Relationship Alive!

Have you ever felt like everyone else’s needs come first? Have you wondered how you’re supposed to show up in your relationship, or for your family, if you’re exhausted and not feeling nourished and supported yourself? How do you make the shift so that you feel full enough to have something extra to offer those around you? In today’s episode, we’re going to cover the art of Extreme Self Care - so that you can learn how to make boundaries and take better care of yourself (and why that’s so important for the health of your relationship). Our guest is Cheryl Richardson, professional coach and New York Times Bestselling author of several books, including Take Time for Your Life, and her most recent book, Waking Up in Winter. Cheryl Richardson was literally one of the first professional coaches, and her decades of experience will help you reclaim your life, find your center, and bring your best self to your relationships.

As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by FabFitFun.com. FabFitFun offers a seasonal gift box with full-size, ahead-of-the-trend, fitness, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion products.

Each box retails for $49.99, but contains more than $200 worth of goodies! You can customize your box, or just be completely surprised by what comes. As a special for Relationship Alive listeners, FabFitFun is offering $10 off your first box if you use the coupon code "ALIVE" with your order. It's a great gift for yourself - or for that special someone in your life.

This week’s episode is also sponsored by SimpleContacts.com, which offers an easy, convenient way to order contact lenses, carrying all major brands. They also have an online vision test that’s you can take quickly in the comfort of your own home or office, AND they are offering you $30 off your order by visiting simplecontacts.com/alive and using the code “ALIVE” at checkout!

Resources:

Check out Cheryl Richardson's website

Read Cheryl Richardson’s Books - Take Time for Your LIfe and Waking Up in Winter

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

www.neilsattin.com/selfcare Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Cheryl Richardson

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. On today's show, we're gonna dive deep into the question of how to take care of yourself and why it is so important to take care of yourself in the context of nurturing your relationship with others, whether that be your spouse, your partner, your children, other important people in your life. At the core of it all rests your ability to nurture who you are here in this journey of your life on the planet. We've covered some more maybe psychological ways to do that. Episodes with Dick Schwartz, with Peter Levine, et cetera, et cetera. We've covered the gamut, and yet, what I wanted you to have today is some very nuts and bolts practical approaches to the art of extreme self-care.

Neil Sattin: I'm saying that intentionally because today's guest is I think the person who launched that term into the public eye, extreme self-care, and in fact she is one of maybe a dozen people who launched the profession of coaching in the world. So, if you are working with a coach or are thinking about working with a coach, then you have this esteemed guest to thank for coaching being what it is today. Her name is Cheryl Richardson and she is author of New York Times bestselling books. She's been on Oprah Winfrey's show. In particular, the first book of hers that I read, Take Time For Your Life, was huge for me in realizing all the ways in which I was not showing up for me and what that was costing me in other aspects of my life.

Neil Sattin: Cheryl has a long running radio show and I'm gonna let her tell you a little bit more about what she's doing and what she's done. She leads retreats and still does coaching, I believe, and in the meantime she is here with us today to share with us her wisdom on how to take care of yourself extremely well. If you are interested in downloading a transcript from today's conversation, then you can visit NeilSattin.com/selfcare, all one word, or you can text the word "passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. I think that's it, so Cheryl Richardson, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive.

Cheryl Richardson: Hi Neil, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Neil Sattin: You are most welcome. I think when I first reached out to you is maybe two and a half years ago, so it's great to finally be able to connect with a fellow ...

Cheryl Richardson: Sorry it took so long.

Neil Sattin: ... A fellow New Englander. That's fine, I'm sure that you were saying no until it was a definite yes.

Cheryl Richardson: Yes, exactly.

Neil Sattin: We'll fill in everyone listening on what we're even talking just then. So, perhaps ... Like, why extreme self-care? Let's start there. Why extreme and not just take care of yourself?

Cheryl Richardson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, the phrase "extreme self-care" was first coined by my coach, Thomas Leonard, who really is the man who's sort of single handedly launched the profession of coaching back in the early '90s. He was my first coach and I worked with him, and, as you said in your introduction, a handful of other coaches who were sort of helping him to craft the curriculum for Coach University, which was his training organization at the time. He's since passed away.

Cheryl Richardson: He coined that phrase and I remember early on after we had been working together for a few years, he was developing this extreme self-care program as part of the coaching curriculum and he called upon both myself and a colleague of mine, Stephen Clooney was his name, to work with him on developing the program. So, he coined the phrase and I decided to bring it to sort of the mainstream world after he had passed, through the book, The Art of Extreme Self-Care. That book was really written ... You know, I had been teaching self-care. As you mentioned, Take Time For Your Life. I had written that book and Stand Up For Your Life, which is ... So, Take Time was about sort of self-care. Getting a handle on the outer world. Stand Up For Your Life was about building confidence and character and self-esteem.

Cheryl Richardson: Then The Unmistakable Touch of Grace was about going even more deeply inward and taking care of our self-care for the spirit. You know, taking care of our spiritual wellbeing. When I wrote The Art of Extreme Self-Care, I had been teaching about self-care for many years but my husband was really sick at the time, and at the time that I had the book contract, and I remember I was really struggling to support him through his illness. My best friend at the time said to me, "How can you possibly write a book on extreme self-care when your life is in a state of extreme disrepair?" I remember thinking, "My God, she's right."

Cheryl Richardson: Early on Thomas had used the phrase "extreme ..." I remember one time he said to me, "You don't just need self-care, you need extreme self-care," because I was such a good girl back then and I was such a yes machine that he was really challenging me. He was brilliant at honoring his own needs and at setting boundaries. At one point he said to me, "Your good girl role is gonna rob you of your life." So, I think he used the word "extreme" certainly to get my attention but to also get the attention of those of us who were training to be coaches by first really getting a handle on our own lives and our own self-care so that we could be good models and so that we could, in working with people, really know what people were up against when it came to practicing better self-care so that we could support them with integrity and with real empathy, I would say.

Neil Sattin: What is extreme about it?

Cheryl Richardson: Well, it really depends on who you are, because, for example, I remember one time early in my coaching with Thomas, he said ... We both identified that I, like a lot of people, especially women, was always saying yes because I didn't want to hurt someone's feelings. I didn't want to disappoint them. I didn't want to piss off people. I wanted them to like me, and so he gave me an assignment. For 30 days I had to piss off one person a day, every day for 30 days, and I remember being ...

Cheryl Richardson: Now, for me, that was extreme, right? For a lot of people, that would be extreme, but he was trying to help me find a balance, and a lot of times when we grow, we go from one way of being in the world to the complete opposite for some of us, until we find a balance in between, so he was challenging me, like a good coach will do, and I've done this for years with my clients ... You challenge your clients to do more than they think they can and they often fall somewhere in the middle, but it's far better than where they were, and that's really what he was doing, I think, at the time.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and what I appreciate about it among many things is that it isn't polarized in the way that ... There are a lot of popular books right now that are basically about kind of not caring what other people think.

Cheryl Richardson: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: What's so artful about what you teach is that these are ways that you can take care of yourself but in a way that actually still honors your connectedness, your relatedness to other people.

Cheryl Richardson: Well, yeah, and as a matter of fact there's one point ... So, my most recent book, Waking Up in Winter, which isn't a how-to book but instead is a memoir that just shares with people exactly how I live an examined life and how I grapple with my own self-care. At one point when I was going back to sort of edit this little section that I had written about doing an interview around self-care, I just named something that I hadn't been able to really name, and I'm not gonna be able to do it as well as I did in the book here in this moment, but ultimately we're all really caring people.

Cheryl Richardson: I mean, trying to teach people to not care what other people think ... I say good luck to that. I mean, that's just not gonna happen, because we are relational beings. We have a need for belonging. We have a need for connection. Most of us do. Very high percentage of people, and so it's not that we want to take care of ourselves at all costs. What we really want is more integrity in our relationships, right? We want to be able to be who we really are. We want others to be who they really are, and we want relationships and connectedness based on truth, so if I say to you, Neil, "Yeah, sure, I'll help you move on Saturday," when I haven't had a day off in 30 days and then suddenly I'm really pissed and resentful because I now have my only day off scheduled to help you move, I promise you I'm not gonna show up on the morning of your move ... It's unlikely I will show up being all excited and ready to be supportive of you.

Cheryl Richardson: So, most of us when we're overwhelmed, and most of us are busy and overwhelmed, when we say yes out of guilt or obligation or just unconsciousness, we end up putting ... Sort of taking little bites out of our relationships, out of the integrity of our relationships, and eventually you wind up with a lot of stuff that's unsaid or a lot of sort of unnecessary energy between two people that prevents a clean, vital, alive connection with the other person. So, I find as I get older and I think I'm probably much older than you are, I want relationships with people based on authenticity, based on aliveness, based on truth, based on a give and take relationship. I don't want to be sitting having dinner with somebody who spends the whole time just talking about themselves and their problems. I have no interest in that.

Cheryl Richardson: If you're somebody I really care about, then I'm gonna attempt to interject. I'm gonna attempt to create some balance in the give and take, but if that's not something you're sensitive to or aware of, then I'm probably not gonna have dinner with you again, and I wouldn't want somebody to do that with me either. If somebody felt drained or frustrated or irritable after spending time with me, I'd want to know that, number one, and number two, I'd want to rectify it, because at our best ...

Cheryl Richardson: You know, when we've got really good, clean, honest, open communication with one another, we really get the value of relationship and our relationships become alive, much like your podcast name, right? They are alive and fulfilling and meaningful and satisfying, and in the end, that's what really matters. I promise you, that's what really matters.

Neil Sattin: So maybe a great specific thing, because I really love the wording of this. You talk about how to say no gracefully to someone, and in a way, that is about honoring your relationship with someone and it being based on truth or being willing to be truthful with someone because you honor and respect your relationship with them. So, what's the key to delivering a truthful message? It could be delivering a no to someone, like refusing to help them out, let's say, or show up for something, or to change your mind about something you've committed to, or it could be a moment of wanting to provide feedback about what's going on in a relationship, to bring the truth to it in a way that isn't heavy handed.

Cheryl Richardson: Well, the honest answer is that for each of those different situations, the language is gonna be different, right?

Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cheryl Richardson: So, let's start by looking at what are some of the general truths for all of it. Number one, if you're having any kind of an emotional reaction to a conversation, you're scared of having it, you feel pressured, you're anxious, you're pissed off. If you're having some kind of an emotional reaction or response to somebody or to the need for conversation, then the very first thing you want to do is go handle that without having a conversation.

Cheryl Richardson: I love it. There's a wonderful book called Growing Yourself Back Up by John Lee that I recommend all the time to people because it's about emotional regression, which is something that therapists understand. Coaches don't necessarily understand it because they're not therapists, but, you know, when somebody gets their buttons pushed, we often go into a regressed state. So, I'm suddenly not 58 years old, I'm 12, and I'm about to have an adult conversation with you as a 12 year old. Chances are it's not gonna go well, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Cheryl Richardson: So, the first thing I need to do is step back and grow myself back up. It might be that I have to turn to my husband or another friend to kind of process the experience. This happens a lot when you've got people in your life that are critical or mean spirited or the nasty boss who humiliates you in front of other employees. Whenever people are inappropriate, the normal human reaction is to be stunned into silence. You don't even know what to say, and then people usually beat themselves up afterwards for not having said something, but it's normal when somebody behaves inappropriately to not have a response because you're too busy processing the shock of it. So, you need to walk away and process that. Have conversations. Maybe write in your journal or write a letter to the person. Do some emotional ... Go to see a therapist depending on the intensity of it.

Cheryl Richardson: You want to just get yourself into as neutral a state as possible. In coaching, we call it "charge neutral," so it's not an excited or a reactive state. That's true for any conversation, and then I would also say, again, a good general guideline is keep it short, sweet and to the point. I can't stress this enough. My dad used to say this to me. I grew up in a family business and my dad, like from the time I was 16 years old when he would be communicating with clients, he was a tax consultant, or he would do an annual letter to his clients, he would always say to me, "Keep things short, sweet and to the point, that way people remember, they get your message and they're not bogged down with too many words."

Cheryl Richardson: I think it's the same thing in difficult conversations. So, what's your truth? You deliver that as succinctly as possible. Along with that, you don't want to defend your position. You don't want to over explain it, which would be giving too much, and you don't want to open the door for debate. So, that's part of the reason why I say "keep it short, sweet and to the point." Then I would say ... I think those are probably the most important general guidelines, and if you can enter into a conversation without being emotionally activated, you've got your best chance of being gracious, and when you keep it ... Oh, and prepare. That's the other thing.

Cheryl Richardson: Sorry, the other thing I want to say is if you have to have a difficult conversation, and for some people, saying no to a friend who asks you to babysit their kids is a difficult conversation, so they need to step back and process the feelings. Let's use that as an example. You've got to step back and process the anxiety in your body of, "Oh God, I know she's gonna be really pissed at me. She watched my kids two times last month, but I'm just ... I'm not able to do it," or, "I really don't want to do it. Her kids are difficult and they're exhausting for me. I don't have kids and it's not easy for me to be with them." Whatever the reason is, process that truth first and then you can simply have a conversation and I think it's always best to have a phone conversation unless the person is toxic in any way. Then we can talk about that separately.

Cheryl Richardson: It might be that you just simply get on the phone and you say to your friend, "I got your message about wanting to take care of the kids and I'm not gonna be able to do it, and I want you to know that I will absolutely look for a time in the future when I can, but this time, I'm not able to and I hope you understand. Period. Period." Then you keep your mouth shut, and regardless of what that friend says, you just repeat the truth of what you just said, and nothing more. "Oh, God, that's too bad. I really needed you to watch the ... I can't find anybody. There's no one." = "I'm so sorry. I really look forward to helping you out in the future. I just can't do it this time."

Cheryl Richardson: "Yeah, but, you know, I'm always watching your kids. You should really-" - "You know, I recognize you're watching my kids and I appreciate that and I will absolutely return the favor. I just can't do it this time." You see? So, I'm not saying, "You know what? I'm so sorry but I promised Jim that we'd get together this weekend and we're supposed to have a date night or a date day." The minute you do that, now you're opening it up for interpretation. It's just completely unnecessary, so ...

Neil Sattin: Right, and what's interesting too, I think, is that the more you say ... When you talk about opening it up for interpretation, that's totally true. The meaning that the other person is making, whether it's ...

Cheryl Richardson: That's right.

Neil Sattin: ... "Oh, they value this person more than me."

Cheryl Richardson: That's right.

Neil Sattin: Or, "Oh, they actually don't really like my children" or whatever it is.

Cheryl Richardson: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, the more you just keep it short, sweet and to the point, the truth is whatever story they make up is their story and that's their responsibility to manage that, so that's why I say it's so important to process ahead of time, then plan what you're going to say. Keep it short, sweet and to the point. Don't over explain. Don't debate it. Don't even open it for ... Just keep returning to the truth of what you've said and let that be enough. Then you'll need to do ...

Cheryl Richardson: You know, if it's a hard conversation for you ... Like, I don't like disappointing people, Neil. I don't like being disappointed. I haven't liked it since I was a little girl, and I've done a lot of work on dealing with my own issues around disappointment, but I know I can get activated. Just ask my husband, you know? All of a sudden we're supposed to do something and he decides, "You know what? I've had a horrible day. I just can't do it. I'm just exhausted and I'm just not able to do it," and I'm like, you know ... I get all activated. The little girl in me, I go into a regressed state sometimes and it's my responsibility to step back and go, "Okay, sweetheart, 90 percent of your reaction has nothing to do with this present moment, so let's become an adult again. Get out of the room and go get your shit together." Excuse my French.

Neil Sattin: No, that's fine. We have actually talked about that a lot on the show, recognizing those parts of us that are stuck in earlier places and earlier traumas, and trying to find the signs that that's where we're operating from instead of operating from our wise adult self, and to show up to care for those parts of us, whether it's ... We talked about it with Margaret Paul, with inner bonding work.

Cheryl Richardson: Yes. So, she's brilliant. She understands. Yes, it's exactly ... You know, it's internal family systems work, it's inner child work, it's ... Yes, it's absolutely, and that's really important. That's why ... So, from a communication standpoint, self-care, the decision to take care of oneself, brings up a lot of stuff. If you grew up in a family where it wasn't okay to tend to your own needs, or you just didn't ... It was never demonstrated to you. You never learned how to do it, it can bring up a lot of anxiety. The simplest thing can bring up a lot of anxiety, and we do need to be really respectful and loving and honoring of those parts of us that get activated. We don't want to communicate with people when they get activated.

Cheryl Richardson: Now, this especially comes into play when we're dealing with tough people, right? Critical people, authority figures, toxic-

Neil Sattin: Ex-spouses.

Cheryl Richardson: Ex-spouses. Yeah, okay, great, or situations fraught with excitability. Toxic people, all of that. It's become so important to ... The more toxic the relationship, the briefer the conversation needs to be, and I will say that in situations like a toxic ex-spouse, let's say, or a toxic parent or sibling, which, you know, I'll hear a lot about that sort of stuff, sometimes the best way to communicate is via email, once again using the guidelines, but not going ... You know, a lot of times people will say to me ... I just had a conversation with somebody recently who had to have a very difficult conversation with a really toxic friend, and she was really scared of her. Understandably so. The woman was a bully.

Cheryl Richardson: I said to this person, "No, no, no, no, no. You don't need ..." She said to me, "Well, I feel like it's only right that I see her face to face." Well, that's really lovely and clearly you're a person of integrity, but it's not good self-care, because this person's gonna eat you for lunch. So, instead, you need to communicate what you have to communicate via email. That's when it's appropriate. It's not appropriate when you're just trying to get out of a tough conversation with somebody you love, but when somebody's really inappropriate, has a history of that or is toxic in some way, or where you get incredibly triggered like an ex-spouse, sometimes you're doing both of you a favor.

Cheryl Richardson: Let me also say this. Sometimes you're doing both of you a favor by communicating via email. The other thing that's important is if you have to deliver really tough, bad news to somebody, you want to remember that sometimes you're doing them a favor by communicating via email, because you're giving them a chance to process their reaction instead of puking it all over you, and I use that gross word intentionally, because a lot of times that's what happens. People end up just puking their unfinished stuff, their unresolved stuff, their old stuff on you, and a lot of damage happens in relationships because of that.

Neil Sattin: I know. I hope more and more to foster a society where people are recognizing their potential to do that and stopping themselves, but I think it's healthy to recognize that that ain't happening all the time by any means. More and more, I think you listening to the show, that's probably true for you, where you recognize, "Oh, I get triggered. I'm going into my fight mode and I'm gonna let someone ... I could let someone have it, but I'm not going to because I recognize that that's what's going on."

Neil Sattin: There is a phrase that you mentioned in one of the recordings of yours I was listening to and I think in one of your books as well that I just love so much, so I want to make sure we say it specifically, and it's something like, "Because I honor and respect our friendship or our relationship or you, I need to tell you the truth."

Cheryl Richardson: Yes, yes. So, it's, "In an effort to honor our relationship, I want to be honest with you," or, "In an effort to honor our relationship, I need to tell you the truth." I would say, "I want to be honest." Depending on who it is, keeping it more conversational makes it feel less threatening to the other person. So, let me give you an example. This is an example I talk about all the time because ... I keep using it because people keep coming to me afterwards going, "Oh my God, that was so helpful. I needed to hear that."

Cheryl Richardson: So, let's say you have a friend that's constantly complaining about her job. Like every time you talk to her, she's just a chronic complainer, and you know you have a friend like this when you look at caller ID and you see that they're calling and you let it go to voicemail, right? Or you make dinner or lunch plans and you keep canceling at the last minute. These are the things we need to pay attention to. In our relationships, those are the clues that something's not working.

Cheryl Richardson: So, if you have a friend that's chronically complaining, it's really important to know that ... Oh, and by the way, let me just say this friend will also say things like, "You know what, Neil? God, I just love you. You know, every time I call you and I just talk about what's going on in my life, I feel so much better afterwards. I just feel relieved and energized." Meanwhile, Neil, you're hanging up the phone filled with all of their junk, exhausted and overwhelmed and thinking, "Oh, why did I answer the phone," right?

Neil Sattin: Right. Going through every spiritual clearing I know to release all that stuff.

Cheryl Richardson: Exactly. You're smudging yourself and you're taking a shower and all of that. So, it's important to recognize that when somebody's like that in your life, you show up and you answer the phone, you're completely ... You know, you're energetically clear, you're in a good place. I often use the visual of the thermometers you see in front of churches when they're raising money and they show the red line moves up as they raise more and more money.

Cheryl Richardson: If you imagine yourself as an empty vessel without a red line when the complaining friend calls and you pick up the phone and they start "wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah ..." You know, like the Charlie Brown character, "wah, wah, wah," and before you know it, the red line of anxiety or just stuff is moving up, up, up and you, because they're puking their negativity onto you, and again, I use that gross word intentionally ... So, it's coming out of them. Their red line is going down, yours is going up and by the end of the conversation, you're filled with their anxiety and you're exhausted, and they're feeling light and happy and off to the next thing.

Cheryl Richardson: The problem with that scenario is unfortunately ... I know you know this, Neil, because I think you were trained through Tony Robbins' work, right?

Neil Sattin: Yep, that was part of my training.

Cheryl Richardson: Yeah, most of us are ... Most human beings are motivated by pain or pleasure and most of it is pain, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Cheryl Richardson: So, when we get our anxiety relieved, we lose our motivation to take action to change things, so people who are chronic complainers who have vessels for their complaining keep getting to empty themselves of the anxiety of their situation so that they don't really ever get to a point where they have to do something about it. So, in that way, I'm not really doing you any favors by listening to you complain, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Cheryl Richardson: So, that's the basis for a conversation where ... Let's say you're the draining friend, Neil. Sorry, I'll only have you be that for a few minutes. So, my conversation-

Neil Sattin: Cheryl, you're always making me the draining friend.

Cheryl Richardson: I'm sorry - I'm so sorry. So, what I would say to you is, Neil, you know what? In an effort to honor our relationship, I really want to be honest with you. The last several times we've talked, you've been complaining about your job and it sounds like you're really unhappy, and you know what? Sometimes I hang up the phone and I feel kind of exhausted, or I notice myself every now and then kind of avoiding your phone calls, and I don't want that between us. So I just want to be honest with you.

Cheryl Richardson: I am here to support you and doing something about changing this job you can't stand. I'll do research for you. I'll take a look at your resume. I'll help you find a career counselor. Like, whatever I can do to support you, but I can't listen to you complain about it anymore, and I just wanted you to know that so that in the future if you start to complain about it, I'm just gonna gently say, "Hey, Neil? Remember that conversation we had? I just want to remind you, tell me what I can do to support you in taking action."

Cheryl Richardson: Then you keep your mouth shut. You don't say anything. Even if you're tempted, like, "I hope you understand. I hope you're not mad." Just keep your mouth shut. Be empowered. That's a way to really raise our level of self-esteem, by the way, by speaking our truth and then shutting up, and then whatever you say to me ... "Well, you complain about things too, Cheryl. I don't think I complain about it this much." - "Well, you know what, Neil? My experience is that you do, and I want to support you in doing something about it, so I promise you, I'm happy to help you take action. I just can't listen to the complaining."

Cheryl Richardson: Whatever you say, I need to just keep saying that, and then the last thing I want to say is, "And, by the way, Neil, you'll probably forget that we had this conversation and I'll gently remind you when it happens again," because the truth is if you keep listening to friends that are chronically complaining, you've trained them to believe that that's okay. They have a neural network set up. You have a neural network set up. That's what regression is. It's neural programming, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Cheryl Richardson: We tap into an old program and it starts running, and you're saying ... You're breaking up that neural network, that neural program, and that you're gonna remind them that you're doing that. So, then, what's really important is that I back up that boundary with action so that if a week from now you call me and you start complaining about your boss, I better say to you, "Hey, Neil, remember that conversation we had? Tell me what I can do to support you," because if you don't, you're also ... you're doing even more damage to the relationship because you're essentially saying to your friend you don't keep your word. Your word isn't to be paid attention to or trusted, so ...

Neil Sattin: Right, right, and I think that's helpful too, because so much of what creates alive relationships is having a container that feels safe. Now, within that safe container, that doesn't mean ...

Cheryl Richardson: That's right.

Neil Sattin: ... That there's not room to ask for adjustments like you were just talking about, but the container of safety, like you set it up by saying, "In an effort to honor our relationship, I need to be honest with you," so you're saying, "I honor you."

Cheryl Richardson: That's right.

Neil Sattin: On the flip side, you're also saying, "And you can trust me that I'm not gonna let this go."

Cheryl Richardson: Yeah. Well, and you can trust me that I'll tell you the truth. I think about some of my closest friends and they're my closest friends because I know that they'll be honest with me and I know that they care about the maintenance of our friendship, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Cheryl Richardson: They don't want unspoken things between us, and the friendships that I've had that have ended, the very long, important friendships I've had that have ended have all ended because of what was unspoken and un-dealt with. I think it's also important when you talk about creating a safe container. I mean, all of my work, for years, has been about building healthy relationships, both in my own life, first and foremost, and then teaching it as a teacher. My husband Michael and I have been together almost 25 years and the year before we got married, we spent a year doing imago therapy. Harville Hendrix's Imago Therapy Together.

Cheryl Richardson: I introduced Michael to it. I told him that I was not gonna get into a committed relationship, especially a marriage, with somebody who wasn't wiling to do the work, and it was the smartest thing we ever did and it was all about creating a safe container, right? Learning to create a dialogue process. I don't know if you've done any podcasts around that work, Neil ...

Neil Sattin: Oh yeah, Harville and Helen have been on the show twice now.

Cheryl Richardson: Great. Okay, great. So, a lot of your audience are familiar. Harville is a dear and one of his colleagues was and is our therapist on call for imago therapy and we've used him off and on over the years when we've been in tough places, all because that dialogue process creates a safe container. You can use it with friends. You can use it in business situations. I've used it in coaching relationships with people, in coaching people through difficult situations, and it is all about safety, because we all get triggered. We're going to emotionally regress for the rest of our lives. I mean, that's just ...

Cheryl Richardson: Without a doubt, I can be the healthiest, most functioning adult ... You know, I saw this ... My dad died a year ago, November, and the night that he died, I'm one of seven children, and thank God for the work I do because ... I mean, I was having my own reaction to my father dying, but here I am in a hospital with my whole family and I'm just watching, bing, bing, bing, one emotional regression after another, knowing, "Breathe, do not pay attention to anything that's going on right now, because everybody is in a regressed state. Nobody is in a sane, wise, adult state. People are scared, they're grief stricken, they're traumatized. Just stay sane as best you can."

Cheryl Richardson: Of course, I had my husband with me who knew exactly what was going on and was such an example, and I think this is important to say in terms of relationships. He was such an example that night of how powerful one's presence can be without saying a word. He was this calm, grounded, loving presence for everybody. He and my brother-in-law, both of them, they were like anchors for everybody. Just being in the room. I would watch him go from one room to another room where there was emotional upset. He would step into a room and just sit and everybody would calm down. That's the power of getting a handle on emotional regression on our own reactions and growing ourselves back up.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. I'm having this thought of, like, "Well, I wonder if when I'm 80 I'll regress to when I'm in my 40s and everything will be fine."

Cheryl Richardson: It's an interesting thing to think about, isn't it? I mean, I certainly have had experiences at 58 of regressing into remembering my mid-30s or 40s, let's say, from a career perspective when things were just going gangbusters and I've had the experience of feeling overwhelmed like I did back then, but so much of regression goes all the way back to where it all started, right?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Cheryl Richardson: In the family of origin...

Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, or maybe even for some of us what we brought in to this life.

Cheryl Richardson: Without a doubt. I personally believe that. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Cheryl, I want to ensure, because this has been so powerful to talk about ways of creating healthy boundaries as a way of taking care of yourself, and I'm wondering, you don't have a lot of time left, but I want to ensure that we touch on some of the other things that are so important. At this moment I just want you listening to know that Cheryl's books are amazing. They lay everything out step by step so you're not gonna get overwhelmed with trying to figure out how to take care of yourself. There's a system there for you to follow, and I'm wondering, Cheryl, if you could give us just a taste of some of the things ...

Neil Sattin: Like, let's pull it back inward and how to really show up for us so that we're nurturing ourselves. That's where so much of your work is so powerful.

Cheryl Richardson: Well, in a lot of ways, my most recent book really demonstrates that. Waking Up In Winter. The subtitle is "In search of what really matters at mid-life," but it could've been subtitled, "In search of what really matters at a transition point in one's life." When it came time for me to write another book, I realized I really honestly felt like I had said all I needed to say about self-care and work-life balance and high quality living in all of my books, and what I really wanted was something I think a lot of us want, and that is to experience the healing power of story and example instead of teaching "how to" information and advice.

Cheryl Richardson: We have so much of it now, right? So, Waking Up in Winter is a memoir in journal form and I think journaling is one of the most powerful things we can do as an act of self-care, as an act of building a strong relationship with oneself, and I sort of demonstrate that through the book by taking a journal that was already written. It's not one that I wrote to be published. It was already written, and showing people what it means to grapple with issues of self-care, what it means to be too busy, what it means to enter a period of life where you feel like you're lingering in limbo, where you don't know what's next. You know what you don't want but you don't know what you do want, or you're waiting for the next stage of your life but you're kind of clueless about what it is.

Cheryl Richardson: How do you hold on during those times and how do you deal with the ending of friendships? I write about the ending of a very important friendship, and how do you deal with career transition and reevaluating? I mean, I think in a lot of ways I wanted people to know that they weren't alone in this process of trying to cultivate a deeper relationship with themselves. It sort of takes people on that journey by sharing what happened to me, and there's one part in the book that ...

Cheryl Richardson: I mention Louise Hay, who I had the good fortune to write a book with before this one. You know, Louise said to me one time when we were traveling together, she said, "Cheryl, you will be with you longer than anyone else on the planet. Why not make it a good relationship?" That just really struck me. I mean, think about that. You will be with you longer than your wife, your husband, your kids. I mean, you will be with you longer than anyone, and in the most intimate way. So, cultivating a relationship with our inner life through journaling or ...

Cheryl Richardson: When I say journaling, by the way, I'm not just talking about sitting down and writing. One whole year my journal consisted of every night I would make a list of 10 things that brought me pleasure that day. For the last two years on Instagram I make a list of five things I'm grateful for and invite my followers to do the same, and then I get to read about all these things people are grateful for. On Instagram I just want to say my username is Coach On Call. It's not Cheryl Richardson.

Neil Sattin: Great.

Cheryl Richardson: Also, I think photographs are a wonderful way, especially now with smartphones. Sometimes journaling is creating photo albums. Like every day I try to take at least one picture of something that's beautiful, and when I go back and I look in photo albums at the beautiful moments in my life, it teaches me something about myself and it reminds me of what really matters to me, so I think we have to expand our notion of what journaling is to be more about the activities we engage in every day that say to us, "You matter. I'm paying attention to you. I'm here for you. I'm present with you. You have my attention," because for most of us, the whole world has our attention on a regular basis. We don't have enough of our own attention.

Cheryl Richardson: In a lot of ways I took a big risk when I put this book out. I was convinced I wasn't gonna publish it til the day I hit send because it's very honest and it's about what happens when we decide to stop and pay close attention, to examine our life. You know, that's what I do. I live an examined life and then I write about what I discover. I mean, that's really ... You could sum up my career as a writer and a teacher pretty much, and that's what I really want for others, is to live an examined life. Give yourself the attention you deserve.

Neil Sattin: I think that's so important, whether it is figuring out how to achieve more of a work-life balance or getting rid of clutter and organizing your life and time so that it supports you and feels more spacious, or your health ... All the points that you talk about in more of your how-to books. I love that you're also there with us as an honest participant, just like I've talked on the show about things going on in my relationship with Chloe. We're not here to pretend like it's all perfect.

Cheryl Richardson: Yeah ...

Neil Sattin: We're here to remind you that it is about the process.

Cheryl Richardson: That's right, that's right. That's what it's all about. I mean, really, the soul is here to experience life, period. We're not here to accomplish or acquire or conquer. We're really here to be fully present for the experience of life and for the beautiful experience of our connection to one another because we are all connected.

Neil Sattin: I'm so pleased that we had this chance to share these moments together, Cheryl. If you're interested in finding out more about Cheryl's work, you can visit CherylRichardson.com. Her new book, Waking Up In Winter, is available, as well as all of her other books and audio programs through Audible, Sounds True. You can find it all on Amazon and through Cheryl's website, her Instagram, et cetera. We'll have links to all of that in the resources section of the show notes and transcript for this episode. Meanwhile, Cheryl, is there anything else that people should know about how they could work with you or get in touch with you?

Cheryl Richardson: No, I don't maintain a coaching practice anymore, so the best thing to do to learn about the events that I'm doing or the retreats ... I do host two retreats a year. They're just intimate gatherings of 50 people and they're very organic, and coaching ... That's where you could get coaching from me. The best place is to subscribe to the newsletter at CherylRichardson.com because I put a blog out every Sunday night and I always include what I'm up to in there as well.

Neil Sattin: Great. Well, thank you so much and it's such a pleasure to meet you and spend some time with you today.

Cheryl Richardson: Thank you, Neil, and thank you for the good work that you're contributing to the world. You have such high quality people on your podcast, people who are really steeped in a lot of experience and knowledge, and I really appreciate that you're putting this out into the world. It's so important right now.

Neil Sattin: Thank you so much for saying so. It's definitely work that's so important to me, so it's helpful to have that feedback from you.

Cheryl Richardson: Great. Thanks, Neil.

Neil Sattin: Sure thing.

Cheryl Richardson: Bye.

What do you do if you want to have sex more than your partner? Or if your partner wants to have sex more than you do? Differences in sexual desire can create so many problems in a relationship, and in today's episode we tackle this topic head-on. There's something here for you no matter which side of the equation you're on. Here's a hint: typically, when differences in sex drive become "the issue" - there's actually something else going on. Or even several "something elses". I'm going to help you figure out what they are in your relationship, and find your way to a balance around sex that feels great to both you and your partner. Along the way, you'll figure out if it's really about a difference in libido - or if there's something standing in the way of your having the kind of sexual connection with your partner that you desire.

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by FabFitFun.com. FabFitFun offers a seasonal gift box with full-size, ahead-of-the-trend, fitness, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion products.

Each box retails for $49.99, but contains more than $200 worth of goodies! You can customize your box, or just be completely surprised by what comes. As a special for Relationship Alive listeners, FabFitFun is offering $10 off your first box if you use the coupon code "ALIVE" with your order. It's a great gift for yourself - or for that special someone in your life.

Resources:

Top 3 Secrets of Great Communication in Relationship (FREE)

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (FREE)

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

What power do you have to change your relationship for the better by working on yourself? If things aren’t going so well, how do you know if you’ve done “all you can do” - or if there’s still hope? As you know, relationships require a balance of learning the skills of relating to others AND doing your own work to bring yourself more fully to your connection. On today’s episode, you’re going to learn how to find that balance, along with some ways to take both your inner growth and your outer skills to the next level. Our guest is Dr. Alexandra Solomon, author of Loving Bravely: 20 Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want. Along with her “Marriage and Intimacy 101” course at Northwestern University, Alexandra Solomon has taken relationship education to a new level - with practical ways to help you uplevel your abilities in relationship. The tools that we present in today’s episode will ensure that you’re on the right track as you move forward on your relationship journey.

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by FabFitFun.com. FabFitFun offers a seasonal gift box with full-size, ahead-of-the-trend, fitness, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion products.

Each box retails for $49.99, but contains more than $200 worth of goodies! You can customize your box, or just be completely surprised by what comes. As a special for Relationship Alive listeners, FabFitFun is offering $10 off your first box if you use the coupon code "ALIVE" with your order. It's a great gift for yourself - or for that special someone in your life.

Resources:

Check out Alexandra Solomon's website

Read Alexandra Solomon’s book, Loving Bravely: 20 Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

www.neilsattin.com/bravely Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Alexandra Solomon.

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. I always start the show with a question. There's a question that's been coming up a lot recently in terms of the kind of feedback that I've been getting from you, both through email and through the Relationship Alive community on facebook, and that is how do I know the balance between what I can actually do in a relationship, and when it's just not going to happen with the person that I'm with? How do I know whether I've really done all that I can do relationally? How do I know that I've truly brought my best to relationship so that if things really aren't working out, then I can safely say it wasn't me, or at least to the best of my ability?

Neil Sattin: I think this is a great question to ask if you're in a troubled relationship. At the same time, if you're in a great relationship, there's always this question too of how do I bring my best to what we're doing? How do we be in a state of growth, and discovery, and curiosity? Also, how do we deal with the things that maybe come up for us over and over again? Is that a sign that there's something wrong or should I be fixing that?

Neil Sattin: It's a great process of inquiry to be in. So to cover the breadth of these questions, I wanted to have on the show a special guest who just came out with a book this past year called Loving Bravely: 20 Lessons of Self Discovery to Help You Get The Love You Want. Her name is Dr. Alexandra Solomon, and she's a professor at Northwestern University who has gained a certain amount of notoriety for teaching a marriage and intimacy 101 class, which is something that we've talked about a lot here on the show that, that special "relationship education" that we often don't get in the haphazard way that we learn about relationship in our culture or in our families.

Neil Sattin: So Alexandra Solomon is here with us today to discuss her book, Loving Bravely, and to get at the heart of how we can take this journey, the journey that really begins within us, but that interfaces with our partners, our family, our friends to make sure that we are bringing our best to relationship.

Neil Sattin: We will have a detailed show guide and transcript for this episode. If you want to download that, you can visit neilsattin.com/bravely, as in Loving Bravely, or you can text the word Passion to the number of 33444. Follow the instructions, and I will send you a link to this show's transcript and guide as well as all of our other show guides and transcripts.

Neil Sattin: So I think that's it. Let's get started. Alexandra Solomon, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive.

Alexandra Solomon: Thank you for having me on. I'm happy to be here.

Neil Sattin: Let's start with, I'm curious about this course that you teach. How did that even come up for you? The idea of teaching this class in college about how to do relationship well.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. This course has certainly been just a huge meaningful experience in my life year after year. So the course, when we teach the course this Spring, it will be our 18th time teaching it. So the first years that it was taught, I was a graduate student studying at Northwestern University. Two of my mentors, Bill Pinsof and Art Nielsen were long time couples therapists who sat hour after hour, week after week in their offices with couple after couple watching these dances of despair, of disconnection, of suffering, and started to ask the question like, what if. What if we started to really value talking to people about love early in their lives before they've partnered, and before they've gotten tossed around in the sea of love, and could it make a difference?

Alexandra Solomon: This was happening as the field of relationship science was really starting to take off and be able to stand on its own two legs as a legitimate field of study.

Alexandra Solomon: So I think for years we thought of love as this, I don't know, woo-woo thing, and so to teach love was seen like, "What are you talking about?" But the science is certainly clear. The quality of our relationships, especially our romantic relationships is a really big piece of the pie in terms of the overall quality of our lives.

Alexandra Solomon: So that was a place from which the course was born, was a desire to touch people, touch young people's lives and journeys early on when they're sexually mature, but exploring. My gosh, when I think about college, I spent hour after hour on the floor of the dorm talking about love and sex with my friends. So this class just, I think it really meets, meets young adults where they are.

Neil Sattin: Does that mean that if you're someone like me who's in his 40s, that I'm not impressionable enough anymore, and these lessons won't apply?

Alexandra Solomon: Not by a long shot. Not by a long shot. That's been, if there's been one thing I've heard over the years during this course has received, as you might expect a great amount of media attention. It's been featured on five continents, and just there's a lot of curiosity about what the heck are you doing talking to college students about how to do love?

Alexandra Solomon: So the one thing I've heard over and over again, is like, "Dang, I wish I had that when I was in college." I think that there's a real longing for why aren't we talking about this? Like, why didn't somebody talk to me about some ... setting down some basic principles, some basic foundation. So it's never too late though. Never ever too late.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Well I was being a little facetious because I do have a whole podcast about this thing.

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. It's only the entirety of your life. That's right. Yes, we love the lifelong learning, right?

Neil Sattin: Yeah, exactly. I love how your book encourages, it encourages a process that allows people to get into that learning mindset, and to always be curious. I think that is one of the big challenges because when we struggle with our partners and find ... you have that moment where you get triggered and your prefrontal cortex turns off, remembering that you can find your way back to curiosity even in a moment like that is a real challenge for people.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah, I mean that's the practice, isn't it? Like holding onto that framework that whatever is happening right now in this space between my partner and I, has got the power to really show me more about me, reveal me to me, offer me tremendous healing. That's a hard place to hold. I don't know if any of us hold it 24/7, but at least we can commit ourselves to trying to remember, to making our forgetfulness as short as possible, and coming back to that center of, "Okay, what's going on in me right now?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah. One of the themes that you come back to over and over again in Loving Bravely is this process of, I think you call it name, connect and choose. So perhaps we could dive into what that means right now. If you're listening and you're hearing me say name, connect, choose, you'll have a sense of what we're talking about because I think it pulls you from these moments of being dislocated from yourself and your curiosity and the kinds of things that help you find solutions or that even help you thrive and grow. It brings you back really, really well and succinctly.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. I think that, that was a helpful tool for me and my writing of the book. It's the name, connect, choose process is just the ... it's just a process of awareness. It's a way of thinking about what bringing awareness looks like. So sometimes it happens at the really macro level, like the really big picture level where the naming is I name my father's alcoholism, I named that. For many of us, we know our healing journey begins by just calling a thing what it is, looking a thing dead in the eyes and calling it what it is. Sometimes the naming is a big picture name, like I name that I am a survivor of abuse. I name that my father struggled with alcoholism.

Alexandra Solomon: Then the connect is just noticing the feelings that are attached to that truth. And, rather than judging the feelings or thinking about what you think the feeling should be, just bearing witness to the feelings. That, the connect is really a permission to just feel what you feel, because it's through that process of naming something, allowing ourselves to feel what we feel that creates enough consciousness, enough awareness that then multiple paths open forward that allow us to choose something different.

Alexandra Solomon: Sometimes like when we're talking about like a big picture thing, we may choose then to not partner with somebody who is in the throes of their addiction the way that we have before. When we're unconscious, when we haven't named the impact of a parent's addiction, for example, we will bring to us, in an unconscious way, we'll bring to us somebody with a similar wound, because that little child in us want so desperately to fix, to redo, to master something that in childhood was unfixable, out of our control.

Alexandra Solomon: Through the process of calling the chapters of our life story what they are, and letting ourselves feel what we feel, we bring ourselves to a place of greater awareness and ability to say, "I see that, that person is suffering. I see it, I feel the pull, but I'm not going to go towards it. I don't need to. I don't need to fix the world. I can come back to my center." That's that big picture naming of bringing our awareness to our life story.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and you mentioned that process of even listing out the chapters. That was one aspect in your book that you revisit over and over again that I really appreciated as a way of helping you both see the themes, and the patterns that happen in your life and in your choices, as well as to get a certain degree of objectivity with those things.

Neil Sattin: So, maybe you could describe what we're even talking about in terms of the chapters of your life and what that ... how someone listening might go through that process for themselves in a particular area of their lives.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. So one thing to say here is that the book itself is written in chapters, obviously, as all books are. Each chapter of the book closes with some exercises. My intention there is to offer the reader ... Each of the chapters of the book is like another, just place of awareness. Then the exercises in each chapter are designed to flesh that out. How does it apply to you?

Alexandra Solomon: You're right, a lot of the work of the book is inviting people to work on their life story. This is from, there's a whole branch in the field of psychology that's about the power of story, the power of narrative, and that when we tell our stories, that's healing, right then and there, that's healing, just the telling of our story. So in the book, there are a number of invitations for the reader to kind of work on their story. It's through the process of working on who was I, and who am I? But then we start to really get empowered around, "Okay, so now who do I want to be going forward? What do I want to break, shed, transform? Then what do I want to carry through?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and being able to, like I was imagining because I, unfortunately, I was reading so much that I didn't get a chance to do all of your exercises. But that being said, it was exciting, the idea of imagining, okay, at this part of the story, this is when the unwitting hero stumbles across his first love, or makes the decision that he will regret for the rest of ... that thing.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, so there's some quality of that, that I think can be really helpful for you to be willing to look at your life that way. If I'm the hero of this story or the heroine of this story, what did I do in this chapter? What's like the one sentence summary, and how does that chapter live in me unconsciously that I'm naming right now. Well, what could happen in the next chapter? Because that's the beauty of story, right? Is that as long as there's another book in the series, you don't really know what's going to happen. It's not a set destiny no matter what you thought in chapters one, two, and three.

Alexandra Solomon: That's right, and I think that when we are thinking about when we're working on a chapter in our story that maybe is what we would consider a dark night of the soul or a really difficult chapter that maybe has to do with a toxic romantic relationship, so we're writing that story. The risk is that what we take away from that relationship is just a lot of heavy cynicism, wound, hurt, a closed off heartedness, right? Because it hurt, because we feel like love is dangerous. We've been hurt. So I think there's something when we're especially working on one of those chapters, the process of telling the story can open up, even if it's just for a moment, it can open up a little light of awareness about the "and", about it was awful...and....

Alexandra Solomon: Then in the and, within the and, is that posttraumatic growth that's always there that we don't get to unless we really stand on the truth of it, allow ourselves to feel what we feel. Through that process, very often there can be this "and", that's about, "and that relationship taught me about what it really means to hold onto my worth, and what it really means to honor the red flags when I see them, and what it really means to speak my truth, even if I'm afraid..."

Alexandra Solomon: But we don't get to those. We don't get to those little pieces that are about our own resilience, and our own ability to get back up unless we're willing to just tell the story. Tell the story, to be like, "This is what happened, here's what I saw, here's what I felt, here's what I did, here's what I tolerated and here's what I want going forward."

Alexandra Solomon: So that's, I think that's why crafting our stories, telling our stories, even the chapters that were hurtful, that we survived. When we do that, we are really reclaiming our healing. We're really reclaiming our resilience through that process. I don't think there's any other way to get to the resilience, to the courage to love again. We don't get to that by just putting the chapter in a box, and burying the box in the bottom of the ocean, or doing this thing where we just say it was where we just don't talk about it. We can't get there unless we kind of go through and story it and start to make some sense of it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. It's funny because I agree with you completely, and still I know these people in my life who that's what they do, like end of chapter, box goes under the bed or in the closet or burned in the bonfire, and that's it. Like, next. No real self reflection.

Neil Sattin: There is a part of me at times, especially when things get complicated where I'm like, "Wow, that must be a much easier way to live on some level." I'm wondering if you have any reflections on that. Do you ever, as you were writing the book, because what I loved about Loving Bravely, apart from it just being a really well organized book, when you read this book, you'll see that it does a great job, which probably won't surprise you for someone who teaches relationship 101. It walks you through a process that will get you somewhere, and with a whole lot more self understanding. So I really appreciated that.

Neil Sattin: At the same time, I was reading it and I was like, "This is great. I can relate to so many of these things, and it's true." We do, we have to ride the waves of our relationship, and there's so much growth, and it can be so hard. Then I was like, "But is there a magical universe somewhere where people would, someone would pick up a book like this and be like, it's not that hard. It's really easy." Or be just like, "What is she even talking about? You just let go of that person and you move on, or whatever it is." What do you think? Does that mythical universe exist?

Alexandra Solomon: I don't know. It sounds lovely. I might go visit that place, hang out for a while.

Neil Sattin: Bring Todd.

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. That's right. Well, that is, I mean, I'm sure you had these moments as well where it's like, I think part of what I do, whether it's in my classroom when I'm teaching undergraduate students, or my classroom when I'm training couples therapists, or in my couple's therapy office when I'm working with couples, I mean my life's work is to make stuff complicated, right? To hold onto 50 Shades of Gray, to be willing to go to the level of nuance to turn something eight different ways so we can look at it.

Alexandra Solomon: So that's my jam. That's what I love to do. But I'm sure that way of living would drive a lot of people really crazy. It'd be a really unpleasant way to live the way there's just a simplicity that comes from not looking at the nuance of it.

Neil Sattin: This brings me, and it gives me an idea for a question.

Alexandra Solomon: Okay.

Neil Sattin: Which is, I'm sure you see this all the time. I see this with my clients and people who write in. There's so often someone who's very self reflective, for some reason, finds themself in relationship with someone who's like, "No, I don't really want to talk about that." Or, "Why are we making things so complicated?" Or any variation of that.

Neil Sattin: I'm wondering because you are probably not hearing from that person, you're hearing from the growth oriented taking things apart person who really wants to affect change. What do you offer someone in that kind of situation around the dialectics of their partner being different than them, versus inviting them into the reflection versus maybe this person isn't right for you?

Alexandra Solomon: Yes. I think that is such a great question because you're right. The person that I talked to is the growth oriented person who asked me a question like, "How do I get my husband ..." because usually, to be stereotypical, it is a straight woman whose asking about her male partner, "How do I get him to be more self reflective, or how do I get him to ..."

Alexandra Solomon: That to me is a red flag kind of question. Whenever we're talking about how to get somebody else to do something, we have exited our own business and we've put ourselves in somebody else's business, you know? But I do think that when there's a partner who has more interest in introspection, self awareness paired with somebody who has less interest, there is a way to invite, I think that the frame needs to be an invitation to collaboration, like an invitation to standing shoulder to shoulder and looking at a dynamic together. I think sometimes the person who has more years of therapy under their belt, who's read more self help books, there's a way that knowledge can start to get used as the weapon in the relationship in a way that, because I think it's like what I have done this to my husband at times, "Well, I'm the couple's therapist. Therefore ..."

Neil Sattin: Right. The number of times that I've sat with my wife Chloe and been like, "Well, Dan Siegel says that ..."

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. I know. Except for when it comes to Dan Siegel, because when you're saying what Dan Siegel said, you really are saying the right thing. He's just fantastic. But yes, I think that is. Those kinds of things can be used as a defense against the vulnerability of, "I'm hurt, I'm scared and lonely. I'm confused." When we start using our knowledge, or our experience, or our successful podcasts, or our successful ... our book, and we can start to use that knowledge defensively because it's maybe easier than saying, "I'm just really lonely for you, or I'm really scared about us right now, or I really don't understand your perspective. Can you tell me more about how you're seeing this?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Alexandra Solomon: We had a, there was a moment, maybe a year or so ago that our daughter was kind of needing to talk through a dynamic that happened at school. This one said to this one something or other, and just one of those messy friendship dynamics. She's kind of unpacking it with me, and I'm working on like a diagram, and frameworks and we're unpacking it. Todd walks by, and my husband Todd walked by and he goes, "I don't know, I think you should just tell her that snitches end up in ditches." I was like, "Beautiful. That's beautiful." because that may very well be as good an answer as this diagram that I'm working on craft here. Maybe there's a simple way forward.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. So in the spirit of being able to hold both things and to see the possibility for connection even when you're with someone who you suspect may not be as "growth oriented" as you are, and yet where there could be this real opportunity to collaborate. Well, let's dive into that. You talk about the dialectical approach, the holding two opposites or seeming opposites together, and being able to be okay there. How does that process work, and where do you see that?

Alexandra Solomon: Well, I think this example we're working on about two people who have different approaches to life, like an introspective versus a just take it as a comes approach, that's a great ... That couple is a dialectic right there. How do you hold the both-and where sometimes reflection and introspection does yield greater wisdom and awareness, and sometimes there's a simplicity, "I love you. I'm here. Let's go forward."

Alexandra Solomon: I know that there are times when my husband will ... I will want to unpack something and look at it multiple ways, and he'll just say, "Al, I love you and it's going to be okay." And, that is the thing that is ... there are times when that feels actually really validating, right? This simplicity of, "I love you. I love you, and we're going to get through it. It's hard, and we're going to get through it. I'm here, and we're together." That there's a simplicity that comes from that.

Alexandra Solomon: So the both-and is like how do you hold onto a sense of like we're in this together, and that's maybe enough for now, and a need to kind of unpack and understand. But those both-ands come up everywhere. I think that's, they happen within us. How can I be both a career ... dedicated to my career and dedicated to my family. How can I be both strong and vulnerable? The dialectic idea is about how do we hold on to just complexity, both things at once. I think that happens at the level of the self, and at the level of the relationship.

Alexandra Solomon: When we start to go into this either-or, either I'm right or you're right, that's, to me, that's a red flag. Whenever the conversation is going towards trying to figure out which one of us is right and which one of us is wrong, that's a red flag that we've gotten ourselves off track.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. So that would represent a black and white thinking, kind of cognitive distortion almost. Yeah.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Right. It can come up in like how can I love you so much and feel so angry at you right now? Or how can I trust you and handle the fact that I don't feel safe right now? Yeah. It comes up all over the place, doesn't it?

Alexandra Solomon: It really does. It's, I'm thinking about when I'm working with a couple where they really, they're coming to therapy and there's a real question about whether or not the relationship will continue. They're, "How can we do both? How can we have serious doubts and do the work of couple's therapy?" That's a hard thing to hold, how to hold on to both the awareness this may not continue, and be dedicated to doing the work, and the one that you're talking about, I think is so common, right? I think when we feel angry, when we feel ... Well, or when somebody is angry at us, when my partner is mad at me, how can I remember that somebody can be mad at me and love me? That's a challenging knot, that sometimes the anger feels ... it's hard to stay present when somebody else is angry with us or disappointed in us.

Neil Sattin: Right? That goes right back to childhood wounds usually around our experience of our parent's anger or disappointment in us.

Alexandra Solomon: I think it's really important for parents to find ways of saying, "I am angry right now. I am upset right now, and I love you and I'm doing my work to move through this. I's my job as a parent to move through this and to reconnect." Right? So we don't leave our kids in that place of toxic shame. But that lingers, right? That lingers, and then the kid becomes an adult who really becomes fearful of conflict.

Neil Sattin: Right? Right. We don't know anyone like that. Another dialectic. I like how you brought that up actually with couples who are on the edge of uncertainty around their status. But I think that that is something that more and more, especially in modern times, people are holding this, "I'm committed to you, and you know what? I could divorce you, I don't have to live with this bullshit." That kind of thing.

Neil Sattin: There's a challenge there because that particular tension can really challenge the safety that you feel in relationship, and the safety that's required to do some of that vulnerable work. Yeah, how do you help someone who's in that, who's deep in that struggle of like, "I really want this, and I don't want to feel like I'm trapped here."

Alexandra Solomon: I know. I think this is the hardest, I think this is the hardest thing. I think this is really, really hard because we are ... To act as if divorce isn't an option is to live in La La land, right? That is, even when divorce was, I think maybe 50 years ago, it was easier to not act as if that was in the realm of the possible because there was so much more shame and stigma around it than there is today. So what does ... that in and, there's no getting around the fact that in order to ... that will, that intimacy really does require a safe container. A container where I'm saying, "I am committed to showing up for you today, and I'm committed to showing up for you tomorrow. I'm here to do this with you."

Alexandra Solomon: I like to think about commitment as having like two faces. The face of commitment that's about, I'm here because it's hard to leave. I got a lot of stuff here and we've got joint accounts. That is a part of commitment, right? Part of the essence of marriage is creating a guard rail, and making it hard for people to leave. That's one part of commitment.

Alexandra Solomon: But there's the other part of commitment which is I'm here because I want to be here, because I value us, because I believe in us. That's always a really important piece of the work with couples who are ... Well, for any couple is really having that value statement, that what are ... that mission statement that, what are we about, what do we believe in, what do we value? That's how you create that container that makes staying here feel like a playground rather than like a prison, right?

Neil Sattin: Right.

Alexandra Solomon: That I'm here because this is where all of me shows up, including the part of me that has pride in what it means to show up, to surrender to a process with a person. There's a pride that comes from experiencing yourself as somebody who gave their word and stands by their word. So I think couples need, individuals, and couples need lots of pathways towards capturing and embracing that second face of commitment, which is, "I'm here because I believe in us. I believe in this. I believe in what we're doing."

Neil Sattin: Yeah, there's something that emerged for me in what you just said, which was the reminder of being committed to the process. So within that, I feel like there's a lot of room for a couple to come to agreement that no matter what, we're committed to this process together, we're committed to being kind to each other.

Neil Sattin: Having that as also something that you hold to, particularly when you know, if you are in a couple in jeopardy, let's say. But at least being willing to say, "Yeah, neither one of us is going to just jump ship, but I'm not going to surprise you. We're going to be in this together, even if the in it means ultimately deciding we're not in it together."

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. One of my teachers along the way would say you can always end a marriage. You can't always save a marriage. So what it means to save a marriage, to work to heal a marriage or a longterm relationship, or a relationship, there's a pride and a sacredness to committing to that process.

Alexandra Solomon: I think here again, I think sometimes we use the fact that we can leave, we can use that as a defense against the vulnerability of really turning towards the relationship, and certainly to I think what creates a healthy relational environment is a commitment to never using the threat of leaving as a reflection. I think when we're, that's why it's so important to manage when we're triggered because when we're triggered, if we're triggered, and we keep talking, and we keep fighting, and the volume is going up, and the volume is going up, we really put ourselves in jeopardy of saying that thing of putting divorce on the table, of putting break up on the table, of threatening to leave.

Alexandra Solomon: That is all that can be, that is in that moment a reflection of that triggered volume-up kind of behavior that just doesn't create a healthy relationship climate. Like you're saying, if a marriage ends, it needs to end, or a relationship ends, it needs to end in, and from a really sober place of thoughtfulness, of consideration, of consciousness.

Alexandra Solomon: People need to be aware that, I mean, that's the thing we've learned. This is what the whole field of interpersonal neurobiology has taught us, is that when we're triggered, we're not our, and we're nowhere near our best self or our bravest self. That triggered language, triggered meaning we're kind of not in our ... we're not in our mind, right? We're out of our mind. Our blood pressure's up, our pulse is racing, our brain, our intellect is down. So we are at risk of saying stuff that we can't take back. Stuff that really hurts.

Alexandra Solomon: So part of that mission statement as a couple, I think is making commitments around what do we do when we get triggered, and how do we commit as a couple to taking time out for the sake of our relationship because we love our relationship too much, and we honor the fragility of the relationship. We know that relationships are breakable, they can be damaged. Therefore, we really value that when we're triggered, we just stop talking and we go back, we do a time out until we can speak from a place of love instead of reactivity. But that's a practice, and that takes commitment to practice to live that way, you know?

Neil Sattin: Yeah. In your book, you bring up several things that we've talked about on the show. Things like creating a code word that you use with your partner so that you can even avoid using the word triggered, which can sometimes be even more triggering. That was one thing, or focusing on just things in your immediate environment to help you get present, to not hopefully not being in an actually threatening situation, which is what that fight or flight is, is responding to. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: You offer lots of great hints in living bravely around how to navigate that kind of agreement with your partner, which I really appreciated. It's been a theme that we talk about a lot here on the show. What were you going to say?

Alexandra Solomon: Well, I was going to say because it's really, I think it's I'm glad that you're talking about it a lot on the show because I think it's just, it's so important and it's so difficult to do. When that overwhelmed state takes over, we can start to tell ourselves, "Well, it's just my feelings. I'm entitled to talk about my feelings." There's this whole kind of story that gets wrapped around, like when I'm upset, I'm allowed to say whatever I want.

Alexandra Solomon: An important aspect of self awareness is being willing to question that belief. There's, of course you are entitled and authorized to talk to your partner about what's on your mind, about what's troubling you, about the how, the how matters.

Neil Sattin: Right? There's a lot circulating in the popular culture right now around radical honesty and telling it like it is. That can feel really good, particularly if you're angry briefly, and then you have to live with the consequences of how you delivered that radical truth. I think you're definitely right that your ability to get back to the part of your brain, that goes offline when you're triggered, your prefrontal cortex to get back to that part of your brain before you express your radical truth, so that you can do it lovingly, and relationally, and creatively, and compassionately, you're going to be way better off.

Alexandra Solomon: Great. Yep. That's right. I think you're wise to connect it to this bigger cultural climate that we are in right now. I'm not a fan of radical truth. When I have a couple in my office, and one of them says, "You're not going to want to hear this, but I got to say it." I put my hand up and I said, "Well, let's just, let's pause. One hand on your heart, one hand on your belly. Let's do some breathing." Because if the frame is, you're not going to want to hear this, but I got to say it, maybe this is a great place to do some mindfulness and some preparation and kind of consider how can it be sad in a way that really is the voice of the voice of love, right? Said in a way that when you can advocate for yourself while also holding onto your partner.

Neil Sattin: Yes. You bring up a couple times this question of what would love say or do in this situation. That's a great place to orient from. If you hear yourself saying, "I don't want to, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but ..."

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. Go with that. Go to your journal, work it out. If that's the frame, that's a big red flag.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. And, talk about the importance of the pause here because I love how you do that in a session, and I can relate. There are times when I definitely have to be like, "All right, stop everything." What's so important about the pause?

Alexandra Solomon: It goes back to the fact that we are ... we act as if we're these highly evolved creatures when we're walking around with these brains that for the vast majority of our existence have, and sometimes in our lives really do still need to be fight or flight. But so we are wired for fight flight so powerfully, but we live in a world, and we create these romantic relationships where we really do value, care, consideration, compassion, closeness, intimacy. Intimacy is really a tender thing, right? To really, if what we say we value is letting ourselves be seen in all of our complexity, if that's what we value in our relationships, then we need to be willing to do what it takes to create the conditions where we can safely show each other to each other, and share stories of our heart, and talk about our insecurity.

Alexandra Solomon: So that's what we want. We have to align our behaviors towards that. That means being willing to pause, and consider, okay, so having a concern, or a complaint, or a criticism is of course understandable and to be expected in a romantic relationship. Of course that's going to happen. But how do I say it in a way that really invites intimacy where this moment of difference, this moment of misunderstanding, this moment of disappointment can help us better understand who we each are individually, and what we're about as a couple.

Alexandra Solomon: That really comes from pausing. Dan Siegel has that really lovely way of talking about the yes space versus the no space. Getting to know what that feels, I think that's where it starts. Very often in my office I'm just helping people get a sense of what does it feel like to be in a yes space. The yes space is curious, collaborative, empathic. The no space is defensive, reactive, like that gotcha energy.

Alexandra Solomon: The first step is figuring out what that feels like in your body to be in a yes space versus a no space. In order to get to that, we've got to pause, and just take that moment of reactivity, and breathe, and watch it, and notice it, and start to question what are the stories that are getting going in me right now?

Alexandra Solomon: Very often, the stories are pretty negative and critical of our partners. They deserve to be unpacked around, okay, the story I'm telling myself is that you must not care very much about me. If that's what your behavior says to me, you don't care much about me. Even just that is a kind of pause, saying the story I'm telling myself is you don't care very much about me. That's a kind of pause because then we're inviting our partner to say, "Okay, I hear that's the story you're telling yourself that you don't feel very cared for right now. I'm sorry that you feel that way. Let me know when you're ready to hear a little more about what was going on, on my side of the street, in my part of the world." That's how that back and forth opens up.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. When you said we think of ourselves as these evolved beings, I think it's worth pointing out that when you were in fight flight, when you are about to say that thing that you know you shouldn't say, but you're actually in the least evolved part of your brain. That's your primitive brain. So you're not acting like an evolved being in that moment. Maybe that can be a reminder to you like, "Let me get back to the place where that ... where I can really leverage evolution here for myself."

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah, it happens quickly. I'll be in a session with a couple, and one partner will raise their eyebrow, and then the other partner is like, "Okay, here we go." I'm like, "Wait, whoa. What happened?" It can turn on a dime. We get to know each other really well, we have these tells. My couple knows each other's tells much more than I know their tells. I'm getting to know the terrain of this relationship that they've been in for a long time.

Alexandra Solomon: So she lifts her eyebrow up, and her partner is like, "Okay, well, here we go." = "Wait, slow down, what's happening?" because that's that reactive part of our brains that is so ready to either fight or get the heck out of there.

Alexandra Solomon: That's a learning. To learn that the fight or flight response is our lower brain response, and that our relationships deserve something a little more careful, a little more nuanced than just fight or flight. That's work. They're like, "Okay, I'm watching your eyebrow go up. I'm starting to tell myself a story of you're dismissing me. You don't believe me?" Just to breathe through that stay in that space of curiosity instead of attack or get the heck out of there.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. And, what's interesting to me, I'm just imagining this hypothetical situation with the eyebrow. I imagine that it's even possible that if the other partner were able to say, "I see you, I see your eyebrows being raised." and to actually name a few other things that they see, that even that in and of itself could totally shift what's being felt in that moment from what was about to happen to like, "Actually, we're both here in this space together, and we're both being people, and we're actually safe with each other." Just the act of mentioning those things presences both partners I think.

Alexandra Solomon: I agree, because then the partner with the eyebrow can say, "Thank you for letting me know. Okay. Let me just take a couple deep breaths here because I really do. I love us. I believe in us. I want to fight for us, so let me just regulate myself for a moment so that I can really take in what you need to say."

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I don't know about you, Alexandra, but for me, when my partner names something that is a sign that I am going down some road that's very familiar to me. I have my own little recognition of, "Oh my God, I am. I'm about to do that thing that I always do." If she catches me just right, that's enough to let me see myself with a certain degree of humor and humility in those moments.

Alexandra Solomon: Yes. Isn't that beautiful? Yes. My husband will. I remember a time not long ago, he was like, "Whoa, you just want like zero to 60 in a millisecond. That was really intense to watch." And, he said it in this kind of half sarcastic but observing way. But it was I was able to hear the love in the message and the invitation to slow down in the message. In that moment I could take myself lightly enough to be like, "Okay. Yep. Okay. You're holding up a mirror. I see it. Let me try again."

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. That's the whole Gottman's 5:1 ratio of positive ... that we need five positive to counteract every one negative, and that when we have that kind of atmosphere in our relationship, our partner can say to us like, "Whoa, you're super zero to 60 right now." And, we can take it for what it is, which is a bid to be like, "Let's go. Let's be careful here. Let's slow down, let's be mindful and take it with that sense of trust that we're both fighting for the same thing right now, which is our relationship."

Neil Sattin: Yeah. There are two things that I want to make sure that we mention before we go today. Actually before we even do that, before we started, you mentioned that there's a new series that you're going to be doing online, like a book club around Loving Bravely. What is that you're going to be doing?

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah, we are. In January, we're going to launch a Loving Bravely book club. It's going to be online. We're going to do it through Facebook. So we've created a facebook group. So to sign up, you go to my website, dralexandrasolomon.com/bookclub and there's signup information. It's going to be free. We're gonna just move through one lesson of the book each month. So there's 20 lessons of the book, so we're going to do just a deep dive on each of the lessons.

Alexandra Solomon: It will be a blend of using Facebook live format plus Q&A in the Facebook group. Some dialogue back and forth there. Participants will have access to ... will do some homework and some challenges. I'm excited. It's a new venue for me. But a way of, I think of taking this work which is simple and infinitely complex at the very same time, and working on it in community, which I think is the best way to do it, frankly.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. To be able to support each other for sure. So we will make sure that we have a link to that in the show notes for this episode as well, so that whenever you're listening to us, you can find Alexandra Solomon and jump in wherever they happen to be in the book.

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. Yeah. They won't be a tight ... there's not going to be like if you don't get in, in lesson one, you're out, it will be an unfolding process.

Neil Sattin: Great. So the two things, one is on the shorter side and one might be a little less short, but hopefully not too long. So the first one is, I love how many helpful ways you offer in your book to be an invitation. Something that we started talking about at the very beginning of this conversation. I'm wondering if you could talk for a moment about constraints questions, because that's something I hadn't, at least a terminology that I hadn't come across before. I found that to be a really generative approach to how you might flip something around to actually be useful. So can you talk about that concept of a constraints question and how you would use that practically?

Alexandra Solomon: Yes. In fact, I love that you brought it up because just this morning I was thinking about the idea of a constraint question and just having a real moment of like, "Man, that's a brilliant idea." It's just, it's an old school family therapy concept that is simple and I think it packs a really powerful punch.

Alexandra Solomon: So let's say, I mean this is kind of a tricky one. Let's say our partner lies to us. There's two ways of bringing it up. One way is, "Why did you lie to me?" Then the other way is to ask a constraint question. The constraint question is, "What kept you from being truthful with me?" So the difference between why did you lie to me and what kept you from being truthful with me is a really big difference, right?

Alexandra Solomon: The why did you lie to me is an invitation to defensiveness. It's an accusation. It invites defensiveness, it predetermines the outcome, which is, I'm the victim. You're the perpetrator. It makes a good-bad split versus, what kept you from being truthful is a curious invitation towards let's work together to understand what the heck is going on in our relationship that truth is being constrained.

Alexandra Solomon: The truth that something doesn't feel safe enough or something is unhealed in you like, "What's going on? Let's look at this." It's an invitation to that shoulder to shoulder stance to look together at what the heck is going on.

Neil Sattin: So what's the trick for looking at a situation and finding the constraint? The constraint being though what's keeping you from something?

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. Well, I think just that language. What's keeping you from, is the way to ask it. So you were late. What's keeping you from being on time? We agreed to 3:30, what's keeping, what kept you? What kept you from showing up at 3:30?

Neil Sattin: Right. You're setting unrealistic expectations for me. Yeah.

Alexandra Solomon: And, it may as well, okay, so now we're off to the races. Let's have a conversation about expectations. How do expectations tie to values? What do we value in this relationship? In what way are you and I different? You grew up in a family where 10 minutes late equaled on time. I grew up in a family where 10 minutes early equaled late. That's so fascinating. Let's unpack that. What does that mean to us going forward?

Alexandra Solomon: Now we're in it. Now we're unpacking and looking at it versus you were late, you were bad, you are wrong, you are disrespectful. That's a stance that closes off intimacy. It closes off any kind of curious conversation about how do we define? You know what? How do we define this? How do we operationalize it? What does it mean to us? Is there a difference between us and the value of this thing? Those are much more interesting conversations.

Alexandra Solomon: The idea, I guess the key to the constrained question - it involves a flip and an asking about what keeps us from a path that feels more healthy, more whole, more inviting, more collaborative.

Neil Sattin: Right? And, as you reach for a constraint question instead, you may bump up against that place in you that wants to be the victim because the constraint question, what I notice immediately is it invites you into a conversation where you have shared responsibility for whatever's happening.

Alexandra Solomon: Totally. Totally. Well, because when it comes to a lie, one of the really tricky things is - when we start to hide, we start to hide things, distort things when we don't trust, when we don't feel safe. So the lie can feel like the blatant obvious place to put the blame or the badness. But there's a very oftentimes really important things to look at about how do we respond when we're in the face of differences. Sometimes I may lie because it's, I'm really scared to be direct with you, to tell you what's really going on.

Neil Sattin: Right. We had, Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson on the show talking about their book, Tell Me No Lies, which, and I love how they illustrate that, that there is a co-created dynamic there of how honesty is fostered, and truth telling in a relationship.

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. It's a lot of breathing. We have to really keep breathing when our partners share a truth that challenges us, that we disagree with, that we don't like. Okay. So keep breathing, keep breathing because if what you're saying is that you value transparency and honesty, then you got to keep breathing even when your partner is sharing something that you don't ... that you're struggling with.

Neil Sattin: Yes. True. Isn't that the truth?

Alexandra Solomon: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Neil Sattin: Maybe that would be a great place for us to end because I'm ... you spend the first half, I think of the lessons in the book are all about the work that we do within ourselves. It can be easy to ... One place where I've focused a lot on the show has been in the skills of being relational because the personal growth, like we're a very personal growth oriented world. So people neglect the growth that's around how you actually connect after you're growing personally.

Neil Sattin: But what did you, how can I phrase this? What's so crucial from your perspective about the way that we approach our own growth, and how we bring that to our relationship?

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. One of the things that I say over and over again in the undergraduate course, and it pervades my work, which is the self awareness, self growth work isn't one and done. It's not like a thing we do for a month or a year or two years. It's something that we, it's a paradigm shift. It's a commitment to always seeing, to really taking ourselves as these unfolding projects, and that were never done, and we're never perfect, and thank goodness, and that it's this back and forth between my own intimacy with myself and how that opens me to intimacy with you.

Alexandra Solomon: Then how intimacy with you turns me back towards intimacy with myself. So it's really just, I think the most important thing is holding onto that both those things are true at the same time. That I'm working on me while we're working on us, and working on us helps me work on me. That that's this ongoing back and forth.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I love that. It's true. It is an ongoing process. You offer some great ways in Loving Bravely to look at your own growth and how it, the bearing that it has on what you bring to relationships. So whether it's your beliefs about soulmates, or your beliefs about anger and confrontation, or what to expect in relationship, all those things are so important because if you're not illuminating them, they're going to drive you unconsciously or subconsciously.

Alexandra Solomon: That's right. That's right. Even the whole, I could see a couple having a fight where it's about, "I thought you were my soul mate." What is a soul mate? Okay, great. So let's use rather than fighting about whether or not each other ... you are each other's soul mates, back up and have a conversation about how did you come to believe what you believe about soulmates? What ways that are a reflection of your family system, your cultural location? All of these little points of difference are really neat opportunities for expanding our own awareness, expanding our compassionate empathy for our partner, and how they're different from us, and how they view the world differently from us rather than them being threats.

Neil Sattin: Do we have time for one more question?

Alexandra Solomon: Sure. Go for it.

Neil Sattin: Okay. This came up for me actually at the very beginning of our conversation, and what you just said reminded me of it, and that is you've talked about the power of creating our narrative and really getting to know ourselves well in what you were just saying, unpacking that with our partners. I'm wondering from your perspective, what's the balance between what we share with our partners about that narrative, like sharing with them about our history, and what we're discovering, and maybe where we don't necessarily have to share.

Neil Sattin: And, on the flip side, I've actually gotten a lot of questions from people. Perhaps you run into this in your therapy as well when your sessions with clients around someone finding something out, and then having trouble forgetting it, or how do I live with knowing that this was my partner's experience? That could be something really bad that happened or it could even be like the knowledge that their partner had this amazing lover, and maybe they're not that. How do you help a couple navigate those kinds of questions?

Alexandra Solomon: Yeah. Boy, that's a big one. The first thing I'm thinking is about early in a relationship, the idea that we really do need to earn each other's stories. I think that early in a relationship there can be either a fear of being seen, of somebody knowing like what if you knew the skeletons in my closet, you would head for the hills, or there can be an opposite of like, "okay, so you need to know all this stuff about me so that you can decide whether you can handle me or not handle me, or I want to know right now if you are up for this because I don't want to get invested and then have you flee."

Alexandra Solomon: That's where the degree to which we can hold onto, with love and compassion, our own complexity that will help us navigate what is a really personal boundary around how and when we share.

Alexandra Solomon: But the thing that we know for sure is that when I show myself to you, and you respond with empathy instead of judgment, that right there creates a loop that builds trust. So the degree to which you do that for me is the degree to which I will feel safe enough to share more about me, and that builds trust.

Alexandra Solomon: The sharing, and the trust building, and the empathy do go hand in hand and they grow over time, and they're a process. Time is a really essential variable. That's what makes, I think I'm getting into a relationship, one of the things that makes getting into relationship so challenging is that, that it takes a while to build. It takes patience to share something, and then read the feedback of how your partner, how that person's responding to you.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and on the flip side, if you're responding with a, "I don't know what to do about this, or having discovered this. You waited three years to tell me whatever it is." What I'm hearing, and what you just said is that, that might be a reflection of your own judgment or fear. And hopefully that's something that you're then able to bring to the conversation.

Alexandra Solomon: Right. Yeah, and when the partner, when our partner, if a partner shares something in year three of a relationship, usually it's when I see this happen with my couples, it tends to be something about when I was a kid I was abused or some piece of a story or my last relationship, I cheated. When that comes forward, hopefully it's coming forward in a way of like, "Listen, here's something difficult, and here's what I've done to understand it, to make sense of it, to heal, to grow. Here's what I commit to going forward." So that it's not just this kind of unfinished plop. Here's this thing which is plopped down in the space.

Alexandra Solomon: Where there is, I think some responsibility on the person who's doing the sharing to have done their own work around it, to have forgiven themselves, to have healed from the trauma, to have done some work around healing the trauma, to understand the bigger picture of what the impact was, what the recovery looks like, how they practice their healing today. I think that helps the integration of new knowledge, be a little easier for the recipient.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Well, now I'm realizing it wasn't really fair of me to drop such a big question on you at the end, but I appreciate that you are willing to dive right in with me. That being said, let this be hopefully an invitation for you to come back at some future date where we can unpack that even more.

Neil Sattin: In the meantime, Alexandra Solomon, thank you so much for being here with us today. Cearly, you are so wise and you have a lot of practical wisdom from also practicing with clients as well. Your book, Loving Bravely: 20 Lessons of Self Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want, I think is just so valuable. It's an easy read, and something that will definitely help you come to understand yourself in relationship way more than perhaps you already do.

Neil Sattin: Again, if you want to download the transcript and guide for this episode, you can do that at neilsatting.com/bravely, as in Loving Bravely. You can also text the word PASSION to the number 33444, and follow the instructions, and I'll send you everything that you need along with links to find Alexandra Solomon, her book, and to get involved in her book group, and whatever else she has going on. Clearly lots of value there.

Neil Sattin: So thank you so much again, Alexandra, for being with us here today.

Alexandra Solomon: You're welcome. Thanks for having me on I appreciate it.

How do you know if your relationship is healthy? Does having problems mean that your relationship isn't healthy? And how do you promote the health of your relationship? In this week's episode, Neil Sattin answers these questions so that you can quickly get a sense of what's going on in your relationship - and, if you decide that things aren't healthy, exactly what to do to get back on track. It's like taking a multivitamin for your relationship!

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by FabFitFun.com.

FabFitFun offers a seasonal gift box with full-size, ahead-of-the-trend, fitness, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion products. Each box retails for $49.99, but contains more than $200 worth of goodies! You can customize your box, or just be completely surprised by what comes. As a special for Relationship Alive listeners, FabFitFun is offering $10 off your first box if you use the coupon code "ALIVE" with your order. It's a great gift for yourself - or for that special someone in your life.

Resources:

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

How do you do the work of true inner transformation? If there are parts of you that are getting in the way - of intimacy, of thriving, of living in integrity - then you’re going to have a tough time realizing the full potential of your life and your relationships. However, you have everything you need inside of you - if you know how to access it! In today’s conversation, we’re getting a return visit from Dick Schwartz, creator of Internal Family Systems. We’ll be exploring this powerful way of finding your core resourcefulness - which he calls “Self” energy - and using it to help heal and grow the parts within you that are holding you back, or interfering with your vibrancy and effectiveness. You’ll learn how to identify the different parts within you, and the roles that they are playing, and you’ll also get a taste of what it’s like to be coming from “Self”. And at the end you will hear Dick Schwartz guide me through an actual journey of identifying a part that’s been impacting me in the here and now - and you’ll hear how he works with me, and that part, to heal and transform. It’s powerful, and vulnerable, and all here for you to experience on this week’s episode of the Relationship Alive podcast.

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Thanks to all of YOU who are chipping in to support Relationship Alive!

Resources:

Listen to Relationship Alive Episode 26 with Dick Schwartz - How to Get All the Parts within You to Work Together

Check out Dick Schwartz's website - the Center for Self Leadership

Read Dick Schwartz’s Books along with others focusing on how to apply Internal Family Systems - both as a therapist, and for your life

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

www.neilsattin.com/self2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Dick Schwartz

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. Way back in Episode 26 of the Relationship Alive Podcast, we spoke with Dick Schwartz who is the Founder of Internal Family Systems which is a way of coming to understand how you operate in the world, the various parts of you that sometimes have very different agendas for you and your life. Of course, this can have an enormous impact on how you show up in relationship and just how you show up in life in general.

Neil Sattin: Maybe you can relate to what I'm talking about, that feeling that one part of you wants one thing, another part of you wants another thing and how that can leave us paralyzed or maybe doing things that we're not necessarily proud of or that we didn't expect or that our partners didn't expect.

Neil Sattin: The process of working with your internal family, all of the parts within you and how they interrelate and the process of finding your own self to lead the way, that was what we covered back in Episode 26. This conversation that we're about to have with Dick Schwartz about some of the finer points of Internal Family Systems and how it can be useful for you in your day to day life to see how it's impacting you, all these parts within you and to give you some really practical new things that you can try to help you get related to how this is impacting you, how it's impacting your relationship and that's where we're headed today.

Neil Sattin: I'm very psyched to welcome back to the show Dick Schwartz to talk more about Internal Family Systems. He is the Head of the Center for Self Leadership, trains therapists all over the world and also has workshops for lay people to go through the process of self-discovery and healing and integration and bringing all of those parts back into harmony with each other.

Neil Sattin: Dick Schwartz, thank you so much for joining us again on Relationship Alive.

Dick Schwartz: Great to talk to you again Neil. I enjoyed our first conversation and you're a great interviewer.

Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you. We'll see. I could have gotten worse in the past couple of years. Hopefully, not. I just gave a quick synopsis in that introduction. By the way, if want to download the transcript or action guide from this episode, you can visit neilsattin.com/self2, that's the word self and then the number two, or you can text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Just didn't want to forget that because I'm sure we're going to cover a lot of ground.

Neil Sattin: Given what I had said already, I'm wondering what are the salient points, what's your elevator speech about "this is what Internal Family Systems is, this is why it's so important"?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. I got to find the perfect elevator speech but I can elaborate a little bit on what you said. It's my belief that we all are multiple personalities, not in the sense that we have that disorder, but that we all have these what you were saying, we all have these parts that are little sub-minds inside of us and I mentioned too that I just wrote a book tracking the history of that in our culture and in psychotherapy that this idea has been in the field for years and years and comes up and then gets knocked down again.

Dick Schwartz: I'm trying to resurrect it, that it's almost like that movie, Inside Out, only with a lot more than just the five that were in that movie where they interact with each other, that's what we call thinking often, and sometimes, one will take over and make us do things we don't want to do like you said. It's a little inner family or society that most of the time, we don't pay much attention to and think of it as just thinking or different emotions coming and going.

Dick Schwartz: If you do shift your focus inside, almost everybody can access their parts and will learn that they're all in there doing their best. Many of them are frozen in time in the past during traumas or in psychotherapy, we call attachment injuries in your family. They're as extreme as they had to be back then to protect you and those are often the ones that we don't like and try to get rid of but you can't really get rid of them. When you try, they just get stronger usually.

Dick Schwartz: In addition to all these parts, the other thing I'll say about the parts is that the good news is they're all valuable. It's like we're built with this inner multiplicity to help us in our lives. Even the very extreme ones that screw up your life can transform once they feel witnessed by you and you can help them out of where they're stuck in the past and then they become very valuable qualities.

Dick Schwartz: The other good news is that as I was exploring all this, I ran into what we'll call the Self which is almost a different level of entity inside of everyone that can't be damaged and has all the capacity you need to heal these parts. When I work with people, I help them access that first, that essence that vital resource and from that place, begin to work with their parts. When people access their Self, we were talking about leadership earlier, they just naturally have qualities like curiosity and calm and what we call the eight C's of self-leadership, compassion, courage, confidence, clarity, connectedness and there's one I just forgot.

Neil Sattin: Curiosity, calm and confidence, did you say that?

Dick Schwartz: Confidence. I don't think I said confidence.

Neil Sattin: Okay. Compassion.

Dick Schwartz: Compassion. I did say compassion.

Neil Sattin: Okay.

Dick Schwartz: Those are what we call the eight C's of self-leadership but it turns out that everybody at their essence, when that's accessed, experiences those qualities in others. From that place, has wisdom about how to heal themselves emotionally. That's as close to an elevator speech as I can get I think.

Neil Sattin: Okay. A couple of questions. First, is that even true for kids? Do kids have a Self Energy that helps them heal their parts?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Yes. Very much, and we use this model a lot with kids. There's a book on IFS with kids fairly recently. It's quite amazing because you would think that that Self has to develop but even in very young kids, you can access that place. From that place, they don't know how to do a lot of things in the outside world but they do know how to heal themselves and relate with love and kindness to these different parts such that the parts will transform.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. The other thing I was curious about was whether you could offer an example, just so people know what we're talking about. Can you think of a time or someone you worked with where they had a part that was really destructive and what that transformed into through working with that part in healing just as an example of how that works?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. There are many, many, many because I'm a therapist and I specialized in the treatment of severe complex trauma for years. I worked with people who had intense suicidal parts for example or parts that wanted to hurt them in other ways and would cut them and then parts that were rageful and would hurt other people. I spent seven years using this model with sex offenders too and I'm here to say that all of those parts including the sex offenders when approached with compassion and curiosity would reveal the secret history of how they got into the role they were in and the crime and how much they hated to do what they were doing but they were carrying these beliefs and emotions from their past experiences that drove them to do those things.

Dick Schwartz: In understanding that and also getting them out of where they were stuck in the past, they were all able to transform. If I'm working with a suicidal client for example and I would ask or I'd have the client ask the part why it wanted to kill them, it would say, if I don't kill you, you're going to continue to suffer the rest of your life. I would say, if we could get her out of her suffering in a different way, would you have to kill her? The part would say, no but I don't think you can do that. I would say, okay. Give me a chance to show that we can and then we would do that. We would heal the parts that are suffering so badly.

Dick Schwartz: You come back and now the suicidal part is happy to step out of its role and we help it into another role which often is the exact opposite of what the protector, the protective part has been in. In the case of suicide, it's often now the part wants to help you enjoy life in different ways. That would be an example.

Neil Sattin: Wow. So powerful because I think one misconception that someone might have would be a part like that where you got to get that out of there somehow.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Get rid of the harming part.

Dick Schwartz: That's right. That's the way our mental health system and our culture has viewed these things, not as entities trying their best in a misguided way as to protect us but as destructive impulses that we have to get rid of. The level of suicide is going up and levels of addiction. All is because we tend to go to war against these parts. When you do that, they think you don't get how dangerous it is and they'll up the ante and they'll kick your butt. You can't beat them most of the time.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. You offer an example in one of your books that I was reading about like imagining you're on a boat and you have a part that is convinced that something is true. The only way they're going to keep the boat upright is by leaning out this side of the boat. Then there's this opposing part that thinks basically the exact opposite and they're leaning out the other way. The more you try and adjust one or the other, instead of coming both in to share tea and crumpets under the mast of the boat, it tends to push them out further to the edges leaning off the sides.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. When any part gets extreme in one direction, there usually will be a part that will get extreme in the opposite direction. It's what we call polarization. You find that in other levels of system, for example our country right now is highly polarized such that the more I as a therapist or anybody sides with one side, the more extreme the other part has to get because they think the boat is going to collapse if they don't lean out in the opposite way.

Dick Schwartz: A lot of what we try to do is get to know each side with curiosity and compassion and then help them come into the boat and trust that it's safe to do that and get to know each other in a different way and see that they actually have things in common. They both have the survival of the boat in common for example and then help them find a new relationship. The best person to do that isn't the therapist, it's the client's Self.

Dick Schwartz: Frequently, we're helping people access the Self and then from that place, become their own inner therapist to these polarized parts.

Neil Sattin: Yeah and that's something that's noticeably different about Internal Family Systems, the role of the therapist. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about why that's so important to usher your clients into being in Self energy and then from that place, more or less doing their own therapy.

Dick Schwartz: As you're saying, that's probably the biggest difference between IFS and most other therapies and that is that rather than me, the therapist being the good attachment figure, it might be one way to think of it to the client and to the client's very insecure or hurt parts so that my relationship with the client becomes the fulcrum of their healing. My relationship is important in the sense that if I can be in what I'm calling Self energy, that allows the client to feel safe enough to drop their guard, their protected parts relax, and allows them to access Self.

Dick Schwartz: In that state, they become the primary caretaker to their parts, the primary attachment figure which is very empowering for clients and they can do it on their own between sessions and it becomes a life practice that way rather than there being this intense dependence on the therapist.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. One of the cases that you write about involves treating someone with bulimia and you detail how 14 sessions and this woman was in charge basically of her life again. I don't know what happened to that particular person but there's something magical and it makes a lot of sense as well, not magical in like fantasy but more like, yeah that makes total sense when people feel empowered that way to work with the parts in them that otherwise were running the show.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. That's part of why this often takes less time than others because as I said, people are doing this work on their own between sessions and many of my sessions, a client comes in and the first 10, 15 minutes, they're just catching me up on everything they've been doing at home. Then we go in and we do some more and then they take it from there so yeah.

Neil Sattin: A quick stepping out moment, because I know this comes up as a therapist and it also comes up in life. When you're interacting with other people's parts, I think you use the term blended. When someone is blended with their part, they're being that rageful part or that inconsiderate or mean or whatever it is. What's a way that you use to say in Self energy, compassion, curious, et cetera in the face of someone being potentially really offensive or inappropriate? Maybe I mean this more in terms of interpersonally out in the world versus in the treatment room.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. I've had a lot of practice given the kinds of clients that I was talking about because they often have parts that as you get close enough to them to do any damage, suddenly, their rage will come at you and they've been watching you for session after session and they know your weaknesses and they find just the right thing to say. These clients would be labeled borderline personality which is a very pejorative way of thinking of somebody.

Dick Schwartz: It's a lot better to just think of them as having this protective rage that isn't going to let you get close enough. I've had many, many practice sessions of immediately noticing the parts of me that come to protect me, defend me and then in the moment now, not before but now, I in the moment, can notice those parts and ask them to just let me handle this, to just let me stay and I'll feel this shift from my heart being fully closed up and my urge to lash out. That will immediately evaporate and feel my heart open again and I'll be able to see past the protector in the client to the pain that's driving it so I have compassion.

Dick Schwartz: I'll be able to stay calm and simply that presence is very diffusing for these rageful parts. Whatever I say, if it comes from that place is going to deescalate rather than escalate.

Neil Sattin: You notice that huge difference between when you're coming from Self energy versus a logical, rational manager part-

Dick Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely. I can do that with most anybody now except my wife. When she and I get into it, I just notice these parts coming in. I know that it's going to make it worse but I can't get them to step back because she can hurt me like nobody else.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: We've learned ways of repairing that afterwards, but yeah. When the protectors, even if it's a logical, rational one which doesn't seem so bad just inflames her angry part and my angry part really sets things off. Anyway, yeah.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I do want to mention that we did have Toni Herbine-Blank on the show to talk about intimacy from the inside out which is the way she applies IFS to couples work and for you listening, that's Episode 52 that you can refer back to.

Dick Schwartz: Great.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm curious because - full disclosure, I see an IFS therapist, my wife sees an IFS therapist and so I'm a little biased here-

Dick Schwartz: Honored to hear that Neil...

Neil Sattin: Yeah. The language of are you coming from Self right now? That permeates our relationship particularly when things happen so I know you are just saying that all bets are off when you're with your wife but I am curious if you have … Yeah, two important things here. One is, is there a way that you found reliably to suggest, wait a minute, we're not Self to Self in this moment.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: That's been a godsend. At some point, one of us will say, okay, let's just take a time out and work with our parts and come back when we can be more Self-led and we do it. That really has defused things. Then the next step and probably Toni talked about this too is to come back and what we call speak for rather than from the parts that were protecting us but also speak for the pain or the fear or the shame that was driving those protectors. When I can speak for what I call my exiles, those parts that I locked up in the past because they were so hurt or scared or ashamed.

Dick Schwartz: When I can speak from Self for those parts, then my wife Jean can hear that rather than when I'm speaking from those parts that try to defend me because they're so afraid that I'll feel ashamed and so on.

Neil Sattin: Wow. So many possibilities right now bumping through my brain about where to go. One loose end from earlier in this conversation, when someone comes to you and they're convinced that they are defective or that they don't have the resource within them, maybe they don't have that experience of Self energy that shows them that it's possible, what do you do to help them see actually, you are the one that you need right now?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. A lot of people start out that way.

Neil Sattin: Right because they're thinking, if I had all the answers, I wouldn't be so fucked up, right?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah and they've never had that experience of what we call Self. They've never felt it in their lives so why would they think they have it? They've been told by their families that they don't have anything like that, that they're good for nothing so they come in really believing that and I'll say, I know there are parts of you that don't believe that's in there but if you give me a shot, I can prove that it is.

Dick Schwartz: By that, I'd say, okay. Let's find the part that has this belief and ask it if it would be willing to just give us a little space in there and see what happens. If I'm in Self and my client has some degree of trust, I'll say just for a second, it can come back immediately, then the client will have this palpable experience of all that self-criticism, getting a little bit of space from it and with that, often will come to some little taste of Self. You never get full Self but just a little bit of a difference.

Dick Schwartz: Then I'll ask another part to step back and so on. Often, you'll come to some key ones that had been running things and asking them to step back is more of a challenge because they'll say, if I step back, there's not going to be anybody left. I'll say, I know you believe that but I guarantee you're wrong. Again, I would love it if you just give me a chance to prove that. You'll actually like who comes forward and it will be a big relief to you.

Dick Schwartz: I'm nothing if not a kind of what I call a hope merchant or a salesman. I'm selling hope to hopeless systems. If they buy it at all, they're eager. They would love to have somebody in there that is Self to run things. They're like in family therapy, we call parentified children. They're likely kids who when parents weren't available, had to run things and they're tired so they're dying for somebody capable to take over. They just don't think it's possible.

Neil Sattin: Could we talk for a moment about just the different categories of parts that might make it easier for you to recognize the different roles that your parts play within you and then maybe we'll chat about a way that someone listening could, after we're done, figure out their cast of characters, get related to some of the parts that are operating within them. What are some of the general categories that you see that are most significant in how we operate?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. The word roles is very important to remember because too often, other people, when they come up with category systems, they describe the category as if it were the part. In this system, these are the roles that the parts have been forced in to by what happened to you in your life. There's really one big distinction and that's between the parts of you that usually were the most sensitive, these inner children who before they're hurt are delightful and creative and innocent and trusting and so on.

Dick Schwartz: After they're hurt, they now carry what we call the burdens from the trauma or the betrayal and so now, they carry a lot of pain or mistrust or fear and shame and now, we don't want anything to do with them because we assume that that's just a hurt feeling or that's just a shame feeling. We tend to try and lock them away inside in inner abysses or caves or jails. We call these the exiles. Most all of us, partly because of these beliefs about who we are from our culture, have a bunch of exiles.

Dick Schwartz: When you get a bunch of exiles, the world suddenly becomes a lot more dangerous because anybody can trigger you. If you get hurt in a similar way again, all that past pain and the parts that are stuck in those past scenes come roaring out and take over and take you down and make it so you can't function often. There's a tremendous fear of the exiles and their being triggered. To keep that from happening, other parts are forced into the role of being protectors and some of them are trying to protect you and those exiles by managing your life so that nothing similar ever happens again and you don't manage your relationship so you don't get too close to anybody or too distant from people you depend on and manage your appearance so you look good all the time, manage your performance.

Dick Schwartz: These are parts that sometimes find themselves in the role of inner critic because they're criticizing you to try and prod you to do better or look better or they might be criticizing you to keep you from taking risks so you don't get hurt but there's lots of other common manager roles so there are caretaking managers that try to take care of everybody else and don't let you take care of yourself and so on and so on, but they're all a bunch of often pretty young parts who are now forced to do this role they're not equipped to do.

Dick Schwartz: Then the last category of protector, managers are the first, are parts that if an exile does get triggered, have to go into action to deal with that emergency and often, have to therefore be very impulsive and damn the torpedoes. I'm going to get you to do something that's going to take you away from this right now and get you higher than the pain or douse it, the shame, with some kind of substance or distract you somehow. These we call firefighters. They're fighting the flames of pain and shame and terror that come out of these exiles.

Dick Schwartz: They're the unsung heroes because most of the time, they do things that get us more attacked or shame but they're just doing their job because they know if they don't do it, the boat is going to sink.

Neil Sattin: Meaning, they're doing things like indulging in addictions or sexual compulsion?

Dick Schwartz: Right. All of those things. Some of us have more socially sanctioned firefighters like work is one of mine, we don't get as much … Actually, we get accolades for that.

Neil Sattin: Right, except maybe from your partner who's like, where the hell are you? You're working all the time.

Dick Schwartz: Exactly right, but most of my client's firefighters have been either destructive to them or to other people and so they hate themselves for having them and often, the people around them are critical of them for having them. Again, all of that shaming, both internal shaming and external shaming just adds to the load of these exiles which creates more work for the firefighters that then brings on more attack from the managers. Most people, addicts and so on are in that loop where the harder they try to sit on the addiction through discipline or self-blame, the more that firefighter feels like it's going to do its job.

Dick Schwartz: You can pump up the managers to the point where they will sit on the firefighters and the exiles but that's what people call dry drunk, a person become very rigid and the slightest thing could trigger them off the wagon so that's not the kind of healing that we're looking for.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm curious the word shame has come up several times. What is the healing path for shame?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Shame is usually minimally a two part phenomena. There's a part that says you're bad and then there's this part which is usually an exile that believes that you're worthless. Before we go to that exile, we'll go to the critic, the one who says you're bad, first and let it know we get it's trying to protect and give us permission to go to the exile. Once we get to that exile, we'll ask it, we'll have the Self ask it where it got the shame in the past and why it feels so bad about itself.

Dick Schwartz: Then people begin to witness scenes from their past where they were shamed or humiliated or made to feel worthless and how terrifying that was and how that part just bought into it then and thought they were a total loser and then how other parts had to combat that the rest of their life.

Dick Schwartz: Just that witnessing, once you see and I don't mean get it intellectually but I actually mean see it and sense it and feel almost like reliving it but not be overwhelmed by it. Once you really get what happened and how bad it was, then the part finally feels like you get it and we know where to have you go into the past in a literal way in this inner world and be with that boy in the way he needed when the shaming thing happened and often take him out of there to a safe place where now, he's willing to give up the shame.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. There's this quality of hanging on. This is the burden, right? Hanging on to the shame?

Dick Schwartz: Right.

Neil Sattin: Through being willing to be present with that part's experience and to do something, I don't know why the word heroic is coming to mind but something that you … that had an adult, had a caring, compassionate, courageous adult been there that they would have done.

Dick Schwartz: Exactly.

Neil Sattin: if you can do that, then that part of you is getting what it needs, the exiled part and no longer requires the shame.

Dick Schwartz: That's right. Yeah. People say you can't change the past but it turns out in this inner world, you can. The part's literal experience, once you go into the scene, like if you did that for some part of you Neil and you are there with that boy in the way he needed and you maybe … stood up for him against your father for example-

Neil Sattin: How did you know that was what I was thinking?

Dick Schwartz: Because I'm so good. I'm psychic. He watched you do that. That literally changes in that part's experience, what happened to him. He now becomes attached to you as the caretaker rather than depending on his father anymore and now, he's willing to leave with you and let you have this ongoing new relationship with him where you take care of him every day which usually doesn't require more than just a little check-in to see how he's doing.

Dick Schwartz: Yes. Once, that's all complete, these parts are more than happy to give up these extreme beliefs and emotions like shame that they've been carrying for whatever it is, 40 years.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and this is why it just seems like it's so important to recognize the personhood of these parts within you to see them that way. It's like an individual worthy of curiosity, compassion, respect.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. That's a tough sell on this culture because multiplicity has been pathologized over and over both by the idea that multiplicity or multiple personality disorder is a disorder. It's a scary syndrome and by just our kind of rational culture that says it's preposterous to have these little beings inside of us. It's been an uphill battle to try and make this idea sink in.

Neil Sattin: On the one hand, I love it because it's so empowering. More and more I hear from listeners or clients, people in relationship where they're like, yeah, I'm with someone who's … they have borderline personality disorder. I'm pretty sure they're a narcissist. There's some relief to knowing what might be going on with the other people in your life, maybe with yourself as well. I don't know how many people are like, you know what, I think I'm a narcissist.

Neil Sattin: At the same time, what I hear you saying is that everyone has this capacity for healing if they're willing to honor these parts within them that are causing the behavior that we see.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Again, I haven't worked with everyone, but everyone I work with, and I've worked with people that have been written off as sociopaths or various other labels. They have protective parts that fit the profile but when those parts step back, they have everything else like everybody else. Yeah, I bristle at all those diagnostic labels, it's like we take a person's most extreme and maybe destructive part and say that that's who they are. That doesn't give you much hope.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. What do you offer someone who … let's say they are in a relationship with someone who is exhibiting narcissistic tendencies? I think for those people, there's often this quandary of experiencing the destructive behavior, maybe seeing … especially if they're someone you love, then you tend to also see their capacity, their potential for amazingness. Yet, there's this question about do I really stay in this? Do I go? Do I give this person an ultimatum? You got this part. You got to heal it or else I'm out of here.

Neil Sattin: How does that work?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Sometimes, it takes something like that but you can do it from Self so there is what we call Self-led confrontation and I've done this with people I'm close to and also clients where you can see that there's a part that dominates them, that doesn't serve them and is also getting in the relationship you're in with them in the way but there's a way to say that to them with an open heart that is much more likely to sink in than if you say it from a protective part of you that's so annoyed with the person and also sees them as "a narcissist" or whatever monolithic label you've been encouraged to see the person as.

Dick Schwartz: When I'm with someone like that, again, so like x-ray vision, I can see the pain that's driving the protector and I can try to speak to both even with our current president which is a challenge. You know that there's just a bundle of exiles in there that drives all this stuff and if you can hold that perspective, then you can speak from a loving place even to very difficult things. Now, that doesn't mean you need to stay with that person if that part is constantly hurting you and that's a whole different topic of whether or not to stay but the point I'm trying to make is that it's possible even with people like that to stand up for your parts without alienating them.

Neil Sattin: What internal work would you suggest someone do to get to Self in order to have that conversation from aSself-led place?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. There's an exercise that I'll do with groups where you could take such a person and put them in a room in your mind that's contained with a window and so you're outside the room looking at that person from outside and have them do the thing that gets to you and then notice the parts that get immediately triggered and come to your defense. As you notice them, start to get to know them and what they're afraid would happened if they didn't jump up to protect you that way and then you'll learn about the exiles they protect and then you can actively ask each of them if they'd be willing to just give you a little bit of space not so you're going into the room with that person but so you can look at them without the influence of all this protective stuff.

Dick Schwartz: If they're willing, the person again will notice this palpable shift and I'll have the person look again in the room and again, when you see through the eyes of Self, you have a very different view. The person looks different, less menacing and the person … I feel sorry for him whereas seconds earlier, they were terrified of him or hated him. I don't know if that answered your question but that's an example of what we can do.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. It seems like that … that's giving someone an experience, a direct experience of that person when they're in Self that then they can bring to a real life encounter?

Dick Schwartz: Exactly, yeah. To really pull it off, you have to return to your parts and find the exiles that get triggered by such a person so much and do the healing we talked about earlier with those exiles because it's really hard to pull it off if your exiles are still vulnerable to that person.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Can we get clear too on some of the terminology like when we talk about asking a part to step back or even just asking a part anything, much less what are you afraid will happen, et cetera? How does that process work? Is that something that … What are the different ways it can work I guess because I'd love for our listeners to be able to get a sense of how this process could go? At least to the extent that they could do without guidance.

Dick Schwartz: You want to do a little piece together as an example Neil?

Neil Sattin: That would be great.

Dick Schwartz: Do you have a part you'd like to start with?

Neil Sattin: Let's see. Is there one? There's not one that's like jumping up immediately. Maybe help me get there.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. Is there something in your relationship, your intimate relationship that gets in the way?

Neil Sattin: Clearly. Yeah. Let's talk about the desire to work, like for me. That was one example you used earlier. That's true for me as well especially because I can feel like others … There's always more to do so it's hard to just close the door and step into time with my lovely amazing wife who would love to see more of me I'm sure. I know that because she tells me.

Dick Schwartz: Right. It's very similar. Focus on that part that's pushing you to work all the time and find it in your body or around your body.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. For me, it's like right in solar plexus area. There's like a heat and a tension there.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. As you notice it, how do you feel toward it?

Neil Sattin: I guess I'm a little bit annoyed and also at the same time, I'm like wow, there you are. That was easy to see you there. Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. Let's see if the part of you who's so annoyed or a little bit annoyed would be willing to relax a little bit and step back in there so we can just get to know the work part because it's hard to get to know it if you're annoyed with it. Just see if that's possible.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. He's trusting you right now so yes. He'll step aside for a moment. Relax. I think he like that word.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. I will use that word then, relax. Then focus again now on the work part and tell me how you feel toward it now.

Neil Sattin: Wow. What I just experienced was another part coming in being like, wow, I can't believe you're not working with me right now. I've really needed some time and attention.

Dick Schwartz: Okay.

Neil Sattin: Isn't that funny?

Dick Schwartz: Do you want to shift or do you want to pass that one to relax too?

Neil Sattin: Let's go into that because that feels potent for me and it's just around the wellbeing of my kids and my listeners know that I've been through divorce. I have my kids halftime, I love them and yeah, there's just something about wanting the best for them in a complex world and being afraid that they'll get hurt.

Dick Schwartz: Okay, good. Where do you find this one in your body, around your body?

Neil Sattin: That one feels like a really intense welling up in my face like a pre-tears kind of feeling and I'm also noticing a hollowness in my belly.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. How do feel toward this part as you notice it, those places?

Neil Sattin: I really want to help this part.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Let it know that and just see how it reacts to your caring for it.

Neil Sattin: How do I let it know that?

Dick Schwartz: Just tell it inside. Just say, I really want to help you. Just see how it reacts.

Neil Sattin: In telling that part, I really want to help you, he feels more teary and I also feel relief like he would say, I'm not alone. I'm not alone.

Dick Schwartz: That's right. Now, let him know he isn't alone anymore and see now what he wants you to know about himself and don't think of the answer, just wait for answers to come.

Neil Sattin: He says, I know the pain of being hurt and I want to save these children from that pain.

Dick Schwartz: Does that make sense, Neil?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Let him know you get that. It makes a lot of sense that you value that.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. It's huge. He's a huge resource for those kids.

Dick Schwartz: That's right.

Neil Sattin: I just see too that there's … I recognize times when that fear that they're not going to be okay is running the show and that sometimes works out and other times, it definitely can keep me from being in Self energy around things that are challenging.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. See if he's interested in unloading some of that fear and pain that he carries from the past. Just ask him that.

Neil Sattin: He says, if you think that's possible, then sure.

Dick Schwartz: Tell him it's totally possible.

Neil Sattin: Totally possible. Dick says so, and I believe it too. I do.

Dick Schwartz: Tell him to show you, let you feel without overwhelming you and sense what happened to give him all that. Neil, you can share with us what you get or keep it private, it's up to you.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. What I'm seeing are experiences of confusion and pain from different parts of my childhood that didn't make a lot of sense and it's just funny, ha-ha, that it does relate more to my father from what we were talking about before in this moment. That's what this part is showing me. Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Just stay with it. Is it okay to see all this, Neil?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Tell him you're getting it and it's okay to really let you get it all and just stay with it, encourage him to really let you feel it and sense it and see it how bad it was for him.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. In that, I notice there's almost like a trembling happening in my body.

Dick Schwartz: Let that happen. Just let your body move the way it needs to. It's all good. It's all part of the witnessing and just stay with it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I can feel that pain for sure.

Dick Schwartz: Okay.

Neil Sattin: What I'm noticing is also that it's not overwhelming me, it's more like I'm getting the tears. I'm getting the trembling but I'm not losing touch with us, here having this conversation or-

Dick Schwartz: Ask him if he feels like you're getting this, if this is what he wanted you to feel and sense and see or if there's more.

Neil Sattin: He says no. This is it and in saying that I also felt this really quick shift to calmness in my body.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah, he's relieved?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Ask him if he's most stuck in one of those scenes or if it's the whole time period we need to get him out of.

Neil Sattin: He's like, if you could get me out of the whole shebang, that would be great.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah, we'll do what we can.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Dick Schwartz: All right. Neil, I'd like you to go into that time period and be with that boy in the way he needed somebody at the time and just tell me when you're in there with him.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, okay. I'm there.

Dick Schwartz: How are you being with him?

Neil Sattin: I'm taking a stand and saying this is not okay.

Dick Schwartz: To your father?

Neil Sattin: To my father.

Dick Schwartz: That's great.

Neil Sattin: I placed myself physically between the young me and my father.

Dick Schwartz: Let me ask you, do you see yourself doing that or are you just there doing it and you see him and your father?

Neil Sattin: That's a tough one. It feels like it's going back and forth.

Dick Schwartz: All right. See if you can just be there without seeing yourself.

Neil Sattin: Okay.

Dick Schwartz: Keep doing that. Whatever the boy needs. Just keep doing that for him.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm there saying, this is not okay and then what feels like it really wants to happen is I turn to grab the boy and pick him up and just take him out of there.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah, let's do that. Let's take him somewhere safe and comfortable he'd enjoy. It could be in the present, it could be a fantasy place, wherever he'd like to be.

Neil Sattin: I'm asking him where he would like to be.

Dick Schwartz: Perfect.

Neil Sattin: I think he wants to just hang out  and play with his Star Wars figures.

Dick Schwartz: Okay.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm like, okay, where can we do that? Can we do that here and now? I'm imagining bringing him here into the room where I sit which is really convenient because my son has all my old Star Wars figures so I can grab some of those.

Dick Schwartz: Great.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. We're here now and he's just doing that and we're away from whatever was happening,

Dick Schwartz: Good. How does he seem now?

Neil Sattin: It's interesting because he seems a lot younger than when I was interacting with him as the part that was fearful for my kids but he seems happy to be here and happy that I'm willing to play with him and he seems relieved like that was hard for him and it was a pretty quick turn though to just be here and be safe.

Dick Schwartz: Good. See if now that he never has to go back there and you're going to take care of him if he's ready to unload the feelings and beliefs he got from those times.

Neil Sattin: I think he says he's not sure what they are but yes, he's ready.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. He could just check his body and see if there's anything he carries that doesn't belong to him.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, there's that like … he's calling it that weird feeling in my belly, that trembly flutteriness.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Great. Is he ready to unload that?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Ask him what he'd like to give it up to. Light, water, fire, wind, earth, anything else.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. He's like, I want it to just get dissolved in light.

Dick Schwartz: Okay. Bring in a light and have that happen. Tell him to let that all dissolve out of his stomach and stay with that until it's gone.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. The feeling is gone and I'm also noticing that the hollowness I was experiencing in my belly before, it feels warm and full. That feels really important to me.

Dick Schwartz: That's great.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Tell him now if he'd like to, he can invite into his body qualities he'll need in the future and you can just see what comes into him now.

Neil Sattin: He says, it's almost like cleverness, and the word that's popping into my head is mischief, but like a playful mischief.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Tell him to invite that in.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Actually, and just like a relaxed happiness, contentment I think is one of those, yeah.

Dick Schwartz: How does he seem now?

Neil Sattin: He seems really happy.

Dick Schwartz: That's great.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: Then before we stop bring in the one who was so annoyed with him originally, so it can see that he's different now and see how it reacts.

Neil Sattin: The annoyed, I think that might have been more around the work part.

Dick Schwartz: That's right. You're right. That's right. Okay. Maybe think about your kids now and see how it feels.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I feel really confident that I'm doing right by them.

Dick Schwartz: Good. Okay, you ready to come back?

Neil Sattin: I am. That was great. Thank you.

Dick Schwartz: That was very cool. Thank you for having the courage to do it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. A little window into Neil's psyche, into the interpsychic space. One thing that I wanted to highlight that you said that feels important is when you talked about experiencing the feelings without being overwhelmed particularly if someone is doing this inner work on their own like being willing to … like having that be part of the dialog with their part.

Neil Sattin: I want to see what you got and you don't need to overwhelm me.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. That was a big discovery maybe 25 years ago that parts can control how much they overwhelm because the trauma field and a lot of psychotherapy has just assumed that if you open that door, you're going to be flooded and there's not much you can do it about it other than practice these grounding skills endlessly and so on. It turns out that if you simply in advance of going to an exile, ask it to not overwhelm and it agrees not to, it won't so we can do the thing we just did with you without a huge fear of that overwhelm happening.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I think some people are afraid to open the door. I'm not going to go there because that's just too much for me and they've probably experienced what that too much feeling is like at least once in their lives, right?

Dick Schwartz: Exactly right, yeah. They've experienced. When they open the door, they were flooded. They couldn't get out of bed. They're horribly depressed and they swore never again. It's a tough sell in such clients to allow them to believe that it's possible to not do that. The exile itself to its defense, it's desperate to get some attention. If you open the door, it's going to jump out and totally take over for fear of being locked up again but if it trusts that it's not going to be locked up and you'll listen to it, it doesn't need to overwhelm you.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and because the worrying part wasn't really a part of that thread, we didn't really get to go there but I'm guessing there's something similar that happens. I'm not guessing, okay, I know but there's something similar that happens with the manager where they also get to be relieved of the burden of the protection and to be infused with some qualities that gives them that new assignment, the new role.

Dick Schwartz: Exactly. There are also stuff back in those same scenes where they took on the role of protecting that boy and they need to be retrieved that same way and unburdened. When that happens, then they're freed up to do something entirely different that they're much more designed to do and that they enjoy.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I felt like it's important to say it just because we did that work around my father that my dad is a good guy in case, in the off chance he's listening or that people who know him are listening. What I've noticed as a parent is that it actually is, their kids have things that hurt them.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. That happens and like my father who isn't alive anymore but had a lot of untreated PTSD from World War II, so everybody has got trauma and everybody has got extreme parts and when they raise their kids, those parts get triggered.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: My father was a great guy also in many different ways.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. One last thing. I just appreciate how wide our conversation has gone and your willingness to do that process with me as well which I think was very illustrative. You've mentioned that your clients, they have a routine or a check-in that they do that helps them do the work as part of their daily lives and I'm wondering what could that look like for someone if they wanted to incorporate something like that into their daily life?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah For some people, it's as simple as just a 10 minute meditation where you can incorporate it into what you already do for meditating but just start by finding, on your case, would be finding this boy and just make sure that he's still in that good place and see if he needs anything. In some times, it takes just a few seconds and he is doing well and other times, he does need more or if he feels like you abandoned him and you got to listen to that and help him with it.

Dick Schwartz: Everybody can do this on a daily basis. It becomes a life practice, not just checking with that part but with all your parts and just noticing what they need and taking care of them the way you might take care of your external children although again, they don't nearly need as much as your external children. Often, it's just a matter of minutes.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Dick Schwartz: There's a woman named Michelle Glass who wrote a book on the daily practice side of it. I can't pull up the name of that book right now but you can find it on our website.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Your website is selfleadership.org, and Dick, you also just recently came out with a book that you're telling me about before we hopped on the line here. What is that called and what's it about?

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. I coauthored it with a guy named Bob Falconer and it's called Many Minds, One Self. It's about ushering in this radically different paradigm of multiplicity and that there is this Self in there too. It's substantiating these positions I take by going through the history of our culture, the history of psychotherapy, different branches of science and showing how often the idea that the mind is naturally multiple comes up and gets pushed down.

Dick Schwartz: Then also going through each major religion and particularly, the more esoteric or contemplative branches of those religions and seeing how every one has a word for Self, it's a different word but they're all talking about the same thing that I stumbled on to many, many years ago that's in there. Some systems call it the soul or Buddha-nature or Atman or various names for it but we try to cover in some depth all of that.

Neil Sattin: Great. Is that available through your website and is it on Amazon as well?

Dick Schwartz: I'm not sure it's on Amazon yet. It just came out.

Neil Sattin: Okay, great.

Dick Schwartz: It will be soon but yeah, you can certainly get it from the website.

Neil Sattin: Great. We'll have links to that book, your website, the Michelle Glass book that you just mentioned.

Dick Schwartz: One more book if you don't mind.

Neil Sattin: No. Go ahead please.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. I coauthored another book with a guy named Frank Anderson and Martha Sweezy which is a kind of workbook for applying IFS to trauma since we've been talking about that today that just came out too with through PESI, capital P-E-S-I.

Neil Sattin: Great. That's more for the therapist in our audience?

Dick Schwartz: Yes. Yes, therapist.

Neil Sattin: Okay, great. If people want to find out more about getting IFS training or finding an IFS therapist, is that through the selfleadership.org website?

Dick Schwartz: That's right. There's a whole section on those issues.

Neil Sattin: Great. Great. One last point of curiosity. We've talked about the self and the qualities that if you're coming from a place that's compassionate, creative, curious, then you're in Self energy. Is there a quick exercise that you have people do to help them get a sense of "this is the inner diaspora of characters that are there within you that you can get to know over time?"

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. There's something we call parts mapping for example where just to describe it very quickly, I would have you start with a part. It might be the same one you started with or a different one and just stay present to it until you could for example, draw it in some form or another on a page and then return to it and stay focused on it until you notice a shift. Another part comes forward and then you'd stay with it until you can represent it on the page and then return to it until another one comes forward.

Dick Schwartz: In doing that, usually, people will map out one circuit of parts, one cluster of parts that are related to each other and it's very useful for people to do that.

Neil Sattin: By staying with one, others will naturally emerge?

Dick Schwartz: It seems to be. If you can stay in an open, curious Self place, then, if you stay with one, something will come up, some other one that's related to it.

Neil Sattin: That makes sense to me especially considering what we're saying about polarized parts earlier that if one is like, I'm here, then the other one is going to be not far behind. Don't forget about me.

Dick Schwartz: Right. That's exactly right. Not just the ones that are polarized. You'll get the ones who protect each other and so on.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. The work is really so fascinating and despite having been speaking here now for a little over an hour, we're still just scratching the surface. I loved, in particular, the way that you map the relationships between these inner parts as they relate to each other and then how that's reflected in the outer world. In fact, it seems like that was one of your breakthroughs, right? The sense that you could apply the structural family therapy that people do with the external systems to what's happening within you.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. That's my background, is a family therapist, particularly structural family therapy. For an amazing thing, it turns out that this inner system is structured in a very similar way so I've become intrigued with the parallels between internal systems and external systems at all different levels including our country and international relations. The parallel is when you really explore them are fascinating and very evident.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. You, I think, make the whole as, is it as within, so without? Is that the phrase-

Dick Schwartz: That is, yeah.

Neil Sattin: It feels really practical and-

Dick Schwartz: Yeah. Concrete.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I think getting some experience doing that within is also really helpful in being generative like the contentious moments that we experience in our lives whether it's with our partners or our parents or just in the workplace and the world, et cetera.

Dick Schwartz: Yeah, being generative and generous. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Dick Schwartz, thank you so much for coming on this show again. I look forward to the next time we can talk and your work is just so rich and such a valuable contribution to change and growth and honoring the potential in us. I'm so blessed to have you here, so thank you.

Dick Schwartz: Thank you Neil. It's an increasing pleasure to talk to you as I get to know you and also feel your appreciation for it, so I'm happy to do it again.

Neil Sattin: Awesome.

How do you invite someone into your world, your truth, your desires? When you have a complaint, how do you invite someone to the table about it in a way where they WANT to respond and help make things right? And, most importantly, how do you invite someone to be who they truly are? Today's show is all about how to "be an invitation", and whether you’re in a relationship, or single and looking to connect, the art of being an invitation can completely transform how you connect with another person. By the end of today's episode, you will have clear strategies to figure out how to improve your connection with the people in your life who matter most.

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Amazing intro and outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

Transcript (more or less): 

Now, what does it mean to be “an invitation”? And why is it so important to the long-term success of your relationship?

At its core, being an invitation is all about play. How do you encourage play in your relationship? Play is the energy that keeps things fun, and light - and can help you through a darker time in your relationship. I’m not necessarily talking about silliness - although that’s a great quality to be able to foster in your connection. “Play” is the energy of creative collaboration, and it requires you and your partner to both be as present as possible. And not only present, but also relaxed, engaged, attentive, responsive.

So being an invitation is the way that you interact with another person, inviting them to “come to the party” with you - so to speak. So at its simplest level, you might ask yourself - is the way that I’m interacting with other people encouraging them to be who they are? I’m going to give you a few questions to help you figure this out. And then, after that, I’m going to give you one key that ties it all together. Without this key, you can invite all you want without actually connecting with a person. So I’ll reveal that in a moment.

But first, how do you figure out if you’re inviting someone to the party with you. You can ask yourself questions like...

Am I being curious about them, and their experience?

Am I showing them that they are safe with me, that I’m not judging them?

Am I willing to notice what’s actually going on with a person - and to validate what I’m noticing through my curiosity? In other words - what do you think is going on with a person? How and why do you think that? And then, once you notice you’re thinking it, do you check in with them to find out whether or not it’s true?

Now why are all of those things so crucial? They are all about giving someone evidence that you are there, with them. And, on top of that, through being curious, you are giving your partner an opportunity to tune into themselves more deeply, to be in touch with their own experience. So as much as you’re inviting them into the dance with you, you are also inviting them into their own inner dance. What IS going on within them? And how is it a reflection of how they want to be in the world? Or are they being how they DON’T want to be?

You can say things like this - “I’m noticing that you’re doing this thing with your face, and it makes me wonder if I just said something that you didn’t like?”

Or - “I’m noticing that you’re taking shallow breaths...are you nervous right now? Or is something else going on?”

Now these are just a couple of examples - and there’s a fine line between asking these kinds of questions in a way that feels like an invitation, and asking them in a way that feels like an interrogation.

So now I’d like to give you the important key that brings it all together.

Can you show up this way, while at the same time revealing something of who YOU are? Bringing your own courageous vulnerability online in these moments?

The first part of being an invitation is inviting someone to the dance with you. The second part is your willingness to invite them into your world, into your experience. When someone learns what’s going on with you, and at the same time staying related to them - it’s an important component of them feeling safe with you.

I’m not talking about the kind of conversation where someone tells you something and then you turn it into being about you. We’ve all been in those kinds of conversations and those, rather than making you feel safer and more connected, can leave you feeling frustrated and like you’re not being considered.

So, by being open about how your experience of and with another person is affecting you, and at the same time, staying connected to their experience - that is perhaps one of the most powerful invitations that you can offer.

So it might be something like this:

“I’m noticing that you have this expression on your face, to me it almost looks like you’re in pain. And what I’m noticing within myself is that I’M getting really nervous, like I might have said something to offend you. Is that what just happened?”

Generally the safest thing is to start with the physical - what are you actually noticing about another person? And then what are you making it mean? And then...what is your OWN experience, your own feeling? And then...check in with the other person. Do they validate your feeling? Do they reveal something about themselves that you never could have guessed?

However, you could also just start with a feeling that you’re getting. Maybe you’ll be right on - or, maybe you’ll be way off. Can you present your feeling as a question, instead of as a fact? And can you reveal your own heart, so that the other person knows the impact that they are having on you?

Something like “wow, when you told me that I noticed that I got this sinking feeling in my gut. Does that relate to how you’re feeling about it?” - or - “Wow, I’m just feeling so elated after hearing that. I’m so excited for you. What was it like for you to have that experience?”

Then you get to see what happens next. And this is another reason why being an invitation is so important - especially if you’re single. You get to learn something about how the other person either does, or doesn’t, show up in this context. Do they want to play with you? Do they respond to your open heart with their own open-heartedness? Do they get flustered? Do they reflect before interacting, or do they just stay on autopilot? Do you get the sense that they are more THERE, more present with you? Does your interaction take on more of a quality of aliveness? Or does the other person get all triggered, and check out? And if that’s what’s happening - how do you know? What are the signs that you’re seeing?

Now...what about if you’re already in a relationship with this person?

Yeah, if you’re in a relationship, what do you do if your partner doesn’t immediately start to dance with you? Well, it could be that you’re really stuck in a rut, and so this can take some work to undo the patterns of the past. This is a great opportunity for you to get support, from a coach or a therapist, to get unstuck in your relationship, to have some guidance around re-patterning.

And, know that if you’ve been doing it one way for awhile, it can take a little time to make the switch to a new way of being, for your partner to actually get that you’re doing something different now. After all, if you haven’t been an invitation all this time, then it might take some time for your partner to actually trust that it’s safe to fully be there, with you, at the dinner table. And that’s ok, a natural part of the process. You’re both discovering here - discovering yourselves and perhaps re-discovering each other. If you start to see how you HAVEN’T been inviting your partner, all along, then you might start by taking responsibility for your part, for all the ways that you have either overtly or covertly been encouraging your partner to NOT be who they are, to not be unguarded with you. Ways that you have perhaps punished their vulnerability.

At this point in our world, there aren’t many people who have truly mastered this relationship skill. It takes practice, not only to do it, but also to UNdo all the ways that you were actively promoting the opposite kind of dynamics in your connection with your partner, or with the people around you. So don’t be hard on yourself if it’s a little awkward, or if it misfires a few times. It takes time. This is another place where getting coaching or support can be helpful, because you get to practice in an environment that’s safe for you - as well as getting to learn by example.

More than anything, I encourage you to….play. Experiment. Try it out with the people who matter in your life, sure - but you can also try this out if you’re standing in line at the grocery store, or when you’re at the gym, or buying a paleo bagel at the local coffee shop. And yes, there are paleo bagels. Well, grain-free bagels anyway. The point is - this is something that you can play with wherever you are, and wherever there are other people. It’s easiest to do when you’re actually interacting with people.

And whether you want support, or you want to simply let me know how your experiments are going - feel free to reach out to me via email: neilius @ neilsattin .com  - I get lots of email so I can’t promise that I’ll be able to respond, but I will definitely read your email - and it’s always great to know what’s happening with you.

That’s it for me, for this week. We’re still deep in the move here, sorting through boxes and boxes. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week, where you will be able to hear me get REALLY vulnerable in a conversation with Dick Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems. This is our second conversation for the relationship alive podcast, and we’re going to dive even more deeply into how your inner world, and inner work, can help you show up more courageously, clearly, and compassionately in your own life. See you next week, and, until then, take care!

Are your orgasms getting in the way of your close connection with your partner? Conventional wisdom says that more orgasms = better - but the truth might actually be quite the opposite. The good news is that there are ways that you can have sex with your partner, and foster intimacy, that seem to avoid the pitfalls that orgasms can create. In order to explain, my guest today is Marnia Robinson, author of Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships. I'm moving this week, and so I pulled this episode from the archives, because Marnia Robinsons's work has been, for me, quite transformational. When I was deciding to create the Relationship Alive podcast I knew that I wanted to teach you about karezza, a form of slow sex that steers clear of orgasms - particularly for men - with the benefit of creating an even deeper, more sustainable connection with your partner. In this episode we'll cover all of the ins and outs of karezza and how to bring this form of bonding into your relationship.

Marnia is a graduate of Brown and Yale and a former corporate attorney.  She blogs on Huffington Post and serves on the board of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health. Marnia is also the moderator of the website www.reuniting.info where you can find more information about karezza and evidence to support how switching to non-orgasmic lovemaking will actually lead to a happier, more intimate relationship.

Here are some of the details of our conversation:

• When you have an orgasm, your brain gets the biggest natural blast of neurochemicals possible without drugs.
• The “ripple effects” of how this blast changes your internal biochemistry can continue for up to two weeks and affect how we view our partner and the world around us.
• Some of the ripples you might experience are: mood swings, depression, anger, irritability, mental fogginess, boredom, and fatigue
• While western society has become very orgasm-focused, other cultures have had teachings (many of them ancient) that advocate abstaining from too much sexual climax because of weakened energy. Now science can actually back up this advice.
• It makes sense in terms of evolution and fostering diversity why you would want to grow tired of one partner and seek out another. However, since we humans are in the rare 3-5% of mammals that pair bond, we have two competing bio-mechanisms at work. If you stick with orgasm-centered sex, then you are going down the road of habituation to your partner. On the other hand, if you practice sex that is non-orgasmic, you activate the pair bonding circuitry more and more strongly over time.
• When you are focused on bonding activities, you actually become increasingly satisfied in your relationship - and take yourself off the path that would otherwise have potentially led to your dissatisfaction.
• Bear in mind that there is a difference for new lovers, who are in the “honeymoon neurochemistry” phase for the first two years of a relationship. During this phase you won’t be as susceptible to the same pattern of habituation - but by the time you reach two years you are in danger of rapidly shifting into an orgasm-driven downward spiral.
• Marnia encourages gentle lovemaking and intercourse without being goal-driven and orgasm-seeking.
• She also teaches attachment cues or “bonding behaviors” that should be part of each couple’s daily relationship.  If you download this show guide you will ALSO get a link to her FREE GUIDE on bonding behaviors that will foster oxytocin production in you and your partner.
• This kind of sex brings more attention to each partner’s needs, a stronger connection, more tenderness, lingering contentment, better communication, reduced anxiety, more energy, more understanding, and more balance in life.
• This kind of sex is also sustainable over the long term. If you’re in a more dopamine (and orgasmic) centered cycle, you will potentially have to always be focused on new ways to create more dopamine. Why go down that rabbit hole when your body already has a mechanism perfectly designed to keep you sexually satisfied and in harmony with your partner over the long term?

Are you intrigued?  I promise that you will learn things you have probably never heard before from Marnia’s practical explanation of these techniques.  Give them a try, and please let us know your results!

Resources:

www.reuniting.info   - Marnia’s website

Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow on Amazon

Text PASSION to 33444 to download the pdf version of this episode guide AND Marnia’s Free Guide to Bonding Behaviors.

FREE Relationship Communication Guide

Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

www.neilsattin.com/cupid   (Marnia’s episode page on my website)

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of:

The Railsplitters - Check them Out!

How do you align with your vision for love and call it into your life? What’s holding you back from experiencing what you want? Whether you’re single and looking, or in a relationship and wondering what’s keeping you from making it even better, today’s episode is for you. Our guest is my friend, colleague, and mentor Katherine Woodward Thomas, bestselling author of Calling in The One and the New York Times bestseller Conscious Uncoupling. In this conversation, Katherine and I will take you on an inner journey, so that you can uncover your unconscious blocks to love and magnetize yourself for attracting exactly what you want in your relationship. She’s also about to launch a new training for Calling in The One coaches, which we’ll talk about towards the end of our conversation. Katherine Woodward Thomas’s work is profoundly transformative - something that I’ve experienced personally, and I’m delighted to be able to share it with you so you can experience it for yourself.

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

Sponsors:

Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by SimpleContacts.com.

SimpleContacts.com offers an easy, convenient way to order contact lenses, carrying all major brands. They also have an online vision test that’s you can take quickly in the comfort of your own home or office, AND they are offering you $30 off your order by visiting simplecontacts.com/alive and using the code “ALIVE” at checkout!

Resources:

Check out Katherine Woodward Thomas's website

Read Katherine Woodward Thomas’s Books - Calling in The One and Conscious Uncoupling

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

www.neilsattin.com/kwt4 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Katherine Woodward Thomas

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. Today, we're going to have another very special visit from someone who's a friend, a colleague, a mentor, and an amazing teacher in the world around love.

Neil Sattin: She's been on the show three times before to talk about making space in your life for love, overcoming your barriers for love, how to get over heartbreak, and pain, and how to transform some of the beliefs at the core of who we are, the negative beliefs that get in the way of us, experiencing love and relationship the way we want to. Her name is Katherine Woodward Thomas. If you're interested in hearing any of her other episodes with me, you can visit NeilSattin.com/KWT. That's for Katherine Woodward Thomas, and you can do KWT, KWT2, and KWT3. That will take you to all of her episodes with me.

Neil Sattin: Today, we are going to hone in on her work around 'Calling in "The One". How do you find love within yourself and in the world around you? Now, this work is especially important if you're single and looking for a relationship, and wondering how to find someone who aligns with you, aligns with your values, and also aligns with having a conscious relationship. At the same time, this work ... I work a lot with couples. In fact, mostly with couples, and I'm always recommending Katherine's books to them because there's so much in Katherine's work that transforms who you are and what you're able to bring to a relationship, so even if you're in relationship, this will help maybe right the course if things aren't quite right or if things are getting stagnant, this will help inject some new life into it.

Neil Sattin: This conversation is also for you. Everything we talk about will help you breathe more energy into your connections, and figure out what within you is potentially contributing to whatever it is that's going on. I think that might be enough from me. We're going to have a detailed transcript of today's episode, and to download it, all you have to do is visit NeilSattin.com/KWT4. Just keeping with the theme there, or you can always text the word 'Passion' to the number 33444, and follow the instructions.

Neil Sattin: Best-selling author of 'Calling in "The One"', New York Times best-selling author of 'Conscious Uncoupling', Katherine Woodward Thomas, it's so great to have you here again on Relationship Alive.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It is a delight to be here with you again, Neil. Thank you so much for inviting me back.

Neil Sattin: Always a pleasure. Great to talk to you. I wanted to start with a quote of yours actually. This is something from 'Calling in "The One"', and it's toward the end of the book, so apologies. Spoiler alert.

Neil Sattin: This is what you had to say, "We have it backwards. We want to have love so that we can do loving things so that we can be loving, but the opposite is true. We need to activate an experience of expanding our hearts to feel love", in other words, being, "And then behave in loving ways, doing, so that we might draw toward us those things that create more love and fulfillment, having. Rather than have, do, be, which is how most of us are trying to create our lives, it's actually be, do, and then have." We got it reversed, and of course, that's what brings so many people into relationships that ultimately need help, right?

Katherine Woodward Thomas: For sure, that we're looking outside of ourselves for that other person to make us happy. They need to change for us to be okay, absolutely. It's so automatic to who we all are that we go outside of ourselves first, and I think the radical nature of 'Calling in "The One"' is that it is from the inside out, and we are always looking to align our consciousness with that which we are wanting to create, and so we do things like take radical personal responsibility for how we're the source of our experience. We also look to clear away anything that's inconsistent within us that would get in the way of being able to have what it is that we're wanting to manifest. I mean, they're really truthfully basic laws of manifestation.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I've had a lot of people do the 'Calling in "The One"' work, and then apply it to many different areas of their lives in order to manifest what it is they're really desiring in their heart to create, and haven't been able to up until now.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. That reminds me of a passage. I think it's somewhere in the middle of the book where you're talking about a relationship that you had that went wrong, and where you went away on retreat, and on retreat, had this epiphany that I think you were like hanging on for, hoping for some sort of retribution around a hurt heart. I think you had a business together with this person, and you had this vision of like, "If you're able to let go of this, then you're going to get all that's coming to you."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Actually, what I heard in that moment ... If I told you guys the story of what he did that had me so backed up and unable to forgive him in that moment, I get everybody all riled up and they wouldn't like him too because we all have our stories, and people actually do behave badly, and they do things that end up hurting us both consciously and unconsciously.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: What happened in that moment is that when I declared that I ... This is back in the 'Calling in "The One"' beginnings where before 'Calling in "The One"' existed as a book or a thing because it was my own process, and I had made this deep commitment to be engaged by my 42nd birthday. I was 41 at the time, and I had no prospects for a husband, but I began to ... It was only eight months away, but I began to live into that future, really into the question like, "Who would I need to be being in order for that to happen?" It wasn't so much about going out to find love. It was about going within to release any obstacles, any barriers that I had built against it, and building up certain skills and capacities that I might have been missing my whole life based on things that I never learned when I was young that most people who are in happy, healthy, secure relationships do automatically.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I was in this ... My whole focus was on my own growth and development, and one of the things I was struggling with is that I had this resentment towards a man. He was my business partner, but also, I was involved with him romantically off and on throughout the five years that we worked together, and we were both very love avoidant, and we had a lot of push/pull, and it was very dramatic, and it was very painful, and then we would always have to come to work together the next day because we had this business together. It was torture. In the end, it ended up kind of just blowing up, and I couldn't get over what he had done and some of the things that I had lost and what it had cost me. I'm on this meditation retreat with Michael Beckwith, who some people know.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: He's a very well-known teacher of metaphysics, and we're in silence, and I was wrestling with the resentment because I knew that I did not want to bring that resentment into the next relationship that I created. I didn't want to punish the next person. I didn't want to be defended against the next person because of what had happened. I wanted to complete it, and so what I was wrestling with was, "How can I complete it when it devastated me so much, and it cost me, and it's so unfair?", and I heard this voice within me. We all have these images. It was my little burning bush experience.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It was like I had this image of a host of angels around me that I felt kind of transported, but I think we all have our own spiritual perspectives and how messages come to us, but I heard loud and clear inside of me that as long as I was holding on to him for restitution of the debt that was due me, then nothing could ever happen, because he wasn't about to restore that debt to me. He wasn't capable of it, and what I heard was is that it's actually blocking the Universe from giving me what my due is, and that framing, where like, "Oh yes, there is a debt due me", but he's not holding that debt anymore. The Universe itself is holding that debt, and that gave me the opportunity to let it go. The interesting thing about that, Neil is that it wasn't until I was willing to just let it go and to not have him holding his feet to the fire like he needed to be accountable, and I just had more faith in the overall goodness of life, that everything you put out that's good will come back to you tenfold just as a principle. It wasn't until I let go of him that I couldn't see my part in it clearly until I did that, and then suddenly, I started to see all sorts of ways that I had given my power away to him.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It became very clear to me why it ended up going the way that it did, that right from the very beginning, that there were ways that I was giving away my power, I didn't believe in myself, I didn't set up proper structures to take care of myself, and that was a huge lesson to me, to not give my power away to anyone ever again like that. That changed me, because with that understanding, I had access to then doing things differently in the future. Now, I wish I could say I did it perfectly and I never ever, ever gave my power away to anyone ever again, but at least I knew that how I had co-created it and that this is actually my thing to deal with, and that the amends that needed to happen was the amends I needed to make to myself, and I think that we're all a little bit like that. I think that we're so busy pointing the finger at other people that it's very hard for us to see our part, but without seeing our part, we don't know how to grow and to change in the ways that we would need to in order to have great happiness and love.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. You mentioned in the book ... In fact, David Burns, and then I think you read something that he had written that, "The number one determining factor of happy, satisfied couples versus dissatisfied couples was in the dissatisfied couples, they blamed each other, and in the satisfied couples, they were focused on taking responsibility for themselves."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: This is why a lot of people who were even in relationship and married, even though the 'Calling in "The One"' work is specifically for people who want to call in a great love, if they want to renew their relationship, they'll come do the work because these are very core foundational teachings about how to have our relationships flourish and thrive.

Neil Sattin: I want to just mention quickly the book, 'Calling in "The One"'. The subtitle is, '7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life'. One thing that I think is so great about the book is that it is broken down into seven weeks with a lesson per day, where you read a little bit, you do a little work. It's not like this monumental thing that you have to take on. You can just one chunk at a time work your way through, and in the process, discover all these things about yourself, transform all these aspects of yourself, and it's all work that you're doing within by just going through the book, so I just appreciate how well you lay that out and made your work very accessible for people going through it.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Thank you, Neil. I mean, I'd really like to backtrack and even share about how that got created if you don't mind.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sure, and then I have a good juicy question for you, but go ahead.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Okay. Would you want to give me the juicy question and I'll leave in the answer?

Neil Sattin: Okay, juicy question. You were talking about the ways that we contribute to the situations that we're in, the ways that we give away our power, and yet, it can be so hard to see ourselves to really get an objective view of how we're doing those things, so I'm wondering if you have some insight on how to get that perspective on the things that we do that are the way that we're contributing to how our life unfolds in ways we might not want.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think that's a fabulous question. You're right. It's very juicy. The short answer, and then it does kind of lead into my story here, but the short answer is that I think the way that we're trying to figure out how we're giving away our power contributing is by analyzing ourselves.

Neil Sattin: Great.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: We're going back into the past, and we're ruminating over what happened and what the story of that missing development is, and we're getting a little stuck in the quicksand of understanding and insight, and we're too far away from having a breakthrough or an actual shift in a relationship - that happens when you really do understand yourself as the source of something. First of all, it begins with the willingness to just say, "Okay. How am I contributing to this dynamic? What are the ways that I'm showing up that are giving someone permission to treat me badly? Is there a way I'm treating myself badly? Am I enrolling them into an old story covertly outside of my own conscious awareness?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: "Who am I being in relationship with this person?", so the willingness to just even explore and begin to ask that question is what I think is a radical practice. I say radical practice because we are so programmed to project blame onto the externals, and we so think that other people are just the way they are. They're just fixed and they're never changing, and there are subtle ways that we are contributing to every single dynamic that's troublesome for us. It can be as simple as we pull our energy in, and we start to hide, we disappear ourselves when somebody disappoints us, or we don't ask the questions that would lead to clarity or set our boundaries. We fail to set boundaries because we're lacking the courage to disappoint someone or risk having someone be angry with us. We have to look at those and confront those ways of being straight on, and ask ourselves of course, "What's motivating that behavior?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: This whole approach from the inside out ... Excuse me. I have a little tickle in my throat here, but this whole approach to the inside out is actually the core of the 'Calling in "The One"' work, and I love to share the story about how it all began because I was always a person who struggled tremendously in relationship. I had a pattern of unavailable people. I would always get involved in triangles, like people had other people in their lives, they were married, they had some incomplete relationship somewhere where they were tied up somewhere else, or it could have been workaholism or alcoholism, or just one impossible love after another was what made up the bulk of my love life for most of my 20's and 30's, and there was consequently either a lot of drama, a lot of pain, and a lot of resignation and disappointment for me. I felt confused about that.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I'm a very spiritual person. I had done years of inner work on myself. I was in therapy by the time I was in my mid-20's, and then I was in 12-step programs for years, and then I did all sorts of transformational work, and eventually, I became a therapist, and I still was helping people to have great love lives and had learned a lot of things intellectually, but I was still struggling. I would come home every night to an empty apartment with my little kitty cat, Clover, and I was just kind of heartbroken about it actually because I always wanted to have a family. It wasn't until I was in my early 40's that I started to learn about the power of setting intentions, and I began to learn about the metaphysics of generating a future that's unpredictable or unprecedented, which means that you're able to break lifelong patterns and lean into a particular possibility that was never going to happen unless you began to declare that future as your own and lean into that future and claim that future, and then, live backwards from that future.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: What I mean by that is you begin to ask yourself the question, like, "Who would I need to be?", "What would I need to let go of?", "What would I need to begin to cultivate?", "How might I prepare myself?", so you become very interested in the inner transformation. I think Dr. Joe Dispenza has a quote, which I'm probably going to butcher right now just off the top of my head, but he says ... I think it's something like, "You can't create a new future with the feelings of the past", and most of us are walking around filled with the emotional set-point of the past. We have tendencies towards depression, or our bodies are a little hiked up from the traumas we suffered long ago, so we go easily into a certain anxiety state or really, the kind of residue from the core consciousness that we formed in response to the wounds of the past, "My father left", or, "My mother worked full-time and neglected me", or whatever that situation, or, "My big sister picked on me", or, "My big brother abused me", or, "I was always left out. I was the one ..."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I mean, we all have these variations of the theme, but there's a core consciousness that was formed in response to what happened, and it was a story that we crafted about ourselves, and that story has an emotional center, "I am alone", "I am not wanted", "I am unsafe", and that tends to be our default center when we get disappointed, or frightened, or overwhelmed, we'll wake up to it in the morning. It becomes kind of that unwanted companion in our bodies that resonates in our body. That's what Joe is talking about when he says, "You can't create a new future with the feelings of the past", so when I talk about creating the future, you declare. You make a declaration like I did, "I'm going to be engaged by my 42nd birthday", and then, I needed to become the self of my future, and that was a very full process. "Who would I be being?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: "How would I be showing up? How would I be feeling?" It goes back to the quote you were saying before. "What does it feel like to have love that is sane, that is stable, that is kind, that is secure, that is inspiring?" Like, "Who am I in that love, and what is inconsistent in my life right now that I need to release that doesn't match that version of me?", so is this process of transforming from the inside out.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I set this intention. I was scared to do it. I had a bunch of friends who were setting intentions for themselves too and we were tapping into the collective field, which is really now being documented by Lynne McTaggart. She came out with a book recently, 'The Power Of 8'. 'The Power Of 8' is all about this collective field that when we share our intentions with each other, we hold those intentions.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: We hold each other accountable even to living inside of those intentions, that it expedites the process of transformation and manifestation. I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know the science, but I did have a group of friends, and we were doing it together, and I began my day, every morning with just asking, "What would I need to give up. Who would I need to be being?", and feeling into that, and imagining that future as though it were happening right now. This is the other answer to your juicy question.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: When you ask life these questions, like, "What would I need to give up?", or, "What would I need to grow within me in order to have the fulfillment of my desires?", my experience is, is that you get pretty hit over the head with the answer, that you will suddenly start to see things or hear things, or people will say things, or chance meetings. You will just get all the information that you need, and so I started to follow the gum drops in the forest, and I saw a ton of things that I needed to let go of. Rather than run out to try and find love, I actually went within to look at all of the barriers that I built against it and to also begin to lean into that future on an emotional level, and to become the person that I would need to be. That was where my focus was. I barely had time to date actually, which is really funny because I was pretty consumed.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I don't mean to keep talking. I have so much to say. Sometimes I'm like you wind me up. I want to get to the story, but I just want to take a breath to see if there's anything you want to say.

Neil Sattin: Wow. Thanks, and I've been enjoying. You're on fire, so that's great. One question that popped into my head, just something that I love as an addendum to the questions you were mentioning is, "What would I need to be willing to experience if I were going to live into that future?", so as a way of uncovering maybe those blocks of, "Oh, right. I'd have to be willing to, let's say confront my fear that someone won't actually love me the way I am", or any number of things like that.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think there is. There's a turning toward the obstacle. There is an engagement, like an inner dialogue. An example of that is that once I ask these questions, I started to get answers, and one of the things that I saw when I said, "Okay. It feels like it's just happening to me, all these unavailable people." Consciously, I really want relationship.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: "How might I be the source of my experience that all these unavailable people keep showing up?", and of course, leading them to the question, "How am I unavailable outside of conscious awareness?" One of the things that I remembered when I was sitting there on this, almost like, not like a mental memory, but a somatic memory when we get flooded with a certain emotion, and I remembered being 10 when my father, who I loved with all my heart, he'd been divorced from my mother for many years, and they've had a lot of tension, so there was like a background to why he chose to do this, but he basically gave up parental rights to my mother without saying goodbye, and I just found out because my mother reported it to me, and then left the room.

Neil Sattin: Wow.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It was so devastating. It was such a defining moment for me, and I think outside of conscious awareness in that moment, I made a decision that no one was ever going to hurt me like that again, and so what I realized in that moment is that for all these years, what I had been doing is creating drama and substituting it for love, just so that I could be saved, and then I wouldn't really have to surrender to someone. When I understood that it was kind of a very primitive way of trying to protect myself, I remember that I'm an adult now, and that I have other tools to protect myself, but I got to ask myself the question, "Katherine, sweetheart, is it really worth love to you to keep this wall up?" Of course, the answer was no, and so I was able to have a dialogue with myself where I said, "You know, I think that there is a risk to loving someone, even if you love the safest person. They could pass away."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: We don't get that kind of guarantee in this lifetime, and I think that we're strong enough, and wise enough, and we have enough resources that we could handle that, and so I was able to renegotiate that within myself where I became consistently, all parts of me became available to love. This was the kind of thing I discovered like the resentments thing that I shared about my former business partner, clearing that, or the agreements that we've made with ourselves. That was really an agreement I've made with myself. Sometimes we make agreements with God. One woman I know was keeping her marital vows because she got married in a Catholic church, and she was Catholic.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: She'd been divorced for 10 years. Her former husband was already married with children from within another relationship, and she hadn't had a date in 10 years, and she couldn't figure out why, and we were able to track it back to -  She made this promise to God that she would only love this one man, so when you make these things conscious, then you get to say, "Oh, wow. That makes so much sense. Can I talk to God and see if I can renegotiate that agreement?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: "God, can you come over for tea? I need to tell you something."

Neil Sattin: Right. Right, because it's not a matter of just realizing those things, and then just abruptly being like, "That's silly. I'm not going to do that." I don't think it works that way, that there is this process of allowing you to shift, but also to maintain your integrity. That's so important.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It's so true what you're saying, Neil, and I think we have to take the time once we name something to renegotiate it and rethink it, and not just leave those tender parts of us behind, because the part of her that made that vow was so sincere, and so trusting, and so believed in that promise. The part of me when I was 10, I was so tender and so vulnerable, so it's not like we just dismiss it as stupid. We want to go back and pick those parts of us up, and say, "Sweetheart, I understand why you did that, but it's not really kind anymore, and it's not really appropriate, and this is what we're going to do now instead, but I've got you. I'm holding you, and I've got you." There were other things ...

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Also, another thing ... Gosh, there's all sorts of things I discovered on that meditation cushion too, Neil. I've discovered another thing that I call 'Toxic tie beliefs', when you're in relationship with people that is kind of based on a dynamic of you giving your power away in order for you to stay bonded to that person. A lot of us have these kind of toxic relational dynamics with people who matter to us - it's our father, or our mother, or our sister, or our boss, or somebody that we can't just discard, or even a friend that we've had for decades, so it's the ability to take back your power and be more authentic in the connection. There are a lot of examples of that, but just a simple one that shows us how much we can all do this is the woman who realized that she was very close to her mother and her grandmother, but the kind of the glue that held them all together was their disdain for men, and they'd always ... Her mother and her grandmother had married alcoholic, weaker men, and so they have this kind of matriarchal club.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Of course, she was in the club, but when she was doing 'Calling in "The One"', she realized, "Wow. I can't be in that dynamic anymore. I have to shift that. That's really toxic because if I'm in that club, and that's my way of belonging to my mother and my grandmother, then what does that say about the men that I'm going to be able to call in?"

Neil Sattin: Right. That would be the calling in the wrong one, of course.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah. Exactly, which we've all done too many times.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah. Go ahead.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm curious because a thread that seems to bind a lot of these things together is something you said early on, this faith in the goodness of life, and it's something that I see a lot that holds people back from taking risks that you might need to take, whether it's going out on a Friday night or whether it's leaving a relationship that should have been left a long time ago, or there are any number of ways that we avoid taking risks because maybe we're not anchored in the faith of the goodness of life, of things turning out well. If you're looking with a negative filter, I think that's something that David Burns talks about. It's like if you look through a negative filter, then you can find all kinds of reasons why it's not true, but I'm wondering if you can talk about the process of someone finding that within themselves to anchor themselves in that place of, "You know what? I can take this risk."

Neil Sattin: "This is going to work out one way or another. I have faith that it will."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think we have to expand our perspective on what it is to work out. I love David Burns, and I think that that quote that you're talking about, if you're looking through a negative filter really is important, and I have something to add to it, which is that it's not just the negative filter.

Neil Sattin: Great.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It's missing development. We're actually ... The simplest way to say it is to say, "is it safe to cross the street?" If you don't know how to look left or right, no, it's not safe to cross the street, but if you know how to look left and right, then yes, it's safe to cross the street, so the same for relationship. If you don't know how to say no, if you don't know how to repair breakdowns, repair rifts and breakdowns, if you don't know how to hold on to your autonomy, if you don't know how to self-sooth, if you don't know how to take personal responsibility, if you don't know how to generate intimacy, all of these things, then is it safe to be in relationship?

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Maybe not. That's where we get into a lot of pain - full of toxic patterns. One of the things that I was doing also was I was looking at, "What didn't I learn when I was young that I would now need to learn in order to have successful, healthy relationships?" It really goes hand in hand. We're not just clearing away the old baggage, but we're also needing to begin to develop certain things, skills and capacities that we didn't develop maybe because it wasn't taught to us or modeled for us in our home, but also, I think that when we came to certain conclusions when we were quite young, for example, the conclusion, "I will always be alone, and no one will ever be there for me", so from that place, we might not really have learned the skills of collaboration or the skills of conflict resolution because maybe we just assume that once there's a conflict, that's kind of the beginning of the end, and at that point, you just start to withdraw your energies, a self-protective move so that you can minimize the hurt that you might feel if someone rejects you.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: There's the limitations of that missing development - what's really creating a feeling that we can't trust life. When you say, "I have faith in the overall goodness of life, and I'm going to go out on a Friday night", basically, there's the faith that, "Wow. Something really lovely could happen. I could make a really nice connection, and if not, I'm going to trust that even if I don't make a nice connection or I have an interaction that doesn't tend to be fulfilling for me, then that's going to be an opportunity for me to learn something about myself that's inside of this journey of 'Calling in "The One"'." I mean, basically, what we're doing with 'Calling in "The One"' and when we talk about living from the future backwards is we're inviting all of us to begin to organize everything, every choice, every action, every interpretation we make of what's going on according to that future, so that there's no mistakes that can be made, and you can pretty much count on that you're going to get disappointed, because in fact, Joseph Campbell said, "Destruction before creation."

Katherine Woodward Thomas: If you actually set an intention to create something that you've never been able to manifest before, what is probably likely is the destruction of what currently exists, so you will have lessons, and you will have some losses, but they're not necessarily a bad thing. Some people come in and do the 'Calling in "The One"' process, and suddenly, within a matter of a week or two, they're at odds with people that they've been in relationship with for years because they suddenly see, "Oh, that the terms of this dynamic is that I have to keep giving my power away, or that it's all about the other person, or that I have to be a doormat, and that doesn't work for me anymore", so everything starts to get repositioned in your life.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of those patterns are so entrenched, and until you fully transcend that dynamic, nothing changes, and then once you transcend, I think everything can change like dramatically sometimes. Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: I'm wondering, yeah, if we can ... I want to ask you just like kind of a silly question, and this is actually ... I mean, it's really not all that silly, but one of the questions I get asked the most by people who are single is, "Where do I meet people, or how do I find the person?" What are your thoughts on that question of like literally where? Do you think it matters whether someone's doing online dating versus going out into the world and doing things that align with their values as far as like how they actually meet people, and what do you think about that dynamic of seeking versus calling someone in?

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think again ... Gosh, you just ask the best questions. I love being interviewed by you. Okay. Let me answer. There's two ways to answer that.

Neil Sattin: Great.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I'm sure there's probably 28 ways to answer it, but I can think of two. I want to answer from a 'Calling in "The One"' perspective, and then I'll add to it. What happened for me was as I was doing this, within a matter of weeks, a friend invited me to, or who was encouraging me, told me to get on a dating site. Now, that sounds normal to us, but this is 18 years ago, so there were no dating sites back then, but there was ... There was one.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It was I think one of the first ones. It doesn't exist anymore. I was a little horrified at the idea because I thought it was so pathetic to have to not just be meeting someone in a supermarket down the aisle while picking out your cantaloupes, but I did it because I was coachable, and there were a quarter of a million people on the site, and I figured out the technology of how to put in all my stats and stuff, and it narrowed it down to I think from like 80 people, which is funny. It tells you how old it was because that was L.A., like 80 people meet my demographics in L.A., but I think there were other things too like my age group, or not smoker or whatever I'd put in there.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I'm reading through these profiles. No pictures. No pictures. No pictures because we didn't have the technology back then, believe it or not, so no pictures and just these handles like "two hearts beating as one" love handles and such, and one person just leaped off the page to me, and I just wrote a short, little email to him, said why I liked his profile, and then my computer froze, so I couldn't look at anybody else and I turned it off. I went to bed, and the next day when I woke up, I went to check my emails.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Back then, the technology was that if they want to write you back, it went right into your email, like it was you went email to email immediately, and so when I got his email, and his name was in parenthesis because that was another quirky, technical thing there back then, is that it actually had his name in parenthesis next to his email address, and it was a man that I had dated six years earlier who I had for years thought of as the one that got away, and that we went out and we ended up being engaged two months later, which was before my 42nd birthday, and we were married the next year, and then had our daughter.

Neil Sattin: Funny.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: To me, that was a miracle. That was the Red Sea parting really. I would have believed the Red Sea could part sooner than I would believe that I could find that wonderful man. That was actually why I created the 'Calling in "The One"' process because I thought, "Wow. What did I just do that created such magic?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I do think that when ... The first part answer to your question like, "Where do we go to meet somebody?", is I think that when you're ready, that the Red Sea will part. When you're really ready and you're standing in that magnetic energy, the Red Sea will part, and if you're not ready, you can go to all the right places, and it might not work out, or if it does, it will just do it for a short period of time because you'll end up sabotaging it. The focus of 'Calling in "The One"' of course is on the consciousness of that, however, I also as a person, have ideas about where to go to meet just because we live in such a global community, and I think more than ever, we have the opportunity to go to join communities and to attend events that really are reflective of our true core values. I think all the dating stuff is good.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I'm ambivalent about it like everybody else because of the fraud issues, and also because the manners of people seem to be really missing, and it seems to be that people have really largely ... We are culturally objectifying each other as opposed to relating to each other, so it's painful and it's wounding, but if you can not take it personally and you can understand that you're walking into a bit of a hornet's nest, there is definitely gold in there because there are people who are genuinely looking for connection and commitment, so I'm not going to pooh-pooh it, but I know that it's not for the faint of heart, and my number ... I was going to say my number one rule is don't take it personally, but my number two rule is be kind, please to people and don't take advantage of people, and try and be respectful and thoughtful, and remember that these are real human beings when you're on there, but I do think that it's about getting involved in things that you most deeply care about. I think that's the best bet truthfully is, because when we're looking at what really ... We've gone from role mate relationship to soulmate relationship.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: When we are looking at what it is that we are looking for in a soulmate, we're looking for someone whose mission is aligned with our own, and who sees the world in a similar way, a similar enough way that we can get up underneath them and trust their support of us, and then also be challenged by them because maybe they see things a little bit differently and challenge us to grow, but the fundamental core values and what you're called to in life are similar enough that you can join forces. That's going to be a more specialized community, and there's a lot of things virtually where people are doing things virtually and creating virtual communities, but there's also a lot of conferences or a lot of events that are happening with people who share our similar interest, and I think that those are the best bets for meeting people.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. In general, I think if you are literally in-person with someone, there's just so much more information available to you about how you connect with that person, that you're not going to get any other way when it really comes down to it.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I don't remember how you met Chloe. How did you meet Chloe?

Neil Sattin: Chloe and I met in a dance class that I had been going to for maybe about six months, and she had just moved to Maine from the West Coast, and she showed up to ... It was like maybe her first week even in Portland where we were at the time. She walked into this class, and we were paired together for an exercise. Totally out of our own control, and then from there, yeah, we just connected, and that led to everything that happened after, which listeners and you as well, Katherine have heard a lot about.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Wow.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, but it was being out there doing what we love.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly what I was saying. It doesn't have to be like you're going to travel to another city to do a conference. You just start taking dance in your community.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Get out to a class and do what you love. That's great.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. For some reason, this word popped into my head. I'm not sure exactly what the question is here, but the word is 'Settled'. Something like, is that a lot of people like they're out, and they have like this clear vision of who they want or what kind of relationship they want, and maybe they've even done some of the work from 'Calling in "The One""', and then there's this like, "This person seems so great, and yet, blah, blah, blah." They have their hesitations, and then there's this question of, "Do I settle for this or do I keep going? Do I keep looking?"

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah. It's more and more an issue in our online dating culture because there's so many choices, and I think ... I'm trying to remember the guy's last name who wrote the 'Modern Romance' book, and this is what's his main point was, where he was ... He did this kind of ... I don't think it was a scientific experiment, but he started interviewing people in retirement homes about they met their mate, and they basically, most of them said, "Oh, she lived next door", or, "She lived down the street." They basically had four people to choose from in their community, and they were happy.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: That was what life gave them, and they made it work, and they were happy, and so we live in a really different world. I think the more that we understand ourselves, and the more that we know what's really most important to us, the more that we will be able to choose wisely and recognize the things that matter most when we meet someone. I think that few of us like the word 'Settled' or few of us like the word 'Compromise', but I think that there is the reality that we're all a little quirky, and we're all a little imperfect and a little crazy, and in our own beautiful ways, and even not so beautiful ways, but if you know yourself, you're not looking for perfection from someone else because you know you're not perfect, and we're looking for a certain quality to the connection. The more we can prepare for that internally and start to ask ourselves questions ... Like one of the questions in the meditations that I offer people are ...

Katherine Woodward Thomas: It's a desiring meditation. It's just asking yourself, "What do I want to be experiencing in this connection?", so we're getting away from that checklist like needs a college degree, or needs to earn this much money, or needs to be working out three days a week. We've got this checklist, but you can have somebody who matches all this checklist and have a miserable connection with that person.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I like to start with, "What are you experiencing?" "I feel at home with this person, and I feel really heard, and I feel safe, and I feel inspired, and I feel like I can trust them, and I feel like just this deep sense of happiness, and I feel held, and I feel like someone has my back." You want to start with that, like, "What are the emotional components? What are you actually experiencing?" Then, when you find somebody who makes you feel that way, you already have been cultivating that within yourself so you know that more.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think we have to drop out of our minds a little bit. I think our minds are a little bit too busy with our checklists, and what we think we want to be happy, but I think it's more about being in our bodies and recognizing that what we're looking for really is a certain quality to the field of the connection, and in order to keep that quality healthy, it requires us to grow in certain ways so that we can weed our gardens on a pretty regular basis, which I think you're helping people do a lot too, Neil.

Neil Sattin: That's definitely a huge part of it, and I'm glad you used that word 'Growth'. It made me wonder about how you identify in another person whether they are along for the ride with you in terms of that capacity to grow and shift, and knowing that that's just going to be required when you're in relationship.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I have learned over the years that people do not accurately self-report.

Neil Sattin: Present company excluded, right?

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Present, yes. You and I are completely not in that category, that people will describe themselves as this and that, this and that, so you don't actually ... No. Do not take people at face value. I don't think that most of us are meaning to deceive other people about who we are.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think it's a lack of self-understanding, so what I'm looking for is kind of early on in the relationship to see how somebody is able to reflect on why their past relationships have been troubled in some way. What happened in that dynamic and how they themselves were responsible? If you have somebody who's only blaming the other person, and when you ask them what was going on for them, if they tell you things that are, "I was going through a tough time at work", that are just kind of circumstantial or situational, or, "I just believe in the best in people, so I just thought it would work out", but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it, it doesn't really bode for deep self-reflection, then you can better assess where this person is on their journey and adjust your expectations and investment accordingly.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah, but that said, then the later stages ... I mean, you have to just see what people do and how they solve their own problems, and if they're growth-oriented and they're thinking, if they take personal responsibility for things. I think there is a process of getting to know people that's really important, but sometimes, we want to know the one in the first date or two, but I'm kind of a little old-fashioned in my own sensibilities about it. I think it's better to not sleep together quickly. I mean, you definitely want to know if there's sexual compatibility and chemistry, but it also begins to cloud your perception, so I'm along the lines of get more information before you introduce sexuality into the equation.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, once the dopamine and oxytocin are flowing, your judgment is totally impaired. Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: All bets are off. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Katherine, we could talk for hours obviously, and I want to ensure because this work that you're doing, you also train people to help others call in the one. You train people as Calling in "The One" coaches, and I think you have another training that's coming up really soon, so I wanted to give you a chance to talk about what that process is like if someone's interested in going through something like that to help other people find love.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yes. It's actually one of my favorite things to do, is to train and certify relationship coaches, and whether or not people have been therapists. We have therapists, we have psychologists, we have social workers, but we also have what I call 'Lay people', people who come from other professions who've always just been that person that others feel comfortable telling their troubles to. The Calling in "The One" Coach Training was born really because the book came out in 2004. It's growing.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: We're just launching it now in China. There's a whole group of folks in U.K.. There's a growing group of coaches in Australia, and it continues to be a demand in United States and Canada, but also some other countries. I think Mexico, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is part of America, but ...

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Anyway, but the work is growing leaps and bounds. Finland, and ... Where is it? Also Estonia. We have a coach in Estonia now.

Neil Sattin: Wow.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: People are bringing the work to different parts of the world, and I do that because I see people as my partners in sharing this work with other people. The 'Calling in "The One"' work is life-saving for many people. It will melt away decades of painful patterns and help them to create a miracle in their love lives that they never thought would be possible for them. I have seen countless stories of people who felt hopeless be able to really awaken to their power to create this miracle of love. I train people to have professional careers as a Calling in "The One" coach, and there's a lot of things that people do with it.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: One person has a radio show now, one of my coaches. People write blogs and get articles written about them. They do their own interviews on podcasts, and they do groups in their communities, and of course, they do the one-on-one coaching, so it's pretty special. I only do a training every two years, and it's very hands-on. I am there with people.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: My senior mentor coaches are there with people. We really take them to the process. It's a really joyful training. Actually, it lasts about six months, and then in six months, people can start earning their living as a coach. People can find out about that and read more about it if they just go to my website, Neil, and I have information there for them.

Neil Sattin: Great. Your website of course is Katherinewoodwardthomas.com, and we will have a link to that in the show notes in the transcript. If you go there and you're not interested in the coach training, you can also sign up for ... Basically, Katherine has been sending out daily inspirations with ... As you can tell, she's got a lot to offer, so it's a great way for you to keep in touch with her, and her teachings, and other courses that she has that are coming out.

Neil Sattin: Before we drop the topic of the coach training entirely, I just want a chance to say some of you know that I've been through Katherine's Conscious Uncoupling Coach Training, and my experience of you, Katherine as a teacher was that you're just so present, so giving, and you have such integrity in what you offer and how you train people. I mean, that's why it's a six-month-long course that you're talking about. It's because you have just such a high commitment to the people that you're training, and my experience of that, it was so powerful. There are very few teachers I've worked with that have that level of dedication to the process of training others. On top of that, the work is so profoundly transformative for ...

Neil Sattin: It was for me as a coach, and I think that's another huge benefit of working with you, going through these trainings is that you get the personal experience of going through this process and having Katherine and her other amazing coaches. She has really great people gathered around her who are also helping you get the benefit of their experience to guide you through the process not of just becoming a coach, but going through the work yourself.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Yeah. That's right. Thank you. We have weekly support calls for people who are processing the material on a personal level. Thank you for that reminder.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Thank you for what you said. That really touches my heart.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the most powerful experiences I've gone through, was to go through that Conscious Uncoupling training programs.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Wow.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Thanks, Neil. That's great to hear.

Neil Sattin: Katherine, it is always a pleasure to have you here. I hope we can have another conversation for the podcast someday soon. In the meantime, you know that if you want to find out more about Katherine's work, visit Katherinewoodwardthomas.com. We'll have a transcript available for you to download if you go to Neilsattin.com/KWT4 or text the word 'Passion' to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Katherine, I'm wondering if there's anything in closing that you, like if you just drop in for everyone listening, is there anything that comes up for you like, "Oh, this is the thing that needs to be said in this moment"?

Katherine Woodward Thomas: I think we've had such a rich conversation, and I just want to leave people with a sense of possibility, that this has been an area that you have struggled in, and if there's any way that you kind of dim down your hopes or just given up even entirely on the possibility of love for you, I would hope with all my heart that you come and find us because we can tell you countless miracles of deep happiness and love after painful patterns in the past, and you can really graduate from them. Your past does not determine your future in happiness and love. You do in this very moment.

Neil Sattin: I love that. Yeah. Just like past results in the stock market are not indicative of future earnings, past results in your relationships are not. You really do have that potential to grow, and change, and graduate to a new level of relationship. Katherine, thank you so much for joining us today. It's always great to have you here.

Katherine Woodward Thomas: Thank you, Neil. It's a joy to be with you.

Resources:

Check out Katherine Woodward Thomas's website

Read Katherine Woodward Thomas’s Books - Calling in The One and Conscious Uncoupling

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

www.neilsattin.com/kwt4 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Katherine Woodward Thomas

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

What's one of the most important factors in determining the success of your relationship? I'll give you a hint: it's something to do with how you and your partner get your needs met. The good news is - there's actually a lot of power in your hands, if you know what you're doing (and how to do it). If you ever feel like you're not quite getting your needs met, or that you and your partner are getting stuck, then this Relationship Action Step could make all the difference. And if you're looking for something practical to help you be even more successful in your relationship, with more energy and passion for each other, then this episode is definitely for you. 

Resources

Join the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

FREE Guide to Neil's Top 3 Relationship Communication Secrets (or text "RELATE" to 33444)

Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE)

Support the podcast (or text "SUPPORT" to 33444)

Amazing intro and outtro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

How does the way that you communicate affect your ability to connect, and be understood? Can you change your communication style to become a more effective communicator? We don’t all use language the same way, and in today’s episode, we’re going to see exactly how those differences play out in our interactions with the people we care about most. And by the end of the conversation, you’ll have some strategies for bridging the communication gap in any situation when things aren’t going quite as you had planned. Our guest is Deborah Tannen, Georgetown Professor and author of You Just Don’t Understand, the classic book on gender differences in communication. Her latest book, You’re the Only One I Can Tell, is about the language of friendships between women. Deborah Tannen’s specialty is how we use language - and identifying exactly where differences in the way that we communicate connect us, and get in our way.

And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.

Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!

During the course of my conversation with Deborah Tannen, we also mention a few other Relationship Alive episodes that will help you with your communication:

Episode 59: How to Make Difficult Conversations So Much Easier - with Sheila Heen

Episode 22: Essential Skills for Conscious Relationship - with Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

Episode 69: How to Be Completely Alive in Your Relationship - with Hedy Schleifer

Resources:

Check out Deborah Tannen's website

Read Deborah Tannen’s Book - You Just Don’t Understand and her latest book You’re the Only One I Can Tell

You can also visit Deborah Tannen’s author page on Amazon

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/language Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Deborah Tannen

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. We’ve spoken a lot about communication on this show - and in today’s episode we’re going to cover how the specific language that you use affects your relationships. The words that you choose matter - and today you’re going to find out why.

Neil Sattin: This podcast was actually born, in some ways, more than 20 years ago, when I was in a class in college called the Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. In this class, I gathered with a bunch of students there, in a circle, and we basically dealt with the shit that came up between us, right then and there. If you’ve ever heard of an encounter group - well, that’s what it was. One of the books that was on the required reading list was called “You Just Don’t Understand”  by Deborah Tannen - about the different ways that Men and Women communicate. This book, after it came out, spent 4 YEARS on the NYT bestseller list. So you can imagine the effect that it’s had on our culture, and what we’ve come to know about language, and gender, how we create meaning and understanding with each other. When I started Relationship Alive, one of the people I knew I had to interview was Deborah Tannen, and it took us two years to coordinate this time together. She’s here on the heels of releasing her new book, “You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships” - and I’m so excited to have her here with us today to discuss how language impacts our connections - and what you can do to improve the way you communicate with the people who matter to you most.

Neil Sattin: If you’d like to download a complete transcript for today’s episode, please visit neilsattin.com/language, or you can always text the word “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions. Deborah Tannen, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive.

Deborah Tannen: Hi. What a pleasure and privilege to speak with you.

Neil Sattin: Thank you so much. The feeling, as you can tell, is mutual. Let's start with You Just Don't Understand. We were talking for a few moments before we officially got started, and, as you mentioned, it's a classic. It's something that has defined how we look at gender dynamics in communication. I'm wondering for you what you've noticed about how that book as impacted people in the world around you, and also how you've seen it affect culture?

Neil Sattin: I know that for me, personally, not only did it give me a much deeper understanding of what was happening and how I communicated, but it made me want to change. It made me want to shift so that I could find more common ground, whether I was talking to men in my life, women in my life, and at this point, people all over the spectrum of gender. So, how have you seen that book shift what is actually happening in our culture?

Deborah Tannen: It has been overwhelming to notice how much of what I wrote about in that book has become part of the landscape, I would say, of how people think about relationships and conversation. I guess the most striking one is, "Why don't men ask directions?" When I put that in the book, I don't think anyone had talked about it, but a number of the interviews that I had very early on had picked up on that. Then it became so much a part of the culture people were sending me cocktail napkins, "Real men don't ask directions"; jokes going around, "Why did Moses wander in the desert for 40 years?"; maybe one of my favorites, "Why does it take so many sperm to find just one egg?"

Deborah Tannen: You hear a little bit less about that now that we all have GPS devices, but it really doesn't change things that much. Just recently, this is really funny ... My research method is asking people about their own lives, listening to people. More and more for the current book I actually interviewed people, but in the beginning I didn't do what. The idea of them not asking directions, which is one example that a friend of mine gave me, I just asked her, "What do you and your husband argue about?"

Deborah Tannen: She mentioned, "He won't stop and ask directions. We get lost and it frustrates me."

Deborah Tannen: I was talking to just that friend not long ago and asked her, "Well, now there's a GPS that doesn't happen, right?"

Deborah Tannen: She said, "It still happens. He doesn't want to use the GPS. He says, 'I don't need her to tell me where to go. I know how to go.'"

Deborah Tannen: So, that's a long answer. I think just the idea that women and men might have different ways of speaking has become almost like it's just accepted for many people, clearly not everybody. Several of the scenarios I talked about are now very much a part of the public knowledge-base, or something like that.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Do you want to touch for a moment on ... Because there, of course, have been critiques of your work. What have you seen in terms of when people stand up and say, "Nah, this isn't really how it is?" Where are they typically coming from?

Deborah Tannen: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I should say, I guess for maybe about a year after the book came out, my book was very frequently criticized, especially in the academic world. It was criticized for generalizing, for saying all women and men are alike, for downplaying, or some people thought I was ignoring power differences.

Deborah Tannen: By the way, that led me to write the book The Argument Culture, because it was so surprising and shocking to me that people in the world of academia ... which had been my intellectual home for so many years at that point and really my oasis, you might say, in this wild world. I loved my academic job, my academic colleagues. So, it was shocking to me that what I saw a search for truth was leading people to accuse me of saying things I had never said. Led me to ask, "Why would they do that?"

Deborah Tannen: I ended up writing the book The Argument Culture in which I just dissected a bit our tendency to approach everything as a fight, a debate, an argument. Then, you're motivated to look for arguments to make the other person look bad, ignore things the other person actually wrote or said that would make them look good. So that's the background.

Deborah Tannen: To answer those complaints, obviously I know that there are power differentials in our culture between women and men. In fact, I do write about how the style differences that we often have -- and I never say all women all men; I always say tend to, many, often, most -- how these very style differences can lead to reinforcing the power of those who use the styles that I associate with men. I actually wrote a whole book about the workplace, that was the next book after You Just Don't Understand. That book was called Talking From 9 to 5, and I showed there how styles that are common among women when used in the workplace lead them to be underestimated, to be seen as less confident than they often are, to be overlooked, to not receive credit that they deserve. Clearly, there's also just sexism, so I would never say that all discrimination is simply based on style, obviously; that's not the case, just that this is one thing that has a role to play there.

Deborah Tannen: As for generalizing, there's almost an irony there. I did not start out as an expert on gender; my field was cross-cultural difference. My dissertation and my first book were about New York as compared to California conversational style. I grew up in New York City, Eastern European Jewish background -- I think that's relevant -- and was getting my PhD at Berkeley in California, and my dissertation was an analysis of a conversation involving three New York Jewish speakers and I was one of them, and two Californians who are not Jewish, and one British woman, who actually was half-Jewish but I don't think that affected her style much.

Deborah Tannen: I had so much to say about how cultural influence had an effect on the ways people were using language in conversation, and therefore the effects of their ways of speaking on the conversation. I had written much about Greek compared to American conversational styles. I had lived in Greece and I speak Greek. So, clearly I knew that gender was only one of many influence on our styles.

Deborah Tannen: The first book that I wrote for general audiences, and, maybe kind of interestingly, the one I really had ambitions for, the one that I thought, "This is going to change the world; people are going to see they're thinking psychology and sometimes it's linguistics, it's use of language," that book was called That's Not What I Meant. It was about all of the ways that our conversational styles, our ways of speaking, our ways of using language, are influenced by ethnic background, regional background, class background, age. How all these influences on style affected our ways of speaking, having conversations, and of course the way people see us, the way we see them. Clearly I knew that gender was not the whole story.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I think why we're here is to get more of the meat around the ways that we use language, how that has an impact. When I read You Just Don't Understand, I identified a lot with some of the more feminine speaking styles. Probably had to do with how I was raised and interacting with my mom. I don't know exactly, my dad was a psychologist so he encouraged me to talk about my feelings. There you have it. It probably doesn't take much more than that.

Deborah Tannen: Yes-

Neil Sattin: And-

Deborah Tannen: Sorry.

Neil Sattin: Go ahead.

Deborah Tannen: Absolutely, yeah. I never actually would say feminine style, masculine style. I tend to say, "Ways of speaking associated with women, ways of speaking common among women, or men." As I said, although I would say something like, "Tend to, maybe, may, most." But, I think it seems to be the way our minds work, that people walk away thinking, "Women do this, men do that. This is feminine, that's masculine." But I would never put it that way, and you are so right, no two women and men are alike. Think of all the people you know. We've all got so many other influences on our style.

Deborah Tannen: I'll give you an example right up front. One of the things that I wrote about in that book, and it traces back to my work in That's Not What I Meant, when I wasn't focusing only on gender, was the use of indirectness. So there was a conversation I discussed there, a couple are riding in a car and the woman turns to the man and says, "Are you thirsty dear? Would you like to stop for a drink?"

Deborah Tannen: He's not, so he says, "No." Then later, when they get home, it turns out she's kind of frustrated. She had wanted to stop. It was the man who told me this anecdote and he said, "Why does she play games with me? Why didn't she just tell me she wanted to stop?"

Deborah Tannen: My response was, "Well she probably didn't expect a yes/no answer. So if she said, 'Are you thirsty? Would you like to stop for a drink?' She probably expected you to say something like, 'I don't know, how do you feel about it?' Then she could say, 'I don't know, how do you feel about it?'" Then they could talk about how they both feel about it. If he ended up saying, "I'm kind of tired, do you mind if we don't?" that would have been fine. Or if he said, "Well, I'm not thirsty, but if you want to we could," that would have been fine, that would have been great.

Deborah Tannen: That's where I began talking about message and meta-message. The meaning of the words, the message, was an information question, "Do you want to stop for a drink?" But the meta-message, what it means that she asks him in that way is, "I don't want to make a demand. I want to know how you feel about it before we make a decision." It's starting a negotiation, and then after you find out how everybody feels about it, you make a decision taking everybody's preferences into account.

Deborah Tannen: When she gets an answer, "No," she hears a meta-message, "I don't care what you want, we're only going to do what I want." Of course, he didn't mean it that way; he had a different idea about how a conversation could go. He assumed he could say no and if she wants to she could say, "Yeah, well I'm thirsty. Do you mind if we stop?" That would have been fine with him too. It was these different ways of going about that.

Deborah Tannen: Now, it's kind of interesting, I included that example in the book That's Not What I Meant. I repeated it in the introduction to You Just Don't Understand, in the context of saying, I think it was in the introduction, I had said, "Here's an example I had given. Both styles are equally valid." It had been included in a review of the book, it was actually a Canadian newspaper, I think, where they said, "So women have to understand how men mean it," and they didn't put the second part, "Men have to understand how women mean it." I use that to say it's very easy for people to hear my examples as one is right and the other's wrong, and I never take that position. I always take the position: Styles work well when they're shared and don't work well when they're not.

Deborah Tannen: This is the long way of leading up to what I was going to say in answer to your question about generalizing. The conclusion of that whole discussion is that women tend to be more indirect when it comes to getting their way. That is, you have something you want, but you don't want to impose it so you open a negotiation. I have lots more examples of that in this new book about women friends, You're the Only One I Can Tell. I have lots of examples of how that creates problems between women and men, and just among women friends. So we can give examples of that if you're interested.

Deborah Tannen: But, the very first paper I ever wrote and ever published in linguistics was based on conversations that I had been part of where I was the one who was direct, talking to a man who was indirect. My explanation was cultural differences. I thought of it at the time as American versus Greek, Greeks tend to be more indirect than Americans. Looking back, I would say the fact that it's a New York Jewish style, probably partially explaining my tendency to be more direct. All of this is by way of saying that not only are these generalizations not applying to everybody, but that even in my own experience something that is associated with women and is more typical of women in this country when it comes to getting your way ... I know because even the first paper I ever wrote, I instantiated the opposite style.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I'm just struck in this moment by how I think it would be common to assume that that means just kind of like what you were saying, that the direct style is more effective. So, when you're having communication issues in your marriage, let's say, try to be more direct. What I'm hearing in this moment is this question of how do we develop an appreciation for different styles of communication so that we're able to bridge the gap in styles more effectively.

Deborah Tannen: I think the most important thing is to be aware of style differences. Being more direct might help, but being more indirect or attuned to indirectness might also help. I'll give you this example that came up in a class I was teaching at Georgetown, it was a graduate seminar and it was about workplace communication.

Deborah Tannen: It came up that papers had been written -- Charlotte Linde is someone who wrote one -- analyzing interaction that is conversation in the cockpit of airplanes that led to accidents. These were studied in order to find out whether there were ways that the pilot and co-pilot were using language that could improve to prevent future accidents. There was one in which this was real. The pilot had not suspected a problem, the co-pilot had suspected the problem; he called attention to it but didn't say it in a direct way. He said it in a kind of indirect way, and so the pilot overlooked it and the plane crashed. This is the most extreme example of a negative result from indirectness.

Deborah Tannen: In the class we were discussing that co-pilots were now being trained to be more direct. There was a Japanese grad student in the class and he said, "Well, why don't they just train the pilots to be more attuned to listen for indirect meaning?" It was not surprising to me that this came from a Japanese speaker. Much has been written about how indirectness plays a very significant role in Japanese communication, and there is lots written about the purpose that it serves, that people feel that they understand each other. You could say, maybe, a meta-message of understanding, of closeness, comes from the indirect communication. We understand each other so well, we can get meaning without having to say it outright.

Deborah Tannen: In fact, someone named Haru Yamada, she was a student of mine who's written a book about Japanese compared to American communication, she says that the most highly valued communication would be translated into English as belly talk. That is silent communication, where you get your meaning across without having to put it into words at all.

Deborah Tannen: So, I'm suspecting the people listening, depending on their own styles, and how they've been raised, and how they've come to view language, some are going to be thinking, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Indirectness is great." Others are thinking, "No, no, no! This is would be a better world if everybody just said what they mean."

Deborah Tannen: I think it's really tricky because the ways we tend to communicate are self-evident. Can I give you an example of this?

Neil Sattin: Yeah, please.

Deborah Tannen: So, I showed up for a conference where I was going to be a primary speaker. Another friend of mine, her name was Judy, was also going to be a primary speaker. That conference organizer, when I arrived, said, "Judy is not going to give her paper. She called me this morning and she said, 'I'm coming down with something. I feel horrible. If you really need me I'll come, but I'm feeling very bad today.'"

Deborah Tannen: The organizer said to me, "I told her, 'I need you to stay home and take care of yourself.'" Now, that's indirect, right?

Deborah Tannen: I thought, "This is terrific. What a great example of indirect communication and how well it worked." I said to the organizer, "Hey, can I use that in my talk today?"

Deborah Tannen: She said, "Yes. Yes, you should. It was excellent, perfect, direct communication."

Deborah Tannen: Now, why did she think it was direct? Because the meaning was clear, and it worked. Judy felt better that she didn't have to make a demand, didn't have to let her friend down. The organizer felt better because she could feel that she made the choice to accommodate her friend. I have so many examples like that, where it just works so well.

Deborah Tannen: But then, I also have examples (again, in my book about women friends) where it can lead to confusion if you have different styles. So here's an example. This was two women, they had gone to college together so they knew each other. A third person who had gone to college with them was in town visiting the one. When he was with her he said, "Hey, are you in touch with so-and-so? I understand that she lives here."

Deborah Tannen: She said, "Yeah, I'm in touch with her."

Deborah Tannen: "Hey, I'd like to see her, too."

Deborah Tannen: "Okay," she said. "I'll find out if she's free." She called the friend, said, "So-and-so's in town. He'd like to see you. If you're free I can bring him over, would you like that?"

Deborah Tannen: She said, "Yeah, sure. Bring him over." And she did. She thought everything was fine. The next day, she got a call from that friend and the friend was livid, "Why did you bring him over? I hate him. You know I hate him."

Deborah Tannen: She was so puzzled. She said, "But you said I should bring him."

Deborah Tannen: She said, "You should have known by the way I said it I didn't mean it." Now, that sounds insane for people who don't share the style, but it would have been self-evident to people who do.

Deborah Tannen: I have one more example that's a self-example. I was talking to a friend-

Neil Sattin: This is the I don't know much about that person?

Deborah Tannen: Yes.

Neil Sattin: I love this.

Deborah Tannen: Yes. So, I was talking to a friend from South Carolina. I asked her about a guy that we had some slight dealings with but wasn't a close friend, and I asked her what she thought of him. She said, "I don't really know him."

Deborah Tannen: I said, "I think he's a jerk."

Deborah Tannen: She said, "That's what I just said."

Deborah Tannen: I said, "Huh?"

Deborah Tannen: So she explained, "In South Carolina, you cannot say someone is a jerk. You have to proceed on the assumption that if you knew him long enough you would find something to like. So, 'I don't really know him,' means, 'I haven't found anything to like about him.'"

Deborah Tannen: Now, this made sense to me, and I believed her, but I was a little bit incredulous. But, luckily, before too long I had met someone who at a gathering for a first time, and he said he was from South Carolina. So I asked him, this is research opportunity now, I asked him, "What would it mean if you asked someone what they thought of someone, and the person said, 'I don't really know him'?"

Deborah Tannen: He said, "That means he's a no good, no account."

Deborah Tannen: The meaning was completely clear to him, would have been to someone else from South Carolina, was opaque to me. So I could complain, "That's no way to communicate, she should have been more direct." But think about it for a moment, being more direct would have made her come across to other people in South Carolina as an unacceptable person. I cringe to think what she would have thought of me if she didn't know me. When I say about somebody, "I think he's a jerk," I'm saying something that you simply cannot say in that culture.

Deborah Tannen: There are ramifications of saying things directly and outright. The thought that you can reduce meaning to the message level and ignore the meta-message level, it's a fantasy. That's not how language works. We're judging people as people by the way they use language.

Neil Sattin: That brings me to, I think, a really important question. Though, I have to, just as an aside, say that I'm not sure that there was anything more traumatizing to me as a three-year-old than coming to Maine, where I grew up but I was born in Tennessee. I learned how to talk in Tennessee and when I got to Maine there was a lot about how I communicated that people didn't seem to understand.

Neil Sattin: I have very vivid memories of having to shift my language patterns, and also hearing things that people said, particularly the word "wicked" which people from New England will maybe laugh about. But, the first time I heard someone saying something was wicked something-or-other, I got freaked out because my only association with wicked was some horrible witch. It turns out that in Maine, anyway, wicked means more or less like "very". So if something's wicked awesome, then it's really, really awesome. So, just kind of a funny cross-cultural experience that I had.

Neil Sattin: Anyway, so the important question, apart from my silly anecdote is: How do we tune in more to the meta-message, particularly in the moment when it's crucial to be understood?

Deborah Tannen: It's a great question. I believe awareness of style differences is probably the best thing and the only thing that we can hope for. We are going to respond automatically, "You must mean what I would mean if I spoke in that way in this context." Now when styles are relatively similar, that's going to be okay, and probably most of the time. We're doing it every minute, every time we talk to someone and they say something, we have some automatic way that we think we know what they mean and draw conclusion about their intentions.

Deborah Tannen: But, when something goes awry, when you have a negative response when you think they're reacting in a way that's kind of weird, the hope is that you could step back and ask yourself, "What's going on?" But it's tough to do, and then sometimes you can do what I call meta-communication, talk about the communication.

Deborah Tannen: An example where I had to do this myself, and again, it's almost embarrassing because it's something I had written about for decades. But I had this op-ed in the New York Times about a month ago where I had a friend over for dinner and she kept offering to help, and then kept getting up and helping. I really didn't want her to and I kept telling her not to, and she kept doing it anyway. I was really frustrated. I was really rattled by it.

Deborah Tannen: Normally, I wouldn't had said anything, but since I was writing this book about friends I felt like I needed to know her perspective. So, I meta-communicated; I talked to her about it. I told her how I had responded, how it bothered me that she was ignoring my telling her that I really didn't want her to help. She was astonished and explained to me that in her family were expected to help, and when people say, "I don't want you to help," they don't mean it. They mean something like, "You're a guest and you shouldn't help, therefore I appreciate it all the more when you do."

Deborah Tannen: Now, I'd written extensively about indirectness, it still never crossed my mind that she thought I was being indirect, that she thought I didn't mean it. And, it never crossed her mind that I did mean it. But we solved it by meta-communicating, by talking about it.

Deborah Tannen: I think many of us, maybe women especially, but probably all of us, don't like to introduce a contentious note into a relationship or a conversation. So, my impulse was not to tell her that what she was doing was bugging me, but I think it served both of us really well to have that conversation. I feel like my consciousness was raised. Any resentment I might have felt because I thought she was behaving in a way that made no sense, that dissipated. She tells me that it's a huge relief to her to know she doesn't have to do all the work when she goes to somebody's house for dinner.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. I feel like there's this frame of reminding yourself not to take everything personally, especially when it's perplexing. To recognize, "Oh, this might not mean what I think it means. This person might not mean what I think they mean when they're making this request, or when they're saying something that I'm finding to be incredibly offensive, or hurtful, or scary even."

Deborah Tannen: Well, realizing what the parameters are is helpful. For example, are you a good person by asking questions to show interest? Or are you a good person by not asking questions because they would be intrusive? So, again, coming from my book about women friends, a woman told her friend that her mother was in the hospital and then was hurt that the friend never asked. But they did meta-communicate and the friend said, "Well in my family that would be considered intrusive. People will tell you if they want to talk about something personal, but you shouldn't ask."

Deborah Tannen: Or friends that were taking a walk, one was telling the other about a problem. She was listening, but when they passed something really pretty like a gorgeous flower, she said, "Oh, look at that." To her, that didn't mean, "I'm not listening. I'm not interrupting the story." It's kind of like you're at the dinner table and you're telling a story, and somebody needs the salt. They can murmur, "Pass the salt," they're not interrupting your story.

Deborah Tannen: But the friend was hurt. She thought, "You're not listening to me." But the other friend was hurt because she so clearly was. If they could talk about that, realize for some people you can throw in interjections and it doesn't mean you're not listening; for other people you really can't, the listener should be quiet. So just knowing that these differences are common makes it possible to give a friend a benefit of the doubt, whereas beforehand it would be self-evident to you that your way of thinking about it is the only way to think about it.

Neil Sattin: I have to say, in reading your latest book, You're the Only One I Can Tell, I had several moments where I was confused, actually. I think it was that I would read something and I'd be like, "Okay, that's the way it is." Then in the very next paragraph I'd be like, "Oh! Now this is how that thing completely malfunctions." It's interesting that there are really no hard, fast rules around how to communicate. What seems to be a hard and fast rule is "assume that there's more than meets the eyes".

Neil Sattin: I'm curious about having those meta-conversations. Do you have hints about ways to invite people into it, particularly as, as so often happens when you're having that conversation, you're almost undoubtedly having it with someone who couldn't imagine how anything could be other than how they see the world? So, do you have hints on how to invite people into that level of conversation?

Deborah Tannen: It's a good question. I guess I feel like the first thing is be aware that there are these differences, so that you can talk about it as a style and not as right and wrong. Then you have to be open to a compromise that might not be the one you would have chosen. People often ask me, this goes way back to You Just Don't Understand and the book before that, "Can people change their conversational styles?" Usually what they have in mind is sending their partner in for repair. They're not thinking, "How can I change my style?" Of course, they could if they wanted to. But they're thinking, "Can I get the other one to change their style?"

Neil Sattin: Right.

Deborah Tannen: So I think really, you can start by saying, "I want to talk to you about this because I think I might not completely understand your perspective." So, if you frame it as trying to listen and understand, I think that will be better. But you do have to realize, and this came up in my book about mothers and daughters called You're Wearing That?, and my book about sisters, which is called You Were Always Mom's Favorite, as well as friends. There were some women who felt you've got to talk about any kind of a problem or point of contention and work it out. There were others who felt talking about it is a problem in itself, "A friend who wants to constantly process is oppressive, and I don't want to be that person's friend."

Deborah Tannen: Now, of course with sisters you can't say, "I don't want to be your sister," but you might distance yourself. But I definitely, in both contexts, talked to people who were frustrated because the friend or the sister didn't want to process, to talk about it. They felt you have to or you can't get past it. So in that context, I would try to raise awareness that it's quite legitimate. Other people feel talking about it only makes it worse, it brings up all the conflict that I felt in the first place, we're both going to end up stating our perspectives that makes the other one angry. Let's just let it lie, move on, and once the emotions have receded in some way, they may never go away, but receded into the background, then we'll just pretend it never happened. I think it often comes down to respecting others differences, and respecting that there could be more than one way of approaching both a problem or the interaction about it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. A classic relationship problem is one person being conflict avoidant and the other person being someone who engages. That's a set-up for so many problems that people have in relationship. I could see that both people getting to a point where they feel understood and feel resolution, how it would help to have acknowledgement that either one is okay, in both directions. We talked about this in an episode with Sheila Heen, who wrote the book Difficult Conversations as part of the Harvard Negotiation Project. We talked about how so much of getting past any sort of disagreement is really about the other person, so if you put yourself in your own shoes, it's your ability to help the other person feel like you understand them and like you want to understand them.

Deborah Tannen: Yes, absolutely. I guess it's kind of like what I said earlier. I know many others are saying something similar, that often our idea of working something out is to convince the other person of our perspective. We want to talk, get them to understand us; but they want to talk and get us to understand them. So I think if we both come in with, "I want to understand your perspective. I want to listen to your perspective," the chances of coming out more happy on the other end are increased.

Deborah Tannen: I know that psychologists have many methods for this that can be very effective, like actually articulate the other person's perspective. Because if you keep saying yours they're going to want to keep saying theirs and so you're going to want to say yours again. But if you each articulate the other's perspective, then you're starting with that mutual understanding and you won't have to waste your breath, trying to say your perspective over and over again.

Neil Sattin: Right, right. Yes, and we actually, we had a great episode with Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, talking about the Imago approach to that kind of dialogue. Hedy Schleifer was on talking about a different flavor of that. I'm curious, that idea that we could be trapped in this cycle of wanting to be understood, and how that drives people apart reminded me of the topic that you bring up in your book that is called complimentary schismogenesis. I'm not sure if I said that right.

Deborah Tannen: You did.

Neil Sattin: This idea that you can find yourself in a dynamic where you're driven further and further apart from the other person in the way that you're communicating.

Deborah Tannen: Yes. That term comes from the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, but he used it for a cultures in contact. I've adapted it to everyday conversation. The idea is: If something is not going well, your impulse is try harder and do more of whatever you're doing. That can drive the other person into more and more extreme examples of the other style.

Deborah Tannen: So, very quick examples. To start with, what we were doing with indirectness. Say you asked somebody, "Do you want to have lunch?"

Deborah Tannen: They say, "Oh, I'm really busy this week." So you ask them again, and they say, "I'm not feeling very well this week."

Deborah Tannen: You start to wonder, "Are they being indirect?" So you're going to try to solve it by making them be direct and say, "First you were busy, and then you didn't feel well, do you just not want to have lunch with me ever?"

Deborah Tannen: Well, a person who started by being indirect probably cannot bring themselves to say, "I don't want to have lunch with you, ever." They will probably become more indirect. "Oh, gee, I don't know. It's just been a tough time now."

Deborah Tannen: So you say, "Well, what is it?" They're going to get even more indirect.

Deborah Tannen: Just a couple of other things that we haven't brought up before that are very prone to this complimentary schismogenesis. Let's say you're talking to someone, you tend to talk a bit more loudly than the other does, and they tend to talk a lot more softly. You might raise your voice to set a good example to let them know they should speak up. Well, you're now offending them even more so they're going to talk even lower because they want to set a good example for you. You're going to end up with one shouting and one whispering. You're talking more loudly than you normally would, they're talking more at a lower volume than they normally would in response to what the other is doing.

Deborah Tannen: Something that turned out to be very important in a conversation with regard to cultural differences, not gender differences, is how long a pause is normal between turns? When this normal length of pause, when you're approaching it, you'll start to think, "Gee, I guess I should take the floor, the other one has nothing to say." But if your sense of pause is somewhat shorter, you're going to be interrupting. You're going to think the other person is done when they're not and they're going to start thinking you don't want to hear them talk, you only want to hear yourself talk, you're interrupting.

Deborah Tannen: You're thinking, "What's wrong with this person? Do they not have anything to say? Do they not like me?" You're coming from Maine, speaking to me, who grew up in Brooklyn. I've got to be really careful and wait, perhaps, a longer length of time than would normally feel right to me, to make sure that you have nothing to say. You might have to push yourself to start speaking before feels completely comfortable. Otherwise, by complimentary schismogenesis, we end up in a situation where I'm doing all the talking and you never get a word in edgewise.

Neil Sattin: I was going to ask you why you keep interrupting me?

Deborah Tannen: Believe me, I've been holding it back.

Neil Sattin: What are some other ... I like how we're flavoring this soup with possibilities in terms of what kind of meta-messages could be operating, what kind of styles could be operating. I'm wondering if there are others, in particular, that come to mind around how people talk to each other. Perhaps, the difference between rapport and reporting, that's one thing that comes to me. But I'm sure you have lots that have been like, "These are the things that we've got to be aware of, because they're most likely happening in your dynamics."

Deborah Tannen: Yes, so a difference that I wrote about in You Just Don't Understand was rapport talk and report talk. So report talk is a conversation where really it's the message level meaning of the words that's most important and it's focused on information, impersonal information. Rapport talk is where a lot of what you're saying is to create social connection. It really doesn't matter that much what the specific answer is. I did, there, find that women probably tended to be more likely to do rapport talk in a situation where a man might do report talk. But this can happen between friends of the same sex, even at work.

Deborah Tannen: I'll give you an example where, because I have a book about the workplace, it's called Talking From 9 to 5, where one person felt when you have a business meeting you should start with personal talk. The other ones feels, in a business meeting get right down to business that's report talk. Well, the one who is starting with general talk might give the impression, and I had examples where this happened, "Well, there really isn't anything important to talk about. There's nothing I have to pay that much attention to. This is just a social meeting." So then, when that person, the rapport talk person gets to the report talk, the other one has switched off, figures this isn't all that important because it's coming as an afterthought, would be an extreme example from the workplace.

Deborah Tannen: I'll give you another example, too. It's kind of like rapport talk and report talk. One of the scenarios from the book You Just Don't Understand that really got a lot of attention, and I think has kind of become part of the culture, a conversation where a woman tells a man about a problem and he tells her how to fix it, and then she's frustrated. What I said about it in that book and what is often said about it is, "She didn't want a solution. She wanted to talk about it."

Deborah Tannen: He's frustrated because he's thinking, "Why do you want to talk about it if you don't want to do anything about it?" Both are frustrated because someone they're close to, who should understand how they mean what they say, seems to be misjudging them.

Deborah Tannen: I would actually say something somewhat different now, and in the book about women friends I do. I really wish for us to go back and think about that some more. How might the conversation go if it were women friends? Well, I tell you about a problem, you might say, "Gee, why do you think he said that?" And then, "Well, what did you say after he said that? What do you think you might do?" "Yeah, I would probably feel the same thing. I'd probably feel the same way, but what do you think of doing this?"

Deborah Tannen: In the end, you do give advice. So when I say, "She didn't want a solution," that's probably not accurate. It's just that we don't want the solution right off the bat, because the very act of talking about it has a meta-message of caring. The fact that you're willing to spend time talking to me about my problem means you care about me. It's a kind of rapport talk.

Deborah Tannen: Taking it as, "Here's a problem, I want a solution," that's approaching it as report talk. Perhaps the frustration is not so much that she didn't want a solution as that she didn't want it right off the bat, because the solution shuts down the conversation. Starting that kind of conversation was probably her motivation in the first place.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm getting the sense, and this comes up with another strategy that we don't really have time to talk about today called The Ways That We Energize Our Partners. But one element of this strategy, I think gets at helps us clarify meta-messages, which is for you to reflect how what someone is ... Let's see if I can say this well.

Neil Sattin: Let's say you say something to me, for me to reflect back to you, "You just said this to me, and what that means to me is ... blank". I think it would be so interesting to use that to flavor a conversation, especially when you sense it going awry. So if you were in that typical scenario where let's say someone just wants to be heard first, before the fixing happens, if you were able to say in that moment, "Wow, you're offering me these solutions. What that means to me is you don't actually really want to hear about what's going on with me, you just want to get past it," it becomes an opportunity for the other person to say, "Well that's not what I meant at all." And at least gives you a window into that dialogue around meaning and how meanings can be misconstrued, and getting at what's important. Like you were just establishing that what's important is setting the stage of caring to help frame a conversation where then someone can actually contribute a solution to it.

Deborah Tannen: Yes. That's why I feel that understanding these parameters, understanding that they can be different and often are different among speakers of the same language, that's what I see as essential. Then, once you have that understanding, you, and maybe you with a particular friend or partner, can come up with a way to handle it.

Deborah Tannen: A quick example: There are many ways that my husband is not typical and I am not, and there are many ways that we are. For example, he's the one who likes to ask directions and I'd rather use waze or a map. But, this is one where he and I often get frustrated. He once said to me, "I know you don't want a solution, but it's too frustrating for me to listen to you go on and on when I know the solution. So, how about I tell you the solution and you listen. Then if you want to keep talking about it you can."

Deborah Tannen: I think that's just as good a compromise as my teaching him to not give me the solution right off the bat. The key is, he and I both understand that this is a difference. Then, we can come up with all different ways of accommodating that difference.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I like that. I really like that. Because your latest book really focuses on friendship, and friendship is such an important part of feeling balance in our lives, feeling fed and supported by the community, I'm wondering if you can touch for a moment on the interplay of how we communicate with our friends versus how we communicate with our spouses, our beloveds?

Deborah Tannen: Many of the patterns that I observed in considering conversations among friends were quite parallel to the kinds of things that happen in family relationships and romantic relationships. Some of the things that were different had to do with the level of choice that goes on with friends. This can be both good and bad.

Deborah Tannen: As I said earlier, you can decide not to be a friend, you can't decide not to be a sister. You can decide to separate from a romantic partner, but that's quite a big deal, although cutting off a friendship with a same sex friend or other sex friend is also a very big deal. I have a lot to say about that because so many of the women that I interviewed, I interviewed 80 girls and women from this book, so many of them told me about cut-offs, or what we now call ghosting. A friend suddenly disappears, or they decided, "This friendship is really not good for me, I'm just going to cut it off."

Deborah Tannen: Somebody pointed out to me, "With a romantic relationship, you kind of have to have that closing conversation, 'I don't think we should see each other anymore because ...'" Certainly if it's a marriage, or living together situation like that, you would have to say, "This isn't working." You would have to have that conversation. But it's so common among friends to just cut it off with no closing conversation, no, "I decided this isn't working for me because ..." So I think that's a huge difference.

Deborah Tannen: I guess there's two ways to look at it. One is it was so hurtful when people told me that others had cut them off and they didn't know why. The not knowing why was really, really hurtful. On the other hand, you could say that it's one of the gifts of friendship that you have more volition, that you can decide, "This is causing me more pain than it's giving me pleasure and I want out." I guess you could think of it as a positive or negative thing, but that certainly is a big difference.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I will say too that some of the more poignant moments in your latest book for me were when the circle did get completed, when people were able to follow up and tell those stories of what they discovered about why cut-offs happen.

Deborah Tannen: Yes, and since it is such a common thing and the cause of so much hurt, I do have a bit about it. It could be ... Maybe this is something, in a way, about the whole book, or maybe about all my books, it's a great relief to know that something you've experienced has also been experienced by many other people. You're not alone, nobody's crazy, but these are inherent in human relationships. These cut-offs, yeah, sometimes someone would come back years later and say, "I was just going through a tough time then," or "I was cutting everybody off at that time."

Deborah Tannen: I have an example of my own from high school. Very exciting when half a century later I actually found the person who had cut me off, and discovered that it actually wasn't anything I had done or anything she really was going through. It was her older brother who insisted that she end our friendship.

Neil Sattin: Wow, yeah, I remember that-

Deborah Tannen: I had actually written about that, that yeah, if you're a young person living at home, older people living with you who have that kind of power over you, sometimes they're the ones that make the decision. Often they're right; they may well see that a certain friend is not good for you. But on the other hand, sometimes they're just jealous.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, plus I think it's worth highlighting in this moment that I think you might have the title for your next book: You're Not Alone and Nobody's Crazy.

Deborah Tannen: Maybe that should be the title of every book.

Neil Sattin: Deborah, before we go I'm wondering if we can just touch for a moment on the influence of digital communication on how we communicate? In particular, how much gets sacrificed through texting and Snapchatting? Maybe if you have some ideas on strategies other than, "Don't try to have any meaningful communication that way," which is often what I would just say, but strategies for people to help them sift through the possibility for missing the meta-message when it's just a few characters on your iMessage that's doing the communicating.

Deborah Tannen: Yes, I do have a chapter on social media, so I'll just say a little bit from that chapter. I believe that all these social media ramp up both the positive and the negative of friendships. On the positive side, you can stay in much more constant touch. There's this sense of absent presence, so that you feel you're together even though you're not. You send these pictures, it's a way of saying, "Hey, look at that," and you feel as if you're together.

Deborah Tannen: One of the big risks is fear of being left out. We all can be hurt if we discover that our friends are doing things without us. Women seem particularly sensitive to that kind of hurt. Well, with social media, your chances not only of knowing what they were doing, but of seeing pictures of what they were doing without you goes way up. It could be you missed it because maybe you were invited but you couldn't make it; maybe you missed it because you didn't check your phone in time; maybe you weren't invited. But the changes of being exposed to this and hurt by it are ratcheted up.

Deborah Tannen: As you say, the risks of missing the meta-message, or mistaking the meta-message because you don't have tone of voice, facial expression, although we're extremely creative at using emojis, emoticons, memes, and pictures. There's more and more use of that. My students look at all the creative uses of ha, ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, lol, all these ways that we say, "Don't take what I just said literally." So, I think that people can be very creative about it.

Deborah Tannen: Maybe one of the biggest risks is the sense that ... Again, it's a kind of conversational style difference. One friend thinks texting is a good way to talk about problems, the other thinks it's not so she gives minimal responses. The one who's talking about the problem that way thinks, "Where's my supportive, caring friend?"

Deborah Tannen: Of course, I think you kind of implied this in your question, just the sense of overload. So many different platforms that you have to check, the fragmentation of attention, the temptation to be looking at your phone rather than the person that you're with. All of these are challenges that we have to be aware and find ways to overcome.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, my hope is that as people become more sensitized to how it's affecting them, that it actually spawns even more authenticity and integrity. It's really calling people to the table to be more aligned in terms of how they communicate, because the consequences are so easily seen or experienced, of not being clear.

Deborah Tannen: You know, I often find myself defending the use of social media, because I think it has a lot of positive things that we can lose track of. There are many people who can be more authentic when they're typing on a screen than if they're facing a person. Many people find it easier to reveal their real feelings, something personal, some emotion, when they don't have a person staring them down. Many close friendships have evolved, some who never meet, just by talking on the screen, Facebook or some other such medium, and reveal things they wouldn't reveal to somebody that's in the same room with them.

Deborah Tannen: I think it's just a matter of awareness and finding what works, and tempering if you feel that things are becoming out of hand. But often those people who are looking at their screen rather than talking to you are really, importantly, avoiding being rude to the person who texted them and need that answer right away. So, a bit of it might be being more tolerant of that. But then, I know there are groups of people who when they get together they all put their phones in the middle, and then the first one who grabs his phone pays the bill.

Neil Sattin: I love that. That's a great solution. I can already imagine the meta-meaning conversations. Like, "So, honey, when you're texting on your phone and we're in bed together, what that means to me is ... " Then you get to get more clear about it.

Deborah Tannen: You certainly can have parameters that you agree on for your relationship.

Neil Sattin: That's what we hope, that's what we hope. Well, Deborah, thank you so much for being here with us today. I'm just so appreciative of your time and your wisdom. For me it's just such a treat, considering how much of an impact your work had on me oh so long ago. It was really fun to revisit today, 20 something years later, and just see how your work has permeated the way that I think, the way that I communicate and interact, and the way that I hope to help others, both as a coach and through this podcast. So, just thank you so much for  being here with us today, and for such a vast contribution to our knowledge about how we communicate with each other.

Deborah Tannen: Thank you so much, it's really been a great pleasure to talk to you.

Resources:

Check out Deborah Tannen's website

Read Deborah Tannen’s Book - You Just Don’t Understand and her latest book You’re the Only One I Can Tell

You can also visit Deborah Tannen’s author page on Amazon

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

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