Many couples report that communication is their number one issue. But what if that wasn’t the real problem? My guest today, Dr. Bruce Chalmer, is a psychologist who specializes in working with couples. In his latest book, he says that the communication tools couples spend so much time trying to learn, can get in the way of their relationship. We talk about what the actual issues are, we talk about intimacy and stability, faith, and why having a therapist or coach who doesn’t pretend to have all the answers is so beneficial.

Dr. Bruce Chalmer is a psychologist in Vermont who has been working with couples for over thirty years. Through his teaching, consulting, writing, podcast, and videos about relationships, his ideas have helped thousands of couples and their therapists.

Dr. Chalmer is the author of "It's Not About Communication! Why Everything You Know About Couples Therapy is Wrong", published in 2022, and "Reigniting the Spark: Why Stable Relationships Lose Intimacy, and How to Get It Back", published in 2020.

With his wife, educator Judy Alexander, Dr. Chalmer co-hosts the "Couples Therapy in Seven Words" podcast, available at https://ctin7.com.

His other notable interests include musical composition (especially on Jewish themes), choral singing and directing. His composition "Berakhot: A Midrash Cantata" was recorded in 2005. He has served in leadership positions in several Jewish communities in Vermont.

https://ctin7.com

https://brucechalmer.com/

 

Transcript

Karin: This is Love is Us: Exploring relationships and how we connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, practiced at a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

 

Episode Introduction:

Hello everybody. Today in this episode, I talk with Dr. Bruce Chalmer, who has been working with couples as a psychologist for the past 30 plus years. So he's got a lot of really great experience. He's written two books, one of which is called It's Not About Communication. So we talk about what he means by this and why many people, including therapists, tend to get it wrong. We also talk about concepts such as the importance of tolerating anxiety and how many therapists would do better if they could just stop pretending to know what's best for their clients.

 

One of the reasons I liked interviewing Bruce so much is that he's got a really great way of explaining things. And I'll just also want to say that toward the end we do geek out a bit about therapy and a framework that I personally use with some of my clients called Ifs or Internal Family Systems. I also just want to say that I read Bruce's book and in it he makes a lot of really good, clear points about the issues couples are grappling with these days. I hope that you appreciate this episode and like always, I hope you'll leave me a review. Here we go.

 

Karin: Welcome, Bruce.

[02:06] Bruce: Well, thank you for having me on. This is really a treat.

[02:09] Karin: Yeah, it's really great to have you. I'm looking forward to this conversation and I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to be really interested in hearing what you have to say. So let's go ahead and get into it. So tell us where you are in the world.

[02:25] Bruce: I am located in South Burlington, Vermont.

[02:29] Karin: On the other side of the country from me. What keeps you in Vermont?

[02:37] Bruce: I love living in Vermont. I've lived here. I like to tell people, you know, I'm I'm a newbie here because I've only lived here for about 50 years, I don't mind saying my age. You know, I'm I'm about to turn 72 in a few weeks and so I moved here in my early twenty s. I grew up in Buffalo, New York, which is a nice place to have been from as a kid. It was a very nice sort of neighborhood kind of place, but came to Vermont and just love it here. The pace of life is nice. The people are generally they're very accepting here. It's funny. Not super friendly initially, but very accepting. That's kind of a Vermont thing. And I just really enjoy the whole way it feels around here. I will say now that I'm the age that I am, I think I'm turning into my parents. My wife and I went to Florida for eight weeks this winter, which is the sort of thing my parents used to do back 30, 40 years ago, because the winters can be pretty intense here. But back in Vermont now and just loving it here.

[03:42] Karin: That's great. When I was much younger, I kind of fantasized about living in Vermont because I just had this picture in my mind of it being really green and lots of trees that turn beautiful colors in autumn. And although I've never been, I ended up in Oregon, which is also very green and has a lot of beautiful trees. So I kind of see it as the opposite coast, but similar in some ways. So what do you do for work?

[04:18] Bruce: I am a couples therapist, so I'm a psychologist, PhD in psychology and got clinical training and did a lot of individual stuff, but really started focusing over the years on couples therapy because I just love doing it. I love working with couples, and so that's what I've been doing for quite a number of years. Well, I've been doing it since I started, but specializing it at really the past five or ten years. I think the only new folks I've accepted, at least for the past four or five years, have been couples, and that's what I'm doing at this point.

[04:49] Karin: And how did you come to work with couples?

[04:53] Bruce: You know, it came up, let's put it that way. Some of the training I got was in family therapy and sort of family systems type stuff, and I enjoyed that and got trained. You perhaps familiar with narrative therapy. That was Michael White and may he rest in peace, and really enjoyed all of that. And I did some teaching about narrative therapy as well, and that often would involve couples and families. And just the longer I did it, the more I just found that that was fascinating work to do. And I just enjoyed sitting with people who are dealing with the kind of problems they're dealing with. And it's such a privilege to see how people put their hearts into fixing things. To me, it feels like something of a calling. It's not merely just work that I like to do. It feels like I'm sort of helping repair the world, helping couples work through their issues. And whether they stay together or not, it still feels like it's repairing the world in some level.

[05:54] Karin: I can relate to that, absolutely. I think that our intimate relationships are so foundational and really, of course, affect kids if they're in the picture, but also just how we also end up relating to the rest of the world, too. So, yeah, I can really relate to that idea. So we're here to talk about communication and your book about it, which is called It's Not About Communication. So it's a little bit of a provocative title.

[06:32] Bruce: It was, of course, intentional.

[06:33] Karin: It's a bit provocative, sure. And I'm sure that people are really kind of curious about what you mean by that.

[06:42] Bruce: Well, let me note that, first of all, of course it's about communication. But I'm claiming that in a certain way it's not I don't know what the percentage is. I haven't actually counted, but kind of a seat of the pants guess. Oh, three quarters of the couples that show up in my office in the first session are telling me things like we need to communicate better. We need tools for communication. When we communicate, things go badly. Can you give us some tools to help us communicate? And if you go online, of course, and search for whatever it is the heck I searched for and when I was writing the book. Anything on that line, you will find millions and millions of hits about different ways, different systems for communication and rules for telling people what procedures they should follow when they're communicating so that things will go better. And you've probably heard of active listening and eye statements and nonviolent communication and I say all of these things with respect, by the way. These are all really interesting and useful ideas. But I came to realize something as I've worked with couples over the years, which is the vast majority of couples I work with, and there are some interesting exceptions I'll get to in a second. But the vast majority of couples that I work with are very skilled at communicating. They have no difficulty communicating how they feel. The problem isn't how they're communicating. The problem is what they're communicating. What they're communicating often is things like mistrust or anger or condescension or any of the variety of things that if you're hearing that from your partner, doesn't feel very good and may lead to somebody reacting defensively and in kind. And conversely, when couples are communicating things like respect and honor and love and compassion, that's coming through very clearly, too. It is a rare couple where they're not already good at conveying those things. Now, I mentioned there are some interesting exceptions if one or both parties are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, indeed, they actually have communication issues because there are folks who the diagnosis used to be called asperger's for example, where they're not very good at picking up somebody's emotional tone. And so they literally may not know if their partner is angry with them or happy with them or whatever. That's a communications problem. Or even more simple than that, if a couple literally does not speak the same language, I guess they have a communications problem often. And you could put like cultural interesting cultural differences in that sort of category. You could say it's kind of sometimes it's a communication issue. Somebody may interpret something differently from how it's intended. But most of the couples I work with, that's not the issue. It's not that they need rules for communicating. And I'll throw in another piece on that, which again, is one of my favorite things to point out. When John Gottman's work, which I really respect, and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Any folks in the field are familiar with John Gottman's work done amazing empirical research on how couples function. And based on that, can predict by looking at a videotape of newlyweds how they're going to do in a few years just based on looking at how they function as newlyweds. And what he has been very good at showing is what it looks like when a couple is doing well. So you can look at couples that are doing well in the sense that they're happy with each other and they seem to remain so over long periods of time. They look quite different in how they communicate from couples who end up not doing well. That's true. There's no question. There are clear differences in how they communicate. The thing is, teaching the couples who are not doing well how to communicate, like the couples who are will not make them do well. It'll make them pretend to do well, but it will not make them do well. My favorite analogy on that is and maybe I'll bet there are better ones out there, but this is the one I thought of when you watch Rafael Nadal playing tennis or any of the big tennis stars, and they will often grunt loudly when they hit the ball. So if I want to be a professional tennis player, I just have to learn how to grunt louder, right? And that'll make me a professional tennis player. Well, no, it won't. Even if you recognize that their grunting probably is related to the things that make them great players. But the grunting isn't the point. And the same thing is true if I teach someone well. Here's how couples who are doing well communicate. You notice how they only interrupt each other when it's friendly. They're not interrupting each other to shut each other up. And you'll notice how they seem to be not criticizing each other's character and all the things that are parts of the rules. They're all good ideas. But if you focus on that and teach people that, all you're going to do is prevent them from actually communicating and they won't function any better. They'll just be better at masking the stuff. That's really the problem. So there's a way of answering like, yeah, it really isn't about communication.

[11:42] Karin: Yeah, there's an association between couples who are doing well and communication, or good communication, but it's not the cause necessarily.

[11:54] Bruce: Exactly. Recovering nerd that I am. I will often point out I'm a recovering nerd with frequent relapses. My wife will point that out to me. I'm putting in a plug for my wife, Judy Alexander, who's she's not a therapist, but we do a podcast together. So I'm putting in a shameless plug for our podcast. She's very good at bringing it back around to getting me out of my nerdy when necessary. But nerdily speaking, that's the post hoke ergo probter hook fallacy, which is to say, what is that after? Therefore, because of it's a fallacy, just because something follows something doesn't mean it was caused by it.

[12:31] Karin: Right.

[12:31] Bruce: Just because they communicate in a certain way when they're doing well doesn't mean that if you communicate that way, that means you're doing well. No, not necessarily.

[12:41] Karin: Yeah. So if couples are in a good place together, it's much easier to communicate well because of those good feelings that are there. But if the bad feelings are there, then it's really hard to communicate in these pretty ways.

[13:00] Bruce: Exactly. No matter how much you teach them to be really careful with their eye statements and to be really careful or have a talking stick or any of those things. None of which are bad ideas. None of those are bad ideas. It's just that when that becomes the focus, what turns out to happen? And I have a whole section in the book about ideas and ideologies. When you take good ideas and then you harden them into ideologies to be focused on as opposed to the ideas they come from, they turn into caricatures. And I've seen people who are well trained in these careful ways of communicating, who can be just vicious to each other within the rules of the communication. So it doesn't help if what's underneath it is not actual respect and actual compassion.

[13:53] Karin: Yeah. And maybe this is an unfair question, because of course all couples are different, but I am curious, how do you help couples get to that? To the what those real issues that they need to talk about?

[14:06] Bruce: Well, it's another thing. I have a whole chapter in the book where I describe my first session in great detail, because that is addressing the very things you're talking about, and so I can talk about some of that. And it's interesting because I liken couples therapy to improv theater, where once you get going, there's no telling what direction things are going to go. And in improv, the chief rule is yes. And in other words, improv actors are never supposed to steer it in their own direction. They're supposed to take wherever it is, affirm that, and add something perhaps even weirder to it. Who knows? And that makes for, like, comedy. It's fun. Well, in couple therapy, of course, it's not comedy, and the couple initially is not at all capable of yes. And they're often very much stuck in a no, damn it mode. But the therapist can be capable of it. And the whole point of my comparing it to improv theater is to note that improv requires a prompt to get things going, and that with the prompt, then that tends to invite people to then reassociate based on the prompt. Well, my first session is basically the prompt. So this is, believe it or not, getting around to your question. In the first session, I cover some stuff that I think facilitates that very thing. Well, all right, if we're not going to talk about how to communicate better, what are we going to talk about? So I will introduce couples to the notion of what I hopefully call the two golden gifts that any relationship needs, which are stability and intimacy. And I differentiate between those two, and I keep doing that, and I often point this out to people. It's one of the things I often say in a first session. I realize when what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I have my favorite way of thinking about this, so I keep doing it that way. But people will often comment when I give them my little spiel about stability and intimacy, they'll say, wow, I never thought of it that way. And it starts to resonate with what they've been experiencing. So I don't know if you want me to go into that distinction.

[16:18] Karin: Yes, because that was maybe my favorite part of your book, because I read it and I thought it was really helpful and some really wise stuff in there. But I really loved that you kind of distill things down into those are some two really important elements to an intimate partnership. And so, yeah, I'd love for you to expand upon those things and explain a little bit more about what those are.

[16:49] Bruce: Yeah, happy to. Yeah. So the interesting thing about them, indeed, they are both really important elements, and the skills you need for the two are very different and in fact, somewhat in tension with each other, which is what makes long term relationships rather interesting, so to speak. First of all, what do I mean by stability? What do I mean by intimacy? Stability, I usually will note with folks, you're probably thinking something similar to what I'm thinking. And using the term in its normal sense, it's most common sense. When things feel stable, you're not anxious about them. They feel solid, they feel like they're not shaky. That's what stable means. And so when a relationship feels stable, it basically means you're not worried that it's in trouble. Now, obviously, anybody coming to a couple's therapist initially had some worry about that. There's some worry about stability, but often they'll be there. And they've been together for however many years. I've worked with couples who have just gotten together, and I've worked with couples who've been together for 50 years plus, and everything in between. So a couple that's been together for a long time, just that itself says, well, there's some kind of stability happening there. The skills of stability are all about keeping the anxiety level relatively low. So that if indeed you are fortunate enough to have no cognitive impairments and you're skilled so that you can get a job and make a living and do the things that people need to do and raise your kids and take care of your household and all the stuff of living with some degree of competence that all contributes to stability, People who are basically sober, that contributes to stability because substance abuse issues can be very destabilizing. People who are monogamous in monogamous relationships and don't cheat are contributing to stability because, of course, infidelity which parenthetically I think my best guess is roughly a third of the folks that I see in the first session are talking about infidelity. It's a very, very common issue, of course, but it's hugely destabilizing because it spikes anxiety like crazy. So behaving in ways that your partner can more or less count on and really not have to think about that much is all about stability and it's really important. I'm not knocking stability at all. Most of the couples who come to see me are pretty good at it. There's some exceptions, but most of the couples who come to see me are pretty good at the stability stuff. Intimacy is a whole different thing. And here I should define the term a bit because, I mean, it not it's not just sex, you know, I mean, it in a broader sense, intimacy is when you're fundamentally present and honest with yourself and each other. So intimate moments are moments when a couple are both present and they can say what they need to say and feel what they need to feel. And sometimes that is just lovely. Of course, I mean, if they're having this wonderful meeting of their souls, whether that's just emotionally or maybe sexually, even if they're having this wonderful, great sex and it's feeling this wonderful joining and it feels wonderful, well, of course, that's not about anxiety, but often intimacy requires that you raise your own and or your partner's anxiety. For example, a garden variety complaint, hey, I wish you would do X, Y or Z that you're not doing, or not do X, Y and Z that you are doing. You don't know how your partner is going to receive that. They may be annoyed by it, they may be resentful of it. Who knows? It's going to possibly raise your own anxiety to ask it, especially if there's a history of those conversations going badly that tends to become a self reinforcing cycle.

[20:29] Karin: Can I interrupt you for a second, please?

[20:31] Bruce: Yeah.

[20:31] Karin: It sounds like you're talking a little bit about vulnerability and the risks associated with that. Would you say that's true?

[20:39] Bruce: Absolutely, yes. That's a great way of saying it. Yeah. What I point out about intimacy in general is that I said about stability the chief skills are all about keeping the anxiety level low. The chief skill of intimacy is to tolerate anxiety and vulnerability is another way of saying well, I'm anxious here, I'm worried about how this is going to go, but I'm going to do it anyway. And so that's essentially what I mean by tolerating anxiety. So the chief skill of intimacy is that and what happens and this is how I my whole spiel here is founded on the idea that both of stability and intimacy are needs. And I'm using the word needs carefully because not just desires but needs that if they're not sufficiently fulfilled, something doesn't function right. So what will happen if what stable couples will tend to do, in fact, because stability is very important, especially when they do things like get married, which ups the ante often to the surprise of people who do it, by the way, but it does. Buying houses, building a life together, having children, of course hugely ups the ante for stability. And so what they will tend to do often is worry about rocking the boat too much in the intimacy department, though they may not raise complaints that they otherwise would raise there's that even more. They may not talk about their or even let themselves know about their own dreams or fantasies. And again, that could be in the sexual domain, that could just be in more generally in life domain. I've been thinking I want to live overseas for a period of time. Does that freak you out or I've been thinking I want to try something in bed we've never tried. And I don't know if you'll think I'm weird for even thinking that those raise anxiety and what stable couples will tend to do is avoid that. And that has the effect of lowering intimacy. And if I'm calling them both needs, which is kind of my whole thesis here, what happens when you do that is something happens to change that it becomes not tolerable to the organism that is a couple. My favorite metaphor is when you think about a plant, the roots of the plant provide stability. But intimacy in plant terms is the energy for growth. And if you have a living organism, it wants to interact with its environment. If you have seeds that are paved over germinated seeds that are paved over on a sidewalk, they will try and crack the sidewalk or they'll die trying. And what you often see with a couple is what brings them into therapy often is one or both tried to crack the sidewalk. It could be an affair, it could be just long silences and that stops being tolerable after a while. It could be that they fight about anything and everything except what they're really scared of. All of those things are symptoms of some kind of impediment in the intimacy world.

[23:39] Karin: So it sounds like, yes, most people that come to see you, that's more the issue is the intimacy issue.

[23:46] Bruce: Yeah, it does seem that way.

[23:51] Karin: Does that tend to be the what that people aren't talking about?

[23:58] Bruce: Usually what I note people and what they'll tell me is that's the part they really hadn't recognized, they know they're fighting all the time or they know they're silent all the time or some combination of that. They know they're having sexual problems, which is a whole other thing, by the way, in the sense that sometimes sexual problems actually are just sexual problems. I want to hasten to note that sometimes they're not. Sometimes they have a wonderful, loving, respectful, passionate relationship. And there's some medical issues that are very genuine. And I am at pains to point that out because actually, somebody that I've known for a while, a sex therapist who wrote a book herself called Sex Points, but Chevam Marcus is her name and she has a lovely chapter in her book where she in effect warns against people like me. And I think she's right. She says beware we interviewed her on our podcast, actually twice, and she demurred when I said that. She said, no, she's not warning people against me. But she should because I hear this stuff, I'm a couples therapist, I'm thinking, oh, it's all about relationship. She's saying no. Sometimes it's about hormones, sometimes it's about some kind of physical issue that can be addressed medically and don't leave that out. And so I'm always putting that in.

[25:17] Karin: Can I go ahead, raise another point. Can it also be about trauma?

[25:21] Bruce: Oh, yes. Actually I didn't write about that much in this past book, the previous book. I have a couple of chapters on that. Yeah, it is often about trauma because if you think about it, trauma is unprocessed trauma. Formally in my career, I did a lot of work with trauma survivors. I'm trained in EMDR and also in clinical hypnosis. And so I did a lot of work with that, with folks with that. And unprocessed trauma basically makes it almost impossible to tolerate anxiety of certain kinds because it turns into panic almost instantly before anybody's even aware of it. And when you cross the line into panic, whole chunks of neocortex shut down. You can't. Well, my podcast is called Couples Therapy. In seven words. The seven words I might as well mention now are be kind, don't panic and have faith. And the don't panic part is key because you can't be kind if you're in a panic. It's just that part of your brain is not functioning at that point.

[26:27] Karin: And when you're experiencing trauma, it's hard to not panic at times.

[26:32] Bruce: Yeah, exactly. If it's on unprocessed trauma, that's almost by definition what we mean by unprocessed trauma. Unprocessed means you're still subject to your brain interpreting a thought or a reminder as the trauma that happened, which was acutely dangerous.

[26:49] Karin: Right.

[26:50] Bruce: And so your body goes into some kind of fight, flight or freeze response.

[26:53] Karin: Yeah.

[26:54] Bruce: And it's very difficult to stay present with someone in any intimate way when you cross the line into panic right.

[27:03] Karin: Trying to protect yourself in any way you can.

[27:08] Bruce: So, yeah, processing trauma is often a really important part of healing and healing relationships as well, if one or both parties have had trauma that they haven't processed.

[27:19] Karin: Yeah, absolutely. So you talk in your book about faith, but you also say, I'm not talking about religious faith. It's really more something else. Maybe you can explain what you mean by that.

[27:35] Bruce: Yeah, and when I say I'm not talking about religious faith, I don't mean to exclude religious faith. I'm just saying I'm not using the term as synonymous with religious faith. I have known religious people, and I'm religiously active myself. I'm Jewish and very active in my Jewish community, and I practice Judaism in a lot of different ways. And of course, the vast majority of folks I work with here in Vermont, if they are at all religiously active, they're almost always Christian. And it's interesting, I work with fewer Jews than I ordinarily might have because I'm Jewish, and it's a small Jewish community, so if they're actively Jewish, I probably know them how it turns out. So I've known lots of very religious Christians who have manifested the kind of faith I've seen, but I've also known lots of religious folks of any religion who don't, and I've known people who do manifest this kind of faith that I'm thinking of who aren't particularly religious. So, yes, let me get to your question. What do I mean by faith? By faith I'm referring this is what I've come up with. And I'll bet there's other ways I'm sure there are other ways of doing this, of defining it, but it's when you accept that reality is right to be what it is, it's really a mindset. The work on mindsets that I'm spacing out on the name of the author that really popularized that…

Karin: Carol Dweck?

Bruce: Thank you. Carol Dweck.

[29:01] Bruce: And I mentioned her in the book. That idea of mindset, I find really fits well with my concept of faith. When you have a mindset that the world is right to be what it is, even though it's really painful sometimes, even though it's really there's loss and there's grief, and also, by the way, there's joy and there's delight, there's all of that. But it's right fundamentally, even when bad stuff happens. Not that we shouldn't change it. On the contrary. I'm not talking about dreary resignation. I'm talking about acceptance and working with it. Because even when somebody is being just awful on some level, in some way, that they're hurting me or they're believing things I think are horrible things to believe or whatever that may be, even if they are, in fact crazy. Which is to say, I don't mean to be flippant about mental health issues, but even if they're schizophrenic or something like that, there's a. Basis for it. There's a basis for the whole business. Reality is right to be what it is. When you approach life with that mindset, it is a very different life you're living than if you approach life with the basic idea of life's a bitch and then you die. That concept. So that's what I mean by faith. And what I noted early on in my practice, the couples speaking of couples therapy, the couples that seem to get through really hard stuff like infidelity or serious illness or any of the kinds of awful things that can happen to people, the ones that could find their way through that stuff were the ones who were manifesting this concept of faith. Just this week I had a couple come in. It was fascinating. I just met a couple for the first time this past week, and they came in and they were dealing with incidents of infidelity, and they were saying, and I think she's the one who had done the cheating, and he was at the heterosexual couple, and he's the one who had just found out about it, I think, several weeks ago. And already they were saying, this is incredibly painful, but we know this is indicative of something we need to look at carefully. That's what I mean by faith. So many couples will, in a similar situation will be saying, oh my God, I don't know, like the person who did the cheating. I don't know why I did this or how I did it. I'll never do it again. We just got to get back to the way it was. And getting back to the way it was is not going to help them.

[31:33] Karin: Right? Yeah.

[31:34] Bruce: And so people who are manifesting that kind of faith are able to look at hard stuff and see meaning in it. And that's the sort of thing I mean by faith. And so how do you foster that? I've said to people sometimes, what do I have to offer you? I can't solve your problems for you. I certainly am not an expert on living your life. O contrera, you are the expert on living your life. What I can offer you, probably more than anything else that I can think of, is faith. And I can't teach it to you, which is to say, I can't sell it to you. I can't say, well, here are the things you need to learn and then you'll have faith because it's a mindset. It's not provable or disprovable. I can simply exemplify it. That's what I have to offer.

[32:26] Karin: And you just mentioned this a little bit, but maybe you can expand on it that as a therapist, you're not someone that is going to give couples advice and maybe you can say why.

[32:40] Bruce: Yeah, that is true. It's often surprising and somewhat frustrating, I suppose, because people say occasionally they'll ask me, what should I do? And I will smile and say, Beat the heck out of me. And in a sense, it's funny. I think I've gotten a little less precious about that as I've gotten older and more experienced. Earlier in my career, I would have been horrified at the notion that I would ever even suggest something to somebody, and I've relaxed about that as I've gone. It's like oh, come on. I know some stuff just based on experience and having worked with lots of folks, I never want to say, you should do this, because I really don't believe that I'm going to be right about that. But I will occasionally say, well, some folks have done this and have found it useful, so you might want to think about that. I skirt the edge of advice sometimes, yeah, but yeah, not for us to solve their problems.

[33:35] Karin: And I think that's refreshing. I mean, you said that that was something that even early on, you were really adamant about. But I think that a lot of therapists are very big on telling people what to do. I'm the expert. I know better. And I think that that's where I was at the beginning of my training when I first started working as a therapist, and it's taken me a little while to let go of that and to be comfortable in that, not knowing and helping my clients really discover what is right for them. And it's made me much better. Now coach, I now work as a coach, but it's made me a lot more effective, I believe. And yeah, it's just more transformative, and it also just touches other parts of my life, too, now that I am much more comfortable saying, yeah, I really don't know, and it opens me up to learning and other ideas.

[34:34] Bruce: Well, exactly, yeah, and I think it's interesting because just in terms of being a coach or a therapist in a helping role, if I am trying to sell somebody a bill of goods, I'm going to get frustrated if they won't buy it.

[34:46] Karin: Right.

[34:47] Bruce: And it's a factor in burnout, and lots of therapists will burn out because they're spending all day struggling with their clients. And I do not experience burnout in that way at all because I don't feel like I'm well when I'm working. Well, I have to say I have my days where I probably fall into that, you know what I mean? If somebody is manifesting something. Well, I'll tell you what, I was realizing this fairly recently, just thinking about it. I think somebody else was interviewing me on another podcast and asked, what's the biggest mistake you ever made? Which I think is that's a fair question? And I was thinking about probably avoiding thinking about things recently because that's too embarrassing even to myself, you know what I mean? Sure I made other mistakes, but I was thinking about early on in my training and this one family I was working with, together with a co therapist, I was an intern. And so this was in an internship scenario, and it was me and a woman co therapist, working with a family, a man and a woman and a couple of kids. And the guy was being a jerk. And not to be judgmental, but that of course I'm a guy, too. I'm a heterosexual, cisgendered, heterosexual male, and I also am capable of being a jerk. Well, it turns out we're all capable of being jerks, right? That's part of the human condition. We need it. But instead of my joining with everybody in the room, I found myself more or less fighting with the guy because I think he was offending me because I was recognizing some of myself in him on some level. And in any case, I would count that as one of the biggies one of the big mistakes I've ever made. And the longer I've done the work, the more relaxed I am about recognizing we're all capable of being the ways we are. And sometimes it isn't pretty. And by the way, I'm not saying I would excuse somebody being abusive. There are the occasional couple I'll work with where it's clearly not a good idea to work with them because there's abuse going on, and it's not safe in a variety of ways. But I am much more, much less likely to get into power struggles with the folks I work with because I'm not trying to convince them that I'm right and they're wrong. And so it is instead of being sort of a burnout factor for me, it's inspiring. It's just inspiring. It's like, wow, you're dealing with really hard stuff, and I'm trying to help you. And that's an incredible privilege to be invited to do that with someone. But it isn't my problem to solve, and if I start thinking it is, I'm just going to get frustrated. It won't help.

[37:27] Karin: Right. I'm curious. You mentioned some Internal Family Systems exposure or training. Is that something that also informs your approach to be much more hands off and more of a guide?

[37:48] Bruce: Yeah, it's interesting. I hadn't thought of that connection. It is definitely something that I will make reference to a lot. I don't have extensive training in internal family systems. I did a week course with Dick Schwartz.

[37:59] Karin: Oh, great.

[37:59] Bruce: Yeah, which was fun, and I was fascinated by it, and I've done some reading in it. You know, Jill Bolte Taylor her stuff. You may not recognize her name, but she's the one who did My Stroke of Insight.

[38:14] Karin: Okay. Oh, yes.

[38:16] Bruce: Viral thing.

[38:17] Karin: Neurological. Yeah.

[38:18] Bruce: And her first book was my Stroke of Insight was sort of based on that Ted Talk that she did, the viral Ted Talk. But then more recently, just I think a couple of years ago, she came out with her second book, which is called Whole Brain Living. And what she talks about is that we're all four different people, and she's very whimsical about how she does it. She's very funny and suggests we all give our four different people funny names. It's funny I was talking to my wife about this when I read the book and she hadn't read the book but I was saying what would you call your four different characters? She immediately said John, Paul, George and Ringo, of course.

[38:51] Karin: Excellent.

[38:52] Bruce: And there's something to that. Her point is that just neurologically we're at least four different people. Of course internal family systems it could be multitude, any number, lots and lots of people and certainly the key in internal family systems and certainly Joe Bolty Taylor implies this as well. And by the way she has a section in her book where she maps what she's talking about onto ifs internal family systems concepts as well. She's well aware of that parallel. But the key in both of those systems is respect for all the parts. They all have good reason for being there and I think of that as faith based. Do you know what I mean? That's what I mean by faith. There is validity to all the parts. Nobody's a mistake. Even when stuff is hard. That's what I mean by faith. And so that sense. So ifs certainly informs me that way. Now you're saying does that connected to the idea of being a guide rather than sort of telling people what to do? I suppose it is via that concept of faith for me to tell people what to do is to imply that they're idiots about living their own life. Maybe I'm being saying that a little harshly, I don't know. But I never want to tell somebody oh this problem is easy. I've got an easy solution for you because it's implying that they're idiots.

[40:13] Karin: Yeah like if it were that easy then why couldn't they have figured that out?

[40:17] Bruce: Yeah if I think it's that easy then I'm missing something because they're not idiots. You know what I mean? They're skilled in living their own lives. Even when it's really hard. Even when they're doing things that I can look at and say well arguably that's a mistake. They already know that. Typically we all do things that we look back on and say well that was really dumb. But that idea that I would tell somebody that problems they're wrestling with to the extent they need someone like me are oh that's simple. No problem. It's funny. We were once talking with a on our podcast we were once talking with somebody who is not a therapist but an educator and we presented her with a problem. We like to present listener questions to our guests. And so we had this one listener question. We told her I think it's one we had used before with another guest who happened to be a therapist. So the guest who happened to be a therapist heard that and said wow, I can see why that's really difficult. Here's some ideas. The guest who was an educator said, Easy, no problem, and presented some ideas which were almost identical to the ones the therapist presented. And and I commented to my wife afterward, I said, you know, speaking as a therapist, I never want to tell anybody you're coming to me with something that's easy to solve, because the implication there it's kind of insulting to say that now. There are folks who would love that. I know there are folks who would love it if I could just say, oh, if only we had gone to you sooner, we would have known the answer to all of our problems. Probably not. That's my guess.

[41:57] Karin: Yeah. The truth of it is that intimate partnerships really take work. Yeah. And sometimes you need a little extra help.

[42:08] Bruce: Oh, yeah. It's not like I'm afraid to say I have expertise. It's just that the expertise I have is not in living their life. The expertise I have is in having conversations that I think help people a lot.

[42:22] Karin: Yeah.

[42:23] Bruce: That's what I offer, and that's worth something. That's why I charge for it. That's worth paying for. And it does seem to help people a lot, which is, of course, very gratifying when it does.

[42:33] Karin: Absolutely. Yeah. So what role does love play in the work that you do?

[42:42] Bruce: I could say it's everything. I could say now that when you put it in those terms, my whole shtick about faith, I could just as easily replace that word faith with love, or it would be maybe not exactly synonymous, but that notion that the world is such that we all belong here, that's an attitude of love. That's what I mean. I love fellow humans, but of course, and I especially love my wife in ways differently from how I love fellow humans, and that's a good thing. But that notion of love is all about that deep sense of affirmation, and the work is all about that.

[43:27] Karin: Yeah. Great. And how can people learn more about your book and possibly about working with you? I don't know if people outside of Vermont can work with you or not.

[43:40] Bruce: People in Florida can. In terms of my being licensed as a psychologist, I have a telehealth license in Florida in addition to my license in Vermont. I'm being cagey about the notion of other folks because I would have to call myself a coach or become a coach or something like that. I'm sure you're familiar with how that works. So I haven't yet started to do that with folks outside of either Vermont or Florida. I probably will at some point, but haven't yet started to do that anyway. But the way people can get in touch with me with respect to the book and with respect to if they wanted to work with me, my name is Bruce Chalmer, and they can go to Brucechalmer.com. So Brucechalmer.com has access to information about my books and also my therapy practice as well.

[44:29] Karin: And your podcast tell us about that?

[44:31] Bruce: Yes. The podcast is called Couples Therapy. In seven words. And if you take couples therapy, that's CT. CT in Seven. That number seven. Ctn.com. Actually, if you spell out the whole thing, couples Therapy in Seven Words, one big long thing, all letters that'll get you there. But a few months into it, I realized that's crazy. They make people type that. I grabbed the domain name CTN Seven. Then you'll have access to all of our podcast episodes. We just finished today. We just finished number 110.

[45:03] Karin: Wow.

[45:03] Bruce: So we've been doing it for a while. I highly recommend it. You'll learn a lot more about the ideas that we're talking about here. We also love to interview guests, and we've had some fascinating guests on our show, as indeed you have. I see that. What is this episode? I don't know what number this will be, but you've had about nine of them since I noticed. Is that right?

[45:26] Karin: Right. Yeah.

[45:27] Bruce: And you've had quite a rundown of really interesting people.

[45:31] Karin: Yeah. Thank you. And I've looked at some of your podcast episodes, and they really are great. And I love the rapport between you and your wife. It's really fun to see. So I recommend that. And like I said, the book, I really thought it was just some really great information.

[45:52] Bruce: Thank you for that.

[45:53] Karin: I appreciate that. Yeah. So thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. I feel like we could have a whole other conversation about your other book, which is Reigniting the Spark.

[46:08] Bruce: I'd be happy to do that. Yes, indeed. We've touched on some of the topics in that, but there's a bunch of topics in there that we haven't touched on that I'd be happy to talk with you about as well.

[46:17] Karin: Great. Well, thank you again. I really appreciate it.

[46:22] Bruce: Thanks for having me on.

[46:24] Karin: Thanks for joining us. Today on Love Is US. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the Love and Connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, al Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.