk this new path where you're approaching and you feel free, the easier it is for your brain to do it. The grass gradually gets trampled down, and the path becomes clear. You don't have to wonder with every step if you're still on the path. At the same time, as you don't walk that reactive path, it starts to grow over and becomes less automatic for your brain to take. So you can work on your circumstances, but you also have to work on your ability to tolerate the openness of walking a new path and not knowing if there will be snakes here or not.James: I just don't know.Catherine Roebuck: The only way to experience more openness is to expand your capacity to tolerate more panic. You have to tolerate more panic to experience more openness. Openness and freedom are essentially the same thing.James: I was imagining an exercise last night to try to expand my capacity to tolerate panic. I imagined writing out, "If this scenario happens to me, this is how I'm going to handle it." Specifically, scenarios that might happen in my marriage where my wife might have a bad day, be critical of me, be unhappy, or withdraw. I have an anxious attachment pattern, so when she withdraws, that's difficult for me. If I could write down how I could respond in a healthy way to that scenario, I saw it as helping my brain make a new pathway in the tall grass. It provides evidence that I will take good care of myself in that scenario should it happen, as opposed to the other pathways in my brain, which were often formed when I was too young to really take good care of myself.Catherine Roebuck: I really like how you're phrasing that: "taking good care of yourself." It's also building trust in yourself. When you say there's evidence that you will, you're saying you trust that about yourself. The only way to trust that is to give yourself many real-time experiences of doing it. I do think the exercise you're describing would work for the same reason that mental practice works for musicians or athletes. I used to be a violinist, and you can practice by playing a literal violin, or you can do mental practice where you're thinking your way through the piece. That has been shown to be effective. Professional athletes do this. That's what you're describing: mental practice of having a plan for how you'll take care of yourself and have a better experience even if things outside of your control go badly.James: Yes, and it could be me imagining how I might relate to that reality if it happened. I had a panic about a month ago. You talk about abandonment panic; well, I had one. Mine was kind of silly, but it did happen. My wife stopped at Target on the way home from work. It sounds silly, but I was pretty anxious to see her. Because of our work schedules, we can go all day barely seeing each other. She sometimes works pretty late, so it was 8:30 at night, and I was really excited for her to come home. She went to Target instead, and I had an abandonment panic. It was pretty intense. The way I relate to that experience matters a lot. That's what I think of as taking good care of myself in that moment when I'm experiencing an abandonment panic because my wife is at Target.Catherine Roebuck: Right. And that example can sound silly because you're a full adult and can handle her being at Target. But it's the same muscle you would use if she disappeared, if she left you and never came back. It is the same thing. We practice this in our daily life because the only way to know that someone is going to be there for you is for you to be there for you, over and over. That's it. That's all you get as a guarantee. It's lovely when other people show up, but this view is about how you give yourself the assurance that you'll always have access to compassionate presence. The only way to give yourself that assurance is to give yourself that compassionate presence. You can't control another person being your on-demand comforter or companion. Best-case scenario, you've got a really kind partner, but you're still not going to spend all your time together. Nobody does.James: And someday they might die. There is no free pass. Tift mentions three unconditional commitments that he thinks are useful. Can you tell me about those?Catherine Roebuck: He talks about unconditional immediacy, embodiment, and kindness. Immediacy is what is happening right now, what my circumstances are. Embodiment is what's happening on a sensation level, on a visceral level in my own body. Your body is your home. Whatever your circumstances are, you exist in both your own embodiment and in the larger container of your circumstances. Then the unconditional commitment to kindness is: "I will bring kindness to every moment regardless of the sensations in my body and regardless of the circumstances that I find myself in." I see that as aspirational, but I see no downsides to it. It's only helpful to practice it, even though nobody manages to do it all the time.James: I have found immense benefit in practicing kindness. I have a theory that unkindness slows down neuroplasticity and kindness accelerates it. I don't have any real scientific basis for that, but it is my experience that when I can practice some sort of kindness or sweet love toward what's happening in me, my brain seems more willing to adapt to my present circumstances. When I practice something more habitual, which is a harsh, judgmental stance toward what is happening and toward myself, I feel like my brain locks up and doesn't want to change or grow.Catherine Roebuck: I like how you're framing that, and it makes complete sense to me. Neuroplasticity means we have a huge impact on the brains we're closest to, and we're impacted by them. If you're tracking kindness in someone, it's a much safer thing to accept influence from them. It's a much better idea.James: Absolutely.Catherine Roebuck: Neuroplasticity is basically the process of accepting influence.James: So you're comparing this to others. I was talking about it with myself, but you're saying it's the same principle. That makes a lot of sense. If I track kindness in a person, then I'm much more willing to accept their influence. In the same way, if I track kindness in myself, then I'm much more willing to accept my own influence. Oh, that makes sense.Catherine Roebuck: Yes. This is part of what makes it hard for people from backgrounds where they didn't experience a lot of kindness to grow. Accepting influence is very threatening when you track that the people around you don't mean well and they're trying to change you. Of course you'll resist it. It's an intelligent thing to resist being changed by people that don't mean well toward you.James: If I'm working with a person who comes from a place where there's not much kindness, they're going to be very resistant to my influence. If I don't offer that kindness or show that I mean well, it's really hard for that person to take what I'm saying and accept it. When I was a young therapist, I had so many experiences of saying something that was spot-on and having the person reject it completely. It was because of a lack of kindness. I didn't care enough about the person I was talking to to make it easier for them to accept what I was saying. As I've gained experience, that happens less and less. People are much more able to accept the things I tell them, even when they're quite difficult, because I've learned to accompany my words with more kindness and caring.Catherine Roebuck: Yes. This is how the fruitional view and the developmental view intersect. As you develop this capacity to relate with kindness to your immediate, embodied experience—your reality, whatever it is—you make it much easier for your brain to map out new possibilities and solutions to your problems and to actually improve your circumstances. You need neuroplasticity if you're going to improve your life; you need your brain to be malleable. The most sustainable way to achieve that is to mean well toward yourself and build trust with yourself so that you can count on your ability to follow through on your goals. The fruitional view is what makes that possible. It's this practice of being kind now.One thing I've thought about with the embodiment piece is that I have a fair bit of chronic pain. The idea of going into my embodied experience has been pretty difficult for me. I'd rather stay out of it. But even there, I've found it's only helpful when I'm willing to do it. It isn't about having a good experience; you just have to be patient and kind with the experience you're having.James: The way I've heard it explained is to ask, "How harmful is this?" or "Is it actually harmful?" I compare this to eating a hot pepper. I was having Chinese food a week ago and there was a little red pepper in it. I thought, "This won't be that bad," and took a bite. I'm salivating just talking about this. Within 30 seconds, my mouth was on fire. But it wasn't really on fire. I immediately thought of what Bruce says: "Is it really harmful?" My mouth was screaming, "Harmful, harmful, harmful!" I decided to run an experiment and find out how harmful it was for as long as the sensation lasted. My instinct was to drink milk, eat ice cream, put an ice cube on my tongue, and run around the house flailing my arms. I really wanted to do all those things we do to try to escape from the intensity of the feeling. But I asked myself, "Can I just stand here and feel what it feels like to have a hot pepper on my tongue for a few minutes?" It lasted about three minutes, and I just kept asking myself, "Is this harmful?" It felt like it was, but I was looking for evidence. Is there any evidence of harm? If you're actually burning yourself, there's evidence—your skin will blister or there will be tissue damage. I could have looked in the mirror at my tongue and asked if there was any evidence of harm. It would have been fine. My intensity tends to last for about three minutes, just like the hot pepper.Catherine Roebuck: That is such a good metaphor. Your instinct is, "I have to immediately change my circumstances. I'll drink milk and run around."James: None of those things really work, but at least it feels like I have to do it. I was literally wanting to jump up and down.Catherine Roebuck: There's a Buddhist saying: "Don't just do something. Sit there."James: Oh my gosh, yes. That was exactly what I decided to do, but it was so hard. I wanted to go through the drama of addressing the problem, when, as I found out, there isn't really a problem. One thing that stands out to me is the advice not to just say there's no problem, because you don't know. It's almost like you're honoring your feeling by saying, "I agree to look at this." My mouth says there's a problem, and I'm not just going to dismiss it or pretend it's not hurting. I agree to pay attention to the warning, because burning is a warning of tissue damage. I will look diligently as long as it happens and ask myself, not in a dismissive way, "Is there any damage occurring?" It's a way of caring for myself. "This feels really dangerous to me. I'm going to pay attention to that, but I'm not going to accept it without investigating, and I'm also not going to dismiss it without investigating." It's a non-judgmental approach.Catherine Roebuck: And there's no harm if, while you're doing that, you also want to run an experiment on whether it helps to drink some milk or have some ice cream. There's no harm in that. I think there are a lot of things we can do on a comfort level that may not be necessary or even change anything. But if you prefer to have something you're doing while you find out if this is harming you, that's okay. It's just about whether you can choose this instead of automatically rushing into it.James: In a relationship, the equivalent of drinking milk and eating ice cream can be things that are quite harmful. If I feel intensity and I blame it on my wife, and then I try to address it externally in the relationship, that tends to make things worse.Catherine Roebuck: Right. A lot of this stuff with relationships is basically this very core attachment panic. When that was coming up for me recently, I tried to take a direct hit on it as a conscious choice. There were different comfort things I could do to distract myself, but I chose not to do them because this is basically a question coming from a part of my brain that is really young and hasn't been updated since I was about five. It is still asking, "Is there anyone I can count on to be there for me? Am I all alone in this?" By just staying present and not getting myself out of that intensity, but instead committing to it and saying, "I'm going to be right here and I'm going to be this compassionate presence for myself throughout," I feel like I could settle that question at a level I've never been able to before. The answer was, "Yes, there is. I'm here."James: You just said that with so much confidence: "I am here." That's beautiful.Catherine Roebuck: It is the most comforting thing. It's actually more comforting than having a partner be there for you because, again, your partner is not always there for you. Even if they're the best partner on earth and you have the happiest marriage ever, sometimes you're driving alone and you get in a car accident.James: Or they go to Target.Catherine Roebuck: How dare they. Sometimes you're at your job and you get fired. They'll be there when you get home, but they won't be there in that acute moment. Who's going to be there for you then? The only option is you. I think that's why it's so worthwhile to develop a deep compassion for yourself, because you always have access to it. There's no other way you could always have access.James: I think we should leave it there.Catherine Roebuck: Okay, great talking to you, James.James: This was such a great conversation. Thank you, Catherine. I'll talk to you again soon.

Catherine Roebuck joins me to discuss Chapter 1 of Bruce Tift’s book “Already Free.”Roseville Couples Counseling300 Harding Blvd Suite 108, Roseville CA916-292-8920TranscriptJames: Let's start with a quote from Already Free by Bruce Tiff. "Most of us are, in a variety of ways, living in the present as if it were the past."What do you think?Catherine: Yeah, I love that quote. He's talking about how we go through our lives now as if our capacity were still frozen at, you know, six years old, and that we have to use the same limited strategies we had back then.James: What strategies are you talking about? What did I do when I was six that I still do as an adult, even though it doesn't make sense?Catherine: He talks about how by the time kids are about six, they learn to detach or suppress parts of their experience because it's overwhelming. It's too intense, or it's just terrifying and too much. So you might do that in response to pressure from your family or even at school, like trying to fit in with public expectations. You end up pushing down maybe how frightened you feel or how angry you are, or that you're very dependent. If you feel a lot of pressure to instead be capable, independent, and self-sufficient, then even at five or six years old, you might suppress the reality of how dependent you really are. So you end up kind of cutting yourself off from parts of your own experience and then going through life with this set of coping mechanisms that were very intelligent and necessary when you were a young child with a young brain and really limited options for handling your life. But then by the time you're in your thirties or forties, it doesn't make sense anymore. It's not the best way to do it, and it starts to cause you problems.James: So he mentions three ways of doing this, which is passion, anger, and disconnection. The three ways that I divide myself against myself. When I'm young, the best way for me to handle myself is to turn off or repress parts of myself that get me in trouble in my family or in the broader world, especially in the family. There are certain parts of me that are annoying to my parents, or that my parents discourage or don't like. So I learn to suppress those parts, and that's me turning against myself, dividing against myself in some way. Which of those three do you think you practiced the most when you were young?Catherine: I could see all three of them coming up at times, but for me, there's definitely a trend toward what he calls positive aggression or the neurotic feminine. That's the passion or attachment one, where you try to relate positively to your parents, your family, and the world around you. You end up internalizing all the problems in your life and thinking that you are the problem. There's this fantasy that if I'm the problem, that explains why things aren't going better for me or why people aren't taking better care of me. It's because I'm the problem. All I have to do is fix that, and then I'll get the love that I really need. The fantasy is that this is in your control and that you could do something about it. For me, I really internalized a lot, and I had a very aggressive position toward myself. All of my anger was pointed inward as depression, and it was not directed very much outside of me at other people.James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: But that was pretty destructive to my relationship with myself.James: Yeah, so you can direct your anger inward, you can direct your anger outward toward others, or you can just disconnect from everything. Most of us use some combination of those three tools. What you were talking about reminded me of a pattern I often see in parenting where parents pretend that they're more innocent than their children. If my child is misbehaving in some way and I'm also misbehaving as a parent, I will often pretend that I'm quite innocent. I'm just trying to help you. I'm just trying to be a good parent here. Look at you, you're being such a bad kid. And so the child in that instance is going to usually internalize this idea that I'm a bad kid, I'm a bad person. This is my fault, because it's pretty hard for them to see through to the actual reality, which is, you know, children are by nature innocent and parents by nature are not innocent. We just have so much responsibility as parents and so much more capacity to do things better than what a child has.Catherine: Yeah, and one way I see that happen a lot is parents who will demand that their children apologize to them, but they won't apologize to their children. They're setting it up as if you can do bad things and have to make repair for that, but everything I do is right and justified.James: So only children make mistakes, and parents don't make mistakes. And only children need to be responsible. Parents don't need to be responsible.Catherine: Yeah. I mean, the irony is that the reason you'd be doing that as a parent is that you're not very mature yourself and you're not handling yourself well. A mature parent that's functioning well wouldn't reach for those strategies.James: Yeah, of course not. So what do I do as an adult if I've adopted this kind of self-aggression as a child?Catherine: One of the things that Tiff talks about is just committing to the truth of your experience. He calls these three styles we were talking about fundamental aggression. I think of them as ways that we argue with reality or fight with reality. So he encourages people to basically back into their embodied sensory experience in real time and find out what's there. Become curious about that and don't buy in too much to your ideas about what's going on, but to track it more closely.James: One way that he addresses this is with what he calls the worst fear technique. What is the feeling I'm most worried about feeling, and the feeling or the thought that seems just absolutely undoable to me? For me, it might be, "I can't handle feeling abandoned." So Bruce would say, "Why don't you try saying to yourself, 'I give myself permission to feel abandoned from time to time, or off and on for the rest of my life?'" Just saying that, there's something so powerful about saying that because I really don't want to say that. It does kind of make sense in the framework of like, once upon a time when I was young, I felt abandoned, and I decided it wasn't okay for me. It wasn't safe for me at that time. So I learned to just push that away and that it was really important for me to push that away in some way. Now, as an adult, feeling abandoned for me now is actually not harmful. But I need to kind of reverse that process and reintegrate with myself by saying, "Well, if I feel this way, can it be okay for me to feel this way?" And the way Bruce would say it is, "Can I investigate? How harmful is it really for me to feel abandoned? How much harm is in this?" He takes this nonjudgmental approach, which is, "Every time it happens, I start an investigation and I say, 'I'm going to investigate how harmful this feeling is, and I'm just going to go into the feeling and see what happens.'" It's beautiful because instead of in childhood where I set up a rule that said, "This feeling is harmful, I can't feel it," as in adulthood, he's like, "You don't need a rule. You need to investigate. You need to see what happens." It's a beautiful way of looking at it.Catherine: Yeah. He also sometimes says, "Could you feel this way for 30 minutes?" I think that one's really powerful because there's stuff that feels so terrible that you can be like, "I can't handle ever feeling this way ever again. I couldn't handle one more minute of this." But then if you kind of look back, you can usually find, "Actually, I've felt this way on and off throughout my entire remembered life, or all the way back to when I was 11 or whatever it may be. This has been going on a long time. I actually am able to tolerate it." I really don't like it and I might never like it. That might never change. But you can drop the sort of desperation and that need to dodge it and just look at it. "I have felt this way on and off throughout my life. If I continue to feel this way on and off throughout my life, all evidence points to I'll be able to continue living my life." That's what I've been doing so far.James: One reason this is helpful is that the behavioral patterns I have as an adult that I used to get away from my feelings are harmful in my family and they're harmful in my relationship. Even though the feeling itself isn't really harmful, the behaviors I do to get away from the feeling are harmful. So if my pattern is that I get angry at someone else to get away from this feeling, then that's harmful in my marriage. If my pattern is that I just retract from reality or withdraw from reality to get away from this feeling, that's also harmful. So all three of these behavioral patterns we talked about are incompatible with having a happy relationship or being a good parent. So even though the feelings themselves aren't harmful, the ways we get away from them are harmful if we want to have good relationships. There are two things here that are surprising to me. First, how difficult it is for me to say, "I give myself permission to feel this feeling that I don't like off and on for the rest of my life." It sounds silly to say it, but it's actually quite difficult, and it really does have an impact. There's something about saying that out loud, about acknowledging the reality of this thing and talking about it as just a feeling and the idea that, as an adult, feelings are okay. I can handle feeling a lot of things that I couldn't really handle feeling when I was a kid, but as an adult, I can feel them. The other thing is that in childhood, these feelings were often a legitimate warning of a legitimate danger or a legitimate concern. Whereas in adulthood, they are often a symptom of me living in the present as if it were the past.Catherine: Yeah. I think of it as your brain wires in childhood information about "Here's how big of a problem it is when you feel this way and here's the available paths, the ways you can respond to it." Then when something reminds you of it as an adult, that's the wiring that lights up, and it's decades out of date, but it's what you have until you update it on purpose.James: Yeah, so the way brain development works is, you know, most of our brain development occurs in the first 20 years of life. After that, brain development by default slows down significantly unless I do something about it. So a lot of the work you and I do is helping people intentionally rewire their brains to enable them to have the kind of relationships they want to have.Catherine: Yeah. And one of the other things that Tiff says is that as adults, we all think we want to resolve our neuroses. That's the conscious goal when people enter therapy or coaching. And underneath that conscious goal is a very deep unconscious investment in never resolving them.James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: I understood that to be about, "You can't resolve this because you've actually organized your whole life around this core belief."James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: You'd have to learn a whole new way of functioning.James: Yeah. And it feels uncomfortable. If my marriage has been operating a certain way for a couple of decades, it feels pretty uncomfortable for me to step into a new way of operating, even if it's better. A new pattern between me and my wife, even if it's significantly better than the old pattern, will drive some anxiety just because it's new.Catherine: Yes. Change is always difficult, even really good change, even things you really want.James: Mm-hmm. And even though the way we used to treat each other wasn't that great, at least I knew how to handle myself in that situation. I knew what to expect. So when my wife changes her pattern and starts treating me better, I love that, and it is just a little bit disconcerting to have her change. You know, I've seen her change quite a bit over the past year, and she treats me a lot better than she used to. And that's a beautiful thing. It also feels fresh and raw in a way that kind of keeps me on my toes.Catherine: Right? I think about the neurotic organization as like, there's something you don't want to feel. And I always visualize it as like a hand for whatever reason. It's like anytime I come up against this thing, I don't want to feel I back off, and I keep doing this throughout my life until I've formed, right in the center of my life, a perfect imprint of the very thing I'm trying to avoid and never think about and never feel. We tend to actually form a sort of a comfortable relationship with having our life organized around this avoidance, and it is unsettling. It's disconcerting to drop it.James: Mm-hmm. Well, and this is what people call getting triggered. "Oh, I got triggered." And what Tiff is saying is it's okay to feel the feelings associated with being triggered. It's actually good to lean into that and feel that completely. But if I let those feelings drive my behavior, then my behavior is going to cause problems in my relationships.Catherine: Right? And then you'll blame those problems on your partner.James: Yeah. Because if I blame my partner for my feelings, then I say my feelings are my partner's fault, and my behavior is therefore my partner's fault. The way I think of it is, "Partner does something, I feel something, and then I do something." This is an unbreakable chain. At no point in that chain do I really have the option of stepping in and doing something different. What Tiff is saying is, "Feel more." If I can lean into feeling the feelings and really participating in the experience of what it's like for me to be me right now, then that gives me more choice about what I actually do, because I don't have to take action as a way to get away from this intensity.Catherine: Yeah. So he talks about if in early life you have a parent or two parents that are pretty avoidant, don't want a lot of closeness and contact with you, you're going to develop a style of doing most of the work of connecting in an important relationship. You learn this so young and you practice it so much, it becomes core to who you are, or it feels that way anyway, that this is how you know to be you in the world. So then you get into a relationship, and you have this style that you've practiced so much of doing 90% of the work of connecting, always being the one to approach and repair. He offers the example of a child giving their parent a hug so that then they get a hug, but always being the one to initiate that hug.James: To initiate. Yeah.Catherine: Yeah. And so then the best move for you on a subconscious level, so that you can continue to operate in the way that has always kept you safe, basically, and that your brain thinks is the safe option, is going to be to partner with someone that has a style of doing 10% of the work. Then you can keep doing 90%, and you can be angry at them because it's really their fault that you're over here doing so much, or that's how it feels.James: Well, and I would be comfortable being with a person who isn't used to putting very much work into connection. Yeah. Because you know that that becomes at least a possible relationship configuration for me because I'm used to doing all this connecting work. So the other person might be more in charge of the disconnection or the independence in the relationship. So they're the one who establishes the separateness by withdrawing or whatever it is they do.Catherine: Yeah. And so then if you've got an avoidant partner like that and they start to face their avoidance and they start to lean in and do more work, sure, you might like it on some level, but it's inherently destabilizing to you and your relationship and how this all fits together. So yeah, even good change is difficult to handle.James: Yeah, it is.Catherine: And then you'd have to also investigate, "Well, what does this mean about reality?" If I had assumed that the way relationships work is I have to work this hard, and then I learned that's not the truth, but I've been doing it for 20 years. Or however many years. There's actually a lot of grief in that and in realizing, "I had to work this hard not because that's just the reality of all relationships, but because that was the reality of my particular relationship when I was a child."James: So instead of feeling like I have to behave the way I'm behaving in my relationship, which is more or less the case when we're children—we don't have a lot of agency or choice in how we show up in our families. We're a child with a very low power in the family system, and so my best choice is just to kind of comply with the rules of the family or fit myself into the family system in the best way I can. But that's more like me adjusting myself as opposed to, as an adult, I can say, "Well, what kind of a person do I want to be? What kind of relationship do I want to have?" And now I can take steps to behave myself in a way that is compatible with that kind of relationship. So I start having influence on the relationship system instead of just it being a one-way trip where the relationship system is having influence on me.Catherine: Yes. One of the things that is really fun for me to see when I work with couples that have children is that as they start to address these patterns between them and individually just in how they show up, then their relationships with their children will shift. If you've got a style of doing 90% of the work, you're going to have not just an avoidant partner, but you're going to end up with a relationship with your children where they avoid you as well, a lot of the time, because that's just how you achieve balance. When there's someone who's doing 90% of the work, you do 10. And so, you know, you shift one. If one person starts to really take this on and change, the whole system responds, which is amazing to see. You watch children become less anxious and become more talkative and engage in family activities willingly. It's because of work the parents are doing, and the kids aren't even having to consciously do it. And it also sets them up for something so much better down the line that they could maybe feel at home in a more balanced relationship.James: The power of an adult being an adult in a family system is immense. It's so huge. But we all learned about taking our place in a family system when we were children. So every person has a brain that was organized around the idea that "I have a role in this family system and I don't really get a choice about that." And that's how it was. Making this shift to where I have a role in my family system as an adult and I get to choose my role, so now I'm the one writing the script, I'm the one directing the play, I'm the one choosing the cast, and I get to choose my role, and I can choose a role of, "I'm going to assert myself. I'm going to take up space. I'm going to be really kind and compassionate, and I'm also going to be hard to get around." That's the role that is going to change the entire family system, not because I'm controlling people, but because I'm controlling myself, and the family system adapts to people who can control themselves.Catherine: Yeah, I actually think this is part of what you were bringing up about the parents seeing themselves as more innocent than their children. I think it's a reaction to those parents, when they were innocent children, being treated like they weren't. So they grow up, they still experience themselves as a child whose innocence was never honored. And that's what they're trying to do. Now that they're in charge, they're going to take a stand for this thing that they weren't able to take a stand for when they were kids. But it's like the ship has sailed. You aren't a child anymore. And it's really easy to engage even as a full adult with your own children, to keep engaging in your relationships and your life as if you are a frightened, overwhelmed, put-upon child. And it's just not the truth.James: It is so hard to change though.Catherine: Yeah. But that's the only way anyone ever gets to have that innocent childhood experience is that someone along the way grows up, becomes a protective adult, takes seriously their responsibility, and stops putting it on the next generation.James: Yeah. It really does require immense change on the part of the parents.Catherine: Yeah. And it usually means that you have to, someone's gotta go first. Somebody has to be willing to step up and say, "I'm going to try to give what I didn't get." It takes a lot of courage. That's one of the things that Tiff talks about is just the amount of courage it takes to experience the reality of our lives directly, to have a direct relationship with it. He talks about how it can be hard to get people on board with wanting to do something as stupid as having an intentional, direct relationship with their own pain or to walk right into terrible feelings. Of course, who wants to do that? You need a good reason. So the reason comes typically from either your strategies are so out of date that it's very painful to keep using them, or your relationships are breaking down because you're acting out childhood dramas. Or you have a lot of capacity and courage and curiosity, and you're willing to step in and try something new.James: Yeah. So this was chapter one. What we were talking about today was chapter one of this book, which talks about the developmental view, which is kind of the view that's traditional to Western therapy. A lot of the work that you and I do really is centered in this developmental view of "Once upon a time I was a relatively powerless child in a family system, and I learned to adapt to that role. And now I'm a relatively powerful adult in the family system, and it's critical for me to adapt to that new role, which is that I am the one now who gets to make things better for me and my family." That is all the things that you were just saying. So I think next time we will talk about chapter two, which is the fruitional or Buddhist view, which is quite different from everything we've been saying so far.Catherine: Yeah. And one of the things that's so fun about this book is that he doesn't try to reconcile the two into one cohesive theory or anything. He talks about the value of going back and forth between the two and holding the dissonance, so it's very fun.James: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm excited to tackle that with you next time, and I think we should leave it there. What do you say?Catherine: Sounds good. Thanks, James.James: Thank you, Catherine.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: https://www.karegladohurley.com/Aron Carlson: https://childandfamilymentalhealth.com/aron-carlson/ Parenting Workshop: https://www.international-crucible-education-center.org/parenting-workshop Transcript:James: My guests today are Aron Carlson and Kristen Alado Hurley, and they're here to talk about a parenting workshop that they have been developing.Kristin Areglado Hurley: So just a bit about my background. I am a therapist in Portland, Maine. I have had a private practice for the last 20 years or so. And I had the privilege of first and foremost working as a family therapist. I did home-based family preservation and I used to teach family therapy. I trained with Dr. Sn, starting in 2011 and really have dedicated the latter part of my personal and professional life to really learning about interpersonal neurobiology and better understanding how we as parents and the ways in which we function and manage ourselves, impacts our children. And so as a mom of a 22-year-old, this topic that Aron and I have been working together to develop a really high end, meaningful experiential training, is very near and dear to my heart. Aron, what would you like to share?James: Thank you. And what about you?Aron Carlson: Hello everybody. It's great to be with both of you. I'm looking forward to the discussion we're gonna have. My name is Aron Carlson. I am a licensed clinical social worker. I work in the Washington DC metro area. I've worked here for about 12 years, mostly with parents and their kids, and also couples. And I trained with David Snar from 2018 to 2020, and that's where I met Kristen. And I'm really looking forward to going through some material that Kristen and I put together to illustrate our thinking and approach to the workshop that we're going to be doing in the fall. And James has so graciously agreed to go along for the ride and discuss all this stuff with us.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I guess just as a broad statement, I think one of the most extraordinary things, but also incredibly difficult things is parenting. And we wanted to start with a little vignette. We call it an interaction that has a lot of material to it. And we wanted to start with the vignette because it's a more of a visual way to engage with our, the material that we're going to be presenting at our training. and so Aron, would you be willing to read the vignette so we can all just start to take in what we're to think about?Aron Carlson: You bet. Okay, so there's a family of three. Eliza and John have a daughter, Sophie, who's five years of age. Sophie attends a Montessori preschool and the headmistress of the school. Ms. Beth sent Eliza Sophie's mom an email to report that there was a rug pulling incident at school. Upon receiving an email from Ms. Beth Eliza learned that the students were informed by one of the teachers that there was a pole in the rug and were explicitly asked not to pull on it, lest they create a hole in the carpet. Sophie was found by her teacher pulling on the carpet, and when the teacher asked Sophie to stop, she continued doing so and made a small hole in the carpet which was discovered. And Eliza found herself surprised by the degree of reactivity and from her point of view intolerance, which the headmistress of the school, Ms. Beth demonstrated in her email, describing her daughter's behavior. To Eliza's mind, what five-year-old wouldn't be curious about what might happen if she pulled on the carpet? Sophie's dad, John learns about this whole incident from his wife Eliza, who relays the email that she received from Ms. Beth and John becomes incensed upon learning of Sophie's behavior. He responds to Eliza by telling her what consequences he believes are appropriate for Sophie's disrespectful behavior. The couple's bedroom conversation turns conflictual as Eliza disagrees with John. And when Sophie comes into the room, John explodes. He tells Sophie, mom and I got into a fight because of the email received from that we received from Miss Beth about your decision to pull on the rug today. And now apparently there's a big hole in the carpet.Sophie bursts into tears. Eliza rushes over to comfort her. And John leaves the room.Kristin Areglado Hurley: Just take a moment to really visualize, take into your mind's eye this series of events. Maybe you close your eyes for a moment and just allow the scenes to unfold in your mind's eye. How do you see five-year-old Sophie as she's sitting in a circle with her classmates in her small Montessori classroom? Consider her thoughts and feelings and her responses as she listens to her teacher's instruction. The teacher points to the pole in the rug and explains that no one should touch it it could make a hole on the carpet. Next, visualize what Eliza Sophie's mom's thinking and feeling and considArong when she reads the email as well as what's happening for her as she informs John about Ms. Beth's email. Allow yourself to visualize Eliza and John in their bedroom might be happening for each of them as they have their argument. What might their facial expressions and tone of voice convey? Let's visualize Sophie as she's entArong her parents' bedroom, might her facial expression look like? How close or far might she be standing to her parents, particularly when her father explodes, visualize the way Eliza might engage with Sophie when she's in tears? How does John decide to leave the room? So it's pretty impactful for me when I really start to take in this interaction and really visualize the scene of what's unfolding. So if we think about this, and James, we, you know, certainly let's let's all have a conversation about this. What beliefs or anxieties could be impacting Eliza in the way she thinks about Sophie's behavior and anticipates interacting with John? How do you think she's feeling both emotionally and in her body and thinking when she's talking with her husband? And I'm curious how you see her functioning overall at that time.James: How Eliza was functioning.Kristin Areglado Hurley: What do you think was affecting Eliza, given the way she's thinking about herJames: So just my mind had gone straight to thinking about John and Sophie and not Eliza. So, I would suspect that she would anticipate this kind of response from John, because it probably wouldn't be the first time would be my guess. And so she, so let's see if I can place myself in her shoes. There, she would've been anticipating that this might cause trouble, but maybe fully anticipating the degree to which it's about to go off the rails. I'm not sure.Kristin Areglado Hurley: So perhaps she has some anticipatory anxiety is maybe what you're, you're, you're hypothesizing, given that it's likely this is not a one-off and it's likely that this, she's seen her husband get really reactive in the past.James: Yeah, I mean the, the pattern behavior describing from John here is just not the kind of thing that happens only once. So I would expect that this is probably a pattern, especially John being willing to kind of take this out on Sophie. So.Kristin Areglado Hurley: What's your sense how she's feeling, how she's emotionally feeling, but then also physiologically, like in her body.James: Oh yeah. So in her body, I would expect her to be, I mean, scared, shaky, If it were me, I would have a tightness in my chest at kind of anticipating the potential intensity that's about to come into the family system and just probably not knowing how to handle it very well.Kristin Areglado Hurley: Any thoughts about what she's thinking about her daughter's behavior and how she's impacted she learns about what happened at the Montessori preschool?James: Yeah, she seems to be worried about how the school is treating her daughter. So, mean, 'cause she, she's worried about the tone of the email. You always said the intolerance, which would Ms. Best and maybe the teacher had. So I think the way Eliza's looking at this is this is normal behavior for her daughter. It's not really that much to be concerned about, you know, it's just the kind of thing that happens and you correct it and that she's worried about how the school is handling it, and then obviously concerned about how John handles it. I imagineKristin Areglado Hurley: Aron, did you wanna move into the second about John,Aron Carlson: I'm happy to. I had the thought while James was talking that, one of the things that I'm picturing is. The concern that Eliza may have about a consistent message or a kind of alliance between the perspective of the head mistress and her husband, Sophie's dad, that this is punishable behavior and it needs to be punished. I'll segue to John.How do you think John is feeling emotionally and in his body and thinking when talking with Eliza, how do you see him functioning overall then?James: He's not functioning well at all and it's so interesting that this doesn't have any, this seems to be mostly about the conflict between him and Eliza, and so like when he complains about, when he, when he says to Sophie is about, he's holding Sophie responsible for starting the fight between him and Eliza, which is obviously not true, but that seems to be his primary concern is what's going on between him and Eliza. And he seems to be using the situation with Sophie as a way to get back at Eliza.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think a lot about the disrespectful behavior and it's clear that this parent has the notion that if his daughter doesn't comply misbehaves it warrants a pretty strict intervention. and I think that's an interesting thing for parents to really think about When our children are. behaving in ways that are disrespectful or in a way where perhaps part of his ups, his reactivity is maybe, you know, about what the school thinks about his daughter and thus about him, that that's a really, it's really quite clear in the way that he is so punitive with his daughter. And I agree. I think there's a lot happening between the couple.Aron Carlson: So, James, did I get it right that you see John is reacting mostly to his wife when getting the news about the email from her? Did I get that right?James: so what I kind of see happening here is Eliza is basically. Eliza is taking Sophie's side in this where she feels like Sophie has been, you know, mistreated by the school and she's concerned about it. And John enters the battle on the other side. And so John seems pretty eager to take whatever side Eliza is not taking. I mean, my suspicion is that a lot of his treatment of Sophie is driven by his desire to kind of make a move on Eliza.Aron Carlson: Do you have an idea of what he wants to make a move? What he might wanna make a move on Eliza for?James: I really don't know what his motivation for that might be, but it's kind of common things that happen in marriage where people are kind of out to get each other.Aron Carlson: Okay. Yeah, I think it's a good thing to consider, if John looks like he's trying to get, make a move on Eliza for some reason, how his mind might do that. And, I hadn't thought about it the way that you thought about it, so I'm not sure either. But I can think of a possibility at the moment, which is, I mean, I don't know if this would be accurate, but possibility that John wants to kind of. make sure he prevails with how decisions get made, particularly in parenting. And if he's going to, if he doesn't like what he hears, he's immediately going to mobilize to try to get that position. I don't know how well supported it is, but it's a way of hypothesizing and about the way that you see John.James: The thing that stands out the most to me is just how he's willing to blame Sophie for the altercation between him and Eliza.Aron Carlson: Mm-hmm.James: Sophie is obviously innocent and, and he is just ready to just jump, jump in there and say, it's your fault. You know, not only did you, this point is not even about the rug anymore. It's like, you know, my behavior and mom's behavior is all your fault as the child, which is, it's just turning everything upside down because Sophia is whether or not she's innocent of pulling the rug or whether or not that's a big deal or not. She's obviously not responsible for the way her parents are behaving, and that's what he presents. And so he moves it away from the rug entirely and says, now, you know, what's happening in our family is your fault.Kristin Areglado Hurley: You, you another point, and we're gonna be getting into some of the teaching points later, but the idea that, you know, you're, there's a lot of looking at the, the couple, and to the extent that, you know, you've spoken about having, you know, Eliza having some anticipatory anxiety. She probably has a good sense about how her husband will respond to to misbehavior. And so to the extent that she's anxious and she's concerned about her daughter, to what degree then does he know this about his wife? And he doubles down and he is extremely punitive in the way that he respond. He reacts to his daughter most, most certainly. Um, did you have any other thoughts about, uh, about John Aron or, or James before he mm-hmm.Aron Carlson: I thought of the possibility that John is a kind of easily reactive, and news of his daughter behaving in the way described by the headmistress. Is it kind of an easy trigger for him and he starts regressing in his functioning and when he gets like that, he is starting to pound on his wife and his daughter's an even easier target for him. And more than having any kind of ongoing agenda, he is just falling apart and trying to make it look like he's kind of in charge and knows what he's doing. And. Ends up in that process of pinning the whole thing on his daughter and his, I, it doesn't say in the vignette explicitly, but I gotta think that he's combative with his wife and that's why their interaction is escalating to the point that in all likelihood, their daughter hears it. And then related to that, makes a decision to enter.Kristin Areglado Hurley: Which, which brings us to think about Sophie and what's happening for her as she's overhearing her parents' conflict. How might her father's interaction impact her thinking and her sense of herself? How do you think she's feeling emotionally and also in her body, and how do you think she's, what do you think she's thinking when she decides to enter her parents' bedroom? What are people's thoughts about how this is, is functioning here?James: I think the tension between her parents is gonna drive her into a survival response because, you know, she as a five-year-old cannot survive alone. She needs her parents and she needs her parents to be okay with each other. At least that's, you know, kind of the way her brain sees it. And so I think she's going into the bedroom to try to calm things down. So she's taking on herself, the regulation of emotionality in the family instead of it being the parent's responsibility.Kristin Areglado Hurley: What are your thoughts about how the way that her dad engages with her impacts how she thinks about herself and her sense of herself? I.James: Yeah. I mean, he presents himself as innocent and her as the problem. And so he, he's reinforcing in her brain this idea that. I think children kind of already have a predilection towards this idea that my parents are basically innocent and I'm the one who's the problem and her dad is obviously reinforcing this in her brain right now, and he's very comfortable painting himself as innocent and her as the problem.Aron Carlson: Yeah, I would add to that, it looks like John is presenting himself innocent as an innocent victim of his daughter for causing this fight that's been hard on him.James: Mm-hmm.Aron Carlson: And and I think that that. Presentation impacts his Sophie's mind and that all of this power is being attributed to her by her dad when her dad is pretty unstable.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I also think the idea about what's happening for her how it is that she goes in to manage her parents is if, if we think about that, it's, it is upside down, isn't it? But that's what happens when children are experiencing, when they're witnessing interactions that would be potentially. Traumatizing and anxiety provoking, so we can surmise that that's a lot of, as you say, James, that she was, she's going in to regulate the anxiety of the whole family system and she's the child, likely what she's doing when she enters into the bedroom.James: And children feel compelled to do that. You know, for the parents, this is much less a survive of a survival problem than it is for Sophie. But for Zoey, this is survival. And she feels like she needs her family to be okay. For her to be okay. And, and she legitimately is in that position of dependency. And so it's pretty normal for children to take this, you know, the idea of mom and dad are fighting and the kid is trying to get them to stop. It happens all the time.Aron Carlson: So a possibility occurred to me about Sophie, where she may be feel like there's motivated to defend herself if she thinks that she's being unfairly talked about. because I think there's a lot of ways that Sophie could play out entArong the room. and since it's not a real person that we've interviewed, we don't have more specific things to to base our speculation on. But I think that there could be some variety about what it means to her to hear her parents fight and she's an only kid and she's gotta think that it's about her to some degree, and so I wonder how she sees. herself reflected back to her and how she handles that along with the points that both of you have made about she's gonna start feeling unstable to some degree. The more she hears her parents reacting to each other and that is likely to produce a response in her where she goes toward them.Kristin Areglado Hurley: and we can see based on the way that the mother engages with Sophie. Then you know, James, you're really tracking the, the likelihood that there's a lot of, there's somewhat of a, maybe more of a combative kind of a relationship between the couple. so to the extent then that that mother is going to comfort and reassure daughter, how does that impact the way that the husband engages with the daughter? so we see a bit of a triangle with the parents and the child. so there's a lot of dynamics at play in thisJames: Mm-hmm.Kristin Areglado Hurley: and we can all really think about this five-year-old. And the degree of anxiety that and also just that survival instinct as you speak about, because it is very much something that young brains are very susceptible to safety, but we all are actually, but particularly younger children, such as this five yearold.James: The way I think about it is, is when there's, there's tension between the parents. It's like a, a live wire being run through the children. 'cause the tension almost always gets routed through the children when parents aren't handling themselves well. And the children have a much lower capacity for anxiety tolerance than the adults do. And so it affects them even more. It's really, really hard on kids when mom and dad aren't doing well.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I wanna just knit back to something that was addressed before about this father, and that is. clearly has the belief that children are just expected to follow rules, and he does take it personally by virtue of the fact that he gets as reactive as he does, when he finds out that she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. we can also think about how that impacts this child knowing that her father, if she's doing something likely this was, she was curious. This is an interesting thing. We haven't really talked a lot yet about the, that what's happening in the classroom, but, but if we visualize a group of five year olds who are being told, whatever you do don't touch this, of course they're going to be curious about touch. What is the this, right? It's not really behavior that we wouldn't expect from five-year-olds and yet. We can see of this father's mind that it is somewhat of a personal affront to him. And he has a lot of, he invokes a lot of, I call it parental privilege. The privilege that he gets to teach her a lesson. but again, not handling himself well at all.Aron Carlson: Yeah, he's, he's very, very focused on his daughter as the the problem and is very deliberate in the state of mind. He's in to characterize her that way, and wants her to know, I think that all of those features support that. He's pretty reactive.Okay. So, we kind of covered the next one. There's some questions about how the couple's relationship works. So how do you picture Eliza and John interacting around making decisions about how to engage with their daughter about these events and also responding to Ms. Beth's email? And then there's kind of a, an epilogue question of that. Do you need to, or do you see a general picture of how Eli and John May make decisions together, or don't you?James: I, it gives me a pretty clear picture of John. I don't see, I don't see Eliza very clearly. I don't know how Eliza would, all I can see from Eliza is that she doesn't think her daughter is being treated justly, you know, by John or by the school and, but as as far as otherwise, don't, I don't see much about her. But it does seem that John would be a very difficult person to deal with, in any disagreement.Kristin Areglado Hurley: And we get a flavor for the difficulty that these two people likely have in, in interacting with each other. can see that Eliza was, quite, you know, concerned when she read the email. Her mind goes to how is her husband going to respond? So again, not, this is not a one-off. Right. and we can see my, you know, she has a, she's surprised by the response to the school. She also clearly is anticipating that her hu there will be a conflict. And it really does unfold in a pretty tumultuous way. So, and we can also see, given the, the position that John takes, he really isn't collaborating with anyone. He's so reactive. It doesn't demonstrate a lot of capacity to have real flexibility in the way that he's thinking. or a real openness either to his wife, given that he just gets so reactive and very punitive. Even invo. It really kind of implants this crazy picture, this big hole in the carpet, doesn't demonstrate a lot of capacity for there to be real collaboration happening between this couple. Aron, what would you, do you have thoughts you'd like to add?Aron Carlson: When I picture the couple having their talk in their bedroom and there's not a lot of specific detail in the vignette about that. I'm imagining what it means to Eliza to inform. John about what happened at school with the anticipation of his response that she has. And I wonder what it means to John, to that his daughter was doing something she was told not to do at the school. And from that point, I, I would, I wonder how they respond to each other, but my guess is they get more reactive. What their kind of meanings are that internally that contribute to their reactivity is something we don't know. That would be something to unpack in a therapy session or several. And, but I think it's pretty clear they don't agree on how to handle talking to their daughter about this. And it looks well supported that. Eliza wants to treat, the me some of the meaning she makes out of this is that her daughter's kind of being normal and it's the school that's outta hand. And some of the meaning that her husband is making out of this is that her daughter's the problem. The school's probably, you know, doing a good job to inform them and shouldn't be inconvenienced or, you know, the school has a right to have their daughter's behavior corrected, with the help of the parents in the environment of the school. And the couple does not agree about this, and it's pretty unclear as to how they play that out, in their interaction. But they don't get anywhere constructive and it escalates. But I, I wonder about how, how they experience interacting with each other and, you know, what leads them to, in the. Kind of recursive loop escalate together.So I don't, I don't see them being able to do any kind of collaborative talking with Sophie about this until, uh, either of them can find a way to get ahold of themselves enough while interacting with the other one. And if they don't do that, which wouldn't be uncommon, my guess is that they may not be able to talk to Sophie together. And she may get different messages from her parents in passing about what this means and what's gonna happen. Or maybe not in passing. Maybe, one or both of them would sit down and talk with her. but what they'll say, I gotta think is likely to be kind of uncoordinated and unsupported and running a risk of having contradiction in it. And I don't think that would be unusual in, you know, in any of our family systems for that to happen. But I think playing out that way would increase the kind of confusion and anxiety that Sophie's likely to live with around this series of events and kind of in general.James: I definitely see it increasing Sophie's anxiety, especially, you know, her seeing that mom and dad can't handle themselves and her capacity to handle herself well is obviously much lower. And so think this would lead to quite a bit of a problem for for Sophie.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think we've, the last piece we wanted to just reflect on, with respect to the vignette was, kind of what we're already talking about. Just, you know, what, If we, as we think, as we continue to look at the way the parents are interacting, how this affects Sophie and the way she thinks about herself and about each of her parents, and also what she's gleaning about her sense of safety connection and relationship based on how these parents relate with each other and with her. So we've already started to speak into this, that obviously this creates a lot of anxiety for this young, young person and a lot of anticipatory anxiety well as the way she thinks about herself and her behavior, knowing that she has a really reactive, punitive father. Um, those are, just to summarize some of the things that each of you has spoken into, do, does either of you have any other thoughts that you'd like to share on this last. reflection question.Aron Carlson: What I'm thinking about is how Sophie sees her mom. And I think that it's not a a, a real clear, it's at least not for me, it's not a real clear picture. And, and I think there's a lot of information that, in a actual case, would want to get before being able to have a more precise view of it. But how her, how Eliza responds to John's kind of pretty acute, regressive pressure on their daughter. And how she handles herself when he's upset. Like that I gotta think, is informing her daughter's picture of her. And that could go a lot of ways. And so I don't think it's clear here, but some of the issues would be about, is what's it like in this marriage for Eliza to talk with John about if, if she's concerned, any concerns that she has about his reactivity that, that she can, well, it's not clear, but there's a, there's a chance that she can see that her husband's aiming that at her daughter. And what's it like for her to consider putting that on the table in a conversation with him and how would she do it? Um, I think those are all important things to consider. In terms of thinking about how Sophie's impacted by how uh, this family system works and how she sees her parents, um, there may be ways where, um, Sophie is supported by her dad that we don't see in this vignette, but we can certainly see where she's gonna be at risk for, to getting throttled by 'em. And then her mom takes a role of protecting her, which I think is pretty understandable. But then also how do the parents, do the parents acknowledge this in any way in their relationship thinking? My thinking is they'd have to, as a kind of prerequisite for them to be able to do something different with how they care for their daughter.James: Well, this puts Eliza in a really tough place where she, realistically, Eliza is going to have to. something to protect Sophie from this, and it's just, it's a really hard thing to do. But this is when you end up as a parent, you know, I have a huge responsibility to my children. I also love and care about the person I'm married to, or I that I had children with. And now what do I do when I'm faced with this, this thing where I need to talk to you about how you treated our child. incredibly difficult conversation. Takes a lot of courage.Kristin Areglado Hurley: It does. And I think we can have a lot of empathy for this, this mother and this father and this daughter. moving into some of the key points that we've spoken around, one of the big things that we'll be teaching, and talking about in the workshop that Aron and I are offArong in November is is about differentiation as it re relates to the way that each of the, we as parents are able to So we can see certainly, particularly with John, that he really doesn't have, he doesn't demonstrate. Good capacity to quiet his mind down and calm his heart. He doesn't respond to his daughter or his, we don't see as much with how he responds to Eliza, but he certainly doesn't respond a grounded way to Sophie. But he's really reactive and he doesn't have a lot of flexibility in himself, given that way or the highway. Right. He, he really is pretty brittle in terms of the way that he about his daughter's behavior and the way that he engages with his daughter. So, the differentiation involves the ability to be solid in ourselves, but also flexible to be able to where another person's coming from, being able to self-soothe and self-regulate. So that's one of the key points that we certainly think is critical for us as parents. So that's a really important piece that we'll be getting into in our workshop.Aron Carlson: I would add to that, on Eliza's side, what happens to her when her husband doesn't see things the way that she sees them. And when she anticipates he's going to become kind of explosive, what happens for her then That would be, I think, a test of her level of resilience as a parent, which is differentiation based. And, that's when all of us run into our limits of resilience and differentiation and our important relationships. But those are the areas that these parents would, I think do well to consider their own process internally and what they know about their partner's mind and how they interact with each other as a focal point, particularly when their minds are likely to identify their daughter as the main problem or intervention point. Not that there isn. reason for considArong intervention or the daughter to be an intervention point, but that it's difficult but possible to hold at the same time. How is the parent seen what's happening in the interaction with the child? And separate that from how they're feeling and what's going on with them so that there's a possibility that they can make at some point, maybe not in the interaction, but a best or better judgment decision that has to do with the child's needs separate from the parents' felt experience. That's, that's part of the, I think, developmental challenge that everybody goes, or everybody runs into. And the vignette that we described is meant to illustrate that. Without knowing the particulars of the minds of each parent, but knowing enough about them and their situation to have a a kind of working conversation like we are.Kristin Areglado Hurley: We've been talking about what each person is mapping of each other, and that is, you know, the brain's innate ability to to create a mental picture of another person's mind, including how they think and feel, what they know and what they want. So mind mapping is a really key skill that allows people to predict what another person is going to do, so we can see of young Sophie. She's likely experienced traumatic mind mapping given that she sees her dad so reactive and she hears the parents in conflict. Likely our hypotheses were that that's why she's entArong into the room. And you can imagine that, we all kind of visualize what her face looked like. She probably had a look of fear, and anxiety because of the way that she was impacted. so it's a, it's an important thing to consider when we're interacting both with each other and with our children. I hear a lot of parents say, well, I don't think she knows what's going on, because we didn't have the conversation in front of her. But there's so much that our children are mapping of us, and the things that they're mapping of us can really be impactful. So this is another piece that we wanna talk more, we will be talking much more about in our workshop, but I think the vignette gives us a real flavor for thinking about what this child is, what prompts her to enter into the bedroom. And as you said, James, it's likely because she's going in to manage her parents' anxiety. She knows there's conflict happening.Aron Carlson: And I'd add in turn her own anxiety.Kristin Areglado Hurley: We spoke about a term earlier. I introduced the term of co-construction to the extent in this vignette that John is punitive in the way that he responds to Sophie, Eliza rushes and to protect. And it's really interesting to think about the way that, to the extent that this is happening here, it impacts this other person here. And also in family systems it's pretty, pretty endemic. We co-construct each other. Um, and so again, the more that we are able to be settled, the managing ourselves, the more resilient we are as parents and the more our children will develop to, uh, resilience.James: I call that, I call that relational wealth. It's like if I want, you know, if I passed a million dollars onto my kids, that would be one thing, but if I pass onto them the ability to love and be loved, that's even more valuable.Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think, um, one of the most loving things we can do is to really get a handle on ourselves as, uh, individuals, uh, and certainly as parents. But boy, it's really hard when there's so many things that are pressuring us, right? We have so many agendas going on. The idea that we need to try to impart things with our children or to keep them safe, or,James: Okay.Kristin Areglado Hurley: certainly so many other factors going on. We'll be talking a lot about issues of self as it affects us and our parenting at the training that we'll be doing in November. We also will, interesting to think a lot, think about self-soothing and, and what actually is involved, because I think you can see how, you know, I bet if we were able to hook these three family members up to heart rate variability, machine monitors, everybody would be having stress responses. So the idea of how do we self-soothe, how do we monitor our physiology? How do we get out of our heads when we're getting overwhelmed and we can't think very clearly because we're so affected by our emotions. able to learn how to really self-soothe and calm ourselves and quiet ourselves is a really, really key thing for us to know how to do. I think it's not necessarily intuitive, particularly when we're interacting in situations that create a lot of stress.Aron Carlson: That's where I think the, the, the kind of most common challenge with this phenomenon is, you're going to be in the worst shape to know what, what's happening to you and to work with yourself when, if you. Can do that, it would have the maximum amount of benefit for you and your kids. But the way that it comes to us is you're going to, you're gonna be in bad shape first.James: So we find if I were in this kind of conflict with my wife. would, I, I think about it in two different ways. It's like self-soothing, where like, I have some time, so maybe I go out and I go for a run or I go for a walk. That's like one type of self-soothing. But the other type is just self-soothing in the moment. So can I handle myself and calm myself down without interrupting the conversation? And one thing, I'm always learning new things, but the thing that I've been really working with this month is I try to feel two different things at the same time. So like two different textures with my hands. Like one hand on my shirt, another hand on my hair, or something like that. And there's connecting with physical reality that helps me calm myself down because in the physical world, I actually am okay. And it's in this world of ideas where all my anxiety lies because my wife isn't really a threat to me. Like she's okay. I mean, she disagrees and she disapproves, but physically I'm still okay. And so by making contact with the physical world, even like touching the desk or touching my pants or something, there's something really calming about that for me.Aron Carlson: One of the things that I think is useful to consider is the, the difficulty of questioning the picture of reality your mind is putting together when you're reactionary and to consider that how you're feeling and what you're seeing. May not be reliable for making accurate sense out of what's happening around you or even inside, but, but to be able to go, wait a minute. maybe what I'm feeling right now and what I'm seeing isn't as reliable as I think. I think that's a very difficult thing to be able to do, and kind of the beginning of the approach that Kristen and I are, are, are offArong, um, in terms of to be able to function differently in situations where you have somewhat of a predictable response pattern as a parent, the internal process that you're experiencing has gotta be unpacked and identified more specifically to the point where you can see somewhat of what's happening and question it yourself. Um, and after that point, I think is when the more. Kind of straightforward, uh, self-soothing, self-soothing practices are most helpful. Breathing, movement, texture, touch, that kind of stuff because you, a lot of the times we don't know how far off we are and it's not gonna occur to us that we've lost our mind temporarily. And if, if we don't do something, we're probably not gonna get it back before we say or do something that makes things kind of unworkable at the.Kristin Areglado Hurley: Yes, I think you're talking about the ability to take a third view. Um, you know, we talk a lot about being a fly on the wall, but it is a very difficult thing if you don't recognize you're underwater and your thinking is terrible and you're so susceptible to your emotion. So we'll certainly be talking about this term regression, um, in the workshop that we'll be offArong, uh, in the fall. And also just the importance of being able to confront ourselves, really being able to have a resilient collaborative relationship as parents. It begins and ends with self confrontation. being able to do it in a meaningful way so that, know, uh, it's, it's, it's, it, parenting can be really demanding, but being able to have flexibility so that we can come back do really meaningful repair, uh, is, uh, one of the biggest gifts more than that million dollars that we might have to give our children, I think. For sure. So, so do you have any other thoughts about what we have or haven't covered James questions for us?James: No, I think it's fantastic. Um, has been a journey for me. I have four children and I have, I've been on a journey the last few years of repairing relationships with my adult children who kind of suffered under my lack of understanding of these things that I've been learning recently. So, I'm a firm believer, you know, the things we want in the world are, are to love and be loved, and we want our children to thrive. And so what you two are offering is, is a ticket to, to that third part is what can I do as a parent that will make it much more likely that my children will thrive? And there's few things that are more important to most parents than that.Aron Carlson: It's, it's a, it's a ticket by way of whatever you need to go through in your own process. So that's one of the things that I think is important to consider that I. You, you don't know what it's going to require, and you don't know how long it's going to take to be able to function better in the same situations where you're having difficulty usually for understandable reasons. And that's part of the anxiety tolerance demand that's on a parent. But what I've learned from working with parents and kids is that kids do don't need their parents to be perfect. And it really means a lot to the most of the time to see the parent effort to try to get themselves together when it's clear to both of them that the parent isn't together. And that really seems to impact child functioning a lot. And so we all kind of have to make messes and run into the closed doors of our limitations. To be able to open them and thrive, but it's not a clean, kind of easy thing. It's, it's tough and it's uncomfortable and not for the faint of heart.Kristin Areglado Hurley: It's very hopeful. I think about a statement that Dr. Schnarch made. We were at a workshop and he said, I bet you'd love to hear this, the secret about parenting. So we all had our pens. We were ready to write. not that you won't mess it up. your capacity to see it, to step back, to see it, and to do meaningful repair. not that we won't mess it up, but it is, uh, certainly we're, we're ahead of the game when we recognize you're probably in worse shape than you, right, than you think you are. That's a great way to approach parenting. and again, I think we bring a lot of heart and compassion, to, to the, the training. It's a, it's a privilege to to be able to do this work. we really appreciate you inviting us to join you today, James.James: Tell me a little bit more about the format of the training. You said it's gonna be a two day online event, and there's gonna be interaction and I mean, what, what is it gonna look like?Aron Carlson: It's broken down into four or five topics. Kristen has mentioned the names of the topics, differentiation, mind mapping, also called theory of Mind, regression, traumatic Mind Mapping and Repair. That's basically the topics and there is some background information about what those things are and where they come from. intertwined with vignettes, interactive exercises, questions posed to the group. Getting feedback from group members about their experiences with some of these, some of these topics in their own lives. And also videos that illustrate the kind of interactions that we've described in our vignettes. So we'll be able to play into interactions between parents and kids, and then see sort of similar to what we did tonight, what those viewing put together. And unpack that a little bit and note some of the variety of interpretation and meaning and also physiological and emotional response to them. And then help connect that with concerns that the parent participants have in their own parenting lives. So we do the topics in kind of a developmental order, starting on day one. And by the end of the second day we're mostly focused on what have you learned about what happens for you and how do, what are your thoughts about how to operationalize this at this point? So we try to make it very experiential, with some groundedness in the research that's been done in the field that supports this. And also to support the parent participants in being able to construct a a third view or a new point of view of their own parenting.James: Sounds amazing. I love the idea that, I love the idea of having the interaction and being able to do the vignettes together.Kristin Areglado Hurley: So it will be very, very experiential and also interactional, much like we've been able to do here this evening. It's really been a lot of fun to share ideas and reflect together and look a bit more deeply at this one little vignette that we've put together.James: So I will put a link to this to this workshop in the show notes, and anyone is welcome to attend. It's gonna be over two days in early November, and I also will add links to Kristen, your website and Aron's website. And then people can reach out to you if you have any questions. Is there anything else you'd like to leave people with?Aron Carlson: I hope what we discussed is meaningful to you all and struck a chord and let us know if so, and thanks for putting this together and and having us on.James: It's fun talking with you about it.Yeah, such a pleasure to talk to both of you. And I am so grateful for the work you're doing. It's so important. So it's so important.Kristin Areglado Hurley: We're happy to answer questions that you might have just based on anything we have or haven't covered this evening. So I just wanna put that out there as well. Happy to be a resource if we've still stimulated some food for thought and we'd be happy to respond to those questions if you have any.James: Excellent. Yeah, I will include links to your websites where I'm sure people can contact you if they need to, I look forward to seeing you both again soon.Kristin Areglado Hurley: you so much.Aron Carlson: Thank you, James.James: All right. Bye.

Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comTranscript:James: I was wondering if you'd be willing to tell me some of your memories of Dr. Schnarch. What first impressed you about him and what your relationship with him was like?Dave: Thinking about my relationship with Dr. Schnarch, I met him as David. I actually started listening to some of his recordings prior to knowing who he was. To be honest, I don't know how I stumbled across his material, but I found his website, ordered his material and started listening and then started reading his books. And it was one of those things where it's like, this guy makes total sense to me. It's counterintuitive, which is oftentimes how my brain operates. I said, I gotta learn more, I gotta know more. And so as I was on his website, I learned that he was going to be on the east coast and this was back in 2015.And that particular seminar was on affairs, dealing with affairs. And historically, David had always been out on the west coast or in Colorado. So when I learned that he was going to be close to where I was, it was a no-brainer. I said, I gotta get there. I gotta go and meet this guy and learn from him. And so lo and behold, went to the week long seminar and I was relatively quiet, trying not to be a fan boy, but relatively quiet. Along the way, David has a way of pulling you into his orbit and asking questions, and I got to know him a little bit better. He had asked me to fill in as a role play by the way. He had asked me to fill in for one of Barbara's—and you know, Barbara Fairfield, another person that I highly respect in the crucible arena. He had asked me to fill in as the husband for a client that she was working with. And so Barbara gave the rundown of the husband's characteristics, the husband's typical profile, how he would react. And then of course, Barbara played the wife. And so David took that opportunity to interview Barbara and I as the couple. And so we had to interact along that way. And I will tell you, watching him in real time, and for him, it wasn't just an act, it was him on how he deals with clients. That was phenomenal. That was very inspirational. Especially being on the other side as if I were a client. And so ever since then, I realized the impact that he has. And so that was my first introduction and I said, you know what? I need more.James: What was so different about how he dealt with clients? Because I never got to meet him. But everyone who talks about him talks about him as someone who had a special gift, and when he worked with clients, when he worked with someone in a close, close setting, there was something different. There was something special. What was it?Dave: All right, so let me answer that in two ways. If you know David, he's very abrasive, very direct, very harsh, in your face, and this is just the way it is. But in the back of my mind I was like, how is this guy gonna work as a clinician? But when he sat in the chair, he was able to see and be compassionate and draw you in without being harsh or critical. And he had a very kind way about presenting himself and he could see through the BS. And so that part made him, I believe, very approachable and very effective, and being able to see behind the masks that people often present.James: So you would say that, what I hear you saying is two things. First, though he was quite abrupt and abrasive, when he was in close contact with the person, he was not that way. That makes sense to me. And then the other part is just being able to see through BS and hold onto what's real and help other people make contact with what's real.Dave: Yes, David had a really good way of conceptualizing what people need, and also timing on when to be able to deliver. And then also how to challenge folks to not take things at the first glance. Amongst colleagues, amongst peers and teaching, he came across as very abrasive and his approach was the best. His approach was superior. It was one of those things that most people took offense if they had another favorite tool. For example, he was always harsh on those that came from the attachment theory. And so he would always really drill down on that. But when he did that in public, it came across as if he was stepping on those. But I will say, the more I got to know him in his later years, he moved far away from that stance of his crucible approach being superior to recognizing that it's a place of different level of maturity. And when folks grow and mature, they will naturally begin to see, okay, this approach works. So the basis of crucible is the Bowenian, more of the differentiation model as opposed to attachment or insecure model that attachment has.And so with that stance, as he matured and grew, it was no longer about using other approaches to show the difference. It was just about, okay, here's crucible and here is the difference. And so in the early stages of when David was developing his model and being able to teach, it was often used as a comparison to what was popular amongst that day. And so since a lot of the newer clinicians were coming in from attachment theory, naturally his presentations gravitated towards, here's the difference between the two. And so as David matured and grew, it was no longer one of those battles he even went to anymore. And when people would bring up, well, what about, he would say, okay, however, here's where Crucible fills that gap. And so he would move from that stance. Which made his presentations later on much more palatable, but much more open. And so it was no longer as abrasive, and then it was easier for newer folks coming on board to be able to say, oh, okay, I see where he is coming from.James: I know you're a man of faith. How does your crucible work interact with your belief?Dave: Oh, that's a great question. Yes, I am a man of faith. Using the differentiation model and crucible model was always really running consistent with my faith. Even though David was a Buddhist and practicing Buddhist, his beginnings, he was Jewish, but he said he converted to Buddhism. And it was funny because he shared this with me and he said, yeah, this is what all Jews do. Once we mature and grow up, we become Buddhists. And so he would always make that joke. And that for him, he said it made sense, but I never found any inconsistencies from crucible to Christianity.Now, there were oftentimes that I would translate in my head on how this applies, how it didn't. The part of being responsible for the choices we make, growth and maturity, differentiation and looking at the different triangles that often pop up, it always made sense for me. So I never saw that as something that was an impediment, even with my Christian beliefs.James: What was the biggest impact that he had on you personally?Dave: The biggest impact, we've had quite a few impacts. David and I, when we first got together and met, we had a disagreement and I confronted him on it. I won't say what the disagreement is because that's not fair to him because he's not here to be able to give his side of it. But I will say that when I confronted him on it, he said some things to me. He said, I said it that way because I thought you could handle it. And then when I mapped you out, I think I was accurate. The second time we met, he came back. He said, I thought about what you had said to me the last time. Because I came back to his conferences even though we had a disagreement. Some people would say, well, why would you go back? He had something I wanted. And whether or not we had a disagreement or words, I wasn't gonna let that get in the way of me getting what I wanted. He had some knowledge and information I wanted from him. But nonetheless, the second time I came back, we met.And you may have heard this before, but I'll fill in the gaps. David is a big hugger. And so he would come up and when David gives you a hug, it is not a side bro hug. It is not a two second, let me let go of you hug. David had a way of a whole body hug, draw you in and I think I count to at least 10 seconds before he would let go. And sometimes it's like one of those uncomfortable long hugs. But that was his, he said, I just wanted us to be present. And so when we met the third time rather, he gave me that long bear hug and he whispered into my ear. I've been thinking about what you said the last time we interacted, and I apologize. He said you were right. And then he says, I'm glad you came back. After that, we just had a general understanding.And for the longest time, David didn't know that I had worked in law enforcement. And when he discovered, this is probably our third or fourth main encounter, that I worked in law enforcement and how I was using his approach in law enforcement, he was excited. He says, I'm excited to hear that my approach is going that far and being used in that way. And so he saw light years ahead of even some of the things that I was encountering, and so that was really impactful as well. I also shared with him how I used it within the prison setting. And this was prior to my exposure to Crucible, but it was just a natural fit. And so as he and I discussed how I had used Crucible even before then, not having the same language, that was also very impactful. And so we continue to expand on that.In particular, I'll share with you, we talked a lot about mind mapping and being able to, in the prison we call it reading the room, situational awareness. We call that in the military and in law enforcement, we often talk a lot about situational awareness and being able to read others. And so the examples I used for him, how I explained it in the law enforcement setting is that your safety is paramount when you are reading whether or not a suspect is going to run, fight, or basically surrender. And so he was tickled to be able to hear how when I explained to others using the examples of law enforcement about mind mapping, he's like, yep, that makes total sense. And then later in the years we also started talking about how as a black person, or a person of color or minority in today's world and culture, mind mapping has always been a part of our survival. And so when I met David and started talking about mind mapping and reading the room and situational awareness, it was kind of like, oh yeah. Yeah, we do that often. And then also the same thing when it talks about impression management, managing other people's impression of you, rather than being authentic, rather than being who you are. So these are some of the conversations that we had and David and I, we did record one of our conversations and that's out there as well to be found where it was really impactful, just being able to go over how racism and mind mapping, and how that plays out. Good, bad or indifferent, just a survival skill.James: Let me ask you a different way. How have you found Crucible useful in working in the law enforcement community?Dave: So within the law enforcement community, there's a lot of trauma, and a lot of unspoken trauma, undealt with trauma. And so when I work with agents, investigators, police officers, first responders, it's really helping them settle themselves. But the way trauma plays out and the way they're on edge is that becomes their typical norm. But when they go home, it's hard for them to hold their relationships together or even trust that their partner has their back or be able to just let their guard down. And so when I often use or work with individuals, I have that approach from the Crucible and just helping them lean into, "Hey, here's the decisions you're making, here's the effect you're having on your family." I also use a lot of mind mapping, how they're constantly reading the room. But one of the things that many people that experience trauma, they're not consciously aware of how other people are also reading them. And so we talk about in their own relationships, how do you think your family's reading you as you're reading them, as you're mapping them? What's their map of you? And so getting them, turning up the heat, allowing them to actually allow themselves to be seen authentically. And then also sometimes dealing with the things they are exposed to that are not always pleasant. And even though they want to protect their families from the traumas that they see, they still vicariously bring it home through their actions. And so it's very one of those things where when you work with those individuals, helping them see themselves, but also be kind to themselves and deal with themselves in the presence of their family or using their family as well. There's where you can gain a little bit of traction and help them to be able to move forward and not have that learned sense of helplessness where they oftentimes feel.James: I really like this situational awareness and then, mind mapping and mind masking in a family or relationship setting?Dave: And mind twisting.James: And mind twisting, yeah. Where especially if I have a job like in law enforcement, your job relies on your ability to read, to map, and to mask, both. And when you come home, there is going to be a price to be paid if you continue masking to the same extent you would naturally mask at work.Dave: And sometimes do it in a way that works to only your advantage and you're assuming that your partner's not mapping you. And so you might try and twist it a little bit or use it to your advantage. Oh yeah.James: Tell me more about twisting.Dave: Mind twisting, it's sort of like, well, what happened was... It's leaving out details in your favor. It's leaving your partner with one impression, but you're doing something totally different. Another parallel might be gaslighting. It's taking someone's reality and twisting it and distorting it rather than being open and honest and forthright. And many people do that. Yeah.James: So gaslighting is trying to make it seem like you are crazy instead of dealing with the reality of what your preferences are or what your observations are.Dave: It could be even as subtle as, "No, no, no. That's not really what I meant. And you're misinterpreting what I said." So it's like twisting it for the letter of the law to your own advantage. And so it's mind twisting, as subtle or in the extreme.James: We all do that to a certain extent. In some families, it has become almost like the national pastime, like some families are just so twisty, whereas it's just everyone is used to doing it all the time and we don't even realize what we're doing.Dave: Oh, absolutely. My other favorite is sarcasm.James: Yeah. Tell me about that. What's so harmful about sarcasm? Isn't it harmless?Dave: Oh, I love it because sarcasm, and this is my definition, sarcasm is anger that leaks. You're trying to hold it in, but it comes out on the side. David used to tell the story, he says, sarcasm is no fun if the other person doesn't get the joke. See, sarcasm only works so long as I can map that you are going to get the hidden meaning. If you get the hidden meaning, got it. Now, if you call me out on the hidden meaning, the beauty of sarcasm is I could just say, "What, you can't take a joke?" I can jump back to the joke part. So now it leaves you stuck.And so sarcasm is another way of mind twisting, but it also has a double message. Now if you've ever tried to be sarcastic with someone that doesn't get the secondary message, you realize that the joke's on you. Now, I always give a joke when I talk about sarcasm and my wife is really good because she'll pick up on my sarcasm and she'll say "What? I don't get it," which leaves me with, do I now have to explain it? But even though she winks, she does get it. So it's the banter that goes back and forth. Yeah.James: I've seen people who defend themselves and they'll say something mean and then they'll say, "Oh, I was just joking." and it's really important to stop that and be like, "No, wait a second." The thing you're calling a joke, first of all, no one laughed. Second of all, it didn't make anybody feel good or enjoy themselves. So you're calling it a joke, but the intended impact was to make things worse for the people around you, not to make things better.Dave: It's a one way joke, and it did make somebody feel good. The one inflicting it.James: The person inflicting it. Yeah. It's like a jab, not a joke.Dave: David would call that marital sadism.James: Yeah. Tell me more about it. It's such a fun phrase. Tell me more about marital sadism.Dave: You know, marital sadism is the part that you get the schadenfreude from, from making your partner miserable. You get to inflict it and people enjoy a little bit of pain and misery.James: And you're gonna pretend it wasn't on purpose.Dave: Absolutely. Unless you're really good at it and then you say, "Okay, you caught me. Yeah, you're right." You lean into it. But married people don't always mean the best for their partner, especially when they're angry with them and they can't directly tell them they're angry because they map out that their partner can't handle the direct anger. So it goes underground, indirect. Marital sadism. But I learned all those things from just working with David a bit and being able to help couples see that dynamic between the two. And then how do you turn up the heat with the couple that is there, helping them to become a little bit more authentic and say, look, can you stand on your own two feet and say that, say what you really mean and what would happen if you did say that? Yeah.James: Why is it so important to turn up the heat? Why is that such a critical part of working with a couple?Dave: Using the metaphor of the Crucible, as a therapist being that crucible that helps couples to be able to boil off the impurities, turning up the heat is one of those phrases that just says that we're going to maintain a little bit of accountability or intensity or just stick with it and not rescue someone prematurely. And as a person in the helping profession, it is so easy and tempting to rescue people and not let people feel discomfort. But I've grown to the place of realizing that growth comes from discomfort. And so turning up the heat is the metaphor of allowing people to be a little bit uncomfortable in order to grow.So when I work with couples, I use the analogy of going to the gym. And I explain to them, can I make gains in the gym if I have a spotter that continuously takes the weight off of me as I'm bench pressing? And most people, they understand the metaphor and they say, no, not really. But then can I make gains if I have a spotter that doesn't take the weight off of me and protect me from injuring myself when I need help? No, there's no trust there. But as a spotter, being able to recognize I'm not going to take the weight off of you, but I'll keep the weight from going back down. So as a person pushing, I get more gains. And so as a therapist, I will often take that role of, I'm not gonna take the weight off of you, I'm not gonna take the heat off of you. You gotta do your own work. But I'm also going to not let you injure yourself and will point out when things are self-defeating. So, there's where I look at being a crucible therapist, allowing people to make their own changes in growth without getting in the way and without rescuing them prematurely. And when I'm coaching other therapists, that's the aspect I take to them as well. I say, "Hey, don't give too much. Don't get too ahead of your clients." David used to always say, don't outpace your client. Just be kind of a step behind. Because sometimes when we outpace our clients and we give them the answers too soon, they didn't earn it. It's not very meaningful.James: They're not ready for it. That's something I've struggled with is not giving people the answer too soon, before the soil is fertile, before the ground has been prepared. Sometimes people need to struggle a little bit to figure things out on their own.Dave: Yeah, I agree. And that's learning to position people or move them and gain traction with them. I think that's the goal of a good crucible therapist is being able to maintain that traction and those moments of meeting, just having that, "ah, we are there." I used to use the saying, and maybe you can help me out with this. You can lead a horse to water. Do you know how the rest of that goes?James: But you can't make him drink.Dave: Beautiful. So part two of that saying is sometimes you have to learn how to make the horse thirsty.James: Yeah, no, that is our job. How have you grown as a therapist over the years?Dave: As a therapist, I've become much more patient. As a young therapist, army background, you know, problem solving, let's get to it. Move. And I would get impatient with my clients as I'm seeing it's right there. This is what you need to do. And so I would often outpace my clients, as I'm looking three or four moves ahead. But I've learned the older I get to slow down and to allow my clients to be uncomfortable. I don't have to have the answers for them. And sometimes even when I do have the answers, I don't have to give it to them. And so that's probably the hardest part is watching people suffer or defeat themselves.James: Well, one of David's four points of balance was to tolerate discomfort for growth, which it is. It's so interesting that that also applies to what happens in the therapy session.Dave: Absolutely. That was probably one of the most impactful things. David used to always say that we can only help our clients up to our highest level of differentiation. And so he said it was incumbent upon us as therapists to continue to grow and differentiate, otherwise we will stunt the people we work with. And I found that to be true over the years. As I've grown, I do things differently. And I'll tell you, when I first recognized that, looking back on some of my early, early clients, I was like, "Oh man, how could I have done that? I missed this." Yeah. I was at that point of, I need to call them back up and at least fix things. But I gave them what I had at that time, at that level of growth and maturity. And so even now, I realize I can only help my clients up to where I'm at now, and I hope in the next four or five years I can go even further than where I am now.James: And one of my favorite things about Crucible training is the emphasis is about 90% on helping me become a better person and about 10% on learning techniques and procedures. But it's mostly about personal transformation, and I know every time I go to Crucible training, I can anticipate that I will come back a better man.Dave: You speak a lot of truth there. Going to other trainings, you're absolutely right. The latest techniques, you know, how do you phrase things? And even now in my current position as a supervisor of many clinicians within a law enforcement environment, when I'm teaching and training, it's not about technique. It's about presence. It's about how do we show up? And for quite a few of my folks that have not been trained in crucible therapy, it's very frustrating. They don't always get it. And so I have given them a couple of David's books to read and say, "If you want to have an idea of the foundation, start here and then let's talk a little bit." But there are times where I do have to give some techniques. And so yes, we do give techniques based on our current policies, here's what we're working on. But when it comes to the nitty gritty, I often have a quote with them that I say, "Not all therapists are created equal." Because I can recognize when some of my clinicians actually show up and they're present and they're authentic and they're grounded. And you could tell they have the four points of balance. They're just working it. And then I could tell the ones that are just faking or going through the motions or trying to figure things out as they go. Yeah. And there is a definite difference.James: It has been beneficial. You know, like you, I was military first and therapist second, and it's been beneficial for me to go through therapy training, especially crucible training, just as a way for me to deal with stuff that I needed to deal with in my own life and my own marriage.Dave: Oh, absolutely. I could definitely tell you this is not a journey I've gone on alone, also being married as well. And so I ambushed my wife. The first time I had one of David's recordings, it was on "The Secrets of a Passionate Marriage," and we were on a trip driving. I was like, I got someone I want you to listen to. And so lo and behold. It was like, oh, wow. And so that started our discussions early on. And so vicariously, she's learned about David through me. My wife is not a therapist. My wife is in the dental field and so what she knows about therapy is what I bring home and expose her to, or ambush her with, so to speak. But that was the early stages there. But from there, lots of growth, lots of discussions, conversations, tough conversations. And I wouldn't say just tough for her, but it's tough for me because now how do I hold myself accountable? How do I endure and have a tough conversation and not rescue? And how do I deal with this guy that wants to inflict the marital sadism or schadenfreude or be sarcastic? Yeah, absolutely.James: Well, I'm grateful to my wife and for my marriage because this combination of crucible therapy for me, becoming a crucible therapist and staying married to my wife and now her becoming a crucible therapist has been so beneficial to me where I don't know how else I would've dealt with my own problems that I was facing. They were really quite daunting, and I'm really grateful. It's been a real blessing in my life.Dave: It's great to have an ally, but also scary to have a real ally.James: Yeah, a real ally. It's not kind or loving to leave your partner in the dark about something they really should address.Dave: Well, yeah, now you're talking about the collaborative alliances that David used to talk about. Whereas many relationships start off as a collusive alliance, but really having that collaborative alliance, it's not about saying a nice, flowery thing, it's being authentic, being honest, which is hard, but it takes courage to do that as well.James: Yeah. I had a chance to do that today. It's another thing I'm grateful for because there was something that I felt was really important to say and I said it, and it was difficult, but my wife handled it well. And just the fact that she and I can have that conversation that even last year we couldn't have had is a huge blessing.Dave: Oh, absolutely. And having those conversations when we're not regressed is a good thing. But in the midst of a regression, oh man, it's tough.James: It is tough. But there is this path. Finding the path has been so beneficial to me. I am content as long as I can see that there is more path ahead of me and that there's somewhere more for me to go, and there's a way to progress. For so many years I didn't see a clear path ahead of me, and that was really frustrating to me.Dave: When you say path, let me clarify. Are you thinking of an end point, a destination?James: No, I don't think that. I just want... the way I think about it is at the end of the day, I look in the mirror and I say, it's okay for me to be where I am. What kind of a man do I want to become tomorrow? I accept myself fully where I am today and I want to change, and I want to become a better man tomorrow. And that's the path. And I don't see any end point there. That's fine. If we were going through a beautiful mountain valley, I would want to have an idea where the path goes, or at least if there's no path, where am I headed? Am I just wandering around in circles or am I headed in a direction? There doesn't have to be a destination, but I do enjoy having a direction.Dave: Yes. And that's why I like the metaphor David used to use of the Mariana Trench, just striving for the surface. You know, rather than just kind of drifting along. And so I agree with you, just having movement. I often get bored when I feel like I'm stagnant, but through the crucible approach, it is nice to be able to strive to move forward and then have mile markers that say, okay, I'm still moving as opposed to I'm drowning, I'm sinking, I'm going under. Yeah.James: I do expect to be challenged for the rest of my life. I think that that's part and parcel of marriage and part of being a marriage therapist. I think I can expect to have continuous challenges on that front, but I embrace that. That's something I look forward to.Dave: I totally agree.James: Yeah. Dave, I think maybe we should leave it there. What do you say?Dave: I appreciate you being able to reach out to me and having this conversation, so I agree this is a good place for us to land this ship.James: It was a pleasure to talk to you, and I'll talk to you again soon.Dave: Likewise.

Jackie Aston:  https://jackieaston.comJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeJackie Aston:  https://jackieaston.comJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comJackie Aston is a licensed psychotherapist with over a decade of experience working with individuals and couples in Washington, DC, and Maryland, as well as coaching clients nationwide and abroad. She is the founder of Clarity and Growth Therapy, where she supports clients navigating stress and anxiety, parenting challenges, relationship dynamics, and the demands of career and family life.Jackie earned her Master of Social Work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Her clinical background includes several years at an eating disorder treatment center, where she worked in both partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs, treating clients with complex eating disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety, as well as supporting their families. She later joined a group practice before launching her own private practice.Jackie’s therapeutic approach is rooted in differentiation theory—an integrated method particularly effective for individuals and couples facing anxiety, relational conflict, and sexual issues. She is also trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based practices.Outside the therapy room, Jackie enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters, being outdoors, and traveling.Transcript:James: So my guest today is Jackie Aston. She's a licensed therapist based in Maryland, and she works with clients all over the world, both individuals and couples. And Jackie, you were just telling me about a woman who really wanted a shelf built in her closet, and she developed a strategy to get her husband to build it. Can you tell me that again?Jackie: Yeah, she wanted this shelf fixed and done on her terms, so she wanted him to get it done right away. Now he's been really busy at work, didn't have much energy, and he says to her, I can get it done on Saturday. I think this is like Monday night. She says, I can get it done on Saturday. And she doesn't like that. It's not done. And in fact, her room's pretty cluttered now 'cause they had to get all the stuff out of the closet and she says, well, I think I want it. Let's, you can do it by, let's do it by Thursday. And that way we'll have time over the weekend and we won't have to, you won't have to do it then. And it will be done sooner. And he then snaps back at her, is frustrated. You're not hearing me. I'm not gonna do it. You don't see how busy I am, and she's thinking, well, come on. We can have a compromise. I'm wanting it done today. You're wanting it done Saturday, so let's do Thursday. And compromise doesn't really work here. First off, he's pretty tired. But the other reason is if she wants to live in New York and he wants to live in California, a compromise would put them in the middle of the country and then nobody's happy. So she wasn't really willing to consider her husband and what was gonna work for him. And he was being, he was being honest. He didn't have the energy for it, but he was gonna do it soon. So anyway, her whole strategy was, how can I get this on my terms and my way, or at least a compromise. Versus like really considering her husband and what he was willing and able to do. And then he didn't handle that well when she didn't, and now he's sort of making moves on her in terms of being a perpetrator and, frustrated with her and not handling the conflict well either.James: So you said the word perpetrator, which comes from this idea about the victim or the trauma triangle. Can you tell me more about the trauma triangle?Jackie: And we can all be perpetrators, victims and rescuers that's in the trauma triangle. And in this instance, he's a perpetrator when he's yelling back at her and trying to make her feel badly for what she wants. Instead of doing it collaboratively and she's playing the victim of like, I can't, no one does things my way and you don't listen to me. That's kind of a victim position. The rescuer position can play out differently. A rescuer could be as if the wife goes to her friend or sister and says, my husband's so terrible. He's not putting the shelf together. This is so hard. My room's so cluttered. And then the, the friend says, well, why don't you stand up to your husband? Or, she tries to smooth things over and sort of make thing or, or make things better, I guess I should say. Sometimes the husband and wife switch into rescuer position and some switch into victim position in the same conflict.James: But it's a useful idea to think about because it's a common way that people make moves is by stepping into a victim position or stepping into a perpetrator position and so it gives me a framework to think about, wait, am I taking one of these positions in my marriage? Neither of which is going to lead to me having a better marriage.Jackie: Yes, it really is. I think it's a good way to think about it as a position. It's like, how can I get someone to see me in a certain way? How can I get things my way? How can I not do what my partner wants me to do, and they're just positions. So if I play the victim, then someone can feel sorry for me. And maybe if I feel like I'm saying, oh, I'm a terrible mother because you told me I shouldn't be yelling at you, and I'm playing the victim and I'm, oh, I'm just so terrible. Now, the rescuer, which could be the child or the husband or partner. Could come and say, oh no, you're not terrible and I really needed to do this. And trying to make it all better. But we can take a position versus really collaborating or confronting ourselves over, wait, maybe that wasn't really good of me, what I just did.James: so if I take a victim position, I'm nudging my other family members into the perpetrator or rescuer positions, encouraging them to take those positions.Jackie: Well, I think you're more hoping you're getting your way. It's sort of controlling from the bottom. Like, I can get control in this way, or I can get them to back off in this way. If I take this position, I can get them to feel guilty and then maybe they'll do it my way or, I can give other examples of it, but I think it's really the goal is to get your way and I think you hope that the other person does it your way?James: The way I think about this is somewhat different. I think about three primary ways that we maneuver or manipulate other people. And the first one is using intense emotions. So if you don't do what I want, then you have to deal with my intense emotions. And the second one is emotional withdrawal. So if you don't do what I want, then I'm going to withdraw my love and affection from you. And then third is twisting reality. Where in order to get you to do what I want, I'm going to make it seem like my way makes a lot more sense than your way, even though it doesn't really, which I think the story you told. It seems like she was kind of going for option three, where she was kind of twisting reality, making it seem like his approach was unreasonable when realistically, the way you were presenting, it sounded like his approach actually was quite reasonable. And he was going for option A where he was using intense emotions to try to get her to back off. you think?Jackie: Yeah. I mean, I think he became the perpetrator when he started yelling at her and snapping back. I think there was something else you just said about what was the second.James: The second one is withdrawing, so when you don't do what I want, I withdraw.Jackie: I think that's a victim. Yeah. I think that's a victim position. Of withdrawing. So I think those are all, I think that's, there's different ways to look at it, and I think I like what you're saying. But I do think that that is sort of a victim position to withdraw and you could sulk, you could go away from the conflict and not handle it well.James: Yeah. What would this couple need to do to have a better marriage? What do they have to change?Jackie: Well, if we're just talking about collaboration as the starting point, I don't think it's a hanging offense to be most of the time the things that we do when we're in the perpetrator, victim or rescuer position. I just think we can do that for different reasons, but I think the self-awareness piece is really important. I think we can sometimes deceive ourselves that we're not doing what we're doing. But if we can be aware of that, and sometimes it's our partner helps us to be aware of that, then we can do things differently. I think we can also set boundaries. So if the husband is not able to do the shelf on Thursday, and his wife is throwing a fit. He doesn't have to give into it. He can say, I'm not able to do it on Thursday. I am gonna come back to it on Saturday, and he can set a boundary with her in that interaction as well. I also think that there's that accountability piece of, oh wait, like I see what I'm doing here too, and this is unfair that I am yelling right now or pushing for my way. And I think we can acknowledge that in the moment. I think we can acknowledge it to ourselves then it allows, we could be willing to not do that, to not yell.James: When I work with couples on this kind of scenario, I often try to get them to focus on what energy or what kind of energetic response am I inviting from my partner. And so if I approach you with a certain energy, I'm inviting you to do something that corresponds to that energy. And so, in this case. The husband is rebelling a little bit against his wife's pressure and the way she was behaving was kind of inviting him or nudging him towards that response. And so, to use your language, she was taking a victim position, which nudges him into the perpetrator position, and he's still responsible for doing what he did. Like he treated her unkindly and that's his responsibility. she made it easier for him to step in. She enabled that transition into that perpetrator energy where he started to be mean to her, if that makes sense.Jackie: Yeah, it's sort of like they triggered each other. Is that kind of what you're saying? That sort of the way she set it up made it harder for him and so he went the perpetrator route.James: So a dynamic I see a lot is where one partner is highly critical and the other one is highly irresponsible. And so, sometimes say if the wife is being highly critical, she might be taking kind of a scolding mother position, and she's critical and she's looking down and she's judging and she's complaining. And the husband in that situation will often start behaving in a very childish way. So low responsibility, a lot of sarcasm and attitude and just refusing to be an adult in the relationship, which is obviously he shouldn't be doing any of those things.Jackie: Yeah. Yeah.James: to the other partner. The childish position is easier to see and easier to understand because obviously this grown man should not be acting like a child. The scolding mother position is harder because on the surface it looks like she's being really responsible. She's doing all the work, she's paying all the bills, blah, blah, blah. She's taking care of all the responsibilities, but she's also accompanying that with a lot of this scolding, judgmental energy. and that's kind of what I need to point out is saying, what you're doing is making it harder for your husband to step up and be an adult. It's so delicate because he's still responsible for what he's doing, that both people are responsible for what they're doing and the energetic influence they're having on each other, and he's having the same influence on her by being irresponsible and makes it harder for her to step down from the scolding mother position.Jackie: Yes. Yeah, I think that's a good example. I was thinking how she's positioning herself as sort of better and one up. Which most of us don't like when someone does that. So, he doesn't like it and his reaction is immature, but I can understand he doesn't like it. But her even taking that position of sort of like, I'm doing everything. And my question would be like, how did they get there in the first place where she is doing everything and now there's all this resentment, but she's sort of making it as if she is superior because she's taking on all these responsibilities.James: I see that happen a lot. Sometimes I called it a parental energy where I'm an adult and I have an adult relationship, but I'm taking a parental role, I'm treating my partner as if they were a child and my partner often will be behaving as if they were a child. But it's a two player game and it's just as important for me to step out of my parental role as it is for my partner to step outta the child role.Jackie: Yeah. It makes me think, I wonder if it's just easier because that kind of role is familiar already from the upbringing. So if your parent is telling you what to do, or if the parent is talking down to the child, they're used to handling it in a certain way. So it's easy to play that out in the relationship.James: And a lot of the people who take this parental role were thrust into a parental position in their teen years. And so I've seen a lot of people who had to be parents when they were teenagers, they had to take care of younger siblings usually, and their parents were advocating responsibility, enforcing these young children, sometimes even younger than teens to be parental. And when that pattern got kind of locked into their brains and they're used to treating. So when I'm a kid, my siblings should be peers, not my responsibility. That's not ideal. But if I get used to treating my peers as my responsibility and someone who's inferior to me. Then when I get into marriage, it's natural for me to take that with my partner and I can step into that parental energy.Jackie: I think that's helpful when a couple is doing couples therapy, that they often learn that about their partner, that that's sort of why the partner is behaving in that parental way. It makes it more understandable and usually the other partner can have more compassion for them. And I think also the partner who's in this parental role, because they're used to it, I think they start to recognize it as not functioning well for them now in their adult relationship. Maybe it worked for them earlier and I think they learned to track it and also have compassion for themselves for it. So, of course they have to decide if they're gonna face it and do something about it, but I think sometimes it's even hard for them to recognize it in the moment, what they're doing, that they're in this kind of dynamic with their partner.James: Do you talk to your clients about parental blindness, about being blind to the worst parts of your parents and how that reflects on your blindness towards yourself? Is that something that you work with?Jackie: Maybe what I say is I help them see how they're blind to themselves and that they went blind to some of the things that their parents were doing.James: Yeah, that's exactly it. I call it parental blindness, but that's a term I made up.Jackie: Oh, okay. Well, that's helpful. Yes. It has to do with the parents who are nurturing them or not nurturing them, but raising them.James: Yeah, it's interesting because it works both ways. 'cause I'm blind to my parents, but if I have children, I'm also blind to the way that I'm doing similar things that my parents did. So it's really hard for me to see myself clearly until I see my parents clearly. And that's what my experience with clients has been, that that's one of the things that holds people back from personal growth is if they don't see themselves clearly they can't change and usually the thing that is most contributing to that blindness is one of my parents. I'm seeing one or both of my parents in an unrealistically positive light. And so especially their intentions, what were their intentions in treating me this way? What did they know about what they were doing? And so I'm perceiving them as a lot more innocent than they really were. and that leads to me perceiving myself as a lot more innocent than I really am.Jackie: That's a good point. I feel like when I do talk about it, many clients don't wanna see it. They'd almost rather it be their fault. I think. I think the idea of a caretaker not behaving well or deliberately doing something that would be harmful to them or inconsiderate of them. And I think that's just hard for us to see. But I don't think it serves them well 'cause then they tend to perpetuate similar dynamics in their relationship. And they have the blindness too. But do you feel like that too? Like clients don't wanna see it.James: Yeah, I think that's the way brains work. So I think that a child's brain is actually designed to see parents in a soft light. It makes sense for a child to see their parents in a soft light. I think most parents reinforce that because they want their children to see them as innocent. They're all the time deceiving their children into thinking that they're less guilty than they really are.Jackie: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That really is confusing to the child.James: And it's so hard. I have kids and it's really hard for me to myself fully to my children because like everybody else, I would like my children to see me as better than I really am. I really would. And it is one of the most powerful things I have done is when I have revealed to my children. So when I've come to see myself differently and then I've gone and talked to my children, they're older now, but I talked to them as adults and say, Hey, I wanna talk to you about this thing that happened between us a few years ago. And you had this view of it and I had this view of it. And looking back now, you were much more right about this than I was. And that's a hard thing for me to do, but I've seen that have a really positive impact on my children.Jackie: Yes, absolutely. And I think that's like a more solid thing to do. But I agree with you. I have young kids. It would be nice to always be seen in a certain light. But I also realize that there's a lot of suffering that happens when we try to push for an image that we are better than we actually are being and behaving. And I think seeing my clients suffer from it, my own experiences suffering from it, I think it's pretty motivating to handle my kids differently or to go back if I didn't handle them well. Because I don't want them to suffer from it because I needed to be seen a certain way.James: Yeah, I didn't really grow into this kind of understanding until my kids were older, and so, especially my older children didn't benefit as much from it as say your children would from your growth just because your kids are younger.Jackie: They are younger. Yeah, I think that's, it's kind of hard to look at it. Yeah.James: and I can offer them a certain amount of revisiting the past and saying, Hey, this is how I see myself now. That's not nearly, it is powerful. It's not as powerful as if I had figured this stuff out 15 years earlier.Jackie: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I see that I'm gonna, unfortunately, mess up my kids in my own way. We just are not, none of us are gonna be perfect parents, but I do think that you're right. I feel fortunate that my kids are young and as I deal with my own self, they benefit.James: Mm-hmm.Jackie: Which is I think why people, couples come together and come to therapy. It's not just between them. I think they sometimes see they're really hurting their kids. They might think their partner's the one hurting their kids, but the relationship is hurting them.James: That is something that goes over well with most of the couples I work with, where they can see the impact of the tension between them is having on their children. And so that's often very motivating to a couple who otherwise would be hesitant to because the difficulty level's pretty high. So if I want to drastically improve the quality of my marriage. For me, that's the hardest thing I've ever done and continues to be the hardest thing I'm doing now. And so when I encourage a couple to take this step, I often talk to them about the benefits. This will pass on to your children and grandchildren. I compare it to financial wealth. If I become wealthy in my lifetime, I can pass that wealth onto my children and grandchildren. And if I become relationally wealthy in my lifetime, I can also pass that relational wealth. And so if I improve my marriage, my children will have better marriages and my grandchildren will have better marriages. And that's, to me, much more valuable than passing on millions of dollars.Jackie: Yes, I think that's a really good point. I also like to relate it to, we spend a lot of money on education.James: That's a good way to look at it. Yeah.Jackie: it's like spending money on therapy because you're helping your kids emotionally. You become more educated, help your kids become more educated. You handle things differently. It's such a good investment for your future. For your kids' future.James: Yeah, I mean, couples therapy is the thing that saved me, individually. I hired my therapist to work with me individually and after a couple weeks she said, James, I'd like your wife to come work with us.Jackie: Yeah.James: She needed to see how I treated my wife in real time. She needed to see it with her own eyes and she needed to see how we treat each other and what was really happening in the marriage. And things kind of took off from that point. It's been this remarkable transformation for me where my marriage is so much better than it used to be.Jackie: Mm-hmm.James: And I am so much more content. Like my anxiety level has dropped by 90% and I'm able to be present with people and just things that have always been hard for me have gotten less hard. And I enjoy my life a lot more. And my relationship with my adult children has improved and it all started in couples therapy.Jackie: Yeah, it's like the impact of that work is huge, even on ourselves of sort of feeling like we respect ourselves more for the work we do to overcome our struggles, and just feeling more at peace with that, more settled about it, that feels good too.James: So tell me more about do you help people see the moves they're making? How do you approach that?Jackie: Yeah. I've really liked our trainings with Natalia because she really slows things down. So a couple comes in with a situation, and this happened and this happened. Well, I'm trying to figure out what each person is doing to get a really clear picture. And to see if they agree with the picture that the partner is describing. So I'm slowing it down, trying to understand, and then I'm kind of looking at what moves are they making on each other, if any? Well, one is maybe taking a superior position or maybe one is taking a victim position, and helping that person see that that actually is part of the relationship dysfunction. If you are feeling sorry for yourself or you're feeling, and again, things can be really hard, so not to say that it shouldn't feel hard, but sort of like I'm powerless to do anything about it. That idea, you can't control your partner, but I'm trying to have each person see themselves so that they show up differently in the relationship. And if one person shifts, the relationship shifts.James: Mm.Jackie: I don't know that the other person always changes, but I think a lot of people come to couples therapy hoping that they can figure things out. And so I think I'm trying to have each person get clear on how they're playing into the dynamic and maybe why they're doing it so they don't have to think, well, I'm this terrible monster, but actually maybe it makes sense why I am being manipulative. Maybe I've been manipulated my whole life, or maybe this is how I get control or power. And in my household, I didn't have much growing up. So I think making sense of that for each person, getting clear on that, and then figuring out how to shift their dynamics so that they're actually being more collaborative. And then there's a possibility for deeper connection.James: I think about it as I can create a new, I spent the first 20 years of my marriage trying to directly influence my wife to get her to do what I wanted, which didn't work. And the way I think about that now is that my wife was very determined to maintain her own freedom and sovereignty as an individual. And when I would pressure her, she would respond by making sure that I was not able to control her. What does have a positive impact on her is when I change the way I show up in the relationship. Now she's living in a new environment and the easiest thing for her to do is to respond in a positive way to positive changes in the environment, just as the easiest thing for her to do before was to respond in a negative way to negative changes in the environment. So when I put in a kind of judgemental controlling energy into the relationship, the easiest way for her to respond is by withdrawing, rebelling or protesting or pushing me away in some way that's the easiest option. It's not that she couldn't have done better, she could have, but it's not the easiest thing. And so. When I put in a certain kind of energy in the relationship, it does invite the same kind of energy from her.Jackie: Yeah. I think you make it easier for her, but I like that you didn't wait for her to shift the energy. Like someone's gotta do it. And we'd always like it to be our partner first. And you made it more, I think made it more possible for her or more, she'd be more willing. But you don't actually need your partner to do it, as you've talked about, for you to do it first, someone's got to, yes.James: Do you ever find, in certain scenarios, like when you work with a couple, do you ever find that it's going to be a lot easier for one partner to go first than the other one? Does that ever seem likely to you? Like do you ever find yourself thinking, well, I basically need to talk to partner A because if I try to get partner B to go first, it's gonna be a lot more difficult to make it work that way.Jackie: Yeah, I'm trying to think. Is there an example for when.James: An example would be the scolding mother thing. I often find like if I'm working with a parental partner, so if partner A is being parental and partner B is being irresponsible, I will often try to get the parental partner to change first. Because it invites a different kind of behavior from the other person. Now, the other person could go first. But I find it to work more quickly if the parental partner can deal with their parental energy just right off the bat. Because. I guess I don't even know why. It just seems to work better, but I think it could go either way. It's just more difficult. And then the other one would be like if one partner is really good at twisting reality, it's a very difficult thing to work with from the other side. So I can help the other partner get better at seeing clearly what's happening. But if they've been having their mind twisted by this person for 10 years and then their mind was twisted by their parents for 20 years before that. It is so hard to deal with that, and it's better if I can get the person who's twisting reality to just stop doing that first and settle things down so that the other person can get better at holding onto what's real.Jackie: I don't know that I have a particular approach. I think I kind of see maybe who's more activated in the moment.James: Hmm.Jackie: sometimes that's letting that person calm down and then work with the other partner.James: Yeah.Jackie: And then sometimes it's moving in on that person and sort of trying to understand what's going on for them that they're getting so escalated.James: Mm-hmm.Jackie: but you're gonna make me think about it. Yeah.James: We all do things differently. Where can people find you, Jackie?Jackie: My website, https://www.google.com/search?q=jackieastin.com. So it's clarity and growth therapy? Yes.James: That's your email.Jackie: Yes. And it's.James: But you have https://www.google.com/search?q=jackieaston.com as well, right?Jackie: I do a lot of Jackie Aston. I tried to make it simple. I also have [email protected] because clarity and growth therapy.James: Uhhuh.Jackie: but yes, just finding me online, there's been occasion where I've been able to speak at a webinar. But they can always reach out to me online and set up a consultation to see if we'd be a good fit to work together.James: And do you specialize in a certain kind of helping people with certain things or is it just basically any kind of anxiety or depression or relationship concern?Jackie: Yeah, I would say a lot of my clients do come to me for anxiety and depression. So I think a lot of it is managing work life, family relationships. So it's sort of like life transitions, things like that. But then it's specifically people looking for relationship help. So if there's been issues with connection. Intimacy there, other kinds of conflict that they're not able to really get traction on their own and they want something to change. They'll seek me out.James: Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure.Jackie: Well, thanks James for having me.

Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeDan Purcell:  https://getyourmarriageon.comJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comTranscript: James: Have you ever seen a pattern in a couple where one person is highly critical and the other one is very irresponsible?Dan: Yes, in my own life.James: Tell me. You would probably not be the irresponsible one, if I know you at all.Dan: I don't know if it's irresponsible or not, but before I knew any better, my wife and I had a lot of conflict over sex in our marriage. I had a lot of desire and she didn't, and I would push and she would withdraw. I would be really sweet to her. I knew how to be a great, nice guy and do all the things. I'd write her these elaborate love letters, but looking back, I cringe reading what I wrote her because they're actually subtle attempts at control and manipulation. My thinking at the time was, if only she would just get ahold of her sexuality, embrace her own sexuality, then this area of conflict in our marriage would just go away. Then we'd just have the most perfect, ideal marriage, because we fight about nothing else. That's the only thing we struggle about. Everything else would be great if only she would just do this one thing.I got this fantastic book. I loved it, loved the author. I think I did the audio first, and I loved it so much I bought the physical book. And I thought, "Emily needs to read this book." It's about embracing your sexuality. She just needs it. So I'd highlight the parts, I'd doggy-ear the corners. I'd put post-its in certain pages and write in the margins, "Emily, read this part, do this part." And I'd set it on her nightstand. It didn't move.James: But the bigger picture is, was your energetic influence moving her towards or away from where you wanted her to go? Were you making it easier for her to do what you wanted, or harder?Dan: At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was pushing her away even further.James: Yeah, that's the thing that I wanted to talk to you about today. How when we're trying to get our partner to do option A, we're actually nudging them towards option B. This happens all the time. It is totally inadvertent and we don't even realize we're doing it, but it happens. A lot of the time when a couple's sitting here on this couch and partner A is complaining of partner B, if partner B would only do this thing, my influence on partner B is that I'm actually nudging them away from the thing I want them to change. It happens so often.Dan: So I moved the book to the pillow. I double-downed.James: Because she hadn't noticed it, I'm sure. I'm sure she had no idea what you were up to.Dan: And then it's back on the nightstand. Anyway, it came to a head. We had a discussion, and I said, "Emily, I really think if you read this book and did the things in there, it would just make things so much better in our marriage." And she looks at me and says, "How in the world do you expect me to sit and read a book? I have young kids. I homeschool. I can barely have a shower to myself every day. I can't even use the bathroom with any privacy, let alone you want me to sit and read a book." For her, it was so low on her priority list. She was like, "Why do you want me to do this? I can't do this right now." So I said, "Fine, I get it. Let's see if we can work this out." We came up with an agreement. It was my idea that I would take over meals for two weeks—all the meal cooking, cleanup, everything, because that's a role she would usually take on. In exchange, it would free up more time in her day, and she would take that time to read the book.To give this a little more context, we did have disagreements over mealtime because when we have dinner really late, like 7:30 or 8:00, after cleanup and the kids go to bed, it's late. It's 9:00 or 10:00 by then, and we don't have any couple time anymore. So I always wanted meals done sooner. But for those two weeks, guess what? I had dinner done by 5:00 or 5:30 every single day while working full time. And I let her know it, like, "Hey, I can work full time and I can get dinner done on time. And they're good meals. What gives?" I didn't say it like that, but that was the energy behind it, too.James: The message got through.Dan: So if she's in the bedroom supposedly reading this book, is she in the room fawning, like, "Oh, my husband, he's so wonderful. He's doing all these things for me. He's making my life better." No, in fact.James: What you're talking about is zooming out and looking at the system as a whole, instead of just saying, "Well, I took action A, which should have had consequence B," based on a very narrow and oversimplified idea of how people work. Why didn't Emily do what you wanted? How would you summarize what was driving her actions? What was she fighting for?Dan: She was fighting for herself because the way I had framed the problem is "I have it figured out and you don't. If you would just do this, it would fix my problem." The moment I put myself on that pedestal, we created a hierarchy in our marriage. I am above her, she's below, and I engage with her with that energy. It is not motivating for the person who's being condescended to. They'll fight for their own freedom, their own individuality, every single time, I think.James: The way I would phrase it is that she was fighting for her freedom or her sovereignty. I see it as a very central drive to how we are as human beings. We long to be free and we long to be in charge of our lives and our decisions. And if someone tries to take that away from me, I will instinctively fight back. I really don't know anyone who yields to that over the long run. People might yield for a limited time, but in the long run, in a marriage especially, I don't know anyone who actually yields to that kind of pressure.Dan: Right. We don't want to be controlled or dictated by another person. That's not fun. You can't have an intimate relationship with someone that you feel controlled by, or that's trying to control you, or you don't feel free in it. It might be a functional marriage, but if you want a passionate marriage, there's got to be freedom in it.James: I have this theory that effective ways of having influence on my wife live in the right brain and ineffective ways live in the left brain. The left brain is obsessed with this oversimplified control manipulation that doesn't work on people. It works on objects, but it doesn't work on people. The right brain is capable of seeing people as people. And just understanding this, if I try to influence you, Dan, as soon as I start pressuring your personal sovereignty, your sense of self, you're going to push back because that's what people do.Dan: I like the phrase, "calm the heck down." That's my mantra. I had to calm the heck down about why I was pushing her so much for this certain outcome that I wanted. Not that it wasn't important to me, it's that part of it is anxiety-driven. I really want this, it matters a lot to me, so I'm going to keep pushing hard to get it. Part of it too is I have an entrepreneurial background. In business life and goals, I'm a high achiever. Everything I've set my mind to, if I push hard enough and work hard enough, I get it. And I think that principle doesn't always translate to relationships or what you want out of other people in relationships. It's not just me, I see this with other people too. That probably goes back to that left-brain, right-brain concept you just mentioned.James: I have this idea, and sometimes I tell couples, that you each have 80% of the power in your relationship if you use it appropriately. The way I see relationships is most of what I do in my marriage is responding to my wife, and she's also mostly responding to me. We're mostly responding to each other, which means that when I take a proactive step and make a real change, then I can have a lot of power and influence the way the relationship goes. But it has to be me doing something different than what I was doing before. People always say, "Well, I already did that." And I say, "No. What you already did got you where you are." If you have 80% of the power, then you are responsible for setting up the system that you have right now. You're playing a role in it. It's a very common idea for people to imagine they have no power in their relationship: "My wife has all the power, she gets to make all the decisions. I'm just poor little me and I have no power." But realistically, either person can go first in doing the very difficult thing of changing the underlying structure of the relationship. But I agree with "calming the heck down." That's the first step—slowing down and calming enough to see things clearly.Dan: Right. Because if I'm engaging with my wife out of all emotional functioning, not using my brain, it's very reactive. So calming the heck down allows me—it's not that my feelings don't matter, it's not that emotions don't matter—but it's calming down enough not to make every decision based on emotional reactivity. I can actually think through things a little bit more, a little bit slower. And oftentimes, if I'm slowed down enough, I come up with better ideas of how to approach situations that aren't just knee-jerk reactions to how I'm feeling in the moment.James: Yeah. Sometimes my first idea is usually a bad idea. Not always, but if I'm feeling regressed, if I'm not doing very well, if I'm upset at my wife, then my first idea is usually a bad one. I can come up with something better, but I have to let that first idea sail on past and wait for the next one to come.Dan: I am working with another couple. This is a hypothetical situation where he's the higher-desire spouse in his marriage, and she's the lower-desire spouse. For years, he wants her to step up in initiating. He's tired of being the only one making overtures for sex. He wants to be wanted by her. He wants her to step up the initiating. One Saturday, things came to a head. They'd been out of town for two weeks on vacation, visiting family, so intimate time was very limited. Now they're back. He is so ready to go and she is just not in the mood. He says, "Fine, then I give up initiating. I'm sick and tired of feeling rejected, the chronic rejection. From now on, you do the initiating, and whenever you're ready, I'll be here for you to say yes." He just stopped initiating.So that's the setup. The logic for him is, if I stop initiating, we'll create a void in the marriage relationship, and then she'll step up and do the initiating because I was doing it all the time. She'll realize it's not happening, and then she'll step up and do it. But what's happening in this relationship is all of that pressure for her to now initiate is actually making it even more difficult for her to want to initiate. He's getting more and more frustrated because he's counting the days, "Wait, I said it's your turn to initiate. It's been a week, it's been two weeks, a month, two months. You're supposed to be doing this now." If she had any desire before, now it's almost zero because of the obligation that she has to step in. It goes back to what we're talking about with having our own autonomy. If she initiates, it's like she's giving in, she's capitulating to what he wants. So to assert herself, she thinks it's better off if she doesn't initiate. So they're at this standstill, really gridlocked over this issue.James: I think there is a way he could do that cleanly. He could say, "Hey, I'm going to take a pause from initiating." But it's the more subtle, nuanced part of it. You hit the nail on the head. The thing that makes it harder for her is that he has set things up in a way where, when she does what he wants, she loses. He has taken a stance of, "I'm the one in control here, and I'm the one who calls the shots, and the shot I'm calling is for you to do this." So he's making it hard, not impossible, but hard for her to do what he wants and hold on to her integrity.In this case, he's probably pressuring her past the amount of solid self that she has. So what he needs to do is calm the heck down, like you said, and say, "This is what I want, but I'm not going to use my emotionality to try to get it. I'm not going to punish you. I'm not going to nag you. I'm going to treat you really well." That's really the core. It's pretty easy to just ask yourself, "How well am I treating my partner as I go through this process?" I can say, "Hey, I'm not going to initiate for the next month and I'm going to treat you really well." That's a big difference from, "I'm not going to initiate for the next month and I'm going to treat you like crap," and then, "Why didn't you do what I wanted?"The question is, is the energy I'm putting into the relationship making it easier for my partner to be who I want them to be, or is it making it harder? Honestly, most of the time in most relationships, it's the second one, where we naturally tend to make it harder. I see that as a left-brain problem because the left brain falls into that trap really easily.Dan: Yes, I like that. "Am I making it easier for my spouse to do what I want or is it making it harder?" Another part of it is, where is my focal point? In that scenario, his point of focus is on her. It's not within himself. In his mind, the only path to success is if she does something. It's very external-focused. If it was, instead, "I am going to stop initiating because it's not good for me. I need to find something else that's better for our marriage than the current setup. I need a break," you see how that's going to be a different energy? It's going to be more self-focused. I think that plays a big role in how couples escape patterns like this.James: Yeah, and the escape is often, "I'm going to be okay regardless of what choices you make," right? I sometimes talk about how one of our earliest instincts is to use dysregulation to get taken care of. When I'm a baby, I get taken care of by getting dysregulated. As an adult, I also try to do that, and it doesn't work, but we still do it all the time. In the example you're giving, there was some of that there—this idea that "I'm not going to be okay unless you change." He might not be thinking about it that way, but he's definitely doing that. You can make the exact same move accompanied with, "Oh, and by the way, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to treat you really well." And now it's a whole different move. "I'm not going to initiate sex for the next month, and I'm going to have a really good life and be totally okay. I'm not putting my well-being on you as your responsibility. I'm actually taking care of myself, and I'm also making it clear what I want you to do." There's a very different vibe between those two. But to do the second one, I have to give up the fantasy of being able to control my partner.Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And it isn't the answer people want to hear. It's so much harder because it means you have to do the work. He's thinking, "What? She's the one not initiating. I'm the one doing it." And then you have to tell him that.James: It really is difficult. It's changing brain patterns that have been there for a long time. The brain is designed to work the way it works, and I know certain problem-solving skills, certain patterns, certain ways of resolving conflict, certain ways to try to get what I want. And obviously, none of those have worked, because if they had worked, I wouldn't be here. So it really takes building new pathways in the brain to be able to behave differently. One way I like to think about it is that we don't really get rid of the old pathways. We just add new parallel pathways. And so the way my brain used to work, that option is still there. But now I have another option as well. And if the other option works better than I have a tendency to choose the new option over and over, but I have to build that new pathway before I can use it.Dan: That's funny. Maybe a metaphor for that: This summer we went to Scotland as a family on vacation. There are seven of us in my family, and we got a rental car that was like a miniature bus. The roads are narrow there, and they drive on the left side of the road. This was my first time driving on the left side. You know where I'm going with this. We ran into some trouble because of that. I won't go into the details, but by the end of the week, I finally got a little more comfortable with the reverse driving in this big car. It takes some practice, it takes a lot of stumbling, but it's that process.James: It's a really good metaphor. It's like learning to drive in Scotland in a huge van. It's just like that. It's incredibly uncomfortable. It feels impossible. The first time you do it is really hard. The next time is a little bit easier, and then after you've done it for a week, you're like, "Oh, yeah, I know how to do this." That's a really good metaphor. I like that. I'm going to steal that.Dan: I hit a big pothole and got two flat tires. We hit it hard because we were coming around a corner, a car was coming at us, and I had a knee-jerk reaction, overcorrected, went off the road, and hit a big hole. That was a wake-up call. I had to take this a little more slowly. You're going to hit potholes, and it's just a reminder to take things a little more slowly and stick to the process. You'll figure it out.James: I really like this metaphor of having to drive on the other side of the road. That's a really good one. I remember driving in England in a rental car, and we were going down this tiny country lane with 12-foot hedgerows on both sides, and I'm doing 40 miles an hour. It's like the car is six feet wide and the road is eight feet wide, and it's a two-lane road. And this huge, full-sized semi-truck just comes the other way. And they're just like this happens every day. I just have to back up. That's just the way it is there. And I'm just like, "Oh my gosh." Meanwhile, the road in my neighborhood is like four times wider than this road that semi-trucks are driving on. It was crazy.Dan: I think conflict in marriage is a wake-up call that something needs to be addressed in the relationship. Not all conflict is necessarily bad. How you deal with the conflict matters, but the conflict alone, I think, is a stepping stone for your marriage if you let it be.In our home, we have a guest bedroom, and we had some guests stay overnight. I was cleaning up in there and I stepped over by the foot of the bed and noticed the carpet was wet. I figured maybe our guests spilled a drink or something. A week later, I was in there taking care of something else, and the carpet was still wet. I thought, "This isn't good," but I didn't want to do anything about it. A month went by, and guess what? I reluctantly stepped on that carpet, and it was still wet. I didn't want to do anything about this. I was busy. This was the last thing I wanted to do. Another week goes by, and I thought, "Okay, it's still wet. I think I need to do something about this." It turns out there was a water pipe that runs in the wall. It had a leak, and it caused thousands of dollars of water damage. I had to rip out the carpet and do it all.I think a lot of marriages are like that. We have a struggle, but we don't want to deal with it right now because it's so inconvenient. It goes unaddressed, and eventually, it turns into a big enough crisis where you have to address it. Or you can be a little more disciplined as a couple and create a ritual, a regular system or process in your marriage to address things. Some of the couples I know that do this really well have created a habit of making time together regularly just to talk and work through things. Couples that do it really well can address issues as they arise while they're still rather small, rather than waiting for things to build up. Then things become a crisis, and it's a bigger job to address. It's that "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" concept. When couples do that and do that well, I think they're happier. They learn how to overcome issues better. It's so much easier to drive on the left side of the road for a short distance rather than a multi-day journey where you're struggling the whole time.James: Sometimes I call that more conflict, not less. You need to have more conflict but handle it better. Because what you're talking about with the wet spot is avoiding conflict, which, honestly, I think is the biggest problem in most relationships. Now, when conflict comes, we also don't handle it well, but we avoid the conflict. We don't talk about things, and we don't try to make things better.Dan: There was a couple that came to my marriage retreat, and they shared this story about the main struggle in their marriage. Things came to a head when she caught him sending text messages, basically sexting someone else extramaritally. It was devastating for her, and he was absolutely embarrassed. When he looks back, for him, it started as a small, innocent thing, and then things got very friendly, very fast with this friend. But he could justify it because she was really closed down sexually in their marriage at the time. He really wanted an outlet, and it just felt so good and so validating that someone else saw him as attractive because he wasn't getting it from his wife. So he could justify it that way.The end result of that was kind of like a "nuke and pave" of their marriage. It was like, "Okay, we're going to take everything down to the studs and build it back up again." And the conversations they had were about everything we've talked about on this call. It was, "What is it in our relationship? What are our patterns? What are our cycles? How is it that I am reacting to you?" For him, it would've been, "Why is it that I crave this external validation about sex so much that I give up my values to get it?" And for her, it was, "Why do I have such a difficult time with sexuality? What is it about my upbringing, my thought patterns, that make it so that I automatically shut that part of me down? And how is that not only unhealthy for me, but what's the impact it has on my marriage too?" It was those kinds of deep questions that they both wrestled through very patiently together and were able to rebuild. Now they have a very happy marriage where they've overcome that.James: So it's the willingness to deal with it head-on and the skills to do so. One thing is that it's hard to imagine what "better" looks like. If I was exposed to a certain kind of marriage when I was young, and then I've had a certain kind of marriage, and all my friends have a certain kind of marriage, it's really hard to imagine what caring about someone a lot more looks like. Or what does being a lot more honest and having a lot more healthy conflict look like? What does even healthy conflict look like? If all I've ever known is avoid, avoid, avoid, explode, then what does it look like to actually bring something up in a collaborative way?Dan: Yeah, that's great. I think some education and help on actual tools is needed. I have on my website a 10-step, step-by-step outline on how to have hard conversations. Step one is "calm the heck down."James: I knew you were going to say that. I was like, I bet I know what step one is. My number one is "slow down." It's more or less the same.Dan: I like that. In fact, I say that phrase so much, a friend bought me a sign as a gift that says "Calm the Heck Down." It's a reminder. You can't engage in a conflict when you're emotionally overstimulated. Part of your brain goes offline when your reactive part of your brain—freeze, fight, flight, whatever you want to call it—when that has hijacked the brain, it doesn't work. So self-soothing is a skill. I think that's where some people find a lot of solace in practices like yoga, meditation, prayer, running—things that involve calming that part of the brain down regularly. It's a skill; it's a muscle you can develop.James: I have a favorite, what I call tactical calming. I think of tactical versus strategic. I was a military guy. Strategic is big picture, when I have time to think, and tactical is in the moment, what do I do? So tactical calming is what can I do right now without disengaging from the conversation? I could go take a 10-minute break and calm myself down, but sometimes I need to deal with something right now.One way that I do that is I look for three things I can feel outside my body and three things I can feel inside my body. Right now, I can feel the air on my skin, the texture of the couch, and the floor against my feet. Those are three outside. Inside, I can feel a slight pain in my back, a tingling in my face, and that I'm hungry. Three things outside, three things inside. We have this phrase, "come to my senses." What I just did is I just came to my senses in that I'm leaving the land of imagination and fantasy and ideas, and I'm coming into the land of physical reality, which is much safer than the land of ideas. Especially if I'm in a difficult marriage, the ideas I have about my marriage don't make me feel safe. I feel really threatened. But if I come back to physical reality, like I'm sitting on a couch in Northern California, I'm fine. I'm not in a war zone. No one's going to hit me. I'm fine. I need to come into physical reality to feel okay. So that's just one way that I calm the heck down—by coming into my senses, coming into physical reality. Sometimes you can use all five senses, too. You can say, "What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel?" and just go through them like that. But I really like to focus more on what I feel, because I can feel outside the body and inside.When I first learned I was anxious about 10 years ago, I didn't know I was anxious. I thought I was just good at pretending to be calm, and I kind of convinced myself. I learned I was anxious when I was deployed in the Middle East a long time ago. That's when I started Googling and I found things like meditation and breathing exercises. That was the first time I learned that I could breathe to calm down. It really helps.There. Should we leave it there?Dan: That's great.James: Why don't you tell people where to find you?Dan: My website is GetYourMarriageOn.com. It has tons of resources. I have a few great resources. One is a mobile app called Intimately Us. It's designed for married couples that want to take intimacy in their marriage to the next level. I also have an Instagram with a lot of fun content. About half of our content is, I guess you could say, adult sex ed. We talk a lot about topics in the context of a marriage and how to just make it more fun. And then the other half is more of this coaching content. How do you develop a solid relationship? How do you overcome conflicts so that the overall climate in your marriage is one where intimacy can thrive?James: All right. Well thanks for coming on the show, Dan, and I'll talk to you again soon.Dan: Thank you.James: All right, bye.

Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeJames Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.comCatherine Roebuck:  https://catroebuck.com TranscriptJames: Why is this called Crucible therapy?Catherine Roebuck: The crucible metaphor comes from metalworking. A crucible is a heat-proof container that you can put into a very hot fire in a forge. It can melt down metal, burn off impurities, and make the metal malleable so that you can form it into something different. In this metaphor, the crucible is your marriage—that's the container. The heat is the inevitable pressure of loving someone for a long time, of being in a committed relationship where you have to either grow or you're going to hurt each other over and over.James: So the idea is, two people step into the crucible of marriage, which has nothing to do with a crucifix; it's not a religious idea. A crucible is just a container that can tolerate immense heat. So if I put two metals into a crucible and heat them, I can form an alloy. Or if I put a metal that has impurities into a crucible and heat it up, I can remove the impurities. The idea is that when two people step into a marriage, we're entering a crucible that will refine us and make us stronger if we approach it correctly. Is that right?Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and it's an important point that it has nothing to do with the crucifix or with religion. This is really just a personal development theory.James: People often ask me if it's a religious approach, which it's not. It's a great name, but most people have never heard of it.Catherine Roebuck: Most people have some familiarity with the idea of differentiation, which is key to it, but they often think about it in a more limited way. People tend to think about differentiation as just growing away or apart, but it's not quite that. It's about becoming capable of being close to another person while staying true to yourself.James: So I don't have to choose between being true to me and belonging to someone else.Catherine Roebuck: Exactly. We all want both of those things, but they sometimes seem to be in contradiction. This is the classic problem people-pleasers have: they feel that being close to another person means they have to shift and mold themselves into who that person wants them to be. They end up giving up their sense of self and then, of course, resenting it.James: So without differentiation, I end up choosing between compliance and defiance. If my wife wants me to do something, I feel like I either have to comply, even though I don't want to, or I have to fight back in some immature way. The third, differentiated way would be: I am going to hold onto who I am and what I want, and I'm also going to make room for what you want. But in the end, my decision is based on my own desires and values and on how much I care about you. I don't feel like I have to give up myself to be in a relationship with you. You get to make your own choices about whether you want to be in a relationship with me, but I don't feel compelled to do things just to make you happy.Catherine Roebuck: Right. You might end up doing something that isn't your preference or that's really hard for you, but still be acting out of your own desire in the sense that you want to be with this person and you care about them. You want them to have more of what would make them happy, and you're willing to push yourself on that front. It's not the version where you only do things you're in the mood to do.James: No, it's not. Another way to talk about it is as a way of having togetherness without giving up separateness. I can be my own person and still be together. I can be part of a relationship without giving up who I am at my core.Catherine Roebuck: I really like that framing.James: The next thing we wanted to talk about was self-validated intimacy, which is very closely tied to this. If I want to create intimacy in my relationship, I can reveal something about myself that might make my wife uncomfortable. The reason I would reveal that specific thing is that those are the things we hide. I've been married for a couple of decades, which means my wife already knows all the things about me that she really likes, because I don't hide those things. The things I hide are the things that she might not like so much. I'm very sensitive to her preferences and sensitivities, so I'm pretty good at masking and hiding things that might upset her, but that leads to a low-intimacy relationship. In a multi-decade marriage, the things I might hesitate to reveal are the things I know might not go over well or that she might not validate. Self-validated intimacy is revealing more of myself, even though what I reveal might not be validated by the other person.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and that's the act of having a self while being close to another person. You're willing to embody that, to reveal it. You're living with a sense of self, you're clear about it, and you're willing to show it. So, why don't people do that? What's so hard about it?James: Do you have any examples of what that might look like?Catherine Roebuck: It's anytime you take a position where you don't know in advance that your partner is going to agree. It could be anything from what car you want, to how you want to parent your children, or if you want to have a child. It could also be what you believe religiously. That's a big one for a lot of couples—taking their positions on religion or politics, knowing their partner doesn't share all of their views. It's being willing to be both open and real about who they are while also being close to and caring about this other person who doesn't see it the same way.James: I think the single most common category is revealing to you what I think of you—showing you how I see you. Most of us are pretty good at pretending to see the other person the way they want to be seen, unless we're trying to get at them. But a lot of the time, most of us are presenting a view of the other person that is designed to appeal to them. We're reflecting back a false self-reflection.Catherine Roebuck: I hadn't thought about that being the main way, but it is a big one. The other category that seems really big to me is just your preferences—being honest about what you want and what matters to you on anything where you can't act unilaterally.James: One thing I've been experimenting with is asking couples to say the words, "I want you to," because it's so direct and unusual. I work with so many couples where they don't express their desires to each other at all. So I've been experimenting with this idea of saying it in the most direct way possible, which is, "I want you to start doing this," or "I want you to stop doing that." I think there's utility in going all the way to the most direct expression and then maybe softening it later. It's more pleasant to hear "I would like" than "I want." But if I'm working with someone who never expresses their desires collaboratively, I think there might be some utility in saying it in the most plain way possible.Catherine Roebuck: Not exactly like that. I have people go from complaint to request, which is similar.James: Can you explain what that means, to go from complaint to request?Catherine Roebuck: It's often easier to know what you don't want and don't like than to come up with a positive. If your partner does something you don't like and you tell them, "Hey, I don't like that, don't do that anymore," they might stop, but they might do something else that feels the same way as a replacement. I think it's more effective and more intimate, in the sense of being self-revealing, to get clear for yourself about what it is that you want. It's often the opposite of what you're getting. If you have a partner who talks down to you, you could get mad and say, "You're so condescending." But you'd probably get more traction if you instead said something like, "I really want you to talk to me like we're on the same team." With most people, you're going to get more traction that way.Another example that comes up with couples is kissing. It's really hard to work with feedback like, "I don't like how you kiss." It's much easier if you're willing to get clear about what you want and then directly ask for it, like, "I'd like it if you would go slower and be softer." Instead of leaving your partner fumbling in the dark, trying different wrong ways to get closer to you—and even picking fights is often a way of trying to get closer—you invite them into what you really want.James: There's a certain vulnerability in expressing what I really want, because the closer I get to telling you exactly what I want, the more I'm facing the reality that you might not give it to me and that it's not my choice. So we tend to beat around the bush and hold onto a kind of plausible deniability, like, "Oh, I didn't really want that anyway." It's like holding onto the fantasy that the reason you're not giving it to me is that you just don't know. That's why I often tell people to say it in the simplest way possible. For example, if my wife is talking to me in an unkind way, I might say, "I don't want you to talk to me that way." I think there's virtue in saying things as simply as possible. If I add a qualifier like, "I think you're speaking to me unkindly," well, now the definition of "unkindly" is up for debate. But if I say, "I don't want you to talk to me how you're talking to me," there's nothing to debate. She doesn't have to change, obviously, but expressing desire is so powerful because I get to define what my desire is. It's pretty hard for someone to come back and say, "No, you don't really want that."Catherine Roebuck: To me, this is the realm that adult love lives in: the realm of desire, of wanting, and of doing things for each other because you care about your own and the other person's desire. That's what love is—caring about what the other person wants for themselves. Short of that, I don't think it's love. It's incredibly vulnerable to face the reality of, "I really want this, I'll be sad if I don't get it, and I don't control whether I get it." As soon as I put a clear request out there, I have to face that I only get to choose how I'm going to handle myself, regardless of whether I get what I wanted. That's hard.I think another reason this is hard for people is that a lot of parenting strategies use reward and punishment. To maneuver a child with reward and punishment, you're using your knowledge of what they want to change their behavior. If this is done by a parent who is perhaps not that mature and misuses this, kids will learn it's not a good idea to let their parents know exactly how much they want something, because it could then be withheld or taken away.James: I never thought about that before, but that makes it so it's not in my best interest to reveal my desires to my parents.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, depending on what kind of parents you have. Do you have parents who are likely to be withholding or to use that as leverage? If you do, you'll form a pattern of thinking, "If I reveal my desires to my spouse, they will also use this as leverage, and I don't want to be leveraged."James: That's a beautiful thought.Catherine Roebuck: So I see people who come from a lot of trauma having the most difficulty even knowing what they want, and then with sharing it.James: You said something the other day that really stuck with me: that we never let go of the patterns that are already ingrained in our brains. I think that we just form new patterns that go alongside the old patterns, and now we have something new that we can do. That just really stuck with me and seems really true.I joined a men's group a couple of years ago, and it's been so useful. I mostly listen, and it's an amazing opportunity for me to confront myself over and over on how judgmental I am. By nature, I am intensely, viciously judgmental, and I always have been. I use men's group as an opportunity to confront my own judgmental nature. When a man speaks, my instinct is to go into some sort of internal, silent judgment of him. I can look at that and ask, what is the other path?This idea has been really useful. When I first became aware of how judgmental I was, I then became judgmental about myself—which is the same path, just with a different twist. But what I've learned to do now is to see myself being judgmental and approach that with compassion. I can imagine a parallel path and think, "Can I jump over to this other groove in my brain that I'm building?" I'm working on walking this new path, which is listening to another person with compassion and understanding, not judging them, not looking down on them, not criticizing them in my mind.I was doing that for an hour last night, and it was a delightful, almost meditative experience. When I meditate on my breath, it's a non-judgmental notice and return. Notice I'm thinking, return to the breath. Last night was noticing my judgment and returning to compassion, over and over, probably 50 times. But I was doing it without judging myself. I would think, "Oh, there's me judging again. Okay, back to compassion." It was a delightful experience, and I left that men's group so grateful for having a safe place to practice this. It's the perfect place to notice what happens in my brain.Catherine Roebuck: That's awesome. Part of what you're describing is the shift from, "I am judgmental" to "I have a judgmental pattern." It exists in your brain; it's wired in there. As you talked, you shifted from totally identifying with it to seeing it as one aspect of the way your brain works, and there are other ways it can work. While you were actively practicing, you were able to drop the judgment of yourself over and over. I heard Barbara Fairfield talk about that idea that we never get rid of our hard-wiring.James: That makes so much sense. To me, it's reminiscent of myelination, the brain's process of reinforcing and hardening certain pathways. As a pathway in the brain gets myelinated, it becomes easier for the brain to follow that path. I don't know if myelination decreases over time if you use the pathway less, but I know that it can increase. I like this idea that I'm now myelinating a new pathway. Once I have a new, well-traveled pathway, it's easier to follow. But I don't have to be upset about falling back into the old pathway again. If I notice it, that's what matters—noticing what I'm doing, noticing that I'm in my pattern.Catherine Roebuck: Right. I use the metaphor of roads. You start off with a paved highway, which is the conditioning that comes from your early life. These pathways are laid down in the first five years of life. That default path is there—it's smooth and easy to drive on. But there's also a field off to the side, a forest or a jungle. As you walk that new path over and over on purpose, you wear it down, and it gets wider and smoother. You can eventually pave it. Then you have two paved roads you can choose between. If you visit the original path less and less, eventually, it'll grow over. I do believe you get to a point where it's easier and more automatic to take the new path, but I still think the old one exists. If you get really flooded, overwhelmed, sick, or regressed, you can be kicked back in that direction.James: You can also put up signposts to remind you there's a fork in the road. One way I do that is with questions I learned from Natalia, such as: "Does this come from the best in me?" "What impact am I having?" "What is my intention?" "Do I mean well?" They are very simple questions. With the old pathway in my brain, the answer to all those questions would be no. When I teach people these questions, it almost feels childish, but for me, they're really useful to just pause. Being aware of the pathways in my brain, I can put up a signpost to remind myself which way I want to go. That takes pausing. What we're talking about here is self-confrontation. In order for me to become a better person, I have to deal honestly with the person I am right now.Catherine Roebuck: But why do you have to do it yourself? Why can't you get someone else to do this for you?James: I think it's in the nature of living creatures to resist someone else trying to push them onto another path. I'm especially talking about these deeply internal processes. No one can sit in men's group with me while I'm thinking silent, judgmental thoughts. It has to be me. Also, I'm pretty good at hiding my intentions when I want to. I have been helped by people who've confronted me externally, but what they were leading me to was, "James, you need to do this for yourself."Honestly, the most powerful example I've seen is people self-confronting in front of me. Hearing Natalia talk about her internal experience of ongoing, daily self-confrontation was really powerful because that's what I needed to know. It showed me how it actually works and normalized it. It's okay to face the constant temptation to treat people poorly. That was very liberating because I used to get pretty discouraged and would constantly look away from it, because I thought, "That's what a bad person would do." But the new perspective is, "No, this is what I do, and I'm not a bad person." I can normalize it and accept that it's okay to be this way, and I want to work on changing it. That's liberating to me.Catherine Roebuck: As adults, we have to be in charge of ourselves. In the same way that no one else can make you take care of your body, no one can make you take care of your mind. You have to manage your own behavior. You're with yourself all the time, and you wouldn't put up with anybody else reminding you 50 times a day anyway. So it has to come from you. It's this ongoing process of being willing to look at yourself and ask, "Okay, was that fair of me? If I take a bird's-eye view, would I have a problem with what I'm saying, how I'm saying it, or the expression on my face?" It's trying to be real about what it's like for somebody to have you talk to them.James: I love how you said "take a bird's-eye view." I often talk to people about imagining a camera on the different walls of the room and looking at the situation in three-dimensional space. I was just imagining if you took a drone and flew it around yourself, looking at yourself from all these different angles. It's really helpful. You're asking, "What was the expression on my face?" Taking that external viewpoint is powerful.Catherine Roebuck: I like the idea of visualizing it as a drone you can fly all around. Self-confrontation is about taking responsibility for yourself and your own functioning. If you're going to do that, you have to be willing to look at yourself and be honest about what's there. It's hard to look at yourself, not just on a willingness level—it's actually hard for your brain to accurately track yourself. That's where it's helpful to have a partner, therapist, coach, or close friends who are willing to say, "Hey, here's what I see you doing right now, and I don't love it. I have some objections to it."James: That's so powerful. We have a deeply ingrained culture of false reflection. I sometimes call it false validation, where I reflect back validation that doesn't represent what I really think of you. It's very ingrained in our culture and widely accepted. But there is a better way, which is learning how to tell you what I really think while making it clear that I'm on your side—because I actually am on your side. That's so hard to learn and get used to doing.Catherine Roebuck: I think this is another reason self-confrontation matters so much. If we aren't willing to look at something in ourselves because we can't calm ourselves down about it, we're not going to be calm when other people show us an accurate picture of ourselves either. You end up taking out your difficulty integrating this thing about yourself on other people, getting on your partner because you're not willing to deal with it. The more you practice just dealing with the fact that you're a person who does some messed-up stuff sometimes—and can also hold real compassion for yourself while knowing that, taking accountability, and keep growing—the better. Don't be perfectionistic about it, because that's never kind. If you're being perfectionistic with yourself, you're not going to be kind to anyone else either.James: The thing that helps me, which came from my therapist, is saying, "I'm a normal person who makes normal mistakes." It's so simple, but it's been so helpful to me. My brain, in contrast, goes to a dichotomy: I'm either perfect or I'm garbage. There's no room for making normal mistakes. I look at everybody else and think, "Oh yeah, they obviously make normal mistakes," and that's fine. But for some reason, for me, there's no room. I fall into this pit of despair and shame about being a horrible person. It's hard to describe; it's like a blackness.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and it's not a productive space when you're going into that shame spiral. It's really hard to work with yourself when that's going on. I really like that phrase, "I'm a normal person who makes normal mistakes." And "normal mistakes" is a really big range. Look around—people are getting a lot of stuff wrong all the time because living a human life is really hard, and none of us has done it before.James: She offered that to me as a way to work past my fragility. For a while, she was talking to me a lot about fragility, wanting me to be more flexible and resilient because whenever I was criticized, I would just crumble. And it wasn't just that I would crumble; I would crumble and then do destructive things. I would start to hide the truth, twist reality, or portray myself as superior or innocent. I would do things that were difficult to work with. She was trying to help me move to a place where it could just be okay that I made a mistake. It sounds so silly talking about it, but it was really hard for me.Catherine Roebuck: Yes, that shows how if you're operating in your own mind from this place of, "I'm either always doing great or I'm garbage," then anytime someone tries to talk to you about a problem with something you've done, you're going to slide into "I'm garbage." That makes it really difficult for people to talk to you about things they want you to do differently and for you to do anything differently. It's just so hard to operationalize from that place.James: And I had this really impressive defense. I would put so much energy into proving that what they were saying was wrong, when maybe the thing I was being "accused" of was just being a normal person. It would just turn into, "It is not okay for me to be seen this way; I can't handle it." And that had to change.Catherine Roebuck: Right, but the thing you're trying to prove is, "No, I'm not garbage." This is the whole idea in Crucible therapy: for most people, the best place to get pressured into dealing with this and becoming capable of handling it is a marriage. This is just a normal developmental process. People start in different places depending on their childhood and family, but everyone has real work to do on this. It's not easy.I always visualize it as a mountain with a path spiraling around it. You move higher and higher, and theoretically, there is a top of the mountain where you're enlightened. I have a lot of influence from Buddhist traditions where enlightenment is a theoretical possibility, but I don't seem to get there. What seems to happen for me is I go round and round, and I am gaining elevation, but every time I look off the path, the view is pretty similar. It changes gradually over time, but it's really slow. That's that core conditioning for me. I feel like I do end up back in familiar places, and I'm not sure that will ever stop.James: I've heard it described as a spiral because it's both an ascending path and a circular path at the same time. You can focus on the circularity: "I'm facing the same challenges over and over." I've struggled with anxious attachment for many years, and I'm always coming around the mountain again.This happened a few days ago. My anxious attachment is very focused on my wife. She was at work, and I was expecting her to come home, but she stopped at Target and didn't get home until very late. Theoretically, I'm an adult, and I'm going to be okay. Realistically, I started to panic, which I hadn't done in a long time. It was just good old anxious attachment. I felt like I was coming around the mountain again, seeing the same marker. The spiral aspect of that is thinking, "Oh, my anxious attachment is here. I'm going to go for a run, and then I'll feel better." And I did.So from one point of view, I was pretty disappointed to feel that panic. But from another point of view, I immediately knew that if I went for a run, I would be okay. And I was. I experienced this anxious attachment panic, dealt with it immediately, and was totally fine half an hour later. That's the idea that I am on an upward journey, but I'm also coming around to the same place on the mountain I've been to before. And it has been quite a while since my anxious attachment felt unworkable, which it used to all the time. It's still there, but it didn't really bother me that much. I even told my wife when she got home, "I'm having some anxious attachment tonight," and she was fine with it. I handled it better, and she handled it better, so it turned out to be okay. In years past, she would've gone into her own panic, like, "Oh, I failed, I'm a bad wife," when all she did was stop at Target on the way home. It wasn't that big of a deal.

Healthy Male Sexuality with Heather Matthews and James Christensen Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeTranscriptHeather Matthews: I'm really passionate about this idea around men and shame around their sexuality. I work with a lot of men in my practice, which I really enjoy, and some of them feel a lot of shame about their sexuality. The way that I see it play out is they really hide themselves sexually in their relationship. In order to not be selfish or not meet the very male stereotype we think of around sexuality, they kind of leave the sexual relationship up to their wife and just say, "What do you want? Tell me when you want it." They don't share what they want because they feel it's a selfish thing. Anytime their body responds to sexual things, there's a lot of shame about it.That was surprising to me, and it's why I wanted to have this conversation with you, you being a male and a therapist, because it was a very different picture than what I had been given. I even told my supervisor that I wanted to find a good resource to help men embrace their sexuality and get rid of the shame around it, but I had a really hard time finding good resources. In the last 10 or 20 years, there's been a huge focus on female sexuality, which was needed, but I think it kind of left men in the dust a little bit. I think today's men, the millennial and Gen Z generations, don't want to take on a lot of this very toxic masculinity. And I think, instead, they've turned more to a lot of shame, thinking, "I'm not going to share and I'm going to kind of hide this part of myself." I want to hear what your thoughts are about it.James: I definitely grew up with the idea that sexuality in general was not okay, and specifically my sexuality as a boy and a man was especially not okay. There are reasons for that, cultural reasons, but it is dangerous. It does cause a lot of harm when not properly managed. There's good reason to fear unharnessed male sexuality more than unharnessed female sexuality, to be honest. I do think an out-of-control, sex-crazed man is more dangerous than an out-of-control, sex-crazed woman. I think that's probably a true statement. So there's a reason this has happened, and I also agree with you that it's important to do something about it.Heather Matthews: Because I think some men, in order to handle that, have then shut it all down with a lot of shame. That's not the answer either. As you know, you're part of a lot of men's groups. How do you guys help foster this more healthy sexuality? Where do you go? Do you go to podcasts? Are there books?James: One of my transformative experiences was sitting in a circle in a men's group during a two-day retreat. We just sat down and started talking about sex. It was very open, with people sharing about being sexually abused and about sexual shame. Every man took a turn sharing the most vulnerable sexual experiences they'd ever had, from childhood through adulthood and marriage, and what it has been like to experience sexual difficulties in their life and the pain tied up in that. It's very related to what you're talking about, where men aren't supposed to have sexual problems. We're supposed to have it all figured out, for it to be easy and simple, like you were saying.That was a precious memory to me. We sat and talked about these things for a couple of hours, no holds barred, revealing our true experiences. It was a place where it was okay to feel deep sexual shame and to talk about the pain you'd experienced. It's just this precious thing, knowing that I'm not alone and not the only one who experiences those things. Men generally don't talk about those things. When we talk about sex, we talk about it in a way that is wildly unrealistic.Heather Matthews: Very unrealistic. And our culture emphasizes that, and gives those expectations. You get the idea of, "I should know this, this should come naturally." A lot of times we tell our kids, "You'll figure it out. It's a natural thing." It's not.James: Good sex isn't natural. Good sex takes a lot of work. There is a certain naturalness to it at a very low level, but if you want to create something better, that does take a lot of work.Heather Matthews: Yes, a sexual relationship. We can have intercourse like animals do, but as humans with our prefrontal lobe, we want it to be a human experience.James: So what has worked so far for you? You said you like to work with male clients, and obviously you've been interested in this topic. Where have you found success so far?Heather Matthews: The book that I did find, to be honest, I don't love. It's very repetitive. It's written by Barry and Barry, who have written a lot of books about sex. It's a husband and wife team; he's a therapist and she has a degree in communications. They've written a lot of books about it, so he was the one I turned to. I read this contemporary male sexuality book that talked a lot about the myths around sex. When it comes down to men feeling shame and hiding this part of themselves, he has what's called the "good enough sex model," or the GES model. Have you heard of it?James: No, I haven't.Heather Matthews: In my human sexuality class in grad school, we used his book. It's amazing to me that in grad school, the human sexuality class isn't even required; it's just an elective. Anyway, the good enough sex model says that there are four different parts to our sexual relationship and experience: desire, pleasure, eroticism, and satisfaction. Using this model, he'll say this over and over: Sex is a team sport. Each person is responsible for their own part in each of those four parts. It is a team sport.When it comes to the first one, desire, there are two different types of desire: spontaneous and responsive. With spontaneous, your body initiates it first, and then your brain catches up. With responsive, you have to get your brain going, and then your body catches up. One is not better than the other. A lot of men experience more spontaneous desire and have shame about that—shame about asking for it, wanting it, and desiring it easily. I really lean into the idea that that's actually a really good thing. That can really bless your life, that it's on your mind. It's about taking away that shame and understanding what really is in your control and what's not. A lot of times what happens in our body—the way our brains, feelings, and bodies work—is not in our control, but it's our actions behind that that are. It's kind of taking more of an ACT perspective.James: I remember what you're talking about. I remember being about 18 years old, and some older guy at church was talking about sexuality and said, "If you're on a date and you're doing anything that causes you to get an erection, then you're doing something bad." And I was like, "Bro, I'm on a date, I have an erection. That's how it goes." I know he's 55, and maybe he hasn't had an erection in 10 years and doesn't remember what it's like to be a teenager. But it's so interesting, these incredibly arbitrary and wildly unrealistic rules people talk about. This idea that it's wrong for you to be aroused was very common in my youth—that if you're aroused, you're wrong. You should not be aroused; it's not okay; you're bad. So what you're saying is that it's actually very normal, and what matters is how you handle yourself when you're aroused. That's what matters.Heather Matthews: Yes, and a lot of times it's out of our control. So why are we putting rules and expectations on it? I have some clients who will say, "I'll see a beautiful woman walking down the street, and my body responds to that. I feel so much shame about it." The "shoulds" come out, and then they get hooked by it, instead of thinking, "Oh, the female body is beautiful, and my body responds to that." We give the erection and the meanings around erections way too much power, both in our youth when they're happening spontaneously, and even in older men when it's not coming as easily and their bodies are changing. We give it way too much power.James: When you were talking about desire and being a higher-desire partner, one thing that came to mind was that if I feel a lot of shame around sex, part of what I'm calling desire could actually be a desire for my wife to make me feel less shame. If I grew up in a shame-based sexual model and I feel shame about feeling desire, if she desires me, all of a sudden my desire feels okay. If she doesn't desire me, then my desire feels wrong—which is not true. Her lack of desire for me doesn't determine whether I'm handling my desire correctly. Theoretically, the way I handle myself is what matters. So I need to be careful. My job is to take care of my own sense of sufficiency and worthiness; it's not her job. If I'm outsourcing that to her, then that's obviously going to get in the way of a good sexual relationship.Heather Matthews: Right, and I think a lot of times the more you become more solid in your desire and it's not so much about anxiety, you're able to appreciate it more and use it for good in your relationship.James: I think what you're pointing at is the ability to tolerate intensity. If I feel very intense desire, sexual intensity, shame, or some sort of discomfort—maybe I'm being rejected—how well can I handle myself while I feel that? What often drives bad behavior is a desire to get away from intensity. I feel something I don't like feeling, and I don't know how to just handle that feeling and be okay with it. So, I do something unwise because I think it will get me away from this feeling I don't like having. But the best solution is for me to learn to just feel the feeling. That way, my behavior is driven by my values and who I want to be, instead of being driven by avoiding discomfort and intensity.Heather Matthews: Yes. Because when you actually appreciate your desire and see it as a good thing, you're going to respond to it differently by changing those meanings around it.James: That's why I like to use the word "intensity"—because it's neutral. Intensity isn't necessarily bad or good; it's just intense. It's like hot sauce. Hot sauce isn't objectively bad or good; it's intense. Rollercoasters are not inherently bad or good; they're intense. If I want sexuality to be a good part of my life, I have to be able to handle intensity, because sex is intense, sexual desire is intense, and sexual rejection is intense. If I want to be sexual, I have to do the work of learning to tolerate intensity. I have to get used to the hot sauce because it's spicy.Heather Matthews: Yes. And this desire is actually good. To see that intensity as not scary... The second one is pleasure and touch, and again, being the giver and the receiver of both. A lot of men with shame will say, "I will touch you, I will do this for you," and not ask for anything in return. That's one thing I've noticed. Again, it's a team sport—both of you sharing, touching, and building on that.The third one is eroticism. There's so much shame around eroticism. I get a lot of questions from my male clients, but also from female clients who will come in and say, "My husband wanted me to ask you, is this okay?" It's interesting. I took a lot of classes from Camie Hearst, who is a great teacher, and I learned from her that sex is where we play. A lot of the themes from childhood play out there. We see a lot of those same themes in our sexual relationship. It's a place to escape the real world and live in a fantasy. You see themes like good guy/bad guy, power differentiation, and all these things. That's part of our eroticism, and it really starts to develop very young, around seven years old, when we're developing our sexual selves. But we put a lot of shame around it. Yes, there are people who do non-consensual things, but as long as there's consent, seeing it in that picture changed my ideas around fantasies. I'd like to know your thoughts about it.James: I agree with you. The caution I would add is that if there's only one specific way I can get aroused, if I rely on a certain kink, that's something for me to look at. It could be what's called an eroticized disgust reflex, where wires get crossed in the brain between something disgusting and something erotic. It's super delicate because, as you said, it is a place to play with things that are not real, like cops and robbers. But if I'm limited—for example, if I had to be humiliated to get aroused—that would probably be something I would want to work on because it's going to limit my sexuality. People often say, "Don't yuck someone's yum," which I agree with. But if my brain is wired so that I can only get aroused by being humiliated, that's going to lead to a very limited sex life. I would be better off if I could try to grow from that starting point and develop a richer eroticism.Heather Matthews: I think what's problematic about what you just said is the rigidity of it. The model is about flexibility, exploration, and both people. So anytime something is rigid, or "I can only do it this way," that's what's problematic.James: But that is the reality for a lot of people. I would say it's pretty common for people to have limited erotic maps. And just like any other human limitation, it's something that can be worked on. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's just acknowledging, "This is how I am." Many of us are pretty limited erotically, and we don't have to stay that way. The wonderful thing about the brain is how flexible it is and how much it can change. It tends to resist change, but it's like changing the body. It's really hard to get in shape, but it's not impossible.Heather Matthews: I find so many metaphors for sex happen around food. Like going to the same restaurant over and over and eating the same things—that's not going to be full and rich, right?James: I like to use a snowboarding metaphor. My wife is an amazing snowboarder, and I am not. I will very happily go down the blue runs all day, and she will not. She's like, "Where are the cliffs? Where are the trees? Where are the trees growing on the cliffs?" She wants to go snowboard that place, and I'll be like, "Okay, I will see you in a while." But realistically, if I want snowboarding to be a rich part of my life, the better I get at it and the more different areas of the ski resort I explore, the more I'm going to enjoy it. I don't know how to ride moguls; she does. Her snowboarding experience is richer than mine because she can ride more parts of the park than I can. I think there's a good parallel there. It's worth trying things and expanding what I'm capable of. If I just want to give up and ride the same run every time, that's fine, but it's a limited thing. That's me accepting a certain limitation in my life.Heather Matthews: I love that metaphor. I'm going to steal it. It's a good one, and it's non-food, because most of mine are around food. But a lot of men will say, "We'll do whatever you want to do. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?" A lot of these men with sexual shame are too afraid to share their fantasies, their eroticism, what they like, what they don't like, or try new things. They will put that responsibility on their partner and say, "I'll do whatever you want to do" as a way to handle that anxiety.James: Do you think it's because they're afraid of rejection? They're afraid of being seen as oversexed or over-erotic or not in line with what should be expected.Heather Matthews: I think there are many reasons: afraid of rejection, afraid of that stereotype of masculinity that they've been given, or afraid of being selfish. That's the word I hear: "I don't want to be selfish." They think men and sex are selfish, so in order not to be selfish, "I'm just going to let her make all the decisions."James: There's a nuance there. I think they're more worried about being seen as selfish. If I'm concerned about that, I need to be the one looking in the mirror at the end of the day and asking, "Was I a generous lover today?" I need to be answering that question myself, instead of just imagining how my wife is answering it. Obviously, her feedback is important, but I need to be the evaluator at the end of the day. If I want to be a better person, I have to be the one looking in the mirror and saying, "I am okay the way I am right now. I accept myself fully, and I want to be even better tomorrow." That very much applies. You're talking about this fear of being selfish. Obviously, I don't want to be selfish, but the only way to work on that is for me to take responsibility for both making the change and evaluating the change. If I grew up in this culture of shame, I need to take a close look at the basis on which I'm evaluating this.Heather Matthews: Well, there's a piece of our sexuality that is for ourselves, right? Our sexual self and our sexual relationship aren't just for the other person. What does your sexuality mean to you? And don't talk about it just in terms of another person. A lot of times, our culture teaches that it is a relational thing, and it is, but there is "self" in it too. So, exploring that self side of "How am I sexually? How do I feel about my own sexuality for myself?"James: I agree. I have to be responsible for asking, "Am I using my sexuality to bless my own life as well as my partner's life?"Heather Matthews: And then the last one is satisfaction, which a lot of times we equate to an orgasm. That's the model we've been given, but satisfaction is much more than that.James: It's kind of funny because I think it's extremely common for men to feel unsatisfied 10 minutes after an orgasm. When you're aroused, you're in an altered brain state. Then after you orgasm, you come back into your normal brain state, and what seemed like a really good thing suddenly seems dissatisfying. I think what that's usually about is if the underlying thing that I want is to be desired and cared about—if I want my partner to really desire me and love me a lot and adore me.What I'm talking about is bypassing. The traditional way of having sex is to get our bodies aroused so that we can move past the emotional block between us. That's called bypassing. A healthier model of sexuality is to follow the connection between us, focus on the emotional connection, and stay in direct contact. I'm not going to allow my pursuit of sexual pleasure or orgasm to move me past the point where I'm in contact. That leads to a satisfying sexual encounter.What usually happens is, at some point, the anxiety gets too high to where I have to break contact with you. The same thing happens in sex. As soon as my anxiety mounts, I'm going to look away—not necessarily physically, though usually it is—but I'm also going to direct my attention elsewhere and not be in contact with my partner. That feels okay while I'm super aroused because being aroused is overwhelming to this sense of disconnection. I can have disconnected sex while I'm aroused, but as soon as my arousal goes away, it doesn't feel good anymore. I go from this artificial high back to the idea that, "Oh, this person doesn't care about me very much." And coming down off that sexual arousal feels really painful.The opposite situation is if I can maintain contact. When there reaches a point in a sexual encounter where I feel myself drifting away or I feel my partner drifting away, I need to stop and just say, "Hey, I'm drifting away," or "I think we're drifting apart." I need to bring this out and be willing to stop. What happens is people start going in pursuit of an orgasm and don't care what happens along the way. I think that's what leads to dissatisfaction—when I come down off my sexual high, it doesn't feel good anymore.Heather Matthews: Yeah, and I think we can all attest that an orgasm is an eros killer, right? It builds and builds, but focusing only on that is not satisfying.James: I think it's especially so for men. I don't know what it feels like to be a woman, but I suspect that it's not as intense a drop in eroticism post-orgasm as what men experience. It's pretty sharp for men. Your level of interest in sex drops precipitously after an orgasm. I don't think that's necessarily true for women, maybe for some.Heather Matthews: Yeah, for some women, because I think women's orgasms are much more flexible and variable. Some do experience a sharp up and then a sharp down, and some can have multiple ones. So I agree with that. But ultimately, if your whole sexual relationship and all the meaning of desire is focused on this orgasm, it is really limiting.James: It is very limiting.Heather Matthews: The real satisfaction... what Barry and Barry talk about is that after the orgasm is just as important as before, really leaning into connection during that time.James: I think if you want to have connection after the orgasm, you have to not abandon it before. If I disconnect from my partner, have an orgasm, and then they're like, "Okay, let's reconnect," it's probably not going to happen. We should have just stayed connected the whole time. That's the thing. And that often means people, especially men, experimenting with non-orgasmic sexual encounters. I don't think it's as big a deal for women, but maybe I'm wrong. I think it's an especially big deal for men, who tend to be focused on getting to orgasm. I think that's harmful.Heather Matthews: I was going to say, I think that's what we've been taught sex is, right? Arousal, intercourse, and that's it. That's very limiting to both men and women.James: Most people are going to want orgasm to be a part of most sexual encounters. That's very normal. You just want to make sure it's not getting in the way of pleasure, satisfaction, and all those other things. It can't be the sole focus, because it destroys everything else if it is.Heather Matthews: In the "good enough sex" model, they talk about sex as an erotic flow. It's a story, a process. It starts very early on, and the erotic flow continues even after. When you embrace the model that this is a process, sex is the entire experience. That's why I like the good enough sex model. It's about flexibility, not performance, but really focusing on the process of it all, just being a part of your life. There are no rigid rules. I really like this model and it's why I use it. It says that sex is asynchronous, not synchronous, and it allows for that. It gets rid of rules like, "We need to orgasm at the same time for this to be a good experience." Sometimes someone's really into it and someone's not. Ten to fifteen percent of our sexual encounters are dissatisfying, and we allow for that to be okay, thinking, "Oh, that wasn't that great," but then we're flexible about it. The model is about asking, "What are our values around our sexual relationship with ourselves and with others?"James: I think it's important to mention that sexual problems are normal in long-term relationships. Every couple deals with them, and it's just part of the struggle of being married. It's just the way it is. I sometimes say that the human brain isn't really designed for marriage or for a long-term, committed sexual relationship. It's like my body isn't designed to run marathons or lift hundreds of pounds unless I really want it to be. I can help my body become capable of things if I put in the effort and tolerate the discomfort of doing that. If I wanted to run 100-mile races, that would be possible, but it would require me to tolerate a lot of discomfort for growth.Creating a really good marriage or a good sexual relationship requires a similar amount of commitment, effort, and tolerance of intensity and discomfort. I'm a runner, but I'll go out and run a couple of miles, and if I don't feel that great, I'll just walk. That's fine, but it means I will never be a great runner unless I change that. I would have to be much more serious about it, and it's just not something I prioritize. The same thing applies to marriage. If I want to have a really good sexual experience, I have to be willing to tolerate some discomfort for it. I have to be willing to really look at myself and what I'm offering. Like you were talking about in the beginning, what baggage do I have from childhood, cultural traditions, and what I learned in my family? What am I dealing with, and am I willing to push through some discomfort to get stronger?Heather Matthews: Yeah. I think we both need to really watch how we are talking about sex and male sexuality. Are we talking about it in a more positive, helpful, affirming way? A lot of research has been done on this, and what they're finding is that men and women are actually more similar sexually than we are different. The differences are more individual than between men versus women. When we talk about men versus women, we're joining in a power struggle conversation around sex instead of a helpful one. I think all of us as human beings have a desire for deep intimacy and connection, to be known and to share all parts of ourselves. One of my professors said that human beings struggle with monogamy, but we struggle with polyamory, too. Anytime we're in a relationship with someone else, it's going to be hard and difficult, and yet it helps us to grow and develop.James: There's an old joke about that, which says, "Polygamy is having too many wives, and monogamy is the same." It's just a joke. But no, marriage is hard. It's the way it is. I agree with you.Heather Matthews: And satisfaction, too, right? When you're doing it well and you embrace the difficulty, like you said, sitting in that discomfort and learning to tolerate it brings about peace and joy.James: Well, Heather, where can people find you?Heather Matthews: I'm in Boise, Idaho. My website's Heather Matthews Counseling.James: Okay. And you mostly work in person and you work with couples as well as individuals.Heather Matthews: Yes, I like the variety. I see teens, couples, and individuals. I like the variety in my life.James: There you go. That was a great callback. Okay, well thank you so much for coming on my podcast. I really appreciate it, and it was a pleasure to talk to you.Heather Matthews: Thank you for having me.James: Okay, I'll talk to you later.

Catherine Roebuck leads James Christensen through three revisualization exercizes. This episode explains David Schnarch's teachings about regression and how to use revisualization exercises to improve the way your brain works. Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on Youtube

Catherine Roebuck joins James Christensen to talk about dealing with parental blindness.Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on Youtube

Catherine Roebuck lays out how to create secure attachment with yourself and with your partner. Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on Youtube

James Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.comCatherine Roebuck: https://catroebuck.com Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaTListen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-christensen-podcast/id1757976298Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast in your favorite podcast app https://jamesmchristensen.com/podcast?format=rss Listen to Balance your Brain Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLev0wDi_D_FKBNguwWm6LhPi711Gs7AVOJames: I had a new client come in last week with his partner, his fiance. He's a very ambitious, very performance-oriented person. And he was super set on fixing this fast. What I told him is, "I share your mindset. I believe in fixing things fast. I really like to work efficiently," and most of the work that I do here is like fitness work where there are no overnight fixes. If you want to get a lot stronger, then you will need to do uncomfortable things on a daily basis for many months. Just as if you're getting physically stronger, that mental strength comes the same way. I said the only exception to that is I have seen incredibly rapid and extreme behavioral change when people get clear on their parents. So has that been your experience too? Have you seen behavior change really, really quickly when people suddenly see their parents more clearly?Catherine: Yeah, I have. And the client that comes to mind most just had such an incredibly negative relationship with himself. And then as he came to understand his parents better, then he understood where this feeling came from and that it had nothing to do with his character or anything inherent to him as a person. That freed him up in a lot of areas, including as a parent, because it's really hard to parent well from a place of fundamental insufficiency or wrongness. But I have seen that I think there can be a real clarifying effect to people being able to see their childhood and their parents more clearly.James: It's so hard to do because we don't want to give up. It feels like I'm betraying my parents if I do this work. Because when we're getting clear on our parents, we're almost never getting clear on my parents being much more kind and much more caring than I thought they were. It's almost always the other direction. Well first, why is that? What do you think?Catherine: I think sometimes you can, after you've worked through some of the blind spots around the problems with how your parent raised you, that you can actually free yourself up more to have a softer view of them as well.James: But you're not changing. So there's a difference. I tell people, it's like you will at the end of this process, you will have more compassion and more care and more love for your parents than you did before.Catherine: Yes.James: But you will not see them the way you do now.Catherine: Yeah.James: So you will be evaluating, you will have a new view of their behavior and their shortcomings, and you will care about them more than you did, which seems like a paradox. But the problem is that even if I had a good childhood, I probably am still viewing my parents through an overly idealized lens. I chalk that up to two reasons, and I'll see if you agree with this, but I think it's partly because the child's brain is designed to see parents as mostly innocent, and I think that most parents reinforce that in their children because most parents want their children to see them as mostly innocent.Catherine: I think there's a survival mechanism where it would make sense for kids to not focus too much on their parents' flaws because you're in a very real power differential where you are literally dependent on your parents. I mean, in adult life, lots of people feel like there's a power differential and feel like they're dependent on someone. As a child, this is the truth for everybody. And so you depend on your parents' benevolence to some degree.James: So one way to think about it is over a thousand thousand generations, the children who got mad at the parents and ran away and got eaten by wild animals did not have children. And we do not have those genes.Catherine: Yeah, or I mean, it doesn't even have to be that extreme. It could be that they didn't get as much help and support from their parents when they were young adults trying to figure stuff out or, you know, like there would be real benefits to keeping some type of a positive, affirming dynamic between you and your parents.James: To the extent that when I work with people who have cut off their parents and who are very angry at their parents, they are still, even though they have cut off their parents and they're angry at their parents, they're still seeing their parents in an unrealistic, positive light usually.Catherine: Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, this is when you or I talk to people about their parents, it's much more about the parental voices in their head than about, you know, mom and dad. Sometimes it's about in current day real-time interactions, but much of the time it's about what got wired in in childhood and where your blind spots are, and those can exist whether or not you're talking to your parents, whether or not your parents are alive. I've worked with clients in their seventies on dynamics with their parents who are long gone and had that improve their functioning. But yeah, I think there is a real benefit or like a lot of survival level pressure on kids to just not pick too many fights with their parents, especially when they're younger. And that can mean that when there's something that's a problem, you're not equipped to take your parents on anyway. They don't have to listen to you. They have way more power than you do. And so it can be the best thing for your brain in childhood to come up with a cover story, wrap it in a prettier facade, you know, put a stamp on it that says they tried their best and leave it there.James: And the other stamp I see on it is that they had my well-being in mind while they were doing this harsh thing. Or whatever they were doing is, if my parents neglected me, it's because they had so many responsibilities. And if my parents were harsh with me, it's because it was for my benefit or because I deserved it in some way. And these are all explanations that paint the parents in a very innocent light. I also think it's worth saying that it's not really about the parents, it's about the tradition of behavioral patterns in the family system that goes back hundreds of years. And so, like you said earlier, it's like, well, if I was working with your parents, then I would be talking about their parents. So it's not that your parents are bad people, it's that your brain was affected by the patterns of behavior that have been ingrained in your family system for many generations. And your brain was affected. The point of interface was between you and your parents. That's where you encountered this tradition. And so we're gonna talk to you about your parents. It just doesn't have as much to do with your parents specifically as what is the energy that's been alive in your family for a long time.Catherine: Yeah. It's who had the biggest role in shaping your brain and in your early childhood handing you answers to questions of who am I, what matters, how does life work, how do relationships work, how do we solve problems, what do we do with our emotions? And that's gonna be your parents or your caregivers. It doesn't really, I mean, for some people this is multiple people. It's not just two. It's also stepparents or grandparents, or a sibling or an older sibling. And so it's not limited to mom and dad.James: It's whoever influenced you most. Especially between the ages, I mean, zero to 10, but I think especially between five and 10. Well, maybe zero to 10, but your first 10 years especially, I think is when a lot of this kind of imprinting takes place.Catherine: Yeah. I mean, before five, it's not as verbal or conscious, but it's still having a really big impact on you.James: It has an impact. It's harder to deal with the stuff before five because it's not as clear.Catherine: Yeah. You have fewer memories to work with. Less verbal clarity. But that's why it's really about understanding yourself and your own wiring. And we're only focused on the parents because they're the people that had the biggest impact there. Absolutely. And all of this in the context of knowing, like your parents came by it, honestly. They got their wiring from somewhere. They didn't wake up after a nice life. They didn't invent this stuff and decide to be mean to their kids, if that's the kind of issue you had with your parents. In general, I do think most parents want to give their kids a good life. And I also think most parents do things that cause long-term harm to their kids that are difficult to work through. And some of this is just like you were saying, the completely normal progression of some things that are adaptive in childhood are not adaptive or are maladaptive in adult relationships. It's like you need different skills to navigate a relationship where there really is a power differential and you really are in a dependent position, than you need to navigate your marriage. Where you're not in a power differential and you're not genuinely dependent on your spouse.James: And getting clarity on what exactly I was up against as a kid helps me differentiate between the two environments. And so my wife has never been a threat to me. It's not even, that's not the best way to explain it. It was never wise for me to be as concerned about my wife's anger as it was for me to be concerned about my parents' anger. Okay. And so, it's been really important for me to get more clear on what kind of undesirable treatment I faced from my parents and get a more detailed understanding of what I was up against as a kid so that, because the more clearly I can see that, the more clearly I can see the difference between that and what I get from my wife, and they really are incredibly different. But in my mind, before I did this work, my mind was treating them as one and the same, and I was having these intense traumatic responses to my wife's anger or my wife's disapproval that were much more appropriate for a child facing parental disapproval.Catherine: And the other real difference I see is that your options in responding as a kid are extremely limited.James: Oh, yeah. There's basically nothing you can do.Catherine: Yeah, you can kind of pull on your parents' emotions.James: One thing I talk to couples about a lot is if your partner's yelling, please, please leave the room. Do not stand there and get yelled at. And when I was a child, I didn't have that option, but as an adult, I almost always had the option of not getting yelled at. There are very few circumstances where I really have to get yelled at for some reason. But if my partner's yelling, it's not good for my brain. I should not be subjecting myself to that. And I should not be blaming my partner for a choice that I'm making to stand there and get yelled at.Catherine: Right. And that's one of those differences between, as a kid, you didn't have that choice. You know, there's someone who really is bigger than you, who really does have way more power over you. And even in marriages where people experience a power differential, absolutely. It's still gonna be less than what's true between a child and a parent.James: In more traditional cultures, the power differential is real. But even in those cultures, like you said, it's not anything like what children experience.Catherine: Right. And then you have other options, like having a fully developed brain gives you more possibilities for what you can do about your situation.James: So the main tool that I use, well, the main tool that we use to work with this is called a parental dialogue or a written mental dialogue.Catherine: Mm-hmm.James: Which, the way I think about it, serves two purposes. One is for me to get really clear on how my parent would handle a situation. So were I to try to talk straight to one of my parents about something that they would not want me to talk straight to them about, how would they handle that conversation? So I have to write my side of the dialogue and I have to write their side of the dialogue. So it's an imagined conversation where I'm gonna say, what if I talk to mom about this topic that would be an uncomfortable, difficult topic. Something where I'd be challenging her. So I write my side and then I write her side. And it serves two purposes. Well, at least two, maybe you can think of some more. The two purposes I tend to think of: it's really good for me to write down exactly how my mom would handle that conversation. Okay. And it's really good for me to write down what would be a very strong and effective and compassionate way for me to handle my side of the conversation in ways that were not available to me as a child.Catherine: I think one of the things that does is helps your brain understand that you're an adult.James: Okay. That's true. It just kind of, and it's something, you know, I've done this dozens of times and I ask all of my clients to do it, and it's something that needs to be done a lot because it's just something we don't do. Even as adults, most of us don't regularly talk to our parents in an adult-to-adult fashion.Catherine: It's like talking to a spouse, people will feel like they're talking to some authority who's got more power than they do. Talking to a boss, you know? They'll feel like they're talking to a parent. You run into this all the time. And at some point if you're gonna go through your life feeling like I am a full adult and I carry my own authority and, you know, if I were to, for example, talk to my parent about something difficult, it would be adult to adult. Yeah. It wouldn't be dependent to authority. Not anymore. Like that's not the truth.James: No, and the interesting thing is in relationships, both partners will feel that parental power from the other person. And so sometimes there's an imbalance, but it's quite common. Like in my marriage, we both felt this parental energy from the other person, and we both felt like we couldn't say what we really wanted to say.Catherine: Well, you're talking about it as you're feeling the parental energy from the other person and that could be there because, sure, people talk down to each other. But the other thing you're feeling is your own sense of being a child. Like you're feeling child energy in yourself. And you're attributing that to this person must be domineering in some way.James: Yeah. Well, and people have ways of, you know, of driving these things and people have ways of manipulating and whatnot. And so, but it takes a deliberate exercise to break out of the habit of facing my partner as if she had a lot more power over me than she really has.Catherine: Right. And in reality, most of the power that your partner has over you, you're handing to them.James: Yes. Over and over, almost always. Yes.Catherine: And it's kind of that you aren't yet willing to take full responsibility for your own life and decisions.James: So we've talked a lot about how humans will always fight for freedom and always fight for sovereignty, but there are better ways of handling that and worse ways of handling that. And so there's, I guess Bruce Tift would call it healthy separateness energy and unhealthy separateness energy. And so, there has to be a certain amount of separateness. I have to have sovereignty in my relationship, and if I don't know a way of doing it well, then I will do it poorly. Which is usually, you know, fighting and rebelling and yelling or distancing or all these things that we do.Catherine: And those aren't really getting you freedom either.James: No, they don't.Catherine: Like anytime you're acting from a place where you're rebelling, reacting, you're letting another person decide your life.James: Yes, and you know, you're responding in anger, where anger is always a response to powerlessness. And so when I respond in anger, I'm letting you know that you've already gotten to me. You know, you've already, I'm already in this place where I feel powerless because if I didn't feel powerless, I wouldn't be angry. I would feel powerful. There's no need to be angry.Catherine: Well, I think you could be angry and still have a handle on yourself. I don't think anger always has to come with being reactive.James: So that's, yeah. So tell me about that. I guess for me, because people often talk about a more healthy anger, for me, healthy anger just seems like courage. I guess I don't know.Catherine: Probably.James: But I wouldn't call it anger at that point.Catherine: Okay. I mean, I'd say like most people that have been serious civil rights leaders, for example, had plenty of anger about the systems that they were trying to change.James: Okay.Catherine: What they had a handle on was the reactivity. So that they could be strategic. And so you can be really angry at someone and you could decide, you know, something has to change here. The helplessness comes from thinking that you can't do anything about it directly.James: And like in our formative years, we really are quite helpless. Like we have very limited options and we become more powerful as we grow older. In, say, less mature families, you see this power struggle that erupts as children grow into adolescence. And they start to move towards full sovereignty and full separateness. And parents tend to push back on that really hard.Catherine: Yeah. What's the problem with that? I mean on one hand, this is a completely predictable developmental process. For a teenager to wanna be their own person is what they're doing. That's what their brains are supposed to be doing.James: I think for me as a parent, if I've depended on, you know, if I get this validation from my child being subservient to me, like if I see myself as powerful because my child is subservient to me and now my child's 13 and no longer wants to be subservient, then that causes a problem for me because I've been building my own ego around the idea that my kid is subservient to me and now they're not, and that's gonna be problematic.Catherine: People that don't have much of a self have a hard time letting others have much of a self as well.James: Yeah. And adolescence is a time when you're struggling to have a self, when you're building that.Catherine: And so if you're in your forties and you still feel like you are basically being controlled by your parents, which lots of people in their forties still feel this way, very common. You know, I can't do or say that, I can't wear that. You know, at least I can't let mom and dad know. Then watching your child carve out more independence for themselves than you allow yourself is gonna be upsetting. Like, if you are buying into, this is just how the system works. Parents control children and children are a reflection on parents and kind of an extension of the parents' sense of self and identity and reputation in the community and all that. Then you're watching your kids as teenagers, if they're differentiating, you're watching them kind of break the system to where you're getting the cons but not the pros. You're like, well, hang on, I'm being controlled and I don't get to control the next generation. This isn't such a good deal anymore. So yeah, there always has to be somebody who's willing to break the pattern. And I think it's a really good thing if a parent can be willing to break the pattern. That's powerful. If you can be willing to give your child room to be a self, even if your parents didn't give you that, and if your parents still aren't handing that to you on a platter. If it's something that you're having to give yourself, I think that's ideal. But the other way this goes is that at some point a teenager or a young adult kind of gets their ability to have a self by getting more distance from the family often.James: How would you describe the process of gaining a self as an adult?Catherine: It has a lot to do with seeing yourself as an authority in your own life. So you have to trust yourself. And the way I trust myself is I trust I will make the decisions. Not that I'll always make the right ones, because that's too much pressure. No one can. That's assuming that you'll always be clear on what the right thing to do is, and you won't. But it's, I'll be the chooser in my life is how I develop more of a self. What about you?James: One of the things that's been powerful to me has been to tolerate intensity. So sometimes I think I talk about feelings-driven behavior versus values-driven behavior. And I was just very, for most of my life, a very feelings-driven person in that, for a pretty significant chunk of most days, my behavior was determined by me trying to avoid feeling this intensity, this unpleasant intensity. So for me it was usually a pain in my chest or burning in my face. And I felt that a lot and I did a lot of things to try to avoid feeling that. And so I would avoid conflict and I would distance myself from people I loved and I would, you know, control my kids and all this kind of stuff. But a huge chunk of my behavior was based on me trying to avoid feeling unpleasant intensity, and I'm calling it unpleasant intensity. It's, you know, for me it was a tightness or a pain in my chest and a burning in my face, and it feels unpleasant. These days, it still feels intense. Well, it feels less intense and much less unpleasant. Like my face is burning a little bit right now as we talk, and it doesn't bother me at all. I'm just kind of used to it. But I had learned as a child that any intense feeling was something to watch out for because it was very tied to, you know, emotional and anxiety levels in my home. And when anxiety levels were high in the home, then things didn't go well for me. And so as an adult, you know, I can face these higher anxiety situations and things do go well for me, and so I have to learn to feel the feeling and still do the right thing anyway instead of doing whatever's going to get me outta this intensity fastest. Which is usually the wrong thing.Catherine: We were talking the other day about courage, and I think you could define it as doing the right thing while feeling something difficult.James: Yeah, absolutely. Which, when you define it that way, it puts it in line with discipline. Because I was trying to think of this overlap between courage and discipline. Courage is usually strictly defined as I'm feeling fear.Catherine: Mm-hmm.James: Carl Jung used to say that the two things that keep us from becoming who we want to become are, he says there's only two, which I think is brilliant, which is fear and lethargy. And so, you know, the solution to that is courage and discipline. But the way you're talking about courage... I was thinking about it the other day because I'm like, is there really that big a difference between courage and discipline? You know, is there really that big a difference between I don't want to do it and I'm afraid to do it? There is a slight difference, but the ability to feel the feeling and do the thing anyway is exactly the same on both sides. So I feel fear, and I'm going to do it anyway. I feel lethargy and I'm going to do it anyway. Right is the solution on both sides and I think there's a pretty strong correlation in building those.Catherine: Yeah, I agree with that.James: Which is interesting because you know, I spent 25 years in the military and I was never in combat, but I worked with some people in special operations who were, to the man, both incredibly courageous and incredibly disciplined. And so I almost wonder if there's some sort of correlate there that as you develop that, as you build that muscle of feeling the feeling and doing it anyway, then you learn how to work through fear and you learn how to work through lethargy, and it just becomes part of who you are.Catherine: Well, and those are both related to this idea of being the chooser in your own life, of exercising your agency. Making the decisions.James: As opposed to leading a feelings-based life where I'm just constantly responding to what I feel in the moment.Catherine: Yeah. And so if you're gonna have a sense of self, you have to be the one deciding what you do. And feelings are like the weather and they can't... it's like if you wanna be a runner, but you only run when it's 70 degrees and not raining, you're not gonna get very far. I guess I don't think as much about the word discipline because it has this kind of connotation, a parental discipline or even just being harsh on yourself.James: Oh, that's interesting. I don't think about that at all. I mean, I can understand how you get there.Catherine: Like maybe commitment might be closer to how I'd think about it.James: Yeah. Discipline is often, like in men's circles, discipline is often talked about as a virtue of the ability to do something I don't want to do. Something that I know is good to do and I don't feel like doing it. And so it's, once again, it's like the feeling is not going to determine what I do and what I don't do. I'm going to base that off my goals and my values. Like who do I want to be and what do I want to do, like from the deeper, better part of myself.Catherine: Right. And one way I talk to myself is I want to have done that.James: Interesting, future me. I've never heard that before.Catherine: Yeah. Like when there's something that I absolutely am not gonna enjoy, I want to have done that.James: Oh, that's nice.Catherine: Yeah. It's like that can help me sometimes because it's connecting me more with... it's easy when something sounds hard to go to, I don't want to. And this is a way to have it still be about desire, even while I hold onto like, I'm not gonna enjoy doing it, you know? But yeah, I want to have done that. I'll respect myself for having done that.James: I talk to people all the time about earning their self-respect. And the way I usually frame it is at the end of the day, look at yourself in the mirror with kindness and with compassion, and you start with the idea that it is okay for me to be who I am today. Like it is completely okay for me to be who I am and where I am, to have behaved how I behaved, and I want to do better tomorrow. And what does that look like? Like what do I want to change about my patterns of behavior tomorrow that is different than today, even though today was good enough? And I just think there's so much power in living from a place of sufficiency. And there's all this talk about abundance today. And you could talk about that in terms of personal abundance. Like, am I good enough? Do I start... like just the fact that I'm human, is that enough for me to be good enough? And is it also okay for me to accept myself fully the way I am and really, really want to do better in the future?Catherine: So I think these connect with what we were talking about with parental blindness and that as you work through seeing your parents more clearly and just realizing that parents are people, not saints, on the other side of that, often you feel more compassion.James: Oh, so much more. Of course.Catherine: And one of the benefits of seeing your parents more clearly is you're gonna be like your parents.James: Yes. 'Cause we already are like our parents. You don't get a choice if you're like your parents. Guess who programmed your brain?Catherine: Well, there's that and there's the DNA level, like the genetic, you know, you're gonna be like your parents. Yes, you are. And so if you want to have a shot at seeing and changing your own patterns, you're going to have to be able to tolerate the intensity of seeing this in your parents. And facing it and not hating them for it. Because that's the same stuff you're gonna have to do with yourself is to see, like, turns out. And for a lot of people, my own experience and also people I work with, when you start to wake up to this more, you're already a parent yourself and you've already had an impact on your own kids and so you're trying to relate in a way that is clearheaded where you're like, I can walk right up to reality, look it in the eye, and say, I love and accept you anyway. To my parents and to myself.James: Yes, absolutely.Catherine: And I wanna be better. But it's hard to see yourself clearly if you are holding up blinders around your parents because you're going to be like them. And so, you know, I started to be more able to catch myself in moments where I'm like, I'm hearing my mom's voice coming outta my mouth, saying stuff that I have a problem with. But to be able to have a problem with that without like rejecting my whole self as a person. But just be like, no, like, you know, this is probably enough generations that have mindlessly repeated this phrase. It could stop here. It could. And I could turn to my kids and be like, I don't agree with what I just said. I take that back. Like that, you know, this is just something that my brain had programmed in there, but it doesn't actually line up with my values and we're not gonna do it that way anymore.James: Let's end it there.Catherine: All right. Thanks, James.James: Thank you, Catherine. I'll talk to you next time.

How to function better in your relationship with:Catherine Roebuck James Christensen Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsWatch on YoutubeJames: So if I improved my functioning significantly, how would, you know? So like, say you and I meet up a year from now and you're like, wow, James, your functioning is way up. But what would tell you that?Catherine: I mean, this has pretty much happened in the last year. It, it has.James: Yeah. So what's changed?Catherine: I know I, I had gone about six months without seeing you, and I was surprised. So there was a kind of a way you were just at peace with yourself, just more relaxed in your own skin. Warmer. Happier, um,James: Less guarded.Catherine: I mean, so I, I do think about it as like a shift into more contact with being a creature.James: I love that you keep using that word. That's such a beautiful word.Catherine: And, and for me that's very tied to the senses. Like there we talk all the time about being present. There's all of this advice on how to be present and that that's how you improve your mental health and enjoy your life and all those things. But like how you actually do that is primarily through the senses because sensory data exists in the present moment. And so anytime you're connected with several senses, you're present. It is one of the best ways to do that, in my view. And I see that as like one of the indicators of good function is, is the capacity to be present and not have to distract from what's happening right now and who you're with right now.James: Is that the same as making contact?Catherine: Yeah, I do think that's the same. Yeah. Brains thrive on reality. Like even a difficult reality, it's still better for your brain to have awareness and contact with what's really happening.James: And when I'm present, I'm not solving any problems or I'm not, at least I'm not focusing my attention on the solving some sort of abstract problem.Catherine: Hmm. Well, you could be present with what you're actually doing right now that relates to a problem in your life. Um, you're cleaning your kitchen and you're present with yourself as you're doing it, and you're, and you're washing dishes and you're feeling the water, and you're listening to the sounds. Uh, you are, I suppose, solving the problem of the kitchen, being dirty.James: So you can wash dishes two way though. I can, I can wash dishes without being present and I can wash dishes while I'm in my head solving a problem. That's not the dishes.Catherine: Yeah. And I think what you're talking about is mostly people ruminating.James: I am talking about that.Catherine: Yeah. Where we, we worry about a problem, but we're not doing anything in real time about it.James: Right. We think of it as solving a problem, but it's, it's thinking about things. Alright. So the way we actually solve problems and the way we think we solve problems are quite different. And so, you know, this corresponds to left brain and right brain. But most problems are actually solved by the right brain because most problems are much too complex for the left brain.Catherine: And the right brain processes most sensory data right?James: Brain processes, the sensory data and the right brain puts together thousands of different inputs and comes to an intuitive conclusion. Instantaneous, intuitive. It just gets things, the left brain is step by step, methodical, mechanical. Uh, very focused on cause and effect. The right brain doesn't think in cause and effect. The right brain thinks in a hundred different inputs coming together in, in an intuitive way, a way that we can just get, uh, and when we solve difficult problems in our lives, it's always with the right brain. The left brain is for solving simple problems. Problems. Relatively simple problems. So I have a mechanical problem in my life. You know, like I have been a, a mountain biker my whole life and I've spent hundreds of hours fixing mountain bikes. That's a very left brain thing because it's step by step. It's methodical. It's a relatively simple machine. Uh, something like Einstein coming up with Ethereums, that would be a more right brain process because he's intuiting something. He's imagining something new. That's a right brain process.Catherine: So you're saying it's the right brain that solves problems.James: Everything, but the simplest of problems in life. So all relationship problems would be solved by the right brain.Catherine: And the right brain can kind of delegate aspects of that to the left brain.James: It does all the time. Yeah. So, so the right brain can't follow a checklist. The left brain can. Yeah. And the right brain can't, uh, any step by step. Like the right brain can't even use language very well because it, it just doesn't think word by word by word. That's a left brain thing. So if I'm gonna string 20 words into a sentence, the left brain has to actually put those words, but the left brain doesn't know what the sentence really means. So the knowing what the sentence means is a right brain function. Actually saying the sentence informing the grammar is a left brain function.Catherine: It's a little bit like the difference between an impression of someone based off of a resume or a dating at profile. And an impression of someone based on a face-to-face conversation with them. Yeah. A direct meeting.James: Yeah. Mcg Kos tells a story of a man who made his living as a, uh, he, he, his first career, he had been a horse trainer, so he trained race, race, horse. And he raised racehorses and he cared for racehorse. So he had decades of experience with racehorses. And then he retired and, um, someone hired him to evaluate the, the horses at the track and say which horse would, would, would run. And he kept, he, he was very interested in how he did this 'cause he didn't know. He would go and they, they go out and they walk the horses from like the, the holding pin to the track. And he would just watch each horse and he would have a sense of what the percentage of that horse was gonna run, how fast that horse is gonna run based on how it's. How the horse is walking. But he couldn't tell you why. And he, uh, and so, and he went and read McGilchrist book trying to understand what was happening because he's getting this intuitive sense, this horse is looking good, this horse is looking bad. Yeah. And he couldn't tell anyone why. And if he tried to explain why, so, so he, he, he really wanted to, he wanted to know why. And so he would, some days he would go down and he would have his initial impression. Then maybe say, okay, but it's because of this, this, this, and this. And when he did that, his predictions were worse. Because he tracked his prediction. I mean, he tracked his predictions. You know, for years and years and years. So he had all this records of how well he performed and, and what kind of effort went in. And his best performance was always when he put zero effort, he just watched the horse. Yeah. And zero effort, zero methods, no checklist, no procedure. Just watch the horse, how fast it's gonna go. It's gonna go fast. It's not gonna go fast. And it's an instantaneous realization.Catherine: Yeah. I, I think that has to come off of subtle sensory cues. You know, he's, he's in close contact with the horse. And he is picking up on something. Um, there is data feeding into that. Intuitive sense, but it's, it's not verbal. It's not something that could be broken down into a checklist. And I think usually what we're talking about when we're talking about intuition or gut sense is, is that like there is something that we're tracking, um, but we don't have words for it. We don't have a good way to do it. Uh, and we don't have words for it.James: because the left brain is the word brain and the left brain doesn't understand it. And so we have to have two brains because we have to be able to understand these incredibly complex things. And in modern society, we have to be able to function in a mechanical age. And words are incredibly important. You know, our society's been based on words for thousands of years now. And so we have to be able to do language and words and all the technology that's come since it. But it's not the foundation of intelligence or functioning.Catherine: Yeah. I think there's always more in like a, a conversation. So if we took everything we're saying now and we just wrote it out and all people had was words on a page, they'd have less. Because there's more going into what we're transmitting or communicating than just the words. And, and it's subtle stuff. It's just things that you can sense through listening about, you know, the qualities that come through in someone's voice. Um, but that, that's part of contact and in my view is like you wanna involve more of the senses. If you want closer contact with somebody. So you're gonna get closer if you are talking than if you are just texting. And you're gonna get, get even closer if you've got video and even closer if you're face to face. And so when you're really trying to get close to someone or understand someone, um, all of those different sensory inputs help.James: My, uh, my son just came back from backpacking in Europe, in Asia. He's gone for six months. And, uh, when he came in the door, my cat was scared. So this used to be like his cat, basically. Like this cat loved it, loved his boy. And, and, uh, but you know, the cat didn't recognize him visually, so, so my son comes in the door, the cat's like skittish and runs halfway up the stairs. And my son went over to the stairs and just put out his hand and the cat sniffs his hand and then he just rubbed up against him. Oh, yeah. But this is sensory data, you know, for, for a cat smell is the primary indication of who this person is. Right. And so when he smelled my son, he's like, oh, yes, I do know this person. But just seeing him, he didn't recognize him. For, for humans, I think we do recognize people based more on sight, but for me to make contact with you, I have to allow myself to be present enough to really focus on what is happening right now as opposed to being up in my head thinking about things that are more than just what's happening right now.Catherine: Yeah. One of the ways that I make that shift is I'll run through the senses and be like, what can I see right now? What can I hear? Um, I, I've heard different tools around this where people be like, five things you see for these, that's too complex for me. I just run through the senses. I just do one thing for each, but it just, I'm just trying to tune in with like the intensity of right here, right now. And I think it is the intensity of it that gets us to abandon it. And go into the much more comfortable space of just thinking and ruminating and not actually living our life in real time.James: Part of being present and part of making contact is me paying attention to what impact I'm having. You part of making contact and part of me present is me paying attention to the impact I'm having on you. Yeah. And caring about the impact I'm having on you. So if I'm not making good contact with you, then I might be saying something that's not of interest to you and I'll just keep saying it. And so I will just kind of keep rambling on this topic that maybe is of interest to me, but it doesn't really make very much sense for me to be talking to you without caring about what impact am I having on you.Catherine: Well, why do you think you'd be doing that? What would be the drive behind it?James: So sometimes I just have this desire to share what's in my head with someone. It's like. This thing is really important to me and I want it to be important to you, and it usually isn't. So I have these like obsessions with certain things. And I will very often, if I think of something that I have an obsession with, I will want to share it with someone and I want someone else to be as excited. It's like, I think I'm seeking kind of validation. That the thing that is really important to me is also really important to you. Uh, realistically, the things I'm obsessed with, like, I'm obsessed with solar power. I always have been like, for, for decades, and. No one else cares about solar power. Like there very few people in the world who care about it the way I do, and, uh, I have this gadget on my house that measures my solar power output, and I look at it multiple times a day, every day, even though it's the same every day. Like it doesn't really change. Like I live in California, the sun comes up, there's no clouds, like it's exactly the same every day. And like I can tell you exactly how many watts my house is producing right now. Yeah. I still go look just in case, you know, And so, uh, it's just, it's just this obsession. But I would love for other people to care about that the way I do. And so sometimes, you know, it would be in my head and I'll be like. Because it's so interesting to me. I'll think like, oh, this person will surely be interested in that, but they're not.Catherine: Yeah. It's so, it seems to be like when we're overly invested in other people sharing our view or our interests or that, that's when it's easy to communicate without any contact.James: Yeah, and it's. I mean, the, a side of good brain functioning is how much do I care about other people? And the way I talk to someone really demonstrates that. So if I care a lot about you, I am going to care a lot about what impact to my words have on you. And, uh, one thing that happens is, you know, if I'm talking to someone about solar power for a long time and I can, you know, and they're not interested, people will always give subtle cues to not being interested. They might be pretending to be interested, but. But if I'm really paying attention, I'll know they're not interested. And, and at that point it becomes a question of how much do I care about this person? I think most conversation between people, I think there's a pretty, usually most conversations, there's a pretty big disconnect where a lot of people are pretending to care more than they really care. And the other person is pretending not to know that, or, or maybe really not noticing, but. The validation I'm getting, even though it's mostly false validation is still so delicious that I'm, I'm willing to just pass it on.Catherine: And I think if you want, if, if you want to have traction with someone, you wanna have a chance at getting them interested in something they're not already interested in, or, uh, influencing how they think in some way without, um. Just putting pressure on them somehow. Then you have to be able to both track your impact on them, like track how they really feel about the conversation, and also have enough calm and steadiness in yourself to slow yourself down and to not go faster than they'll go with you, which is hard.James: It's so hard. Yeah. Yeah,Catherine: but I think that's one of the main ways that people drop contact is that they go too fast.James: Oh, gosh. So for you and I, we've spent thousands of hours talking about these subjects and we know them so well and we're so passionate. It's like our solar power thing. Yeah, exactly. Like we have this obsession with this and, and so it really is difficult to. Uh, to stay with someone else who's learning about the science of relationships and, and maybe has not spent thousands of hours in their life, you know, obsessively thinking about what does it take to have a good relationship and what does it take to build a good relationship?Catherine: Right. No, I, I have experiences where I can tell I'm losing somebody that, you know, they might think it sounds interesting, but they're not really following it. Um, and it, it usually means I need to slow down. But that's one of the things I push myself on in relationships is like, no matter how important something is to me, I can't go faster than my ability to calm myself down in trying to change it or I won't get anywhere. It's always. Self-sabotage, counterproductive to do that. And so like an example, my kids are both pretty picky eaters and I want them to eat a wider variety of foods. And I can't go any faster on that than my ability to regulate my own emotions about it. Uh, or I will get nowhere. And that's been frustrating to me because it's felt like. There's a clock. You know, I'm, I'm raising kids. They're growing, they need nutrition. Um, I feel all this pressure as a parent that I'm supposed to be doing a better job at this than I am, and I'm supposed to have it figured out. And every time I try to move them along faster, it backfires and we end up in like a power struggle. But I've found if I can really only move at the pace where I'm calm about it and I can um, talk to them from like a calm place and let them know that I care and why I care, but not be trying to like coerce them. They're willing to try more things. They're willing to move on this a little. They're just not, you know, they can't move faster than their nervous system can handle. And I can't move faster than my nervous system can handle. And that's the challenge I think in relationships is that we end up, we really want something. It's really important. Yeah. And we think the other person is the reason that it we're not getting it and the change in the happening faster. But usually there's real difficulty on both sides with going any faster.James: It's almost like there's two signals. There's the one signal is this person wants something from me and the other person is this person cares about me. And the cares about signal has to be stronger for movement to happen. 'cause if they want something from me, signal is stronger, then I'm gonna push against that. Right? 'cause now you're threatening my autonomy. Right. If you care about me to the extent that I know you care about me, I know you would never threaten my autonomy. And so if I can launch, if I can latch onto that signal, then you know, I, my mind is still open to changing something, even if it's difficult. But if the signal I'm picking up is you want something from me, then I'm just gonna defend myself and push against that signal.Catherine: right? Yeah. So. It's much easier to trust somebody that is in contact with reality themselves. Um, and is working off of real time data. And not just up in their head with a bunch of abstract ideas.James: Yeah, I think so.Catherine: So one dynamic I see play out about a lot is there's one person who's kind of dragging. And, you know, trying to pull their partner into change or something. And then there's the other other person is resisting and the person who's putting a lot of overt pressure or pulling, they will feel like this other person is slowing me down. Uh, you know, I would change so much faster if they would get on board, but it's like the person who feels out front can't calm themselves down enough. To deal with the reality of the partner doesn't wanna change and they don't have to change, and instead they keep trying to change reality. So it's like they're not doing any better at moving themselves closer to what they want than the partner who's resisting thing.James: So David Shart said that those who can't control themselves control the people, which is what you're talking about. Right. But, uh, you could also say that those who don't control themselves try to control reality instead. Right? So instead of focusing my effort on changing me, I'm, I'm focusing my effort on trying to change the environment I'm in or trying to change the people. Yes. Uh, I mean, I, I've talked about this or trying to change the people I'm with. I've talked about sometimes as you can try to modify your environment to suit your needs, or you can try to modify yourself to suit your environment. That's not the best way. You can try to, you can try to fight. You know, humans have a tendency, like we're, we're sitting here in a house in the woods. We, we have do this thing where we modify the environment to suit our needs. Sure. So we're dry. It's 70 degrees. We have food in the refrigerator. There's no bears in there. There's no bears. And so we're really good at modifying your environment. Uh, there's certain parts of the environment that will refuse to be modified. Uh, like a partner, a a, the weather, the weather will not be modified. Yes. We can't do anything about that. You can rage at the storms all day, but that won't help. And the other thing that won't be modified is my wife refuses to be modified. Yeah. So, so if I try to take direct action and, you know, modify her in the way, I would like be able to fire or build a a, a shelter or put up a tent or dig a ditch. These are things that I can go and I can take direct action on an inanimate object or an inanimate world, but when I try to take that same uh, kind of direct action on Anate person, on a living person, they will push back.Catherine: Unless it's yourself, that's the only animate person you can do this with directly. But I mean, I'd propose as a scale of brain function you could have from one to 10, where one is I act on everything I can't control. I try to manipulate every factor I don't have direct control of. That's your functioning very poorly. You're trying to control everybody else and everything else, all the way to 10, which is I do everything in my power about my situation. Which is gonna mean like, I'm exercising a lot of influence over myself. That's, and my focus is on what I can actually do andJames: Yeah. And by being a better person, you do have a lot of influence in the world. Yeah. So, so you and I are surrounded by people who actually do care about us. And, uh, to the extent that someone cares about me. I really have a lot of power in that situation. It's not just that, that these people care about us, it's like we're surrounded by people with whom we have significant emotional connection. And so that means that this person is responding, uh, to the energy I'm bringing into the relationship. And so, like with my wife, she responds to the energy I bring. So, so if I went up to our room right now and I was upset and anxious, she would also start to feel anxiety and I would've. Directly created that change in her, you know? Yeah. So people will often say, well, I have no power in my relationship. I think you're the one who told me this. Actually, people have no power in. They say, I have no power in my relationship, but I think you are the one who said, well, can you make your wife angry or Can you make your partner angry? And, and the answer is always yes. And so, if I can make my wife angry, if I can push her buttons, I also have power in the opposite direction. I don't think it's quite as explicit.Catherine: Yeah. But we act like we only know how to push the, the buttons that set someone off, and we have no idea what would calm them down or make them feel better. Sure. You know, and we live with this person. Yeah. But we only have data about how to set them off, you know?James: But I think there's some truth to that. I think there's some truth to that where it, you know, I think that we do have more instincts, like a, a baby gets taken care of by causing emotional distress in the parent.Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, okay. It's more intuitive and it's easier. Sure. It's more intuitive and it's instinctive.James: It is. Like, and I think to do the opposite, for me to live in a way that makes my wife, that makes my wife's life easy is actually challenging and difficult. And it requires growth and it requires good function.Catherine: Well, okay, so now you're hitting on another aspect of this, which is that brain function is contagious.James: It really Oh, so contagious.Catherine: And so, um. It's hard on your brain to be around someone that is not functioning well. It's hard on other people's brains to be around you when you're not functioning well and there's stuff you can do. It's not like you're, it's not like the answer here is to isolate yourself from all poor functioning brains. Like you'll just be alone in life. Um, but there's ways you can take care of yourself even when you're around people that aren't doing well. But especially in a family brain function is contagious in a family system. And so you can bring contagious chaos or contagious calm to your family system, to your marriage or your family. And it doesn't, uh, negate that everyone's got a choice. Um, and you can bring a lot of goodness into a situation and have someone still not engage with it. But. That's where I always come back to this idea of inviting, like what are you inviting? And the way, like what you were describing, if you walk up to your room where your wife is and you're really upset and anxious, uh, are you inviting her into anxiety? Uh, and a lot of people. Absolutely. That's what, yeah. Yeah.James: Well, it comes back, you said we're herd animals. So if you look at a group, I mean, we've all watched these nature shows and there's. You know, 45 antelope on the serenity Savannah. And they're all grazing. And then one sees a lion. Yeah. And all of the antelope are instantly anxious.Catherine: Yeah. And it happensJames: in a foot second. And that's how we operate.Catherine: Right, right. And it's not, they didn't all see the lion.James: They did not. But they know something's up and they, they track. We're wired, we're connected that way. And we have ways of sharing anxiety with each other. And it's not just that the anxiety happens. It's like when I'm anxious, I want you to also be anxious. It bothers me. If I am living in a world where I sense danger and you're like, ah, everything's fine. That's irritating to me. And my instinct is going to be to do something to get you to be just as anxious as that.Catherine: Well, it makes you, it kind of leaves you alone with the, A threat is the, yeah. The feeling of it is like, if I can't get everyone else to feel threatened by this too, then I'm alone and facing it, I think is part of why. But part of the, like the contagiousness of this especially affects childrenJames: so much, especially from a parent.Catherine: Yes. And so when you've got anxious kids, uh, or kids that are not doing well emotionally or socially, like typically there, there can be multiple factors here, but typically one of the factors is they're picking up on their parents' tension and anxiety at home.James: It's so commonCatherine: and so when you know when my kids are doing worse, it's almost always a reflection that I'm doing worse. And that I've gotta resource myself better and take better care of myself if I want them to do any better. And the thing that parents wanna be true, that in my view just doesn't work, is that you could just, um, hand the kids off for treatment. You know, get the kids into therapy, not have to deal with the family system and have the kids get better.James: But it, it can help. I'm not opposed to therapy for kids or teens. It really does help. It's just not the core problem.Catherine: Right. The, the kids, I think overall kids benefit more from their parents doing therapy than from the child doing therapy in general. I agree that they, they need to see their parents calm down and be kinder. Um, and that's what's gonna make the biggest difference. Yeah. Which as a parent is pretty frustrating, you know, like to have that level of, of responsibility for a. Your kid's wellbeing, but I think that's just reality.James: Oh, it's, yeah. No, I, I've thought about this quite a bit over the last year. The way I put it is that, uh, as a father, I do not get to blame my children for their immaturity. That's just not how it works. That it's not necessarily that it's all my fault. It's that, uh, my children's immaturity is much more a function of the problems that are present in the extended family system. Than it is of their own lack of personal development. Yeah. Now when someone's in their forties, that's much less true. Yeah. But, but for someone in their teens, for example, most of, most of their immaturity is, is just simply a function of the family system and they're just Yeah. Kind of manifesting what they've been handedCatherine: there. Kids are gonna have a portion of their parents' emotional skillfulness. And, and that's both because they have less life experience because their brains are not fully developed. Um, like there's really legitimate, understandable reasons for that also, that they just have less autonomy in, in their lives. And so adults can change their circumstances a lot. You know, if adults don't wanna live in one house, they very often are able to live in a different house. If a kid doesn't wanna live in one house. It's up to their parents, you know, they don't get to choose. Um, a kid doesn't usually have control over very much in their life. And so kids, you know, on this, on this scale of like doing what you can about your, uh, influencing the things you can't control, trying, putting your energy toward the things you can't control versus putting your energy towards the things you can, like kids just have less on that side available to them. Um. Uh, but I think it's realistic. You know, if my kid is less than half my age and I'm expecting my kid to have more than half of my maturity, uh, that's not very fair.James: But we do it all the time.Catherine: Yes. Yeah. But I don't think it's realistic. I Shn says that by the time kids leave home, they're going to reach approximately the level of emotional development their parents are at. Yes. Um. Yeah, but that's, that's often what's hard in parent-child relationships is that we want the kid to do better because we can't handle things very well ourselves, and we know it.James: It's so common if I am feeling anxious to blame my anxiety on someone else. Yeah. And especially if I'm anxious as a parent, if I don't feel okay as a parent, it's like, ah, it's your fault. Who? We blame it on our partners too.Catherine: Yeah. So partners and brain function, you know, how are, how are people influencing each other on this?James: I think, you know, the most powerful thing that I can do to help my partner grow is for me to grow.Catherine: So. What did you say? You said anxiety is contagious or calm is contagious. Yeah. I think just emotional state and brain state are contagious too. Functioning is contagious. Yeah. Yeah. Functioning is contagious.James: Yeah. I think you have to see it. So if I handle my relationship different, it really does put my wife in a different environment and, uh, it, it puts some pressure on her to handle things better. Yeah. So you use this word invite. When I show up in an immature way, I am inviting immaturity for my wife. I'm inviting and encouraging and feeding into immaturity for my wife. It, it's like a, it's like if I'm trying to, I often use the metaphor of the fire because if one log is burning, it goes out. Okay. If two logs are both burning, then they sustain each other. Uh, if I have a, a. A log that's on fire and I put a wet log next to it, then that hampers the fire and the other log, it doesn't encourage it. So when I am burning bright, I am encouraging my wife to burn bright, and when I am dimmed, then I'm encouraging my wife to be dim. That's not the best metaphor, but, but it really does work that way. And we consistently overestimate pe like it's so easy for me to overestimate my ability to change my wife's behavior through words. Which is very, very small. And wildly underestimate my ability to change my wife's behavior by changing my own behavior. Mm. It's much more powerful than, than using words.Catherine: Yeah. And one of the things that's kind of unique about David NA's work is that he focuses on how sex impacts your brain. And so he's looking at like. The sexual relationship as a way that partners can either improve or harm their brain functioning. And there's a like heightened neuroplasticity when you're in a high arousal state. And so if you do something cruel in a sexual relationship or you do something very selfish, uh, you're gonna have an outsized. Impact on your partner. And, but similarly, if you do something kind, reparative, uh, invested, you'll have an outsized positive impact.James: So everything we just said is even more impactful if it happens in sex,Catherine: which is one of the reasons that partners have such an impact on each other's brains because they ' cause it's a sexual relationship, it's a sexual relationship, right. Right. And so that's like on, on one level, everybody can impact each other's functioning. Uh, anyone that you're close to you know that that can happen. But, but between partners there's a bigger impact. Yeah. Because it's a sexual relationship.James: That's one of the reasons resentful sex is so harmful. So, yeah. Uh, you know, most relationships have a higher desire partner and a lower desire partner. And common dynamic is a lower desire partner has resentful sex with their partner because. They feel like they have to or feel like they should. And so I'm gonna have sex with you, but you know, in while I'm having sex with you, I'm thinking about how much I don't like this and I'm thinking about how much I don't like you. I'm thinking about how selfish you are, but I'm not saying any of these things, but this energy is still being transmitted in, you know, uh, my partner's brain is exceptionally sensitive to these messages and it causes a lot of harm and Right. Some, some relationships go for decades. Uh, having routine, like regularly having this kind of sex where the message that's being transmitted is not, I love you, but it's I hate you. It's so powerful.Catherine: Yeah. Or it could be it's your job to manage my mood.James: Yeah. Which is what the higher desire partner. Yeah. The higher desire transmitting that. It's like, my wellbeing is your responsibility.Catherine: Yeah. And, and the lower desire partner might be transmitting something, some kind of response to that about like. Being with you is a burden. Um, you're hard to love. Yeah. You're hard to want. Yeah. You're not, you're not lovable. Like there's, there's these incredibly painful messages going back and forth. Yeah. And, and then they're wrapped in an orgasm and it's having this huge impact on your brain. Oh my gosh. Um, and so, yeah. I. I mean, I always advise couples not to have that kind of sex. Like it's better to not be having sex than to be having sex where those kinds of messages are getting wired in over and over. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I think that's where like marriage is a, a unique opportunity to work on your brain function for several reasons that you can do it in the sexual relationship with your partner. And if you're doing that on purpose, it can have huge benefits for both of you. I mean, you can work through a lot of trauma. You can. Um, create a much deeper sense of knowing your, your own goodness and and loving yourself. Um, you can develop the capacity for much deeper love and generosity and kindness, like it's a good place to be working on those things. And, and then also just the inherent difficulty of. Holding your brain together when there's someone seeing you up close who's got some critiques and some of it is fair and you know it.James: and the key to all of it is, is being present and making contact.Catherine: Yeah,James: so Schorge talks about following the connection where, you know, if I'm used to having disconnected sex, like, so let's say I'm in a long-term relationship and sex has been falling apart for a long time. And so I'm used to bypassing that disconnection and getting. To a sufficient state of arousal where my body can just continue to have sex even though I'm not really present. The opposite would be I am going to pay attention to primarily the emotional connection right between me and my lover. And that's what, that's the primary and, and, uh, orgasm comes second, sex comes second. Any kind of particular sexual activity comes second. Then I'm gonna follow the connection and as long as the connection is still present. If I'm still present and you're still present with me, you know, then, then we will continue. But I'm not going to allow myself to bypass disconnection and continuing to disconnected sex. Right. Because it's so harmful.Catherine: Yeah. I think some people mix this up with the idea that it should come naturally.James: It's so far from natural andCatherine: following the connection is not the same thing as this is spontaneous and natural. No. It, it means like, I can do this on purpose. I, and Schnarch has several exercises for people to work on. Their, their sexual connection or their physical emotional connection on purpose. Um, my favorite is touching well feeling that's about like. You for a set amount of time in set roles where one is giving and one is receiving. You're touching your partner and you're on purpose trying to transmit like your love for them. Yeah. Like that's the point of this. It's not to, to get them to a certain state of physical arousal. It's, it's to communicate, you know, heart to heart, mind to mind. Um, but I think it's about following the connection is about like being willing to go part way and stop. When you hit a point where you can't be present with each other, where you can feel your body going numb. Or you can't handle the intensity of eye contact, you have to look away or close your eyes or turn the lights out. Um, that's a good point to stop. And a lot of people are just rushing right past that. And having very numb, disconnected sex where they've dropped contact and, and there's no. A collaboration, uh, and you're just chasing a physiological reflux response, you know, and, and that's not good for the relationship.James: Do you think dropping contact is the same as dropping an alliance? So, in Crucible world, we talk about dropping contact, like you just said. But we also talk about dropping an alliance and in that world of these, these words that come up in Crucible that I just never heard. Yeah. It's like, oh, you dropped your alliance with me. I'm like, what does that even mean? And so I've been thinking about it. An alliance is a pledge of loyalty or an agreement to be loyal to someone that's an alliance. And, and so if I drop my alliance, it's that I, um, have stopped. I, I can't even put it like I can, I can picture it in my mind what it means to drop an alliance. It's like, I don't care about you anymore.Catherine: Yeah. I think it's close to that. Uh, is it the same as contact? I do think you can have contact in a negative way.James: Okay. Um, so Alliance is positive contact and it is po It's like, well, it's so hard to describe. It's a great word, but it's, it's hard to,Catherine: you're, you're talking about a collaborative alliance, so you could have a combative alliance.James: Yeah. Which would be negative contact. And we talked about dropping the alliance, we're talking about dropping the collaborative alliance.Catherine: Right, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it like a negative alliance is like, uh, a lot of kids have an experience where a parent or a teacher is scolding them and is saying, look at me while I'm talking to you.James: Yeah, there you go. Negative contact. Yeah. And, and the parent wants that contact. Yes. He wants to, I want to really hammer this into you. Right. I want to really make sure I'm getting it, getting you,Catherine: I don't wanna give you a way out from the, yeah. From feeling my contempt for you or my anger at you Yes. Or whatever it is. So, so that's negative contact, but dropping an alliance, I, yeah. I think it's when you stop, meaning, well, when you stop caring on purpose.James: Yeah.Catherine: And you're willing to use someone or hurt someone,James: Outside of Crucible, it's an alliance between two countries. It's always an alliance between two countries. So two countries agree that we are on the same side. I'm on your side. And so I think that's a good way of saying it, is when I drop my alliance, I am no longer on your side now. That I am now willing to pursue something for my own benefit that doesn't benefit you. Um, and you are no longer, your wellbeing is no longer important to you.Catherine: Not even necessarily my own benefit. Because a lot of it isn't really good for us either when we're doing that. Like we're doing something that's indulgent. Right.James: But it feels good in the moment.Catherine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do something for my moment. Momentary satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoyment or whatever it is, right? Um, but I mean like an alliance between countries. If you sign onto an alliance and you're serious about it and the other country breaks the agreement. Then you, you're up against, well, what do I do now? You know, if, if these are my values and I hold them. Do I continue to hold them or do I choose that somebody else decides what my values are and what I live up to? Hmm. Like there's, there's this integrity piece to holding an alliance that's about like. I am the one deciding what I do versus I'm just reacting to you and if you do something bad, I'll do something bad too.James: I think that's most of human behavior is just reacting to each other.Catherine: Yeah. Uh, which leaves you resentful and feeling powerless and feeling like a victim and,James: but it also gives you so much power in your relationship. So. The way I think about it is that in most say, most relationships, most of the behavior is just a reaction to the other person's behavior. And so most relationships, consist of an ongoing chain reaction. I'm reacting to my wife. My wife is reacting to me, and I'm reacting to my wife, and it goes back and forth, which means that if I am willing to do the difficult work of taking a proactive step and changing my energetic input into the relationship, uh, unilaterally, proactively. My wife is most likely going to react to that in a more positive way. Yeah, because she, that's what she's doing is she's reacting.Catherine: So I think there's two things there. One of them is this is why presence matters so much, because that's how you get a choice.James: Like yes. Because if you're not present, you're just instinctively responding,Catherine: right? And, and so all forms of meditation are basically getting you to slow down enough that there's a space between the. Impetus and response, like the space between you receiving something and you doing something. Um, and you have to slow down enough to do it. And for me, getting into the census is the way that works best to do that. But then it's also about connecting with reality, because reality is you always get a choice. And. You are deceiving yourself when you think, well, I had no choice because they did that. That's never true. You're as agentic as your spouse. Um, but that, that's like how you get a sense of solidity as a person is to make more of those choices yourself.James: Yeah. If I am agentic, then I'm not innocent though. Because if I have a choice, that means I'm responsible for my mistakes. And I think that's why's true. That's true. So, alright, this what just popped into my mind that, that we use, 'cause you're talking about this idea of, I'm, I'm using the idea that I didn't have a choice in order to not feel guilty. Uh, but in, so that's one way that we try to, it's an escape hatch. So an escape hatch from responsibility is. Well, I didn't have a choice. I did what I have to do. Okay. And another escape patch is, well, I don't know any better. I don't know what to do. Which I'veseen. So besides those two, not having a choice, not having the knowledge or the capacity, can you think of any others? Or is it just those two? That other escape patches? Yeah. People along with those. I'm sure you've heard those before. But what else do we, what else do we come up with as an excuse for why we're not taking action?Catherine: Yeah. So we don't have a choice. I don't know what to do.James: Maybe I'm too afraid,Catherine: um, I'm too overwhelmed or traumatized. Which is similar to, I don't A choice, I afraid. Yeah. But it's like I'm too damaged to do any better.James: Mm-hmm.Catherine: I do think people pull that one that I'm, I'm too damaged to do any better.James: That's interesting.Catherine: Uh, which is a little similar to, I don't have a choice, but it's like, yeah. I, is this limitation coming from what is happening right now or is it coming from, you know, I had a really rough childhood and I'm just never gonna be Okay. Um,James: embodied in this idea of, I don't know what to do, is it's, it's kind of encapsulating idea that if I did know, I would totally do it, which is usually false. And so maybe, maybe I'm not certain what I should be doing, but what's also usually true in that situation is. Even if I were certain, I probably wouldn't be doing it.Catherine: The other thing I think is true is I am not willing to sit in the this anxiety. So that's what, why it's an escape hatch or this intensity, because you might not know what to do. Yeah. But you know what not to do.James: Yeah, sure.Catherine: You know what you've tried a hundred times that has only made things go badly. Yeah, and so you know not to do that. And the reason that you do it anyway is that you don't wanna be present with the intensity. But it's that thing that would put sufficient pressure on your brain that you'd come up with something different to try.James: Yeah.Catherine: And I aim for different, more than better just because it, it can be easy to sit around and twiddle your thumbs and feel like you're not clear on what's better, but if there's some, if it's qualitatively different. Hmm. Uh, it's probably going to produce more of a shift in the dynamic than doing the same thing. Yeah. You change the relationship and the, the thing, like if you don't do the thing you always do, then your partner doesn't have the, you're out of the ping pong game, like your partner doesn't get the thing they were expecting. Sure. And then it gives them a space. A minute to think about, well, what do I do now? You know, this is not how it usually goes. Yeah. It's different. So if you break yourself outta the pattern, you make it much harder for your partner to continue the pattern too. And NAR would say, if you want to get your partner to like map you, be more conscious about their interactions with you. Pay more attention. You wanna do something that is unexpected and positive. And it's not enough for it to be positive. It can't just be the, and it's not enough for it to be unexpected. Like can't just be wacky and it can't just be the nice things that you always do. Yeah. It's gotta be something that gets them to, it gets their brain to engage differently and be like, well, hang on. Who's this person? You know, what do I do with that? Um.James: I think with the trap we can get into of, I think it's easy for me to judge my actions based on my partner's response. Uh, as opposed to judging my actions based on how do I evaluate how well I acted in this, you know, it's, people often say, well, I tried that. I've tried that already, which means that I. You know, tried altering something and my partner still responded poorly.Catherine: So it didn't work.James: Yeah, it didn't work. I tried that and it didn't work, but, but the idea is that I need to look in the mirror and say, what kind of person do I want to become and what's the next step on that path? And I need to execute on that plan and, and my partner's response is useful information, but it cannot be the deciding factor. Oftentimes, if I've been stuck in a multi-decade rough relationship and I'm starting to break outta that mold, my partner's going to initially respond poorly to that, especially if I'm breaking long-term patterns of behavior that we've gotten comfortable with. Yeah. So, for example, if, if, if we've been having, you know, uh, resentful sex for, for decades and I say, I'm not gonna have, you know, resentful sex anymore, that is not something that's just gonna go over easy. That's gonna be a, a real rough change.Catherine: Yeah. I, and I've seen myself do this when someone starts to change in a positive way and, and there's just like, change is hard. Even when it's good, even when you want it, and it's so intuitive for your brain to find a way to like, let's get this back into kind of known territory, you know?James: Yeah. Let's get things back. How I like, um.Catherine: It's really intuitive. It's hard to resist. Even when you know about that, even when you're anticipating it going in, like it's not easy to resist that, but I think so some markers of I are you moving yourself in a good direction on the brain function side? Like clarity versus fogginess is one of the things that I look at. Like, when I did this, did I feel more clear or more foggy? Um, sort of a, a felt sense of do I feel settled, piece in my body sensory level? And you could feel settled in at peace, even when you're taking a big risk.James: Yeah.Catherine: You can feel like, you know, this is. This is a move I can respect, even though I don't know what's gonna happen next. And it could hurt.James: Yeah. Okay. Should we wrap it up there?Catherine: Sure.James: Thank you Catherine.Catherine: Thanks.

Catherine Roebuck and James Christensen discuss infidelity in the light of the Coldplay affair. What does it take to heal a relationship after infidelity? Why is infidelity such an important cultural touchstone? What is the path forward for the couple that got caught on the Coldplay kiss cam?Couples therapists James Christensen and relationship expert Catherine Roebuck discuss infidelity through the lens of the recent Coldplay affair. James Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.com Catherine Roebuck: https://catroebuck.com Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaT Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-christensen-podcast/id1757976298 Listen to Balance Your Brain Podcast in your favorite podcast app https://jamesmchristensen.com/podcast?format=rss Watch Balance your Brain Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLev0wDi_D_FKBNguwWm6LhPi711Gs7AVOHere is a readable version of the transcript:James: What is your advice for the spouses of the people from the Coldplay concert who were caught cheating?Catherine: One of the most difficult parts of being cheated on for a lot of people is the public humiliation of it. That staying is humiliating. A lot of people feel pressure that the only way they can hold onto their own dignity is to kick their spouse to the curb, make them a villain, and put the entire responsibility for the breakdown of the marriage on the person that cheated.James: I think people who get cheated on often feel guilty about still loving the person who cheated on them.Catherine: Yeah, I agree with that.James: They feel like they shouldn't. They feel like, "I should no longer have feelings for this person anymore. Why do I still like this person?" Very often they find themselves feeling somewhat similar after the affair as they did before the affair, which actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. But they feel like they should feel totally different.Catherine: Well, another thing that I see happen is a kind of hysterical bonding where there's this big threat to the relationship when the affair comes out. And in that uncertainty, the betrayed partner, the person who's been cheated on, can actually feel even stronger attraction and desire for their spouse. Sometimes people end up more affectionate.James: Yes, there's that. There are many reasons for that, but also the person who cheated often starts treating their partner a lot better than they were, and so they suddenly become more attractive. It's such an interesting situation because so many things happen at once.Catherine: Well, I don't think it's just about them being more attractive. I think there are different aspects to that. There could be some aspect of seeing somebody else want your partner and you start to think about them in a different way. But there's also just the threat of loss involved. Typically, there's a lot of pain in a marriage where someone ends up cheating. But even so, there's this risk of loss, this threat that you're going to lose this person who, especially if you have a family together, may be an irreplaceable life partner to you.James: So that could drive increased concern or affection or interest, just wanting to hold it together.Catherine: Wanting to hold on to this person, wanting to hold it together. Yeah.James: So I hear people who got cheated on a lot express distress over, "I can't respect myself for having stayed. What am I doing? Why am I here?" But to me, it actually makes a lot of sense. Here's what I tell people in this situation who are like, "Well, should I leave? Should I go?" I'm like, you're probably not in the best place to make that decision right now. So these are people where there was an affair, the affair was discovered, and they came to therapy. And I'm like, the fact that you are here means now is the time to improve your relationship. And then after you've gone a certain way down that path, then you decide to stay or go. You'll be in such a better place to stay or such a better place to go, whichever you decide. But people often say, "Oh, the affair happened. I need to leave immediately." I mean, perhaps. But I guess there's something special about the couples who come to therapy after an affair because they're coming to therapy because they don't want to end the relationship.Catherine: Yeah. And what I think would surprise a lot of people is that, at least based on the statistics I've seen, most couples do work through infidelity. It's around 60%, but it's more than half.James: More than half. That doesn't surprise me at all.Catherine: Yeah. And so culturally, we kind of relate to it like this is the end of the world and there's no way that you could ever trust this person again. This breaks the marriage; it's over. The only decent option is to leave. But the reality is that the people—and it's so courageous when people face this and go to therapy—the people who do, they mostly are able to not just hold a relationship together, but to actually grow. Like, use the energy of the crisis to deal with the things that they've been ignoring or pushing away.James: What is your advice for people who are recovering from an affair that was several years ago and they can't get over it? If I was cheated on three years ago and I can't get over it, what would you offer me?Catherine: There might be some exceptions, but most of the time when people are really fixated on something from years ago, there's a quality to it of the problem not being resolved. So maybe it's been three years since your partner cheated on you, but they're still not open with you. And you can just track them holding information back or being misleading or lying even in small ways. And that's not resolved.James: Okay. I call that micro-deceptions.Catherine: Okay.James: So the affair is the big deception. And this is exactly what I tell a person in this situation: It's not so much that you can't get over the affair, it's that you are subconsciously picking up on your partner's micro-deceptions, which are ongoing. Your brain is translating that into, "I'm not over the affair," because your brain says "deception, deception, deception." And you're like, "Oh, I must be upset about what happened three years ago." But I think I agree with you, it's usually about what's happening right now.Catherine: Right. And so each of those small deceptions is reminding your brain, "Hey, this person still hasn't made a commitment to be open and honest." And until they do that, how are you going to trust that they wouldn't hurt you again in a big way?James: Maybe they haven't cheated in the last three years, but they have not fundamentally changed the way they operate in the marriage.Catherine: Right. And you have to think about what the reasons for the affair were in the first place. Are those resolved or not? Because someone who has difficulty being open and honest maybe switches from cheating to hiding money or using substances more than they're telling you. And the same core-level problem is still happening of your partner not being honest with you.James: What do you think of the idea that infidelity is usually not the biggest problem in the relationship?Catherine: I think it goes to symptom versus root cause. People cheat for a variety of reasons.James: What do you think are the biggest?Catherine: Sometimes somebody wants to end a relationship, but they aren't solid enough in themselves to be alone. And so the way they end the relationship is they go partner with someone else because they can't bridge that gap. They can't validate themselves through a divorce or a breakup, so they handle it by getting a new partner before they drop the old one. Esther Perel talks about people using infidelity as a way to connect with lost parts of themselves. They go connect with somebody that enlivens them in some way they have lost track of. They feel young and confident and interesting, and they've kind of dropped those aspects of themselves over the years and don't know how to foster them on their own. Are there other major reasons that come to mind?James: I think it's usually about seeking validation. This free-flowing validation that happens in the early stages of a relationship usually stops in most relationships. In a very healthy relationship, there's tons of validation. In most relationships, there's not a lot of external validation flowing back and forth. So I think that it's so tempting. In any fresh relationship, that tap is going to be wide open. And it's so tempting. Before the affair starts, the validation starts flowing and you start moving closer and closer to this other person who becomes the affair partner because of the validation they're offering. They're attracted to you, they like you, and they see you as a special person. And I think that's the primary driver of affairs.Catherine: I agree with that, and that is at play in both of the reasons that I brought up too. You're relying on the external validation from the affair partner to either represent or wake up some aspect of yourself or to get you through some life transition. I agree that's the main thing.James: So people in a post-affair situation usually talk about rebuilding trust. How do you put that together? What does that process look like?Catherine: I think it's more about opening your eyes, waking up. It's more about your discernment—your confidence in your own discernment and in your own ability to act on what you see. Because a lot of times in hindsight, people can say, "Yeah, I saw the signs," and there's a reason that you're tracking it and looking away. It's because you can't really handle dealing with it. There's something at stake for you. There's some reason that you would rather pretend it isn't happening or just kind of go blind to either how unhappy things are between you and your partner, or the signs that you see that they are connecting with someone else.James: So, the way I break it up is into three kinds of trust. The most obvious is trusting your partner to be faithful, and I actually think that's the least important of the three. Because if you behave in a trustworthy way for many months, then I trust you more and more. So say you just cheated on me and now you're not cheating anymore, and I watch you not cheat for the next 12 months. After 12 months, I'm going to trust you a lot more than I did at month one. Obviously. That's the most obvious part. The other two are trust in myself that I'm going to take care of myself, because I think cheating evokes fears of abandonment. You know, if I was five years old and my mom abandoned me for some other little boy, then I was in deep trouble. I really think that's the core of why cheating is so painful—it's a fear of abandonment. So, trusting myself that I realize you get to make all of your own choices and, if you leave me for someone else, then I am going to be able to take care of myself. And because of that, this fear of abandonment is in me, but it's an emotional reality that doesn't reflect physical reality. The physical reality is I'm going to build a good life for myself if you leave me. And then the third part is trust in my ability to perceive you clearly. Which, if you have been successfully deceiving me for a long time, I really need to work on that. For me, that usually involves dealing with parental blindness and looking at what kind of deception and untrustworthiness I was exposed to as a child which desensitized me to that kind of behavior, normalized it. So that now I'm in a relationship with someone who does these things and I'm not fully aware of what deception looks like, and I don't even really know what a trustworthy person looks like. I'm not familiar with what that looks like or smells like. And so, yeah, there's some work for me to do there on honing my sense of what is trustworthy behavior.Catherine: Yeah, I agree with that. The relationship is only going to work out long-term if your partner's trustworthy. But your well-being isn't dependent on whether your partner is trustworthy. You're in a precarious position if you link those things, and that's a lot of the impact of an affair—somebody has to disentangle those two things. Like, if I depend on my partner's integrity as the source of my well-being, I'm not going to be okay.James: Right. So my well-being has to be my responsibility. I have to be the one who guarantees that I'm going to be okay. And in a high-trust relationship, it's so funny because we talk about these things and the reality in a really good relationship is totally different than in a normal relationship. The reality in a really good relationship is that it's okay for me to rely on my partner because my partner is so trustworthy, but that is really only built on the foundation of taking really good care of yourself.Catherine: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the goal isn't rugged individualism, but the goal is to be able to take care of yourself. Because of the open reality of life, anything can change at any time. And it's actually the only way you can really relax in life. You can only relax to the extent you can take care of yourself.James: And that energy, my ability to take care of myself, allows me to invite care from the other person. If I can care for myself, then I'm not being needy. If I show up needy in a relationship, that invites withdrawal or resentment from the other person because if I'm needy, I'm trying to manipulate you into taking care of me. And people don't like to be manipulated. So I end up inviting the opposite of the behavior that I'm seeking. Now, if I show up strong and capable of caring for myself, I'm inviting you to offer me love and affection because I'm not pulling it from you. Whenever I'm dealing with a living being, the thing that I try to force that living being to do, they will intentionally try not to do it because they're fighting for their sovereignty and their freedom.Catherine: It's making me think of a metaphor. If you have a dream career that you want to pursue, you're going to be in a much better position to go all in on it if you have some savings, if you've got the ability to take care of yourself if it doesn't pan out. It was like that for me when I jumped into coaching. I had been working in tech and I'd saved money specifically so that I could take that risk. I needed a safety net, but I had to be my own safety net. If you're going to jump in and take a big risk and you don't have any kind of safety net for yourself, how are you ever going to really relax and be present with what you're trying to do?James: So you're always going to be really cautious if you don't have a backup plan.Catherine: Yeah. And so there's a way that the ability to take care of yourself is actually the very thing that lets you relax or surrender into deeply being cared for, like letting in care and support from a partner. It's not really safe to rely on a partner and to deeply trust a partner if you don't deeply trust yourself as well.James: Do you think that's because of the neediness thing?Catherine: Well, there's something else there. There's genuine need. So it's not all about state of mind. Some of it is about, are you set up in a dynamic, in a relationship where your life is going to fall apart if your partner leaves you? On a practical level and not just on an emotional level. That's a precarious position to be in. I think it's hard to overcome that with mindset.James: Sometimes I ask people to envision their life one year after their partner left them. Let's say your partner leaves now, fast forward one year later. What does your life look like? Have you built a thriving life for yourself? Do you have a place to live? Do you have friends? Do you have someone to love you? Have you built the life that you want? And they always say yes. And so I'm like, that's what you need to lean into because your ability to trust yourself is what carries you through the fear of abandonment.Catherine: There were times in my life where a year would not have been enough of a ramp for that at all.James: And I am sure that would change the way you operated within your marriage. You would've felt stuck.Catherine: Yeah, absolutely. And so it makes it less open-hearted. You can't risk being open-hearted. You're more cautious, you're more hypervigilant. And those things are not good for a marriage. They're not really good for yourself either. It's hard on your mind and your mood to be living in a state of caution and hypervigilance all the time. But it's a realistic expectation that adults be able to take care of themselves, with rare exception.James: It is a realistic expectation. I don't think our culture does a good job of normalizing that idea that I, as an adult, am going to take care of myself and that I'm going to be in charge of my own emotions, my own behavior, what I say, as opposed to constantly blaming it on circumstances or other people.Catherine: And that does include taking care of yourself if your partner really hurts you. But I mean, somebody who's having an affair isn't taking good care of themselves either.James: So coming back to the Coldplay concert, tell me what your advice would be for the people who got caught.Catherine: When you've violated your own values, which I'm going to assume they both have, you have to find a way to look at that without going into a shame spiral. People try to deflect, they try to blame other people for what they've done. And then the other thing they do is just spiral into hating themselves. And neither of those is productive. You've got to find a way to hold your own dignity while you face what you've done and your impact. I think the more compassion you have for yourself, the more you're able to look at the dark stuff you've done and own it.James: So one way I work on this is to say, "I am a normal person who makes normal mistakes." And I think the Coldplay couple falls within that realm of a normal person who makes normal mistakes. It's a very normal thing to do. Not recommended, but not abnormal in any way. Most relationships have infidelity; it's a part of most relationships. It's a very common occurrence. So most couples will struggle with some form of infidelity at some point. And so can I look at myself as a normal person who made a normal mistake, as a way to start down a path of growth?Catherine: I didn't think the stats were that high, that most will.James: Maybe not sexual infidelity. I don't know what the stats are, and I don't know how you would even know the stats. It's going to be a guess.Catherine: Self-report.James: Probably. But I really do think... let me think. I would say almost all couples face, if not full sexual infidelity, at least an emotional affair. I think it's almost universal that two people in a 30-year relationship are going to have some kind of emotional affair, at least on one side. But as far as a sexual affair, I guess there are quite a few relationships where there's no full adultery that happens. But I really think emotional affairs are quite common.Catherine: Well, one of the things I think about is just how we relate to faithfulness. There are many ways to take love or sex or romance out of a marriage, and taking it to somebody else is only one of them. And we treat it like that's the only way this happens. But someone can withdraw from their partner, withhold from their partner, basically remove intimacy and desire and eroticism from the relationship. And I see that as a problem with fidelity and with the commitments that we make in a marriage as well.James: So the idea behind marriage is, "I'm going to bring the best of myself to you for the rest of my life." Right? And that is what breaks down all the time. What I hear you talking about is, I promise to bring the best of myself to you, and now the best of myself is going to my sport, or my job, or my video games, or my friends, or whatever obsession I have at the time. Or I'm just taking the best of myself and watching TV.Catherine: Yeah. Maybe no one's getting the best of me. You know, maybe I've just shut it down.James: Maybe I've just turned it off. But I 100% agree with you. What matters is what am I offering to my partner? How much of the best of myself am I offering to my partner? Where the rest of that is going is not nearly as important as what is going to my partner.Catherine: Right. And so, I mean, there are some things that are uniquely painful about being cheated on. But I do think most people and most couples have some experience of basically breaking vows. People fail to live up to their own ideals in marriage most of the time. At some point during a marriage, there will be a point where you failed at that. People have different vows, but one of the classic ones is "to have and to hold." And so if you withdraw and you withhold and you ignore and you avoid and you reject, you're not living up to that vow. And there's a lot of pain in that too, on both sides, really. Because people often have a reason that they're pulling back. They always have a reason, but there's often something that's quite difficult about being close with their partner. And they're handling it by pulling back.James: The way I frame it for couples in this situation is, the only way out of this is to build a relationship. The only way out is to build the kind of relationship where affairs don't happen. And you don't have that relationship now. Most couples don't. Even couples where there's not active infidelity, there's a threat of infidelity because the relationship isn't strong enough to be past that.Catherine: Yeah. Most people who cheat say that they never thought they would cheat.James: Right.Catherine: I believe them.James: Well, it's so addictive. It's that validation. The way I imagine it is I start to feel validated by someone I'm attracted to. And I mean, that's powerful stuff, especially if I'm in a relationship where I'm not getting validation and now all of a sudden someone else is offering it. And it's a huge difference.Catherine: Right? And it happens by degrees. It's subtle. It is hard to pick your line and say, "I won't go past that," and the line keeps moving. And that's just how it typically happens. I mean, there are people that I work with who are in an ongoing emotional affair, and I'll talk to them about the threat, the risk that this is going to escalate if they don't de-escalate it. But it's really hard to drop it. It is so addictive, like you said. And ultimately this comes down to, "Am I a strong enough person to do the right thing when I'm not getting what I want?" And most of us, on some level, could answer no to that. We're all susceptible to doing the wrong thing when we're not getting what we want.James: I think that the measure of how much I care about my wife is how I treat her when I'm not doing very well. When I'm having a great day, it's pretty easy for me to treat my wife well. What about when I'm having a bad day? When I'm not getting what I want? How do I treat her? I really think if I'm building, say, an airplane or a bicycle frame, I'm going to measure its strength at the point of greatest weakness. And if I'm going to measure my own ability to care about another person, it has to be at the point of greatest weakness. That's the critical point where it matters. And so I just think we shouldn't be giving ourselves a pass on, "Well, I was having a bad day," or "You had just done something mean to me." I think that it's better to say, "To the extent that I really care about you, I'm going to handle myself and I'm going to offer you the best of me."Catherine: Yeah. So this Coldplay couple, they're dealing with a couple of layers here because there's what's going on at home, there's their own experience of public humiliation, and that this is going to follow them around the rest of their lives.James: It's defining them.Catherine: And then there's their spouse's experience of public humiliation and the amount of social pressure for their spouses to leave them. And then there's also that it's professionally very embarrassing and damaging, ruinous even. So it's really a lot to navigate at once, and they're likely losing both the support they have with their spouse and the support they have with each other at the same time. And so it's a crisis that might push them to deal with themselves. Something I was thinking about is it's easy if you're cheated on to think your partner must not have cared about you. But this couple is an example. He may or may not care about his wife, but he sure cares about his job.James: Yeah, he does.Catherine: And he cheated with his HR. Like, he's putting the thing that he is most obsessed with at risk.James: We do ourselves a huge disservice when we make that a black-or-white thing, like, "Do I care or not?" When I talk to people about what it looks like for them to care more about their wife, they always say, "I do care." I'm like, okay, we really need to go more into this. There is no upper limit to the capacity for human caring. So I can always learn to care more about my wife than I do, and that is the correct path. So if my instinct is to say, "But I already do care," what I'm doing is I'm turning down the invitation. I'm saying, "I am not willing right now to learn how to care more about my wife than I do." But it's really interesting how you brought that up. He definitely cared about his job. And he was willing to put that at risk for this. So it's just not a yes/no question. It's, he cared more about his affair than he cared about his job.Catherine: A lot of people think that if their partner cheats on them, there's no way they could have cared about them or loved them. What do you think about that?James: So I think it's an infinite spectrum. It's not a yes/no, "Do I care or do I not care?" This is something I think about all the time now: What does it look like for me to care more about my wife than I already do? And I challenge couples about this all the time. I ask that very question. Because we get so locked into, "Well, I do care." I think a lot of it is set when I'm growing up; my imaginary maximum to which a person could care about another is whatever my parents offered me. That's just the default setting. And there's always more than that. So what I've been exploring recently is, what does it look like for me to care a lot more? This man obviously cared a lot about his job. He probably cared about his wife to a certain extent. And he cared even more about this affair.Catherine: He cared about getting validation, most likely.James: Yeah. He knew he was taking a risk.Catherine: Right. And he had lots of options for people he could have had an affair with, and the person he chose was like the worst possible option for his personal and professional ambitions. Yes, really ruinous to his career, his wealth, his company. You know, there's a way that it looks stupid, but the main factor in who you end up having an affair with is just proximity. And so if you're somebody who is at risk of having an affair and you work closely with someone, that's who you're going to end up having an affair with much of the time.James: I think that's how most affairs happen. I don't think most affairs start on a Tuesday with someone saying, "You know what? I think I'm going to have an affair this year." I think what happens is I am interacting with some attractive person and I start to get vibes and validation from this person, and it progresses very gradually, and it's hard to say no to that next notch on the dial.Catherine: Yeah, it's easy for me to imagine you've got this really exciting, thriving company. You're working late, you're working closely with each other because she's head of HR, he's the head of the company. Of course it makes sense, and the validation loop just keeps going back and forth. You know, she thinks he's smart and great, and he thinks she's smart and great. It's easy to just keep climbing that loop and to have the lines blur a little bit. You know, maybe you're out at a company dinner, but then you have a drink or two, and then suddenly it's feeling more social, or you stay later than everyone else and it becomes more flirtatious. But I do think it's helpful to look at the things people are willing to ruin for an affair other than their marriage, to give a little bit of perspective on, like, this doesn't mean that they didn't value their marriage at all. It's just, unless you have a lot of integrity, a lot of solidity in yourself, a lot of inner strength, presented with a buffet of validation, it's going to be hard to just say no.James: Yeah. So I've moved away from framing all these things as yes/no questions like, "Do you value? Do you care?" It's just too black and white. Everybody cares to some extent.Catherine: Yeah. I really like how you talked about that, because of course he was not loving his wife well to do this, obviously. And she was not loving her husband well, you know? So, absolutely, there's tons of room for both of these people to care more about their spouses. And actually also about each other, because the other thing about affairs is friends don't ruin each other's lives. People who love you don't wreck your marriage. If you really, really love someone and they're in a committed relationship, you don't get involved in that.James: Oh, absolutely not. That's not love. It's really kind of a cruel thing to do. It's really selfish.Catherine: Someone who's acting out of true love for that person is going to put distance and boundaries in place. They're going to protect their friend. They're going to protect the person that they love from the really difficult-to-resist temptation. So yeah, somebody that's willing to be your affair partner always has real limitations in their own capacity to love you or anybody. But yeah, I think that's what we're up against with any type of infidelity. And most of the ways that people take their love and affection out of a marriage is just, it's hard to care a lot about people. It's hard to care more than how much you were cared for growing up. But that's again, like the normal, reasonable expectation of adults is that they push themselves on that and they grow.James: When we use an escape hatch out of a marriage, then we're opting out of the cycle of growth. And so for these people who are in this affair, their better option would've been to do the work of creating in their marriage the kind of love affair that they want to have, which is really difficult, but it's the only sustainable option. That's why marriage is a people-growing machine. Because if I want to have a really solid marriage, it's an incredibly difficult thing to do. It's just really hard.Catherine: I think you also have to grow into wanting better things because if what you want is constant validation, you're not going to grow your way into constant validation.James: No, you're not. And that is what most people want. And so you need to understand what's possible, which is much better than constant validation. But for most of us, we hold that as the gold standard. That this is what a good relationship looks like, is when you first fall in love and they're fawning over you. And that has its value, but it's just not permanent.Catherine: Yeah. If you want to live in the honeymoon stage, there really is only one way to do it, which is you change partners every two or three years. That is the only way. You miss out on all kinds of other benefits of having someone deeply know and love you and be a witness to your life. But I have people ask me all the time how they can keep that. And they're worried about the inevitable drop-off of the honeymoon hormones, and you can't. Not with one person.James: You can build something better, but it's different. I've likened it to this: when you first fall in love, there is a pile of dry timber and you set a match to it. And after two or three years, there is a stack of wet lumber. You can build a fire with a lot of skill and a lot of work. And that fire, honestly, a fire in a rainstorm is even more satisfying than a pile of timber that you just had a match to. But it doesn't just happen. It's possible on the other side of a lot of difficult effort.Catherine: Yeah. And a lot of what's making it easy for people to validate each other early on is that they have distance built in, because we want autonomy and belonging in a partnership. And you've got the autonomy built in up until the relationship is secure and settled, which for most people means marriage.James: So you were talking about how there's distance built into a relationship at the beginning, but after the relationship reaches full fusion, then there is no distance. And so now we have to create distance. How do you go about creating distance if you don't know how to do it in a healthy way?Catherine: Right. So we all want belonging and autonomy in a relationship. And when you're dating and you live apart and you have separate finances, there's distance built in.James: You're mysterious to each other. Yes. There's distance built in because you don't even know this other person.Catherine: Right. But over time, you know, you merge your lives, you merge your bank accounts, you have kids together. There's so much togetherness. And then you're faced with, if I'm still going to have a self, I have to be able to do that while up close with someone that's different from me. You can't live with someone and only show them your good side. That person is going to disagree with me, criticize me, want me to change, want me to accommodate them, want me to validate things in them that I don't like. It takes a lot of strength to do that.James: Yeah. David Schnarch called it the difference between self-validated intimacy and other-validated intimacy. So in the beginning of the relationship, it's other-validated intimacy because it's so easy for me to reveal myself because you're fawning over me. You're in love with me. You like everything I show you. As the relationship matures, I start to get a sense for what things you don't like anymore, and you start to get choosier. And so the only things left for me to reveal to you are the things that I know you may disapprove of or get upset about. And so I start hiding because I know what to hide, and that's what leads to a disconnected relationship. For me to create intimacy, I have to have self-validated intimacy where I reveal myself to you, even though I know you're not going to like it. I know you're not going to approve of what I'm showing you, but I start to show myself to you of my own volition and under my own power, so that I will take care of myself knowing that you disapprove, and I'm still going to let you see me clearly.Catherine: Yeah. There's this difference between holding together an appealing facade and putting in the work it takes to build a habitable home with someone. You know, you can make things look good, but if you're trying to create a relationship you can live in, you're trying to create a love you can live in. And it's much more work to put that together and maintain it than it is to make something look nice from a distance, which is all you have to do when you're dating.James: People talk about walking on eggshells, which is a similar pattern where I'm being really careful about what I say because you are so sensitive. But when a person says, "I'm walking on eggshells," they usually are blaming it on their partner. It's really both people. So yeah, their partner is using emotional intensity to control them, but the person walking on eggshells is also agreeing to it. People talk about walking on eggshells, which is where I'm censoring what I say to you to avoid your emotional response, and I'm probably blaming you for that. But it's really 50/50 because I'm agreeing to be controlled just as much as you are controlling me. Realistically, I don't have to censor myself. I can say what I really think and I can deal with your upsetness. Now, both people can play a role in ending the cycle, and it is really quite difficult if you have a highly reactive partner to go ahead and say what you need to say, even though they're going to try to shut you down. But as you do that more, as their tactics get less effective, then they're less likely to use them.Catherine: Yeah. And people will say that what they're trying to avoid is their partner's emotional response. But it's their own emotional response to their partner's emotional response that they can't handle, primarily. Because their partner can have the same response in front of a different person who will be just fine.James: I was talking to a client about this years ago, and the example I came up with was, I was trying to explain what you were just saying. I said, "You know, there are people who could handle your wife's reactivity and be okay with that. For example, a Buddhist monk could be here and your wife could be reactive, and this Buddhist monk would be okay." And he just got this really sad look in his eyes and he looked at me and said, "James, I'm an ordained Buddhist monk." And I was like, "Then I have nothing for you." It was like, how is this possible? I'm reaching for this example that's so extreme to the point of ridiculousness, and he's like, "Nope, that's me." And I'm like, "I guess in this case then, you win."Catherine: Well, one of the benefits of the therapeutic process is that if you go to couples counseling, then you can see somebody else, if they're doing a good job of it, handle the things that you can't handle in your spouse and not be completely knocked off balance or get reactive themselves. And so it can give you a view of how you could talk to them when they're acting like that. And sure, sometimes people start out on good behavior in couples counseling, but they don't stay that way. If you work with someone long-term and you get close, it's pretty normal for the same behaviors that are hard to handle in any close relationship to start to come out in the therapeutic relationship. And so then you get to see, if you're working with someone who can handle it, an effective way to handle that.James: Oh, it's so valuable. Watching my therapist work with my wife and just watching what her approach is. I'm so intensely curious. I'm like, "How is she going to handle this?" And just watching the way she chooses her words. I just watch it so closely. I'm so interested. So yeah, there has to be a certain level of conflict in the therapy room for that to happen. And so the therapist has to be courageous enough to kind of talk straight and say, "Hey, let me talk to you about what you're doing right now," and let me enter into this conflict a little bit. And then that's just a gift to the partner to say, "This is one way that you can face this person with integrity and power."Catherine: Yeah. And so it only works if the therapist can face what your partner's doing or what you're doing with integrity, power, kindness, all those things. You know, it's this relational transmission that has to work that way. It's not enough to offer tools or "I" phrases or any of that.James: It has to be demonstrated.Catherine: It has to be, and you can't fake it.James: No, you have to have gone through the fire yourself. This is what I love so much about the Crucible approach, is that Crucible training for therapists is 95% building the person of the therapist and 5% talking about technique. And that's the way it should be. It should be focused so much on the strength of the therapist.Catherine: Yeah. So if you're working with somebody and they get reactive and worked up at you or your partner, that's a limitation in how much they're going to be able to help you. And no one is able to stay calm and regulated with every personality and every type of dysfunction. That's not a realistic expectation of anybody. But yeah, there's got to be one calm person in the room if you're going to get anywhere.James: There has to be. Yes. It's so infinitely challenging. Well, you know what? I have a lot of compassion for this Coldplay couple. I do too. I honestly, I hope that both of them figure out their marriages. I hope that they find really good therapists and they figure things out and make things work. It's usually the best outcome when you have children with someone to try to find a way to create an amazing relationship with that person. It's just such a great blessing to offer your children. I was thinking the other day about what people want. And I think what people want is we want to be loved and we want our children to thrive. I think we want that very deeply. And so the path to that is more often than not trying to create a really solid marriage. Obviously, there are exceptions, but you got to at least give it a go.Catherine: So something I know we both talk to people about is generational emotional wealth.James: Yes.Catherine: And relational wealth.James: Yes. And this... oh, I've never called it relational wealth. Oh yeah. Okay. That's the perfect word. I love that.Catherine: So especially with this couple, you're looking at both of the marriages involved. These are people who obviously have valued passing financial wealth onto their children. They've set their kids up with a financial legacy.James: Almost everyone wants to provide their children at least some sort of financial assistance.Catherine: Yeah. Everyone wants to, but these are two families that really have done it to a degree most of us could only dream of. But what we're seeing here is the gap in the legacy that they're leaving their kids is around their emotional strength, their integrity, and their relational wealth. And especially when I work with people who have really kind of won the game financially already, where they're set up, their kids are set up, maybe their grandkids are set up, it's going to be fine for the foreseeable future, I talk to them about relational wealth and emotional wealth. It's like, "Look, you have secured this part of your kids' legacy, but what are you going to do about giving your kids the best possible start relationally and emotionally? Give them a shot at having a happy family, at ever feeling secure." And if either of these couples could pull this off, of really growing their marriage in the face of this kind of crisis, they would be securing their kids' relational legacy in a major way.James: That's a great metaphor.Catherine: If you can survive this, what's going to take you down?James: No, this is it. That's a pretty big one.Catherine: This is it. And you know, I love working with people who are ambitious, high achievers because they often can relate to giving their all to their relationship. I'll talk to them about like, "Have you ever tackled a relationship problem with the same level of commitment, intensity, and dedication that you take to your work?" So these are people who will work really hard, 18-hour days, or pull an all-nighter. It's like, when's the last time you pulled an all-nighter putting your full brainpower toward trying to figure out the next step in your marriage? People do this for their jobs far more than they do for their marriage.James: I use that technique too, which is I'll often say, "You look like the kind of person who has done several hard things in your life. And this is one more hard thing for you to do, and don't expect it to be easy, but the payoff is greater than any of the other hard things you've done."Catherine: Yeah. So I appreciated you saying that you have a lot of compassion for this couple because that's one of the things that I think is often missing when people talk about infidelity, is to have compassion. It's a very human failing.James: Oh, it's so understandable. It's just so normal. I think it's been helpful to me working with so many couples who are working through infidelity, that it's helped me feel more compassion for people in that situation.Catherine: And it's not to downplay how devastating it is. It really does break hearts and break families, and that's real. The cost is huge and it takes people sometimes years to work through it, but people do work through it. And there aren't enough examples, I think, of people who openly work through it. But that's possible.James: Alright. Should we wrap it up there?Catherine: You too.James: Okay. We'll talk again soon.Catherine: Okay. Thanks, James.James: Thanks, Catherine.

Catherine: The thing I’ve been thinking about is that mature love is courageous love. Infatuation and validation trades don’t require courage. Loving like a grown-up does. Absolute safety is a childlike expectation of love. If you had very brave, very grown parents, you might start life feeling safe. Most of us didn’t. So we have to step into love without guarantees; the felt safety comes after growth and bravery, not before.James: I’ve thought of courage as feeling afraid and doing it anyway. I agree safety in relationships follows from building a solid self. “I don’t feel safe” is largely about me, not you. For me, a solid self means confidence that I can take care of myself—ultimately, that’s why I’m safe as an adult. Depending on a partner to “take care of me like a child” isn’t stable; even if it worked, I could lose them.Catherine: Exactly. You can’t love your spouse well until you could even handle losing them. Otherwise you grip the relationship like a child. Mature love rests on “I can also take care of me.”James: Love demands courage because love is bounded by time. Even in the best case, one of us dies first. If I’m operating from insecurity and abandonment fears, that dread never stops. The only viable answer to “Who will take care of me if they leave or die?” is “I will.”Catherine: Which is a hard adult shift—learning to trust yourself. One challenge of marrying young is you may never have had to build that confidence by taking care of yourself first. Pragmatics aren’t enough; can you build a thriving life and soothe your own pain?James: People ask how to “self-soothe.” It’s hard to reduce to steps. Some teachers say “soothe yourself,” but resist oversimplifying it.Catherine: He gets a bit more granular in Already Free–style thinking: feet on the floor, breathe, stay with intensity. For me, self-soothing usually starts with self-compassion—talking to myself kindly like I would with a hurting child. When my son broke his arm, I couldn’t remove the pain, but I stayed present and kind the whole drive. I try to do the same for myself.James: In Already Free (Buddhist meets Western therapy), the Western move is “reduce distress,” the Buddhist move is “change the meaning you give it.” I’ve been experimenting with “permission to feel” humiliation or embarrassment for the rest of my life—yielding to the reality that distress comes with loving and being loved, and reframing it.Catherine: I call that “dropping the argument with reality.” If we accept we’ll feel boredom, loneliness, insecurity off and on for decades, we can run experiments to hurt less or move through it faster—without the desperation that it must disappear now.James: Surrender reduces intensity by changing meaning. Known pain (a sunburn) hurts less than mysterious pain at 4 a.m. Likewise, expecting distress—especially if we pursue intimacy—makes it more workable. If I push people away, I reduce intensity but also lose intimacy.Catherine: Right. Closeness brings us into closer contact with old pain. If we reject that truth, we’ll be tempted to avoid people.James: Our culture often implies relationships should be pain-free. That’s false. Distress is part of the system. So the courage is choosing, repeatedly, to get closer to you knowing it brings me closer to pain. Sometimes it helps to rename “unpleasant” as simply “intense.”Catherine: Many meaningful pursuits are intense in a difficult way—climbing a mountain versus helicoptering up. We’re built for challenge; even our entertainment craves it. Acts of courage move us.James: In relationships my recurring courage task is revealing more of myself. I’m strategic about what I show and hide. Courage is letting myself be plainly seen.Catherine: One of the hardest things to reveal is something you know is a problem in yourself that you’re not sure you can stop yet. Owning “I can be mean” can feel like handing over ammo that could be used against you. But if I won’t own it, I can’t change it; secrecy blocks growth.James: Small example: I snapped at Molly about testing the cabin internet. She had no ill intent; I was irritated that she didn’t read my mind. I caught it and owned it, instead of framing her as wrong. That’s courage too—exposing my part instead of positioning myself as innocent.Catherine: Another aspect of courage is not pushing your partner’s buttons even when you know how. Button-pushing keeps the other person reactive, gives you control, and gets you off the hook from your own values.James: Yes. We all know our partner’s triggers and can keep them in a reactive, defensive loop. That’s control, not love.Catherine: The bigger the gap between where your relationship is and where you want it, the more courage it takes—especially if you grew up with coldness or harshness. You have to see what you didn’t get and then love in ways you weren’t loved.James: It’s hard to imagine “better” without examples. You almost need to see consistent care and courage to believe in it.Catherine: Fiction helps: families in literature, even a show like Ted Lasso, where people grow from suspicion into care and accountability.James: Improv has rules that map to families: assume competence, care about your scene partner, build a coherent world together, and act in ways that invite the best in the other. Ask: does this bring out your partner’s best, even if the first response is defensive?Catherine: “What are you inviting?” is the right question. Even saying “I already checked the internet” can be said in a way that invites warmth or invites a fight.James: My snap was the old, automatic pathway. You can’t always delete those pathways, but you can strengthen new ones until they become your default.Catherine: Under stress we regress to old routes. Part of the work is grieving the childhood we didn’t have—consistent warmth, a baseline of safe love. The season to legitimately receive more than we give is over; that’s something to grieve and accept.James: Parenting exposed this for me. My capacity to care well for my kids is the same skill as caring for myself. I missed how okay I was with them not thriving. Now I measure my willingness to work for their thriving—and mine.Catherine: Growth as a parent also brings sadness and regret. One of my sons brought up a six-year-old memory where I was overly harsh. I can have compassion for the stress I was under and also say, “That was not okay.” When I clearly took responsibility—telling him he’d done nothing wrong and that my reaction was on me—he relaxed. His brain didn’t need to keep inventing a way it was his fault. That’s love through courage: reveal, own impact, relieve the child of carrying your innocence.James: That also shows why “I did my best” is the wrong frame. The question isn’t “Was it my best?” but “What was my impact? What was I inviting in my child?” “I did my best” is often a smokescreen to dodge responsibility now.Catherine: In that moment my priority wasn’t my child’s felt safety; it was preserving my job. Understandable, but there were kinder ways to pursue that priority. Saying “I did my best” pressures others to reassure you you’re good enough instead of taking accountability and doing something meaningful now.James: Becoming a parent means surrendering “innocence.” We all get frustrated with newborns; we’re not innocent, and pretending otherwise blocks growth.Catherine: Love, at its best, grows you up. Parenting can grow you up too. I had kids young and remember realizing: “I can’t be a baby anymore—he’s the baby.” It demanded I build adult capacity.James: I’ve been thinking about courage versus discipline. Discipline is doing what I don’t want; courage is doing what I fear. Another facet is owning agency—choosing without guarantees and relinquishing innocence. Fear often drives us to run; going toward the fear is often the growth path in intimacy, with judgment about context and trust.Catherine: My take: in adult life, you rarely get better love from someone else than you can give yourself. If there’s no inner container for love, you’ll deflect or drain what others offer. That’s why partners tend to end up at similar levels of maturity.James: When one partner grows, proximity pulls the other forward (or the leader back). Treating someone very well makes it harder for them to treat you poorly. In good therapy or coaching, you’re treated well—including in conflict—so you can internalize it and rise to it. The “rubber band” moves you both.Catherine: Exactly: care personally and challenge directly. “Ruinous empathy” is caring without challenge; “casually cruel honesty” is challenge without care. Real love does both, inviting the best from the other.James: It’s not the words alone; it’s what I’m inviting. Can I confront and hold eye contact—stay in contact while I challenge? Looking away often hides contempt or self-abandonment. As Steve Gilligan said to me, “Every time you look away, you abandon the little one inside you.” Self-soothing is refusing to abandon that part while tolerating intensity. Am I inviting you to solve a problem with me—or inviting you to a fight?Catherine: In long power struggles, partners instinctively push each other’s old buttons—the ones parents used—because those get big reactions. Over time you can end up acting like your partner’s parents without ever meeting them.James: So why do all this hard work? To love and be loved—and to be okay. Most of us doubt we can be fully known and loved, by others or ourselves. The only helpful confrontation is with love: “I can see you and still hold you as lovable.” Who you are isn’t defined by the distress I feel in my body when I’m with you.Catherine: The happiest moments in life come from peaceful, close contact—with people and with the world—if we can tolerate the intensity of happiness. It’s available, but our inner agitation makes us look away, numb out, or check our phones. We need new neural pathways that can bear intensity so we can be present for the good stuff.James: Intelligence isn’t the measure of a healthy brain. The best single indicator might be the capacity to make contact: to know and love another person (and yourself), to be fully present, to offer something solid and appreciate what’s offered back.Catherine: And to accept that most of what makes life good—shared meals, sunlight, stretch, simple creaturely pleasures, loving because we’ve chosen to—doesn’t require us to be impressive. We love our specific cat or dog not because it’s extraordinary, but because it’s ours. People are like that too. Choosing to love, and to keep showing up with courage, is the point.James: Should we wrap?Catherine: Yes—we have a dinner to enjoy.James: Thank you, Catherine.Catherine: Thank you.

Join James Christensen and Dr Corey from Sexy Marriage radio for a discussion of how marriage helps us grow. Dr. Corey Allan: https://smr.fmJames Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.com

Daniel Robertson joins me for a discussion about narcissism, how to heal narcissism, and how narcissism affects relationships.

This conversation mentions the book Already Free by Bruce Tift and the book The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. Learn more about Steve Thatcher at stevethatchercoaching.com

Relationship coach Daniel Robertson joins me to talk about non-violent communication in relationships. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a communication model developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s. It focuses on fostering empathy, compassion, and honest expression in interpersonal interactions. The main goal is to reduce conflict and build deeper, more respectful connections.NVC emphasizes that beneath every action is a human need. Conflict arises not because of the needs themselves but because of the strategies we use to meet them.Rosenberg breaks down NVC into four components:Observation — State what you observe without judgment or evaluation. Example: “When you arrive 30 minutes late…”Feelings — Express your emotions related to what you observed. Example: “…I feel frustrated and anxious…”Needs — Identify the universal human needs connected to those feelings. Example: “…because I need reliability and trust.”Request — Make a clear, doable, positive request. Example: “Would you be willing to call me if you’re going to be late?”

Catherine Roebuck joins James Christensen for a discussion of how to balance your brain. The left brain is a simplistic problem-solver with a narrow focus. It doesn’t understand people, it ignores context, and it constantly makes things up. The right brain maintains global awareness, remembers context, and loves complexity.The right brain understands and cares about peopleIn a balanced brain, the right brain calls the shots and helps the left brain focus on what is most important. When you’re angry or frustrated, your left brain is in charge. You can’t solve relationship problems in that state. Singing, dancing, telling stories, going outside, and any kind of full-body movement can help you activate your right brain.

In this episode, James Christensen and Catherine Roebuck explore what it means to truly come alive. They dive into how you can break free from childhood habits and internal restrictions that once held you back from genuine self-expression. Throughout the conversation, you'll discover:Evolving Relationships: How even small interactions, like casual banter or conversations with family, can shift from effortful to natural as you become more authentic.Overcoming Protective Barriers: Insights into how the brain builds protective pathways in childhood—and how you can deliberately create new pathways that allow for flexibility, humor, and connection.Practical Tools: The role of activities like joining a men's group or taking improv classes, which help you practice reacting naturally to life’s surprises using techniques like “yes, and.”Authentic Parenting: The importance of modeling vulnerability and self-reflection for your children, showing them that making mistakes is a natural part of growing up.Facing Reality: Strategies for reducing anxiety by embracing reality rather than clinging to imagined threats, and understanding that engaging with what’s real can lead to deeper, more fulfilling relationships.

8 Ways to Improve Communication in Your Relationship 1. Hit the Pause Button (10 Seconds or 10 Minutes)Before reacting to your partner, take a beat. There's magic in a well-timed pause. I like to think of two types:The 10-Second Pause: This is your quick breather. Take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, and then respond. This helps prevent blurting out something you might regret.The 10-Minute Pause: Feeling overwhelmed? Getting heated? This is your emergency brake. Tell your partner, "I'm feeling upset/flooded/defensive. I'll be back in 10 minutes." This gives you space to cool down and prevents a full-blown argument. It also lets your partner know that you are coming back, which can ease their worries.2. State Your IntentionBefore launching into a conversation, ask yourself: What do I hope to achieve? Being clear about your intention—both to yourself and your partner—can prevent you from falling into common traps. Are you actually looking for agreement? Approval? Are you simply venting anxiety? Maybe you're not even sure. Defining your intention brings focus and clarity to the conversation.3. Feelings Speak Louder Than WordsThe emotions you bring to a conversation have a far more significant impact than the specific words you choose. Your partner can sense your underlying feelings, whether it's anger, indifference, or genuine care. Trying to manipulate your partner's perception with clever wording doesn’t work in the long run. 4. Focus on the Now: Present Over PastHere's a fascinating fact about memory: when we're emotionally charged, our brains tend to reconstruct memories that reinforce our current feelings. So, if you're angry with your partner, your mind will dig up past events to "prove" your anger is justified. Conversely, positive emotions will bring up positive memories.The point? Arguing about the past is often a smokescreen. Your current feelings are likely rooted in something happening now, even if your brain tries to convince you otherwise. Instead of fixating on past grievances, take time to understand what your partner might be doing in the present that's triggering those negative feelings.5. Request Over ComplaintComplaints dwell on the past, are critical, and are drenched in negative emotion. Requests are about the future, involve positive emotions, and are non-critical.Complaints sound like this: "You never do this," "You always do that."Requests sound like this: "I would like you to do this," "I don't want you to do that."See the difference? Your partner can't change the past, but they can change their future actions.Requests are harder because they require you to figure out exactly what you want and to admit you need your partner's help. But it's worth the effort. Be clear, be kind, and understand they might say no (or say yes and not follow through). That's part of the deal.6. Reveal, dont’ ConvinceFocus on revealing your inner world to your partner. Share your observations, your perceptions of yourself and them, and your desires. In other words, reveal your perception and your preferences.Perception: What do you see in yourself, your partner, and the world?Preference: What do you want from your partner? How do you want them to treat you?⠀This approach can be especially helpful for high-conflict couples. Limiting communication to perception and preference helps avoid complaints, manipulation, and other unproductive patterns.7. Let Go of DefensivenessWhen you get defensive, you're essentially handing your partner the power to determine your worth. It reveals an internal struggle—you feel you need their approval to feel okay.Instead, cultivate curiosity. Listen to their criticism with an open heart and mind. You don't have to agree, but you don't have to fight it either. Remember, you are the ultimate judge of your own character. You decide what kind of person you want to be, and you can take your partner's feedback into account without basing your entire self-worth on it.8. Embrace DisagreementMost arguments boil down to a desperate need for agreement and approval. But guess what? It's okay to disagree! It's okay if your partner doesn't approve of everything you do or think.Of course, some decisions require a unified front (buying a house, having kids, etc.). But most of the time, seeking agreement is unnecessary. Every time you allow your partner to disagree without fighting for their approval, your relationship (and your sense of self) grows stronger.Final ThoughtsAs children, we all relied on external validation. But as adults, we must develop the ability to look inward, to define our own values, and to measure our own progress. Your partner can offer valuable feedback, but they shouldn't be the source of your self-worth. That's a job for you.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/SLRkSo03j4cJames Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.comCatherine Roebuck: https://catroebuck.com What happens after an affair? Should you stay or should you go? How do you rebuild trust? Why is it more important to trust yourself than to trust your partner?00:00- What happens when infidelity is revealed?00:32- The double impact of infidelity on trust01:13- Mind blindness and its roots in childhood01:46- Infidelity as a symptom, not the cause03:07- Counseling approach for couples dealing with infidelity04:18- Focusing on self-trust instead of partner trust05:26- Deception patterns in relationships07:32- Introduction to mind mapping in relationships08:42- Development of mind mapping skills in children09:28- Mind mapping in everyday situations10:13- The significance of tracking mind mapping in relationships11:38- Authenticity and intimacy in relationships13:06- Trusting your perception vs. trusting your partner14:16- David Schnarch's Dialogue tool for improving mind mapping15:07- Benefits of mind mapping work15:47- The process of developing mind mapping skills16:49- Final thoughts on living authentically 🔑 Key Takeaways: • Infidelity affects trust in both your partner and yourself • Focus on self-trust when dealing with infidelity • Mind mapping is crucial for understanding relationships • Authenticity leads to greater intimacy, even if it's challenging

Relationship Coach Catherine Roebuck joins me to discuss Dr. David Schnarch’s last book, Living at the Bottom of the Ocean.The book available as a free PDF download:  https://crucible4points.com/download-dr-schnarchs-last-book-manuscriptCatherine’s site:  https://catroebuck.comMy site:  https://jamesmchristensen.com Youtube video of this episode:  Dr. David Schnarch's Last Book with Catherine RoebuckDr. David Schnarch's book 'Living at the Bottom of the Ocean' offers a path to improve our thinking, emotional regulation, and relationships.Regression is a state of low functioning where we struggle to think clearly, regulate emotions, and have close relationships.Integrating the right brain and left brain is crucial for healing and personal growth.Reprocessing difficult memories through visualizations and dialogues can lead to profound shifts in thinking and behavior.By addressing our own regressions, we create a safer and healthier environment for our children and future generations.

How does PTSD work in relationships?00:50 Analyzing the Husband's PTSD01:57 Therapeutic Approaches to Relationship Issues02:48 Emotional Flashbacks and PTSD04:46 Therapist's Perspective on Relationship Dynamics06:13 Healing Through Couple Therapy08:11 Balancing Self and Relationship10:18 Attachment Injuries and Emotional Intensity12:29 Navigating Emotional Vulnerability16:02 The Role of the Partner in Healing18:14 Individual Responsibility vs. Couple's Problem19:55 Therapeutic Techniques and Challenges29:51 Emotional Problems in Relationships30:22 Addressing Relationship Shakiness30:56 Fear of Vulnerability32:01 Emotional Safety and Openness33:46 Role of Self-Improvement36:23 Therapist's Perspective on Relational Work38:54 Challenges in Emotional Healing46:28 Marriage as a Developmental Challenge55:25 Final Thoughts and Podcast Promotion

 In this episode, I join Chad Fraga LMFT to discuss sadism in adult relationships. Here is the transcript:   Okay. Uh, welcome to James Christensen podcast, the podcast with the most creative name in the world. Um, I guess today is Chad Fraga, LMFT and he brought a vignette from. The subreddit, am I the asshole? And we're gonna start with this vignette.So, so Chad, why don't you read the vignette and then let's talk about what we think about the situation. So yeah. Am I the asshole for telling my husband to stop eating like he's never seen food before? I will try to make this short, but don't judge.Just off the title 29. I'm a 29-year-old female. Went out to dinner with my husband, 28 fe uh, male last night. Nothing fancy, just a chain sports bar, and it's, and it, and it being a Friday, the place was packed. We sit, place our order, and we're catching up on the day. Everything's going fine. When the waitress brought out, brought out our appetizer, my husband grabs about four decent sized tortilla chips and scoops an actual mountain of spinach, dip with them and shoved the whole thing in his mouth.And when I say shoved, I mean shoved his fingers in his mouth with the food. By the time I'd had three chips with some dip, the entire rest of the appetizer was gone, so I was already irked and embarrassed because of, of course, people were starting, were staring at us. I said as much to him, and when he said he didn't see what he was doing wrong, I told him, you're acting like you've never seen food before.It's embarrassing. He didn't say another word to me after that and has barely spoke to me today either. I don't think I'm the asshole for telling him I was embarrassed by how he was eating and annoyed that most of the appetizer was eaten by him. But I may have taken it too far with the last comment. I.For further context. No, this isn't the first time this has happened. I've told him multiple times. It's embarrassing when he does this and asked him why. So I can try to help or at least understand a bit better. It's only at this specific chain, and his answer always is either, I don't know, or that he really loves Spinach dip.They have. He also does this at home, but I don't really care when he's at home because I'm not going to dictate how he acts in the privacy of our house. Also the No, but I'm sure people may ask. No, he did not grow up with food insecure household. They weren't rich but not struggling. And neither are we struggling now.No, there's no history of eating disorder either in his or my family. With all that said, am I the asshole? So what's your, what's your yes or no on this? Um, I believe that very few people are assholes. Um. But maybe there was some, it doesn't surprise me at all, but maybe their asshole behavior, and I don't even know if disqualifies an asshole behavior, but it was kind of mean.I, when I first, when I first read it, I was like, yeah, I don't know how, how are you imagining her emotional? So when you read it, I was imagining her sending, saying these things like in kind of a, a kind, collaborative way. But I doubt that's what really happened. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Tone obviously doesn't get, you know, translated very well via text, but, um, I, I, I imagine that she was trying to be playful.I, I don't think that she was actually really trying to insult him or hurt his feelings. I think she was trying to use the hyperbole to, to make her point. Um, but that's, that's not really relational thinking. That's kind of what my, my whole basis of this is, is you're not thinking relationally. I think that's what, um.I'm noticing at least. What about you though? What's your, I mean, you read it, what's your Yeah, so for me it's all, it's so interesting because she presented it as if, do the words I said make me an asshole. Right, right. And I think she's asking the wrong question. 'cause it has nothing to do with the words.I mean, the words were fine. Uh, what the question, like the real issue here is. Communication, especially, you know, in a marriage is 90% emotions and 10% words. And so the emotional load of what she said was way more important than whatever words she said. And I don't find the words she said to be particular offensive.Um, so. My guess is because this affects her emotionally. When she said this, there was a pretty heavy emotional load to what she said, and, and that is, you know, that's getting her further away from what she wants. So she wants, you know, she wants her husband to eat more politely in this restaurant and the way she handled it is not helping her case.Um, and. I don't know. It's just so important to get to the center of what's actually happening here is that, you know, she was experiencing significant emotional distress in this moment, and her solution to this stress was try to talk to him about what he was doing. Um, but then that increased his distress and it's gonna make him, it's just gonna make it really hard for him to chase, to change his behavior.Yeah. And I think what, I don't know if we wanna start. Um, going into this side of the thought that I had, but one of the things that really struck me was that, um, you know, she says that like, um, this isn't the first time it's happened. I've told him multiple times, he also does it at home, but I don't really care about that very much because at home, if you're gonna embarrass yourself, that's on you. And so there's this idea of this image thing about what they look like out in public as a couple. And that to me felt very judgy. That to me was something that, you know, maybe your partner doesn't have very good manners, and what are you gonna do with that when you are out into public and how do you go about. Working with your partner when they potentially don't have the best manners, are you going to just accept them for who they are or are you going to talk to them about how that maybe impacts you? Right. I think, I think you can do both. I think you can accept them for who they are and state your preference.And so I always talk, I, I encourage couples to talk about perception and preference, and so this case it would be, hey. You know, my perception is that you, um, eat like you've never seen food before. You eat very rapidly, um, when we're out in public, uh, much more rapidly than I would like you to eat. So my preference is that you slow down and eat more slowly.Um, and it is significant that this affects her more when they're in public than, than when they're at home. My guess is that it's harder for her to pay attention to how her husband treats her when they're at home, uh, because she's probably kind of used to being poorly treated, would be my guess, and that when she's in public, she's more sensitive to being judged by others, and so she's more sensitive to his behavior in the way that it might affect the way others see her, as opposed to if he treats her poorly at home.She might not even pay attention to that because she might have a kind of a blindness or an insensitivity to that kind of treatment, and this would probably be something that's left over from childhood for her. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, you went straight into attachment stuff and how she was able to really show up for this moment. Hey, you know, I, I feel for her though, because she's clearly frustrated. You know, she's clearly frustrated. It's on a Friday after a long week maybe, you know, she's not her best self. Do I think she's the asshole. Not necessarily. How would you phrase it though? What would you call what she was doing? Um, I think it's good that she spoke up and I think, uh, there's, I think the way you do it matters.And so my suspicion is I. She wasn't as civil about it as the way she portrayed it in her writeup. And so when we write these things up, we portray ourselves as being, well darling, the way you are eating is not quite considerate in reality. She was honestly quite frustrated. She was probably pretty angry in, in that anger carried through in her voice, and that's really the issue.What she's saying is very reason. It's just, it's a very reasonable request. You know, um, I kind of identify with, I have a tendency to eat very quickly, and so like, there's a little sensitivity here, but it's very reasonable to ask your partner to eat slowly. Like that's a, just a reasonable request.Especially like, you know, if you're sharing this dish and heats 80% of it and only saves 20% of it for her, totally reasonable. And the way you make that request matters a lot. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to note too is obviously his reaction to this, which is basically moving away, not speaking to hi her for, you know, a whole day. Totally stonewalling, totally avoiding the conversation, creating this power dynamic in the relationship that doesn't work towards healing. Right. And just saying like, well, I, you, you don't get, you don't deserve to be talked to at this point, right? Because of how much you hurt me, right? Mm-Hmm. And that, that to me showed a lot of immaturity.If that's what happens, um, you know, with, with the man in this instance, I, you know. Show up to the occasion, you know, show up and say, Hey, what you said was hurtful, or whatever he's feeling, I'm assuming at that point was that he felt really hurt. He felt called out, he felt judged that he doesn't feel supported by her or whatever it is.He needs to be able to talk through that with her. That's, that's kind of why I was thinking about that and his behavior too. Yeah. And I would see that as a punishing behavior. And so, you know, him withdrawing that way is just making it clear that, uh, if you stand up to me, I'm going to punish you by withdrawing my affection from you and even my presence, like I'm not gonna talk to you at all.Um, very common. I mean, it's fight or flight, right? And so it's just a very common technique to try to control a person who's saying, well, if you don't treat me the way I wanna be treated, um, then you don't get to be with me at all. You don't get to have any interaction with me. So yeah, just as a level of I. I wanna say immaturity, but I don't wanna sound mean when I'm saying that. I mean, really, I think men try to go about, especially men, try to go about solving their emotional problems in very immature ways, and him being able to withdraw, throw up the power struggle. You know, I. Put the mode around him, you know, that's not really solving your problems, so, mm-hmm.Yeah, so, so my advice to her in this situation would be, you know, so she does the thing in the restaurant and then he withdraws, and now they're stuck in this, you know, stonewalling situation. And so I would say this is a great opportunity for you to come and apologize for what you did, which is like, hey, um. I got defensive in the restaurant last night and I'm really sorry. Yeah. Okay. And that would be the end of the apology. Okay. And he probably, you know, he reacts, how he reacts, it doesn't matter. And then the next part would be, um, you know, I prefer that you not eat that way. Um, not only when we're in public, but I prefer that you not eat that way whenever we're eating together, because that's uncomfortable for me.Um, and I would like to eat with someone who eats more slowly. Yeah. Just, there's this weird part of me that wants to. It doesn't feel right because I, I agree with you on one hand, but there's something in my body that's telling me that it's not right. To tell your partner that I don't agree with how you're eating.Like, I, I don't know. It doesn't that feel weird to you? Like it feels weird. Like, it's almost like saying I don't agree with how you walk. Like, like, wait, what do you mean? Like, you can't just say that you don't like, I don't know. What, what do you think about that? That's what makes intimate relationships so difficult is because there's literally no other person in the world whose style of eating affects me other than the person I live with. And so, you know, if you are gonna be my life partner, we're gonna be eating together for the next 20 years. Yeah. The way you eat is important to me. And, and it is weird, but there's so much that's weird about marriage. You know, the way you sleep matters to me, the way you smell matters to me, um, especially the way you manage your money.That matters a lot to me. And whereas all of the other, you know, 8 billion people in the world honestly get to do whatever they want. Well, and you get to do whatever you want too, but. The things you do affect me significantly. Um, doesn't mean you don't have a choice, but it's just important for me to kind of be honest with you that, you know, this has a real impact on me.And I, I can pretend it doesn't, but that's never gonna work out in the long run. Right? And really the only solution is just say, Hey, this is my preference. Realizing that in the end, you get to choose how you eat. I don't get to choose that for you. And that's, that's the key point, is. I will still treat you well if you choose to continue eating this way.That's so important, right? Yeah. Just that unconditional love and support you, you know, it's not conditional of whether, how he eats. You still have a right to say that it affects you. Mm-Hmm. But it doesn't mean that you're gonna withdraw your love. Right? Another thing I like to say with my couples is, um, everything you do affects your partner. And I always get pushback on that. They're like, really everything, like what I choose to go eat for lunch during my workday doesn't affect my partner. And I always say like, yes it does. If you eat a bunch of beans and you go home at night and at nighttime, you're, you're, you're bombing up the bed. I'm married to a woman who can't stand the smell of garlic.And so what you're saying, what you're saying is so true to me, and this is, you know. I love garlic, but I also eat very little of it because I guess you could say I don't love garlic as much as I love my wife, and it's really just, it's just not that big of a sacrifice to me because it really affects her.She has this incredibly sensitive nose and the smell of garlic is highly offensive to her, and, um, she's not mean about it. But it really does affect her. And so like when she goes away for a week, oh man, the garlic comes out like, like it is party time. We're having garlic bread and garlic toast and garlic fries and, and, and it's delicious.And then, you know, a couple days before she comes back, the garlic goes back away and it's just, it's just part of being in a marriage is making room for the other person. Yeah. And, and if, if she was like making a dozen unreasonable requests, then that would be different. But she's not, you know, she's not like intentionally trying to cramp my style or saying, I can't eat this, I can't eat that.Right. It's just a reasonable accommodation. Yep. And, and if you think it's unreasonable, like for example, if this guy were to think that what she's asking about how he eats is unreasonable. That's fine. That's, that's your choice. You get to decide what you think you want is acceptable to you in a marriage.If you, but then that means that you may not be married. Mm-Hmm. So you have to make that decision. Yeah, absolutely. What's important to you. Right. And, and if I did, like if I do decide to eat garlic, um, you know, then it's important for me. So I make the decision to eat garlic and, and she probably is not gonna kiss me for a couple days.And that's also reasonable. It's just. It just kind of makes sense. And so me to say, well, you have to kiss me even though ate garlic. I mean, come on. Like, like, you just need to be real about these things. Yeah. Um, and, and the core principle here is that if I can hold her in my heart in a loving way, then I'm gonna be able to work these things out.And if I'm seeing her as, you know, ants at my picnic, or an annoyance or an obstacle, then I'm not gonna work anything out. Everything's gonna be, you know, every single molehill is becoming a mountain. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to talk about with, with this post was the fact that she posted this on, am I the asshole thread?Yeah. And I think it's really significant because the whole premise, there's a, there, there's a two sides to the same coin here. When, when you post something on this thread, one side is there's a level of curiosity. I mean, you're asking the question, right? There's a level of like. Am I like, you know what I mean?There's also a level of ego. There's a level of, I don't think I did anything wrong. And you're looking for that validation on both sides of the coin, right? You're looking to see, look, I'm such a curious person. I'm not the asshole. I'm, I'm good. And there's this ego on the other side saying, I'm right. See, look, I'm not the asshole.And, and you, you're setting up the question in a way that you're gonna win on both sides. And again, it just feeds into this idea that you're not thinking relationally when your partner withdraws after you said something at dinner and you're going and, and you're noticing that they're really, really upset, the first question shouldn't be, I don't think what I did was wrong.Am I the asshole? The first question should be. Man, my partner is really upset. I don't like that. Whatever happens, this was the result and I don't like it and I want to go fix that and repair that regardless of whether I think that I'm the asshole or not. Okay. If I think that I'm righteous on top of righteous Hill, that's fine, but that's not thinking relationally.Go redo the repair work. That was my thought, but I don't know what you think. Yeah, I think that, I mean, first of all, this kind of assumption that there's only one asshole is always wrong, you know? Right. And, and second, you know, I mean, if I treat my wife poorly, there's a really good chance she's gonna treat me poorly back. And, and maybe she goes first, maybe I go first. It doesn't really matter.Uh, it's always my responsibility to treat her well, kind of no matter what. Like, there's never an excuse for, you know, adults to just be like treating each other like children. So. Yeah, I think that. We have more power, kind of in tune with what you were saying. We have so much more power to improve our relationships unilaterally than we want to admit.We always wanna say, oh, I'm a poor, innocent victim. I can't do anything about it. You know, this horrible person is just mistreating me. And, and there was some truth to that for a lot of us when we were five years old. You know, there was some truth to that where, where you didn't have much power and you probably were mistreated.I mean, we all were, to a certain extent. I mean, kids are, it's hard to take really good care of a kid and so. In adult relationships, we just want to pretend that we have like 10% of the power we actually have, where I really do have the option to treat my wife really well all the time. That is a choice available to me.Now, maybe I don't have the emotional maturity to do that, but I have the choice to go try and develop that emotional maturity and, and I'm gonna say, well, she has to go first. She blah, blah. You know, all the things. But in the end. I have choices, I have options, I have resources. I can learn to be a better husband, and that's what I can do to make my marriage better.Yep. And this is, I mean, it's such an opportunity here too, to really lean into your, your couple values and your family values at this point, right? Like the value of I commit to a no yelling household. I commit to never calling you names. I commit to, you know, the things that you say you commit to when you marry somebody, you know, step up.These are the moments that they say when marriage is hard, these are the moments that you need to step up and, and be able to do that repair work. Um, so it, it's inspiring. It's a great opportunity. Um, I don't think she's the asshole, but, um, I think there's, uh, there's definitely some work on both of them to be done. And there's always this opportunity where, I mean, she definitely got defensive in that situation. Like there's no way. Um, and, and unless she, yeah, there's no way, you know, just the way she, the fact that it was important enough to her to go and write about it on Reddit means that there was an emotional charge.And so when I bring a negative emotional charge to my wife, that's something for me to apologize for. It really is because, um. I don't want to be the kind of husband who brings these negative emotional charges to my wife. It doesn't mean I'm not gonna confront her about things. That's really important.I'm gonna step into like this collaborative conflict, but I can come to my wife and say, Hey, this is what I see you doing and this is what I want you to do. And I can do that with just like pure love in my heart and that's the solution. Um, and so, you know, I don't think that's what she did. And that means that she has this opportunity now that he's stonewalling all this stuff, she has an opportunity.Go and apologize for her part in it. Um, and confront Tim about his part in it and, or you don't have to do both. At least apologize for your part. If you want to go the extra mile, say, um, you know, I think that you are withdrawing your love and affection from me to punish me for what I did. Yeah, you can say that.And, uh, it's not necessarily going to change his behavior, but that's not the point. The point is. You know, am I doing what I can to take really good care of myself and the relationship? And by stepping into that kind of conflict, you can avoid falling into like a reasonable accommodation trap where you're like, well, he won't talk to me.There's nothing I can do about it, so I'm just gonna hate him silently, you know, for the rest of the week or whatever. So that's like, that's what you avoid by, I always tell couples to step into more conflict and not less, because most couples have not even close to enough conflict in their relationship.It's the avoidance is what's killing them. Sure. Yeah, usually there's two sides to that coin that some people are wanting to stir up all the conflict and they, the person's trying to quell it and s you know, stomp it out. Yeah. Sometimes there, there, there often is that, that pursuer distance or dynamic where someone's trying to bring things up.Often the person who's trying to bring things up is trying to bring up the wrong things though. So it really does matter what you argue about. Um, so like once she already brought up his eating thing, you know, that. We just, we think these things take like 30 minutes to talk about. They don't, they take 30 seconds, you know, Hey, I want you to eat slower.That's literally the end of, that's the whole thing. Like, there's nothing else to say. Um, I want you to not stonewall me also into that. You know, there's just nothing else to say. You don't need to justify, you don't need to qualify it, you don't need to explain it. It's like, I'm a person. I'm your person.Uh, I, I want to matter to you and I want you to care about what I want, and this is what I want. Um, and you get to say no, but I'm not gonna pretend that I don't want what I want. And like, like in my relationship, you know, I don't ever want to be stonewalled, you know, and obviously it's going to happen sometimes, but when it happens, it's important for me to say, Hey, I noticed, you know, you haven't talked to me or touched me for the last 24 hours.Um. I just want to like, bring that onto the light and just say, Hey, this is what's happening right now. Yeah. This is what's happening in our marriage right now. And I know you have your reasons. Um, and hopefully I already apologize for whatever my role in this was. Right. But, but it's important to face the reality of like, this is what's going on right now.Right. So I'm wondering can we, can we role play that out with you asking her or you being her and asking me, I want you to eat slower, period. Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's say this is like, um, let's say this is the next day and, and you're stonewalling. And, uh, so Chad, I want to talk to you about what happened in the restaurant last night. Yeah, I, I wanna talk about it too. This is, uh, kinda bugging me. Okay, so first off, I got really defensive and I treated you poorly, and I'm really sorry for that. That's not the kind of person I want to be. And I know that I made it hard for you to be there with me because I was angry and upset and I felt embarrassed, and, um, that's all on me.So I want to just let you know that I'm really sorry for how I handled the incident. I mean, I, I appreciate you saying you're sorry. I, I don't know if you know why you're sorry, because I think you're sorry for me not talking to you. Um. You're sorry because, and I don't, I don't know what you mean by defensive.Um, you were attacking, you basically insulted me and that was kind of hurtful. Yeah, I, I agree that I treated you poorly and so what I'm apologizing for is that I got emotional. I got defensive. Um, and so yeah, I did lash out at you and I, and I, and I embarrass you in the restaurant. And I am sorry for that. Um, I, I'm not saying that I'm sorry for you stonewalling. I'm saying that I'm sorry for what I did. Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that. I guess this is the only time you've criticized me though, about my eating and I, I don't understand why that you, you're, uh, you're getting frustrated about the way that I eat. Well, there's kind of two things. First is that I, I do have a preference for you to eat slower, right? And so, so me getting upset about it is on me. Um. But I do want to make it clear that, uh, it's really uncomfortable for me when, when you eat very quickly, especially when I'm out in public, I know you do it at home too, that bothers me less.But I would still prefer that you eat more slowly, even when it's just us. W why though? Why, why do you care about how fast I eat? Um, why does that bother you? That's a really good question. So, so when we were out last night, I was concerned about what everyone else was thinking about us. So, so I was worried about everyone else kind of judging us because of the way you were eating. You were eating very quickly. Like, I mean, if I looked around the restaurant, no one else was eating that way.So, uh, there's just like an expectation in society that you eat a certain way and you were violating that expectation as, as to why it bothers me so much. I. Um, I really don't know. Um, I obviously, you know, I want to not be so fragile around this and to be able to handle it better. Um, but it does bother me e even if it didn't bother me, like, you know, we had this, this spinach dip and you ate about 80% of it, and, and by the time I got to the point where I was gonna have my third bite, it was all gone.Yeah. That part I do recognize and I don't want, you know, I wanna make sure that I'm not eating the whole plate. That's. That's not fair to you. The other part of, though, as far as the embarrassment, I mean, I don't know. I wanna, there's a part of me that wants to argue back with you, like, who cares what other people think?You know what I mean? Like, I, you know, other people can be judgmental of how I eat to forever. If it's not judging me how I eat, it's gonna be judging what I wear. It's gonna be judging something. And for us, I don't want us to, to, to, to mold our behaviors or ways that we do things because of what other people are doing.Or what people are thinking. I want us to be a unit and we're strong and we decide what we want to do as a couple. Um, I understand, you know, image does play a part in some things, whether it be in business, whether it be in whatever, you know, um, neighbor relationships. But, um, you know, I, I, I don't want to me eat less because I don't want to be embarrassed by other people that that's not something that's a value of mine.That's where I'm seeing a little bit of my frustration coming from is that you're placing a big value on how other people look at us, and that's not a value of mine. If you were gonna say something like, the reason why I want you to eat slower is because I wanna enjoy the meal with you. When you eat super, super fast, it doesn't feel like you can slow down with me.It doesn't feel like you're present with me. That's something that I can get behind because I care about presence with you. I care about our commitment to, you know, sharing a meal together and breaking bread. I don't care about what other people think about me and I, and I, I guess it's surprising to hear that you. I, I didn't, I didn't know that that was a, that was a big deal for you and I'm, I'm feeling that maybe we have differences in values that we could, we could talk through. Yeah, I think that's part of it. And uh, also, you know, I have a pretty strong preference for you to eat more slowly when we're just eating at home too.So it would be much more comfortable, like, you know, if we have dinner together at home, I would love for us to both kind of eat at the same rate. You know, just kind of like a more gradual pace. There's honestly, there's probably something going on where I'm probably judging you in your mind for eating too fast in my mind.Like, and that's, there's stuff for me to look at there. Um. Because that's what, that's what it felt like to me. It felt like you were judging me for me eating fast because of the people who were looking at us. And that's what was so hurtful. Yeah. No, that you're right. That's what happened. Yeah. And I'm sorry for that.Yeah. So, um, you know, separate from that, it's, it's hard for me to, it's hard for me to imagine. I don't think that I'm ever going to reach this place where I'm going to, you know. I just don't think I'm gonna be ever totally okay with you. Eating as quickly as you ate last night, like that seems pretty unrealistic to me.And I definitely want to be more kind about it, but I don't think I'll ever agree with it. Yeah, and that if that's something that is really, really important to you because of a shared value of art, like I said, we wanna make sure that we're eating bread together, that we're experiencing the meal together.We don't get that many times to go out on dates on Friday nights. I, I get that right. But what I don't want to have happen is the reason why you want me to slow down is because of what other people are saying. That's, that's not something I'm gonna get behind. Um, and I'm, I'm really glad that we talked this through because like, you know, there's other instances where I do feel like you're judging me because of other people's view of me. Right. And, and I don't, I guess I don't, I don't want that to happen, right? If it's something that when it comes to us and our family and it's affecting us. I am all ears. A hundred percent. And you're right, I shouldn't be eating that fast when I'm out to dinner with you because I, I wanna spend the time with you and I, I, I'm focusing more on the food than us coning a conversation that's not okay. But, um, but I'm glad that you brought it to my attention like this, and I, and I really hear you. It's very generous of you. Thank you. Yeah. Man, we're such a great couple. I mean, obviously we're, you know, we're, we're roleplaying, but like, I mean, man, how amazing would the world be if, if couples were able to do that? We'll get it there. Yeah. No, that was awesome. Yeah, that was actually really fun. That was great. Roleplay. Yeah, that really is how it's done. Uh, it's hard because none of us really saw our parents do that. Yeah. And so, you know, we all step into marriage and we're like, we know how to do the thing. And it turns out we don't know how to do the thing.I, we can learn. But I have people tell me all the time, like, the way you talk when you go into those role plays, Chad, like, I'll be honest with you, like I've had, I've had a man say this to me. He, it sounds whack. And I was like, what do you mean by whack? And I, you know, he was like, people don't talk like that.And I was like, imagine if they did. It's true. I didn't know you did role plays like that. Oh, I do role plays like this all the time with my class. Okay. This is fantastic. I do role plays all the time too. Yeah. Oh yeah. I've, I've been playing with this, so I go to dance, my wife and I go to dance class, dance lessons every, every Friday, and I was just, it just hit me the other day how I.Couples therapy is a lot like a dance lesson where the goal is to be dancing better at the end of the session than you were dancing in the beginning. And I was like, this is just so useful for me as a therapist. I'm like, if I look at how you're managing conflict at the beginning of the session and how you're managing the end, I want there to be a difference there.Like there needs to be progression during the session. 'cause otherwise what are we doing? You know? Yeah. If, if you're not getting better at managing conflict during a marriage therapy session, how can I expect you to get better at doing it in between sessions? So, so I, I've just been thinking about it a lot and I started out in marriage being a really bad dancer, and my wife was a pretty good dancer.And so we've been going to dance class for like. Several months now, and I'm almost getting to the point where I can almost call myself a dancer and it's actually really cool, but, but I'm relying on, you know, professional instruction to get there. It would be really hard, like I could go on YouTube and teach myself how to dance and that'd be so hard.It's so much easier just to have a professional there. He's so good. And he'll look at me and he'd be like. This is what you're doing wrong. He'll just show me and he'll like, move my elbow or something. And for me to like figure that out from YouTube would be like 10 times harder. And so it just really makes me appreciate the role of a skilled professional, let's say this is what you're doing and this is what you want to do and this is how you change.Um, and that's kind of how I see my role as a couples therapist. You're making my point for in-person therapy too. I mean. Cool. But I mean, yeah, you can do a lot of work on, on video, but yeah, I mean, in person it just, there's a different feel for sure. There is. There is a difference. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me and going over this. Yeah. Should we wrap it up there? This was a great conversation. Yeah, this was great.We'll do this again. Yeah. All right. Take care. Okay.

 In this episode, I join Chad Fraga LMFT to discuss sadism in adult relationships. Here is the transcript: James: So culturally, we think, oh, sadistic behavior is rare. It's like this outlier, like there's a small percentage of the population that is routinely sadistic and Schnarch says. No, he says in most marriages there is sadistic behavior on both sides most of the time. When I first read Schnarch like six years ago, it like turned my world upside down and specifically it really changed the way I saw myself there's no shame and there's no judgment and there's no condemnation there. It's just this is where we're starting from, and we're capable of becoming kind and loving and considerate and courageous, but only if we face the reality of where we are in the first place. James: And so he'll often say, don't work with couples who don't hurt each other on purpose. Because if you think you're not hurting each other on purpose, then you're refusing to acknowledge reality. And if you refuse to acknowledge reality. James: We won't be able to get anywhere because you're pretending you're not starting where you're really starting. So it is an unusual view, especially in the world of couples therapy. In the world of couples therapy. The general assumption is that when we hurt each other, it's accidental. Oh, I didn't mean to, that wasn't my intention. James: Say, if I've been living with someone for 10 years and I'm regularly hurting their feelings, there's this idea that's an accident even though it's happening, say a dozen times a week. James: And that just seems a little far out to me. Chad: No, there's definitely ways in which couples purposely hurt their partners. I, one thing I don't agree with is that we inherently want to do that. And that to me is the reason why I think I had such a charge conversation about it and thought about it so much was because I think it's a really dangerous, tricky, slippery slope. Chad: Because I'm wondering how does that help couples encourage courage? Behavior change. If you're telling somebody that, I don't believe you, that I believe that you're doing this on purpose, and I believe that you're doing it because you're evil. It doesn't really, it's not very inviting to the James: I wouldn't say the last part. I don't think people are evil. Chad: When you say people are do sadistic behaviors, there's this idea of between right and wrong, and I think evil comes up with it. And then this is what I'm talking about. Like the conversation we're having has been happening for several centuries. Chad: Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, they did it and then they're also talking, before as well in, in ancient Greek philosophy as well. So I don't know if we ever really will know the answer. But I think the premise of starting from a very hobbesian, leviathan type of approach, which is that people essentially need to be controlled. Chad: People need to be, have rules and regulations because people are naturally going to do bad things, I think is what's problematic in relationships. 'cause it doesn't breed an opportunity of wanting to. See the inherent good in somebody, and when you don't see the inherent good in somebody, I think that it starts a conversation off in a very defensive, critical way, and it's not very inviting. Chad: It's not I don't wanna show up to the plate if someone's calling me evil or saying no, you did that and you did that on purpose. I think that's difficult for someone to hear and for someone to be able to want to show up for that. James: I think the root of this is what I would call benevolent parent bias. Where children are programmed to see their parents as benevolent. Even when they aren't right. James: And so we all had parents who were benevolent to a certain extent. And many of us had parents who were definitely not benevolent in certain situations. And the problem is that a child's brain is programmed to only see the good side. It's pretty easy to imagine a reason why we would be programmed to see mom and dad in a positive way. 'cause that does. Improve chances of surviving childhood, which until say 200 years ago was a really big deal. So we're designed to survive childhood. Part of surviving childhood is sticking with mom and dad no matter what. James: Part of sticking with mom and dad, no matter what is mom and dad are okay no matter what. And I know you've worked with people who've been abused as children. I have two. And they always say the same things. They say, mom and dad didn't know what they were doing. Mom and dad didn't mean to hurt me. Mom and dad didn't know they were hurting me. James: And they definitely didn't enjoy hurting me. And then you kinda look at the reality and that doesn't line up. It just doesn't line up. So once again, you're creating this world where people are in an organized fashion, in a predictable fashion, hurting innocent children by accident. And they're not getting any benefit from it. James: It just doesn't add up. People don't behave that way. We don't accidentally do the same thing in an organized fashion over and over on a daily basis. Chad: I agree. They don't do it on accident. That's not that people don't do bad things. Necessarily because it's a complete, just oh, I just happened to do this. What I believe, and I think like you said, I'm on the camp of the majority of couples therapists, is people do this because they're playing out their maladaptive coping ideas of what makes sense in their head. Chad: It's pretty hard for us to stomach the idea that someone in their right mind thinks that it's a good thing to abuse a child. However, when you talk to somebody like that and you ask them, what was the tension like? 'cause I refuse to believe that you are evil, that you're just a bad person, that you're just someone who wants to purposely hurt your child. Chad: Why was it that you hit your child? And James: but I wouldn't say you're evil. I would just say you're normal. Because, the default is that the chain of abuse continues and, I'm programmed in a certain way in childhood and I carry in that programming. And then hopefully we stand up and we say, I'm gonna break that chain. James: The act of breaking the chain. I really think that for me to break the chain, I have to face the reality of what actually happened. And the reality of what actually happened is usually, if I'm a person who was routinely abused as a child. Someone was enjoying that or it wouldn't have happened over and over, like someone was someone, was it? James: It was ego syntonic, someone was receiving some kind of pleasure or benefit from doing that. 'cause people do not routinely do things they don't like to do unless there's some sort of incentive to do it. Chad: Absolutely. They were doing it to serve a purpose or a role to feel that they're powerful, to feel that they're in control, to feel that they were helping their child, and all those are things are the reasons why, but they didn't do that because they enjoy inflicting pain in their child. And that's my belief. Chad: I, I don't believe that they said I'm gonna continue to do this because I like to see my child hurt. If that would happen. That that's very evil in nature. I believe that they're doing it, but it's like you said, there is a positive reaction to it for themselves, but they're not saying, the positive reaction is, I love seeing my child hurt. Chad: They're not gonna say that, James: One of my favorite stories about this comes from Terry Terry Warner, who started the Arbinger Institute. There's a bunch of books. Some people have heard of him, but Terry Warner tells this story about a father waiting for his son to come home by midnight curfew. So the father's waiting up, he's waiting, it's 1155, no one's here. James: It's 1157. And then at 1159, the son pulls into the driveway and runs through the door, and he made it by curfew. What emotion does the father experience in that moment? Is the father rejoiced? Or is the father disappointed And the answer is the father is usually disappointed because he was getting ready to enjoy punishing his child. James: That's the normal state of human affairs, and this is something we just don't face in therapy world most of the time, is that for most parents and most spouses, we enjoy getting a jab in at the other person. Chad: What would be the enjoyment of wanting to that, that he was disappointed in that story? What's the enjoyment that, because I guess I'm confused on what would be enjoying, James: So it yeah. So most of us face this problem, this crisis of, am I good enough? Am I okay? And the default way of answering that is, I'm good enough and I'm okay because I'm a little bit better than someone else. And it's so tempting as parents, if I'm an adult and I'm raising a teenager and that teenager breaks the rule, it's once again ego tonic. There's this little sliver of pleasure and saying, aha, I gotcha. And I don't know. I just see that all the time and I see it, I see it in parents all the time. I see it in spouses all the time. I, and it's just, once I see it, I can't unsee it. And so I would call that sadistic like if the father is disappointed that his son got home before curfew. James: That seems like kind of sadistic pattern to me Chad: What? But again I guess I'm just wanting to be more cur, like when you say disappointed, what do you mean by disappointed? James: because, 'cause he was looking forward to being able to berate the son because he was looking forward to the ego boost from feeling superior to the son because he, the father is being the good one and his son is being the bad one. Now if his son shows up on time. Then the father doesn't be, doesn't get to feel superior to the son 'cause the son, because the son fulfilled his agreement to come home by midnight. Chad: Sure, and the disappointment relies you believe in the action of wanting to hurt his son because he believes that he's gonna feel better about it. But I'm wondering. What does him hurting him son do for him? What? James: Oh, I just told you it, it helps you like, like when I push another person down, I feel better about myself. And so it comes from this place of personal unworthiness. I don't feel good about me. And the normal solution to that is I'm gonna start, I'm gonna try to feel a little bit better about me by pushing someone else down. James: And this is so common in parenting. Chad: It's a classic bully behavior, right? This is what bullies do on the playground, right? I'm gonna push you because I hate myself or I don't know what I'm doing. I believe though the real behavior change and the real second order change that can happen with that father though, is realizing that you don't need to feel powerful. Chad: That it's okay that you are walk, you have to grieve the fact that you're walking through the day feeling that you're not strong enough or powerful enough. And that is the true second order change. Not saying, not calling out, oh, you really wanted to hurt your child, didn't you? Because James: the way you're talking about it is not the way I would talk about, because you're talking about the way a bully would talk about it. But I think there's a third way, which is. I can talk to you about what your experience was of putting down this other person, but I can do it in a kind and loving way because, 'cause you're picking up something which is really dangerous, which is if I, the therapist, then step into this role and say, I'm gonna put you down so I can feel better about me, which also happens in therapy all the Chad: Sure. James: That, that is just the same thing happening over and over again. And therapists are specifically vulnerable to all of those mistakes that parents make, and especially to the mistakes that our parents made. Chad: No, but I guess I'm, I guess my fear is that if you hold the stance that people are doing sadistic behaviors because they enjoy it. And I'm fearing that in therapy as a therapist, you are going to be replaying that bully mentality because your job is to try to root out that evil sense of sadistic behavior in them. Chad: And they're James: and if I fall into that trap, obviously, then I'm just doing the thing that I'm preaching against. Chad: Exactly.  James: So I don't think the solution is to pretend that people aren't who they are. I think the solution is to tell the truth with love. And I do think that's possible. Chad: But I think this is where the conversation goes back to, we don't know who people really are. We you have this philosophy that you think people are really sadistic in nature, but that's a philosophy that's not true, that's not rooted  James: But I don't, I don't look at it that way. I look at observations of individual people and so I'll watch a couple in therapy and I'll watch one, get in a jab at the other one, and then I'll watch their face and like after, after they hurt their partner's feelings. Did they feel better about themselves or did they feel worse? James: And that's like an in the moment observation. And if I in the moment observe this person just got an ego boost from putting their partner down, which is the normal result, I'm not gonna pretend that didn't happen just to make that person feel better. Chad: But they didn't, my opinion, they didn't do. The putting their partner down on purpose so that they can get the ego boost. That was not the intention. The intention was to feel like they are I don't know. Maybe they're think that they're actually helping their partner because they are gonna tell them that, look, when you show up on time and you or you show up late all the time, this isn't helping us. Chad: So you need to hurry up. And they think that belittling is going to actually result in some behavior change. James: Which reminds me a lot, a, again, of the excuses we make for abusive parents, right? Oh, my mom didn't really want to hurt me. My mom was doing it for my, my, my parent was not trying to hurt me. It was like for my better, for my betterment. It was for my good. They didn't know what they were doing. And I honestly, okay. James: I think that most therapists had above average difficulty in childhood. I think there's a reason we become therapists and I think because of that, we're more susceptible to this child mind blindness than most people. And because we have more blindness, we tend to jump through more of these hoops and do more of these mental gymnastics, pretending that people accidentally hurt each other. James: And so that's I just think that because therapists are more susceptible to the problem, we tend to promulgate it into the population more. Chad: Where is your stance on forgiveness with that? James: Oh. It should be instantaneous. The forgiveness is should come before the confrontation. If I'm holding judgment in my mind towards a person, then anything I say to them is just gonna be counter effective. So Chad: But with the whole, let's just take all of us therapists, right? You said we've had, below average experiences or whatever, or above average difficulties with our parents. When you think about how, like you said you don't wanna replay that. We just make excuses for our parents. I'm wondering if your version of excuses is just our version of saying we've forgiven them for who they are and their humanity is. Like I don't believe that my parents wanted James: but I think that's different. Forgiveness. I can't forgive someone until they face the reality of what happened. And so forgiving and deception, or forgiving and ignoring are different things. And so if I'm gonna forgive you, I'm gonna first acknowledge, Hey, this is what you did. That's the first step. James: And then I'm gonna say, and I hold no ill will towards you. Like I, I see what you did, Chad, for example. And I love you completely even though I see what you did. And that's what forgiveness is. And forgiveness is not I'm gonna pretend I didn't see what you did. That's different. Chad: No, but forgiveness is also saying when you say I see what you did for what it is. ​ Chad: When we don't, when we don't acknowledge that people don't try to hurt people just for their own egocentric views. I don't really believe that forgiveness has been accomplished because then there's still anger and depression and upsetness in there in that statement. James: And if that, I mean if that really is the way things, then that would be honest from your point of view. But it would not be honest from my point of view because that's it's very rare for me to see, I work with a ton of couples and, people in really happy marriages generally don't come to counseling. James: And so you tend to have some pretty difficult situations. And I just see a lot of organized behavior. Taking place. I would say intentional. Intentional is a little bit harder because I think my favorite word for it is organized, predictable behavior. And so something that happens on a daily or weekly basis is just not an accident. James: If I crash my car once, that's an accident. If I crash my car every day, it's just not an accident. And if I. Insult my partner once that could be accidental. If it's happening repeatedly. These couples I work with, you're seeing, insults and put downs and emotional abuse consistently daily, on a daily basis on both sides. James: And to say that's like somehow chaotic or unpredictable or disorganized behavior, it just doesn't add up for me. Chad: Yeah. That's where I think I agree with you. It's not chaotic and disorganized. I think they're doing it on purpose, but the reason why they're doing it is not because they enjoy hurting their partner. That's a that to me is something that like, there's no way James: So why then? Why then? Chad: yeah. Why would somebody want to hurt their partner? James: No. Why? Why? Why are they doing it? Chad: Yeah. That's the question why we don't know. We. James: It's almost like you're saying they're do something that they don't want to do, like they're Chad: No, they're doing something that's actually beneficial for them. James: I would say it feels beneficial to them. Chad: No. So like for example, if you put down your partner and make fun of them for showing up late, this is one of their trope that, that they always show up late all the time. And you make fun of them when you try to get down to the root of why they are doing this behavior. It could be any number of positive reasons. Chad: I'm trying to get my partner to show up because I don't want, I'm trying to save face. And so I think that me putting them down is actually gonna result in some sort of behavior change in them. That's like shame-based motivation, right? They're trying to shame their partner into motivation, right? Chad: Because that's how they were shamed when they were kids, James: But you called that positive behavior and that, that sounds like negative Chad: No. It's a positive intent, James: Oh yeah. Once again, we disagree about that, but yeah. Chad: It they think that them doing that is going to work. Chad: That it's positive behavior. No it's awful James: yeah, so you see it as positive intent with a negative impact, which means that the person going into it expects the partner to not be hurt. Because if it's a PO I can't have positive intent if I think I'm gonna hurt my partner. Chad: I don't know if they're thinking about whether or not it hurts them. They think that the overall goal. Is be like in this instance of trying to shame them for time stuff, they think that the overall goal that's most important in that instant is behavior change James: Yeah. And so I would guess in this example that the overall goal is actually to cause emotional harm. And that the behavioral change is, I know you disagree but that's how I would see it. And there's a related concept once again from Arch, which is. The idea of anti-social empathy, that if I'm effectively hurting my partner on a consistent basis, it means that I have a really good understanding of how my partner's feelings work. James: Because if I didn't understand how my partner's feelings work, I wouldn't know how to insert the knife to cause maximum damage. And so this once again comes back to the child blindness is my dad didn't know what he was doing. And so the question I usually ask is that, is if you did this to your child, would you know the impact you were having? James: Oh, I would totally know. I'm like, how do you square that with this idea that your dad had no idea what he was doing when you would totally know? Is there really that big a difference between you and your dad? And the only explanation I can come up with for that is that my mind is programmed to perceive my parents as benevolent no matter what. James: And it, my mind refuses, refuses to face the reality that my parents were not nearly as benevolent as I thought they were. And that's just, that's what normal parents look like. And if I'm a therapist, I probably was a little bit under the normal. Chad: sure. Yeah, I think. When you've practiced this with couples, I'm curious what are their responses when you basically spell out no, you did that to hurt them, right? And you show them that in a, probably in the most loving and compassionate way that you could do because you're the third eye here, you're the third object in the room. Chad: You're not in relation with them. So you probably can confront the abuse and manipulation. When you confront it in that way to our clients, what is their responses like? Is it like, oh, you know what you're right. I did do that to hurt them. James: That happens about half the time. Chad: Really? James: Yeah. Yeah. So the most immediate response is in the other person. So if I'm talking to, partner a, I'm talking to Bob and Sue's sitting on the couch and Sue's complained about this behavior, I. And Sue says, he just hurts me over and over. James: And I talked to Bob's oh, I didn't mean to, I talked to Bob and I say, Bob, actually I think you did mean to, in fact I think you knew exactly what you're doing. And I think this is organized behavior. And Bob, there's gonna be 50 50. He's gonna, he's gonna it's gonna make sense to him. James: He's gonna pick it up and he's gonna see it, or he's gonna push back. But either way, Sue's gonna relax in that moment because. She sees that I'm not getting sucked into Bob's narrative and this, this is based on the precondition that I've already, you know 'cause Bob doesn't always know what he's doing. James: Sometimes it is like whatever. There's reasons but usually it is like a pattern of organized behavior. And Bob usually has a pretty good idea, especially if he's really effective at this. He has antisocial empathy. And he has a pretty good idea of what he's doing before he says his first word. James: And yeah, I've had immense success with this.  Chad: So then when you confront them, and let's say they, say, they say, yeah, I did do it on purpose. You're right. ​ Chad: I did. James: Yeah. Chad: does the behavior, where's the what do you call that the theory of change happen within this theory of understanding of confronting the. Chad: The abuse like this and basically calling it out. How what? How does this play out in therapy and what does it look like to change? James: The whole idea is the reason it hasn't changed. Yes. The reason I haven't, like if I'm the person who, the perpetrator, the reason I haven't changed up until this point is that I haven't really been able to see what's happening. And so in my mind, I've been telling the story. No, I'm just trying to make you come on time. James: I'm doing this with your interest at heart. I don't enjoy seeing you suffer. These are all the stories I'm telling myself. And so then, I'll just tell you from my perspective, 'cause I've been in this seat with a therapist telling this to me many times and it's been immensely beneficial to me. James: And so it's helped me see past my own blindness. I grew up, with parents who had conspicuous character flaws as most of us did. And so I developed a blindness to those flaws both in them and in myself and in others. And the critical part is that I was blamed to those flaws in myself. James: I was unable to see specific behavioral patterns that replicated the undesirable behavioral patterns of my parents, as we all are. And so what my therapists have helped me do is say, James. The way you're behaving here in your mind is innocent and even benevolent. And the way I see it is the opposite of that. James: Like when I look at your behavior, it looks like you're intentionally trying to hurt your wife. And that's been the only thing that's helped me move the needle on my own behavior in my marriage. And I was, I went to years of couples therapy before I encountered that for the first time, and that was the first thing that made a difference. Chad: That, that actual, James: That intervention, the idea of let me tell you how I see you and you're not gonna like it. But the key is it's delivered with, it's delivered with pure love and pure compassion. And that's actually really hard. So if the therapist is being a bully, then obviously that's not gonna work. But if a therapist, if I can sense this person genuinely has my best interest at heart and has no desire for me to suffer. James: That's the precondition. And so that's actually quite difficult to get to that point as a therapist, especially for someone like me who I would say I, I grew up in a low compassion family and so developing that ability to really care about another person has been an immense challenge, but it's part of learning this approach. Chad: And then, thank you so much for sharing, first of all your own personal story. I think it's really helpful for people who are listening or whatever you were confronted or when a client of yours is confronted like that. Then what does the therapist do afterwards to work on how do we do something differently now? What does that difference look and how do you help the client identify, oh, you're gonna do that thing again, and what is the thing you do differently? James: so one of my favorite is what I call a reverse reverse role play where I will play you and you'll play your spouse. And so they, there's some conflict came up, and I'll say, okay, what did your partner say? And they say that, and I say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you an example of what it looks to hold onto yourself. James: Stand up for yourself. Ask for what you want in the kindest way possible. And it's easier for me 'cause I'm outside the relationship system. I haven't been married to this person for 10 years, I don't have all this resentment built up. I can do this. It's easier for me to pull myself up to that level of functioning even than it would be in my own marriage. James: If I'm trying to do this in my own marriage, it's much more difficult because of all the history involved.  Chad: Sorry. James: show this person, Hey, this is what it would look like. This is an example of how you hold onto yourself and how you take up space in the relationship. But in a kind way, not in an antagonistic way or in a collaborative way. Chad: Exactly and so then how do you as a therapist do that proxy voice and play that reverse role play? What are the things that you are going to utilize to, to say differently? If you're not going to insult them to try to, because of your own egocentric views. In the example of my partner shows up late and I'm trying to insult them to do that, what are you gonna show them as the therapist proxy voicing to say differently in that instant? James: Let's do that right now. Let's, so let's say you were the partner who showed up late, and so I'll be your, I'll be your partner. Chad I want to talk to you about how you showed up late yesterday. Chad: This happens every time. I try, but I just can't. I got all these things going on and I just I try to show up on time, but I just I, you always complain about this. James: Yes. And I can see I understand how this is difficult because I know that in the past I've actually behaved really poorly on this, where I have used, I've used my complaint as a way to bludgeon you and to make you feel bad on purpose, and I'm really sorry for that. Even though I've done that in the past, I still want to talk to you today and just acknowledging that, this is your choice, not mine. James: And it's not something that's in my control, but I do want you just to let you know that your behavior has an impact on me. And when you showed up late yesterday, that really affected my day. And it just makes it harder for me to trust you. And I almost wonder. James: It is just hard for me to believe that this is really accidental on, on your part because it just happens so often. And so it seems it just seems like something that, that you kind of plan on doing because it seems like if you didn't plan on doing it, you would probably show up on time more often. Chad: So if I can pause here for that, James: ahead. Chad: your reaction to me was the exact way. And the reason why I don't hold people in of saying that they do statistic behaviors because you just said. The true reason about why in the past you have done this you've acted differently. You've acted differently because you feel it's hard to trust, and that pain was so hard for you to deal with that you chose a maladaptive coping skill to try to solve that pain and inflict pain on me. James: That's not what I told you though. I said, I've used it to bludgeon you in the past. And bludgeon is not, bludgeoning, you could call it a maladaptive coping skill and you could also just call it sadism. It's the same thing. Anything, Hitler had maladaptive cope coping skills, I, I feel like that's a dodge where yes, it's a maladaptive coping skill, it. James: Sometimes I think it's useful to go beyond just calling it a maladaptive coping skill. I agree with that, but I think all of the bad things we do are maladaptive coping, coping skills. So I don't think that really makes it any better. Chad: I guess I'm still confused on what is the benefit of calling it sadism versus maladaptive coping skill.  James: I'm, I don't call it sadism I, I don't use that word like, I'm using that word now, but like with clients. I don't say sadistic. I don't say sadism. I don't find that helpful. But I do say, I don't think you, usually what I just say is I don't think this was accidental Chad: But if we don't James: That's the most, that's the most thing. And so I think sadistic is the most accurate term for it. It's just not the word, I don't find it the most helpful word to use with clients. Chad: And I guess what my fear is that if it's not the most helpful views of clients, I think us as clinicians shouldn't be using it. Because then we also in inherently internalize, oh, our clients are sadistic. That's right. This is James: just our clients it's us too. And I don't know. I. I guess culturally we want to pretend that we're a lot less sadistic than we are, and I just looking around the world, I just see it everywhere. I just think it's very normal for people to enjoy hurting other people. James: And we usually keep it, we keep it within a very narrow range. There's, except one of the examples from one of my favorite books is a waiter spills coffee on you and you get up and you yell at the waiter, and that's considered acceptable behavior more or less, right? Chad: no. James: I, okay, but the comparison is the waiter spills coffee. James: On you and you get up and you punch the waiter in the face. And that's like in a cultural context. That's like way out's no, you don't go there. But if you get up and yell at the waiter, that's considered forgivable. And so there's like this big difference. I'm talking, I understand you disagree. James: I would say culturally, I, if I asked a hundred people, a lot of people say, oh yeah, I can understand why you yelled at the waiter. I don't understand you punching a waiter in the face. Chad: No, I can understand even why you punched him in the face. I understand that, but it's still not okay. Even the yelling too. Like I understand it's not okay. I think it's like when we look at the world though, and we look at through this idea that people will do things to purposely hurt other people. Chad: The thing that I really want to make sure is I feel like there's a big danger in that, and the danger is that we don't promote positive intent within our relationships, and if we don't James: I see it as the opposite because I see I. I would say promoting what's actually happening. And so one of my favorite sayings is you can't change what you can't see. And so in my marriage, I was definitely sadistic, like absolutely. And I came by that honestly. Chad: I disagree, James: I know, but you also don't know the details of what I did. James: If I told you, if I told you the details of what I did in my marriage, I'm not sure you would disagree with me. Even though you don't like to see it that way. Chad: I would beg to differ that you could tell me the worst things, and I don't believe that you did it because you were sadistic and evil and egocentric. I just don't believe that. I believe that you James: I remember, I'll tell you the moment, like this came clear to me. I was remembering a particular phone call to my wife when I said a particular thing. And in my mind at the time, I was just I was holding my ground and standing up for myself and holding onto my power in the relationship. James: That was what was going through my mind and. And it, the thing I said hurt her deeply, like really deeply. And in my mind I was like, that's her things. Those are her feelings, not my responsibility. I'm making the right choice for me. And then when I looked on that same phone call a couple years later, I remembered what I felt when I noticed her emotional response, and it felt really good to me. James: And so if that's not sadism, then there is no sadism. Chad: Why did it feel good? James: Because I'm sadistic. Because everybody's sadistic. Chad: Without putting a label on whether you are or not, I'm curious why it felt good. James: Why would it feel good? Chad: What did, how did it serve you? James: I think okay, so let's see. I was working from like an understanding of my relationship where I felt controlled and manipulated and powerless, and none of those things were true, but that is how I felt, right? So I felt, pretty typical things. We fill in marriage and so in my mind, I'm the brave freedom fighter, fighting for freedom and liberty and the American way and I'm standing up for my choices and all these things. James: And from that point of view, from that stance, it's okay to hurt people because sometimes we have to hurt people when we're fighting for freedom, right? That's the way, that's the way the human mind works. And so why did it feel good? The best answer I could give you is that I learned when I was really young that's. James: It's normal to enjoy hurting other people. That's probably, I think that's probably the closest to the truth I could get. Chad: But besides it being normal, I think that you're saying that it felt good because you were able to reestablish your power in the relationship. James: No, it wasn't about that though. It felt like her specific negative emotional response feel good. I already had my power, like this was. My power was there the whole time. So this was definitely something that was in my power. And so the hurt I caused in her felt good to me just for a moment. James: And in the moment I, so I'd always perceived myself as like this kind, generous, typical therapist we're so awesome. And but when I looked back on this moment and I was like if I'm this kind, generous person. Why would I feel this joy in my heart when I said this thing to my wife that hurt her so deeply? James: So if I were a good person, not that I'm not a good person, let's see. If I were a much more compassionate person than I was at that moment, then maybe it would still been the right thing to say. That's totally possible. But if I say the right thing and it hurts my wife who I love, I'm going to mourn for that pain. James: I'm not gonna rejoice in that pain. And so it still might be the right thing for me to say that's totally possible, but I'm going to mourn with those who mourn. I'm going to feel her pain as my pain, and instead I felt her pain as my pleasure. And so I, I think that pattern was deeply ingrained in me as a small child and it was just the way I always was. James: And I never, I can tell someone pointed it out to me very directly. I was never able to see it. Chad: Yeah, I. James: and as soon as I saw it, I was able to change it, but before I saw it, like I have to see that before I can do anything about it, because if I'm still pretending, oh, I'm this super compassionate person, I can't change that if I'm pretending. James: And I was pretending it wasn't, not so much I was pretending I was just blind, like I was very blind. Chad: Sure. No, you're. I think one thing that I'm curious about is what does the confrontation, not the con, what does the acknowledgement of the behavior and calling it for what it looks like in that moment? I. Do for our clients. And from what you're saying, from your experience with therapists, it made a huge impact on you because it allowed you to think about I don't want to do that anymore. Chad: And I think maybe what we're doing, maybe what you're, maybe something where I could benefit from this sort of style is that if I'm trying to always do this second order change of, okay, fine, yes, maybe it's a district or not, but what's underneath, what's driving that behavior? Maybe we're not actually confronting what the behavior really is, and we're not able to actually even start the behavior change until you actually acknowledge and see the impacts of that behavior. Chad: Is that kind of what you're saying? James: Yeah. Yeah, that, that's part of what I'm saying. I am also running outta time. Chad: Oh, got it. James: Yeah. Chad, is it okay if we button it up there for now? Chad: Yeah, absolutely. James: Okay. I love this conversation with you, and I really appreciate you and I hope that we have many more. Chad: Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much.