Relationship Alive!

Is it ever a good idea to snoop? Do you suspect that your partner is keeping secrets from you? Or are you being "snooped upon" and wondering what to do about it? How do you rebuild trust? In today's episode, we're going to dive deep on the topic of snooping, and secrets, in your relationship. What do you do if you feel like snooping is the only way to get information about what's going on with your partner? How do you rebuild openness and honesty in your relationship? I'll answer all of those questions as we continue the conversation about how to promote "the truth" in your relationship.

And why would you want to promote the truth? Because it creates energy, and passion, and connection - even when the truth is complicated. The truth might not be easy, but it is better than what happens when you live in an atmosphere of lies in your relationship.

There have been a couple other episodes that have focused on this topic so far. If you want to get more information, you can listen to:

Episode 24: Why We Lie and How to Get Back to the Truth - with Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson

Episode 107: A Little Honesty Goes a Long Way - with Neil Sattin

Sponsors

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

YogaGlo offers amazing online yoga and meditation classes, at all levels, wherever you are, at whatever time is convenient for you. Along with being incredibly affordable (each month costs less than a single yoga class), they are offering you two weeks free just for signing up and checking them out. Visit yogaglo.com/alive for two free weeks!

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

The way that you think creates the way you feel. If you have great thoughts then no problem, but if your thoughts are a little distorted, then...look out! Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easy way to look at your thoughts...and change them? As it turns out - there is! In today’s conversation we are going to show you how to identify the kinds of thoughts that lead to depression, anxiety, shame, anger, and self-doubt - and talk about the process that you can go through to eliminate those thoughts for good. Our guest is Dr. David Burns, author of the acclaimed bestseller Feeling Good and one of the leading popularizers of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). He is also the creator of TEAM therapy, which takes CBT to the next level. Today, David Burns and I are tackling the topic of “cognitive distortions” - the messed-up thinking that can get you stuck in negative emotions. By the end of today’s episode you’ll not only be able to spot the times when your thinking gets distorted, but you’ll know what to do about it so that you can “feel good”.

If you want to listen to our first episode together, where David Burns and I spoke about how to apply his work in relationships (based on his book Feeling Good Together), here is a link to Episode 98: How to Stop Being a Victim - Feeling Good Together - with David Burns

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!

Resources:

Check out Dr. David Burns's website

Read David’s classic books, Feeling Good or When Panic Attacks

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/feelinggood2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Burns

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 going to cover ways that your thinking can be distorted. And, by being distorted can impact the way you feel, the way you behave, the way you interact with other people, and basically get in the way of you being an effectively functioning human being.

Neil Sattin: I'm talking about cognitive distortions and they've been mentioned a little bit on the show before, but I wanted to take this opportunity to dive deeply into the ways that our thinking can just be messed up. From that messed upness - and no that is not a technical term -  comes all sorts of problems.

Neil Sattin: From today's show, what my hope is for you is that you understand these things well enough so that you can spot them happening in your own thinking and perhaps in the thinking and reasoning of those around you. We're going to talk about effective strategies for changing the pattern.

Neil Sattin: In order to do that, we have with us today a fortunate return visit from Dr. David Burns who was on the show back in episode 98 where we talked about how to stop being a victim in your relationship. This was an episode that was all based on David's work in a book called Feeling Good Together.

Neil Sattin: If you're interested in hearing that, you can go to neilsattin.com/feelinggood. What I wanted to talk about today relates to some of the pioneering work that David did in popularizing cognitive behavioral therapy primarily through his book Feeling Good which has sold millions of copies all over the world and has been prescribed and shown to actually help people with depression simply by reading the book and going through the exercises.

Neil Sattin: I'm very excited to have David with us today, we're going to talk about cognitive distortions, we're probably going to touch on TEAM therapy which is his latest evolution that's attacking some of the problems with cognitive behavioral therapy. And hear about some of the amazing results that that's getting and get some insight into how that even works.

Neil Sattin: Without any further ado, let us dive right in. David Burns, thank you so much for joining us again here on Relationship Alive.

David Burns: Thanks Neil, I'm absolutely delighted to be on your podcast for two reasons. First, I think you're a tremendous host. You know your stuff both technically and you know my background, you do your homework, that's very flattering to me being interviewed, but also you seem to exude a lot of warmth and integrity, just a pleasure to hang out with you a little bit today and your many, many listeners.

Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your saying that. This stuff is important to me. I'm hoping that this podcast makes a big difference in the world and the way that we do that is through being able to feature amazing work like what you do. I don't want to forget to mention that you also have your own podcast, the Feeling Good Podcast that has amazing insight into the work that you're doing.

Neil Sattin: In fact, you record sessions with people so people can actually hear you working with clients and then explaining how you did what you did and also getting direct feedback from the people that you're working with. That's a fascinating show and how many episodes have you put out at this point?

David Burns: I think Fabrice and I are up to roughly 60, in the range of 60. One really neat bit of feedback we're getting is that a lot of therapists now are requiring their patients to listen to the Feeling Good podcasts. There's been a lot of research on my book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and studies have shown that if you just hand the book to someone with moderate to severe depression, 60% of them ... 65% of them will improve dramatically within four weeks.

David Burns: That's really, really good news. It's called bibliotherapy or reading therapy, but now we're getting this ... I'm getting the same kind of feedback from people who are listening to the podcasts and saying that just listening to the Feeling Good Podcast had a dramatic effect on their depression or their obsessive compulsive disorder or whatever is bothering them. I'm hoping that that trend will continue.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, someone's going to have to study podcastio-therapy.

David Burns: Yeah, right. You may be having the same thing Neil on your relationship broadcast from people with troubled relationships following the information and the techniques you're providing and perhaps experiencing genuine improvement in their relationships, greater intimacy and love.

Neil Sattin: Absolutely. I'm getting that kind of feedback all the time from listeners and I also hear that therapists, particularly couples therapists are having their clients listen to the show and even sometimes prescribing specific episodes for them to listen to. It feels really good to be able to be an adjunct part of people's progress and therapy.

David Burns: Congrats. That's great. That's a real credit to the quality of what you're offering.

Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you. Well, let's dive in. Enough kudos although it does feel really good, though I guess that doesn't surprise me considering you're the author of Feeling Good. Quick point of clarification. Is it the just handing of the Feeling Good book that has a 60 to 65% improvement rate or did the people actually have to read some of it to get that?

David Burns: All they have to do is touch it. The improvement comes through osmosis and many of those who have read it have gotten worse. They don't have good data on that in the studies. It's people coming to a medical center for the treatment of depression and in the original studies, they said that they had to be on a waiting list for four weeks and during the four weeks, read this book.

David Burns: Then they continued to test them every week with various depression tests and half the patients went to some kind of control group who were on a waiting list control for four weeks or they gave them some other book to read like Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning and in all of the studies, the patients who were given a copy of Feeling Good, two thirds of them had improved so much within four weeks that they didn't need to have treatment anymore at the medical center.

David Burns: They never got antidepressants or psychotherapy. Then they've done follow up, up to two year follow up studies on these patients as well. For the most part, they've continued to do well or even improve more and have not had significant relapses. The alternative groups who got Victor Frankl's book did not show significant improvement or people on waiting list control.

David Burns: They were pretty well done studies sponsored by research from ... sponsored by National Institute of Mental Health and other research groups. Forrest Scogin is a clinical psychologist at University of Alabama and he pioneered a lot of these studies, but there have been probably at least a dozen replications of that finding that have been published now with teenagers, with elderly people and with people in between.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I want to just say, your book despite having been published a little while ago now is eminently readable and I did read it a while ago. In fact, I think it was one of the first "self-help books" that I stumbled across probably around when I was graduating from college. In sitting down and revisiting it in preparation for our conversation today, I was just struck by how personable, for a book that's about cognitive behavioral therapy which is something that I think just calling it that probably turns a lot of people off.

David Burns: You bet.

Neil Sattin: The truth is that reading it through, it just makes so much sense and I love how you bring humor into the subject and in many ways talk about yourself as an author in some of the quizzes around the kind of thoughts that undermine our self-esteem. Anyway, I definitely recommend it.

Neil Sattin: If you're not one of the millions of people who have already read it, you should pick it up and if you are, I would suggest picking it up again to just glean again what more is there. We're going to talk about one of the central topics in the book which is how our thinking affects the way we feel.

Neil Sattin: Maybe we just start there because that was one place where I even in upon revisiting, I got a little confused and in the past, that's made total sense to me. Yeah of course, I make something mean something and that gives me an emotional response to it which ironically makes me think of Victor Frankl's work.

Neil Sattin: At the same time, I know that we have feelings that just our bodies kick in with emotional responses in a split second when something happens. That seems to precede thought. How do you parse that apart in a way that makes sense?

David Burns: Well, the basis of cognitive therapy and we've moved on to something new called TEAM therapy or TEAM CBT, but I think the basis of cognitive therapy which as far as it goes it's still pure gold goes back to the Buddha 2,500 years ago and to the Greek philosophers like Epictetus 2,000 years ago that humans are disturbed not by things, but by the views we take of them that you have to interpret an event in a particular way before you can have an emotional reaction to it.

David Burns: This thought is so basic that our thoughts create all of our moods. We create our emotional reality at every moment of every day by the way, we interpret things, but that's such a basic idea that many people can't get it or they don't believe it. I had an example of this at my workshop in the east coast recently - I was in a hotel.

David Burns: I've had many afflictions myself in my life. I love to treat people with depression or anxiety because whatever they have I could say, "Oh, I've been there myself." I can show you the way out of the woods, but when I was little, I had the fear of heights and then I got over it completely as a teenager through a high school teacher who had me stand on the top of a tall ladder until my fear disappeared and took about 15 minutes and it was dramatically effective.

David Burns: Suddenly, my anxiety went from 100 to zero and I was free, but it crept back in because I stopped going up on heights not out avoidance, just I had no reason to and then suddenly I realized it had returned. I was on a hotel on one of these glass elevators and I was going up to the 14th floor and I was looking down into the elevator and I had no emotional reaction whatsoever and it was because I was telling myself and this was automatic I guess, but you're safe.

David Burns: However, if there hadn't been that glass there and it would have been the same elevator going up and looking out, I would have been paralyzed with fear and terror and it would have been a total body experience that I can feel in my whole body this extreme terror. That's the first idea that you can't have an emotional reaction without having some kind of thought or interpretation.

David Burns: You feel the way you think - your thoughts create all of your moods. After Feeling Good came out, I got a letter from a therapist in Philadelphia. He was a student therapist at the Philadelphia Marriage Counsel I believe and he said he had read my book Feeling Good: How Your Thoughts Create All of Your Moods.

David Burns: He said, "Well, that's a great idea, but how can it be true? If you're on a railroad track with a train coming and you're about to get killed, you're going to feel terrified. You don't have to put a thought in your mind, it's just an automatic reaction." He said, "I don't believe your claim that only your thoughts can create your moods."

David Burns: I got that letter and I started thinking, I said, "Gosh, what he's saying is so obvious, how could I have missed that when I wrote that book?" I felt embarrassed and ashamed. A couple days after I got that letter, I was in a taxi coming home from the airport and at a certain place on River Road, you go over this railroad track.

David Burns: I looked down the railroad track, I saw there was a car driving on the railroad track at about two miles an hour. Bumpety-bumpety-bump. I looked then in the other direction and this is ... Freight trains come through here, they never stop, they come at 65 miles an hour. I saw one about a mile and a half in the other direction.

David Burns: I said, "Man, that guy is going to get smashed by the train." I told the taxi driver, "Stop, I got to try to get that guy off the railroad tracks." I ran up and knocked on the window and he rolled down the window and there's this older man there and he said, "Can you please direct me to City Line Avenue?"

David Burns: I said, "City Line Avenue is 10 miles in the other direction, but you're on the railroad tracks and there's a train coming. You've got to back up. Back up to get to the road." Because he was beyond the road, where you know how they have a pile of rocks at the railroad tracks, that's where he was and I said, "Back up, I'm going to get you off the railroad tracks."

David Burns: He backed up and he kept ... When he got to the road, I said, "Now turn, turn your car." Finally I had them positioned to where just the nose of the car, the front part of the car was over the tracks and I was standing in front of it. Now the train was about maybe 20 seconds from impact and they had their whistle on.

David Burns: I was waving my hands like, "Back up, back up. Just back up five feet and it will save you." Instead, the guy started creeping forward very slowly.

Neil Sattin: Oh no.

David Burns: The train smashed into him at the side of his car at about 60 miles an hour.

Neil Sattin: Oh my goodness.

David Burns: Actually ripped the car in half. The front compartment was thrown about 30 feet from the tracks. They had their brakes on, the train was skidding to a stop and I ran over again to the driver's compartment and looked in, it was all smashed windows and I thought I'd see a decapitated corpse, but it hit probably an inch behind his head and it hit so fast it had just cut the car in half and he didn't seem to be that injured or anything.

David Burns: He looked at me and smiled and said, "Which way exactly did you say now to City Line Avenue?" I said, "You got to be kidding me." I said, "You were just hit by a train." He said, "I was not." He says, "That's ridiculous." I said, "Oh yeah, what happened to the windows of your car?"

David Burns: Then he looked and he noticed all the windows were smashed and there was glass all over. Then he says, "Gosh, it looks like somebody broke my windows." I said, "Look, where's the back seat? Where's the back half of your car?" He turned around and he saw the back half of his car was missing.

David Burns: He looked at me and he says, "I think you're right. Half of my car seems to have disappeared." He says, "Where is this train?" I said, "Look, it's right there, it's 20 feet from here." Now the conductors were rushing up and the engineers and he looked at me and he says, "This is great."

David Burns: I said, "Why is that? Why is this great?" He says, "Well, maybe I can sue." I said, "You'll be lucky if they don't sue you. You were driving down the railroad tracks." I couldn't understand it and at this point, the police cars came, the ambulance, they put him in an ambulance, I gave my story to the police, he looked just fine and they took him to the Bryn Mawr Hospital.

David Burns: I was just scratching my head and I got in the taxi, it was just a mile from home, the taxi driver took me the rest of the way home. I was saying, "What in the heck happened?" The next day I was jogging around that same corner, of course, there was all this litter from the car or broken pieces of metal and glass all over the place and there was a younger guy maybe 50 years old or something like that going through the rubble.

David Burns: I stopped there and asked him who he was and he says, "My father was almost killed by a train here yesterday and somebody saved his life and I was just checking out the scene." I said, "Well, that was me actually." I said, "I didn't understand it -  he was driving down the railroad track and if I hadn't gotten there, I think he would have been killed."

David Burns: I said, "Why was he driving down the railroad track?" He says, "Well, my father has had Alzheimer's disease and he lost his driver's license 10 years ago, but he forgot and after dinner, he snuck out. He grabbed the keys and snuck out, decided to take the car for a drive." Here is the same situation, a train about to kill somebody on a railroad track about to smash into you and I had the thought this guy is in danger he could be killed.

David Burns: I was experiencing 100% terror and anxiety and fear, but his thought was different. His thought was, "This is great. I might be able to sue and get a great deal of money." Therefore he was feeling joy and euphoria. Same situation, different thoughts and radically different emotions.

David Burns: That's what I mean and that's what the Buddha meant 2,500 years ago when we say that only your thoughts can create your emotions. It's not what happens to you, but the way you think about it that creates every positive and negative emotion.

Neil Sattin: Did you ever write back to that person who wrote you? About that train - to tell him what had happened?

David Burns: I don't remember it because this was way back in 1980 shortly after the book came out. I probably did because in those days, I was so excited to get a fan letter. I never had any idea that the book would become popular, it didn't hit the best-seller list until eight years after it was published because the publishers wouldn't support it with any marketing or advertising because they thought no one would ever want to read a book on depression.

David Burns: When I got a letter in the days before email, I would get so excited and I would try to contact the person and sometimes talk to them for an hour or two on the telephone thinking this might be the only fan I'll ever have. I'm sure I did write back.

Neil Sattin: Speaking of that, this might be a good chance to start talking about the cognitive distortions and like the idea that this might be the only fan that you ever have, what are we talking about in terms of now we've established pretty well. The way I think about things is going to determine how I feel.

Neil Sattin: Yet, there are these distorted ways of thinking about the world that really have an enormously negative impact on our ability to function and interact.

David Burns: This is one of the amazing ideas of cognitive therapy that at first I didn't quite grasp, but the early cognitive therapists like Albert Ellis from New York and then Aaron Beck at University of Pennsylvania who I learned it from were claiming not only do your thoughts create all of your moods, but when you're upset, when you're depressed, when you're anxious, when you feel ashamed or excessively angry or hopeless, not only are those feelings created by your thoughts and not by the circumstances of your life, but those negative thoughts will generally be distorted and illogical so that when you're depressed, you're fooling yourself, you're telling yourself things that simply aren't true and that depression and anxiety are really the world's oldest cons.

David Burns: Beck - when I first began learning about cognitive therapy from him when I was a psychiatric resident and postdoctoral fellow, he had about four distortions as I recall and he had big names for them and then I added some to those and I used to talk to my patients about all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization and self-blame and the different ones.

David Burns: Once, I was having a session with a patient and he said, "Why don't you list your 10 distortions and hand it out to patients?" He said, "It would make it so much easier for us." I thought, "Wow, that is a cool idea." I ran home that night after work and I made the list of the 10 cognitive distortions and that's what led to my book Feeling Good.

David Burns: My list of 10 cognitive distortions, it's probably been reproduced in magazines and by therapists all over the world, I would imagine easily millions of times and probably tens of millions of times, but there are 10 distortions. Number one is all-or-nothing thinking, black or white thinking.

David Burns: It's where you think about yourself in black or white term, shades of gray don't exist. If you're not a total success, you think that you're a complete failure or you tell yourself you're defective. I gave a workshop with Dr. Beck at one of the professional conferences like the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, cognitive therapy had just come out and Beck is not a very good public speaker.

David Burns: I was a novice also at the time and we had a half day workshop and there were a few hundred therapists there and it was okay, but it wasn't great and they started challenging us because nobody liked the idea of cognitive therapy initially, it was scorned and looked down on. We got defensive and then afterwards Dr. Beck looked at me and said, "David, you look like you're feeling down. What's the problem?"

David Burns: I said, "Well, to tell you the truth Dr. Beck, I thought we were below average in this presentation and I'm feeling upset about that." He said, "Oh, well you should, if we were below average, you should thank your lucky stars." I said, "Why should I thank my lucky stars if we were below average?"

David Burns: He said, "Because average is the halfway point. By definition, we have to be below average half the time. We can thank our lucky stars we got the below average one out of the way and we look forward to an above average one the next time we present." Suddenly, my discouragement disappeared.

David Burns: He was just modeling thinking in shades of gray whereas I had been thinking in black and white terms. All-or-nothing thinking is very common in depression and it's also the cause of all perfectionism - thinking if you're not the greatest, second best or average just is not good enough, it's either the world or nothing, perfection or failure and it creates tremendous problems.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I could see that also coming up in terms of comparisons like if so and so is already doing this thing, I can't possibly do that because it's so and so's domain. As if one person could own the domain for the entire world in any particular area.

David Burns: Well yeah, that's another mental trick that we play in ourselves with the distortions I call mental filtering and discounting the positive. You see this all the time when you're feeling inferior and comparing yourself to other people. Mental filter is where you focus on all of your flaws thinking about all of your errors.

David Burns: You don't think about what's good about you or what's beautiful about you. I did a TV show finally when the book gained popularity in Cincinnati and it was a morning show and they had a live audience and a band and he was interviewing me. It was exciting for me because it was still the first time I had any media exposure.

David Burns: Then after the show, the host said, "Dr. Burns, could I talk to you for a minute?" This often happens to me when I'm on a radio or TV show because the people in the media have tremendous pressures on them and they often also feel that they're not good enough. I said, "Sure. I'd love to. What's the issue?"

David Burns: He says, "Well, after every morning show, I get about 350 fan mails, fan letters or calls or whatever." He said, "They are 99.9% positive, but everyday I'll get one critical letter. One critical feedback and I dwell on that one constantly and make myself miserable and ignore all the other positive feedback." That's called mental filter because you filter out the good stuff and you've just focused on your flaws.

David Burns: A lot of the people listening to the show right now do that. Then an even bigger mental error is called discounting the positive - when you say that the good things about you don't even count. You may have done this to yourself when someone gives you a compliment, you might tell yourself, "Oh, they're just saying that to be nice to me. They don't really mean it." You discount that positive experience.

David Burns: I had a colleague who got upset when he recently won the Nobel prize, one of my college roommates, and the reason he got upset is he said they haven't recognized my best work yet. So those are three of the 10 distortions.

Neil Sattin: Yes. One of my favorites I think comes next on your list, at least the list I'm looking at after discounting the positive which is the ways that we jump to conclusions.

David Burns: Right. There's two common patterns here, jumping to conclusions that aren't warranted by the facts and mind-reading and fortune-telling are two of the commonest ones. Now, fortune-telling is when you make a prediction about the future, an arbitrary prediction about the future and all anxiety results from fortune-telling, telling yourself that something terrible is about to happen - like when I get on that plane, I just know it will run into turbulence and crash. You feel panic and anxiety.

David Burns: Depressed people do fortune-telling as well. Hopelessness results from predicting that things will never change, my problems will never get solved, I'm going to be miserable forever. Almost every depressed patient thinks that way and that's actually why many people with depression commit suicide because they have the illogical belief that their mood will never improve, that they're the one untreatable person.

David Burns: Mind-reading is the other common form of jumping to conclusions and this is real common in social anxiety, but Neil, I'm sure you see it in a lot of people with relationship problems.

Neil Sattin: Absolutely.

David Burns: But mind-reading is where you assume you know how other people are thinking and feeling without any evidence, without any data. I used to struggle with intense social anxiety among my many other fears and phobias that I've had and overcome over the years, but the anxious person - say you're at a social gathering and you think, "Oh, these people won't be interested in what I have to say and they never feel anxious. I'm the only one who feels insecure."

David Burns: Then you also may have the thought, "Oh, they can see how anxious I am and they're going to be real turned off by me." Then what happens is that when you start talking to someone, you get really busy worrying about how they're not going to be interested in you. You try to think of something clever or interesting to say while they're talking.

David Burns: Then when they're done, instead of repeating what they said and expressing an interest in what they said, you make the little speech you had prepared. That turns the other person off because I think, "Wow, David doesn't seem interested in me. I was just telling him about my son, he was just accepted to Harvard and now he's talking about something else."

David Burns: That person pretty quickly loses interest in you and says, "Oh, I have to talk to so and so on the other side of the room." Then you, the shy person get rejected again which is what you thought was going to happen. Although these are distortions, you're thinking in an unrealistic way, they sometimes feel like self-fulfilling prophecies so you don't realize that you're fooling yourself.

Neil Sattin: Right, because when you're in it, then you seem to be getting plenty of evidence that it's true.

David Burns: Yes, and another form of evidence comes to another distortion. One name I made up called emotional reasoning where you reason from your feelings. You see this in angry interactions, you see that in anxiety and in depression. The depressed patient is giving themselves all these messages like I'm a loser, I'm no good and beating up on yourself and then you feel ashamed and guilty and worthless and inferior and inadequate.

David Burns: Then you say, "Well, I feel like a loser, I must really be one." Reasoning from your emotions, thinking your emotions somehow reflect reality. That thought by the way is one we skipped over - overgeneralization. That's number two on the list actually, right after all-or-nothing thinking.

David Burns: Overgeneralization, this is a Buddhist thing, really overgeneralization. It's where you generalize to yourself from some specific event. For example, I have a free training for Bay Area psychotherapists every Tuesday evening at Stanford and you don't have to be a Stanford student to come,  I give unlimited free psychotherapy training to therapists who can come to my Tuesday group and any of the listeners or therapists near in the Bay Area on a Tuesday email me and you're welcome to attend my Tuesday training group.

David Burns: Then I also have free hikes every Sunday morning and we go out hiking for maybe three and a half hours on the trails around my home and I treat people for free on the hikes. We do training and one of the women on the Sunday hike, I'll keep it vague to protect her identity, but she just had a problem with her boyfriend and they broke up and then she was telling herself, "I'm inadequate ... I'm unlovable" kind of thing.

David Burns: "This was my fault and I must have been doing something wrong." You see, when you think like that and most of us do when we're upset, she's generalizing from this event, that it didn't work out with her boyfriend to then this global idea that "I'm inadequate. There's something wrong with me" - as if you had a self that wasn't good enough.

David Burns: Then people also say, "I'll be alone forever. I'm unlovable. This is always happening to me." That's all over generalization where you generalize from a negative event and you see it as a never-ending pattern of defeat. You also see it as evidence that you're somehow defective or not good enough than when you're thinking these things, they seem so true - just as believable as the fact that there's skin on your hand.

David Burns: You don't realize that you're fooling yourself, the pain that you feel is just incredible. I know that of the many people listening to this show right now, I'm sure you can identify this with this that you've had thoughts like that and you know how real and painful these feelings are.

David Burns: It's one of the worst forms of human suffering, but the good news is and we haven't gone around to that, but not only are there fantastic techniques, cognitive therapy techniques that we've been talking about from my book feeling good described in there or my feeling good handbook so that you can overcome these distorted thoughts and get back to joy and self-esteem quickly, but also my group at Stanford over the 10 years, the past 10 years, we've created even more powerful techniques and to help bring about really high speed recovery for people struggling with depression and anxiety.

David Burns: The new techniques are way more powerful than the original cognitive therapy although those methods are still fabulous, but maybe we'll have time to talk about some of these.

David Burns: But there's more distortions to cover.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Maybe what we could do because I'd love to balance this out and I want to ensure that we cover the other distortions. We have maybe four more. At the same time, maybe let's break from the distortions just to change things up a bit and start entertaining that question of, "Alright, yeah. I relate to some or all that we've even listed so far."

Neil Sattin: What are some of the initial steps that someone could talk because where I tend to go with this is like, "Well, these belief patterns like you talked about, "I'm unlovable" as one, those seem to emerge from a place that's immutable. It's something that's really deep in someone's psyche and yet, you're suggesting that there's ways to transform that that are really quick and direct and give someone a felt experience of the truth that's not that thing.

David Burns: Yeah, that's right. You can group the techniques into cognitive techniques to crush these distorted thoughts and motivational techniques to get rid of your ... To bring your resistance to change to conscious awareness and melt away the resistance. The patients become incredibly motivated to crush their thoughts.

David Burns: An example of the way the cognitive techniques work, what is crucial and this is one of the first things when we first created cognitive therapy in the mid 1970s was to write the negative thoughts on a piece of paper. It's a very humble thing to do, but it can be dramatically effective because then you can look at the list of 10 distortions and immediately, pinpoint the distortions and that makes it much easier to talk back to these disruptive thoughts and poke holes in them.

David Burns: I'll give you an example of my own personal life because I've used these techniques myself and if they hadn't worked for me, I never would have become a cognitive therapist and now a TEAM CBT therapist, but when I was a postdoctoral fellow, I used to go to Dr. Beck's weekly seminars and I would present all my most difficult cases and get tips from him on how to treat these people with what was then the rapidly emerging brand new cognitive therapy and it was an exciting time, but one day, I talked to him about a patient that wasn't paying the bill, that I've had a bad session with this patient and asked him for some guidance.

David Burns: He actually was pretty critical of the way I had dealt with this patient. I became awfully upset, I got depressed and anxious and I was riding home on the train and my head was filled with negative thoughts and negative feelings. Then when I got home, I told myself, "Well David, you probably better run, go on a long six mile run and get your brain endorphins up so get over your depression" because those were the days when everyone was believing the phony baloney that somehow exercise boosts brain endorphins and will reduce depression.

David Burns: I went out on this long run and the longer I ran, the more believable my negative thoughts became. I said, "David, what are you telling yourself?" I said, "Oh, I'm a worthless human being. I have no therapeutic skills, I'm going to be banned from the state of Pennsylvania and they'll take away my medical license, I have no future in psychiatry. I'm a worthless human being, I'm a bad person." Stuff like that.

David Burns: It seemed overwhelmingly true. I said, "Are there some distortions in your thoughts David? Look for the distortions like what you tell your patients." I said, "No, there are no distortions in my thoughts. This is just real." I was telling myself it's so weird to hear, you're something like 30 years old or however old I was, 31, it took you all of this time in your life to realize what a horrible loser you are.

David Burns: It's as if I had seen the truth for the first time and it was devastating. Then when I got home, I said, "David, why don't you write your thoughts on a piece of paper? That's what you make all of your patients do." I said, "Oh no, no, my thoughts are real, that won't do any good." Then I told myself, "But isn't that the same way you're whining just like your patients whine and resist? And you force them to write their thoughts down on a piece of paper. You tell them they have to do that. Why don't you try that David?"

David Burns: I said, "No, no, it wouldn't do any good. I really am a worthless human being. This is true." Then I said, "No David, you're still resisting. Take out a piece of paper and do what you tell your patients to do." I said, "Oh okay, I'll do it just to prove that it won't work." I wrote my thoughts down. Number one, I'm a worthless human being, number two, I have no therapy skill.

David Burns: Number three, I screwed up with this patient. Number four, they'll take away my medical license, stuff like that. I wrote down four or five thoughts. Then I said, "Now, are there any distortions?" I looked at my own list of 10 distortions. I said, "Wow, those thoughts are pretty distorted. It's all-or-nothing thinking, black and white thinking like I'm not allowed to make a mistake with a patient. It's overgeneralization, I'm generalizing from the fact that I screwed up with this patient in a session to, "I am a worthless human being," it's fortune-telling, "I have no future in psychiatry."

David Burns: Jumping to conclusions, self-blame, hidden "should" statements, that's another distortion. I shouldn't have screwed up, I should always be perfect. It was emotional reasoning, I feel worthless, I must be worthless. I suddenly saw those distortions and then I said, "Now, can I write a positive thought to challenge these negative thoughts?" That's the other part of the exercise. First you write the negative thought, then you identify the distortions, then you write a positive thought.

David Burns: The positive thought has to be 100% true. Rationalizations and half truth will never help a human being. I came up with this positive thought. I said, "David, you're just a beginner. You have the right to make mistakes. In fact, even when you're 75 years old years from now, you might be a great therapist, but you'll still make mistakes and learn from them. That's part of the territory."

David Burns: "You're absolutely permitted to do that. Instead of beating up on yourself, why don't you talk it over with your patient tomorrow and tell him that you made a mistake and see if you can repair that rupture in your relationship with the patient." All of a sudden, I said, "Is that true?" "Yeah, that thought is 100% true." How much do I believe this rubbish that I'm a worthless human being and all of that and my belief in those negative thoughts went to zero and my negative feelings just disappeared in a flash entirely. I said, "Wow, this shit is pretty good. This really works." Hope you don't have to edit out that word.

Neil Sattin: No, that's fine. That's fine.

David Burns: Then the next day I saw the patient, I said, "You know Mark, I've been feeling terrible since last session and ashamed because I don't think I treated you right." I was putting pressure on you because of the unpaid balance and I didn't put any emphasis on your suffering and what's going on with you as a human being I just imagine you felt so hurt and angry with me and discouraged and I'm just overjoyed that you came back today rather than dropping out of therapy so we can talk it over and see if we can deepen our relationship.

David Burns: He just loved that and we had the best session ever, he gave me perfect empathy scores at the end of the session, but that's just an example from my personal life and I'm sure the people here can relate to that, but I've developed probably 50 or 100 techniques for crushing negative thoughts and I've made it sound easy, but it isn't always easy because you might be very, very trapped in your negative thoughts.

David Burns: You might have to try several of the different techniques before you find the one that works for you. I want to be encouraging to the listeners and to therapists who may be listening, but I also don't want to make it sound like something overly simple or overly simplistic because it's really a pretty high-powered, sophisticated type of therapy.

David Burns: Fortunately, many people can make it work on their own, but anyway, that's the half of the treatment breakthroughs and that was called the cognitive revolution and my book Feeling Good really helped usher that in when feeling good came out in 1980, cognitive therapy was virtually unknown and they were just a handful of cognitive therapists in the world.

David Burns: Now, it's become the most popular form of psychotherapy in the world and the most researched form of psychotherapy in all of the history of psychology and psychiatry.

Neil Sattin: I wonder if we could emphasize because I'm thinking about how we talked about the technique for identifying a negative thought, identifying the cognitive distortion or distortions that are happening and just to talk about the importance of actually going through that exercise and writing it down.

Neil Sattin: Maybe you could just talk for one more minute about why that part is so important. Why is it important to actually write that stuff down versus to do it in your head?

David Burns: I think that the negative, the power of the human mind to be negative is very profound. The negative thoughts are like a snake eating its tail, they go round and round and one leads to the next.

David Burns: In the early days, I used to try to do cognitive therapy without the written exercise and to this day, new therapists still try to do that. They think they're too fancy that writing things down is too simplistic or something like that and they're going to be deep and just do verbal, deep stuff with people, but the problem is, the human mind is so clever.

David Burns: Each distortion reinforces another one and each negative thought reinforces another one and you go round and round and round. That's why doing it verbally or in your head when you're alone is rarely going to be effective, but when you write the negative thoughts down one at a time and number them with short sentences, that makes it much easier to identify the distortions in them and turn them around.

David Burns: There are three rules of thumb. There's an art form to writing them down. Everything is more sophisticated than I make it sound in a brief interview. There's a lot of rules of the game. For example, when you're writing down negative thoughts, you should never put an emotion or an event.

David Burns: People have a negative thought like Trisha rejected me and I feel terrible. Well, that's not a negative thought. That's an event. Trisha rejected me and I use a form called the Daily Mood Log and at the top you put the event and then you circle all of your emotions and put how strong they are between zero and a hundred.

David Burns: These emotions might be feel guilty, ashamed, lonely, depressed, worthless and then the negative thought would be the interpretation of that event like I must be unlovable, I'll be alone forever. Then those are things that have distortions. A second rule is don't ever put rhetorical questions in the negative thought column.

David Burns: If you say something like, "Oh, why am I like this? Why am I so anxious in social situations?" Or "What's wrong with me?" You can't disprove questions so instead you can substitute the hidden claim behind the question which is generally a hidden should statement like I shouldn't be like this or I must be defective because I'm so anxious in social situations or some such thing.

David Burns: There are probably one or two other rules of the game and my book When Panic Attacks which is one of my newer books on all the anxiety disorders, Feeling Good is on depression. When Panic Attacks is on all of the different kinds of anxiety. I think the third chapter shows how to fill out the Daily Mood Log and what the rules are to follow to enhance the effectiveness of it so you'll be more likely to have a successful experience.

Neil Sattin: Great. The idea is that it's simply by doing this process that the things shift. It's not like there's ... You go through the process and then maybe you would track your mood afterwards and see, "Wow, I'm actually feeling better than I was before" just by simply doing that?

David Burns: Well, a lot of people can feel better just by doing it, but the research has shown that two thirds of people just by reading Feeling Good, they can improve a lot in depression, but some people need the help of a therapist and it isn't true that everyone has to do it on your own, sometimes you need another person to get that leverage to pop out of it.

David Burns: Another thing that's helpful when you're writing down your negative thoughts is Beck's theory of cognitive specificity. You see, Buddha said our thoughts create our emotions, but Beck took it to the next level and said different patterns of thoughts create different types of emotions.

David Burns: If you're feeling guilty, you're probably telling yourself that you're a bad person or that you violated your value system. If you're feeling hopeless, you're definitely telling yourself that things will never change, something like that. I'll be miserable forever. If you're feeling anxious, you're definitely telling yourself something awful is about to happen.

David Burns: "When I get on that show with Neil, I'll screw up, my brain will go blank." That type of thing. When you're feeling sad, you're telling yourself... or depressed, that you've lost something central to your self-esteem. When you're feeling angry, you're telling yourself that someone else is a loser that they're treating you unfairly, that they shouldn't be that way.

David Burns: These rules can also help individuals pinpoint your negative thoughts. Once you see what the emotions are, then you know the kind of thoughts to look for. One last thing is sometimes people say, "Oh, I don't know what my negative thoughts are." I just say, "We'll just make some up and write them down and number them."

David Burns: Then I say, "Are your thoughts like this?" They say, "Oh, that's exactly what I'm thinking." Those are a few tips on refining the part with the negative thoughts. But now we have even more powerful techniques that have evolved in my work with my training and development group at Stanford.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, before we talk about those, which I hope we will have time to do - there are a couple of things that jumped out at me. One was as you were describing the distortions that we've already talked about, it popped into my head that this is often at the source of most conflict that happens in couples - that either one person is having distorted thinking or one person is protecting themselves from their own distorted thinking.

Neil Sattin: For example, your partner says something and you have this feeling like, "Well, that's not true. I got to defend myself from that accusation."

David Burns: That's right yeah.

Neil Sattin: You jump into this place of conflict that's all about proving that this negative concept you suddenly are perceiving about yourself isn't true. When that negative concept in and of itself might be an example of you just having a distortion - like for instance, "my partner is mad at me, that must mean they think I'm a horrible human being."

David Burns: Yeah, what's huge what you just said, when we're in conflict with people, there's a lot of inner chatter going on in addition to the verbal altercations, the arguing, the escalation, the defensiveness - and some of the distortions will be focused on the other person and some of the distortions will be focused on yourself.

David Burns: You see all of the 10 cognitive distortions in relationship conflict, but they have a little bit of a different function I would say. Now, let's say you're angry, Mary is angry at her husband Sam, she's ticked off and then if you look at her thoughts, they have all 10 distortions.

David Burns: She'll tell herself things like, she might be thinking, "Oh, he's a loser. All he cares about is himself. The relationship problems are all his fault, he'll never change." That type of thing. You sell all-or-nothing thinking, mind-reading, imagining how he's thinking, you see blame, you see hidden should statements, he shouldn't be like that, he shouldn't feel like that.

David Burns: You see discounting the positive, mental filtering, overgeneralization, magnification, minimization. You see all the same 10 distortions. The only difference is that when you're depressed and I can show you that your thoughts about yourself are distorted and that's not true that you're a loser, you're going to love me, the therapist, you're going to appreciate that and you're going to feel better and you're going to feel better and recover from your depression.

David Burns: When people are in conflict and we're having distorted thoughts about the other person, we're generally not motivated to challenge those distortions because they make us feel good. We feel morally superior to the other person. I don't generally work with people too much on changing their distortions about others because they don't want to hear it.

David Burns: If the therapist finds out that this woman, that her thoughts about her husband are causing her to be upset, not her husband's behavior, and in addition that her thoughts about her husband are all wrong, wrong, wrong, they are all distorted, she'll just fire the therapist and drop out of therapy and she'll have two enemies, her loser of a husband and her loser of a therapist.

David Burns: That's why I developed some of the techniques we talked about in the last podcast we did on relationships. I used slightly different strategies, but you're right, those distortions are incredibly positive and the other kind of distortion you have when you're in conflict if someone's criticizing you, again you may start thinking, "This shows that I'm a loser, I'm no good. I should be better than I am. If you're criticizing me, that's a very dangerous and terrible situation."

David Burns: By attending to those kind of thoughts that make you feel anxious and ashamed and inferior and guilty and inadequate, then you can modify those and then do much better in the way you communicate with the other person because your ego isn't on the line. An example with me is in my teaching, I always get feedback from every class I do, every student I mentor or supervise from every workshop and I get it right away, I don't get it six months from now, I get it the very day that I'm teaching.

David Burns: I get all kinds of criticisms on the feedback forms I've developed even if I have a tremendous teaching seminar, I'll get a lot of criticisms especially if they feel safe to criticize the teacher. I find that if I don't beat myself up with inner dialogue, then I can find the truth in what the student is saying and treat that person with warmth and with respect and with enthusiasm even.

David Burns: Then they suddenly really love the way that I've handled their criticism and it leads to a better relationship and that's true between partners or in families as well. That inner dialogue that's where we're targeting ourselves and making ourselves needlessly anxious and defensive and hurt and angry and worthless when we're in conflict with someone - that can be adjusted and modified to really enhance relationships.

Neil Sattin: The two distortions that we hadn't really covered yet, you just mentioned them and I thought ... We've mentioned them all at this point, but some of them like blaming, whether it's blaming yourself for a situation or blaming others for a situation, that seems a little self-evident.

Neil Sattin: I'm curious if you could talk for a moment about labeling and then also magnification and minimization just because I think those are the two that we listed, but didn't really cover.

David Burns: Did we mention shoulds?

Neil Sattin: Let's mention them and I think again, that might be something that's a little more understandable for people, but yeah, let's do this.

David Burns: Oh yeah, okay. Yup. Well, labeling is just an extreme form of overgeneralization where you say I am a loser or with someone else, "He is a jerk." Where you see yourself or another person as this bad glob so to speak. Instead of focusing on specific behaviors, you're focusing on the self. When you think of yourself as a loser or a hopeless case, it creates tremendous pain.

David Burns: When you label someone else as a jerk or a loser, it creates rage and then you'll often treat them in a hostile way and then they treat you in a hostile way and you say, "Oh, I know he was a loser." You don't realize you're involved in a self-fulfilling prophecy and you're creating the other person's, you're contributing to or creating the other person's hostile behavior.

David Burns: Magnification or minimization is pretty self-evident - where you're blowing things out of proportion - like procrastinators do that. You think about, "All you have to do, all the filing that you're behind on." It feels like you have to climb Mount Everest and you got overwhelmed and then minimization, you're telling yoruself, "Oh, just working on that for five or 10 minutes would be a drop in the bucket. It wouldn't make a difference." You don't get started on the project.

David Burns: We've done those two. The should statement say I think is very subtle and not obvious to people at all that we beat up on ourselves the shoulds and shouldn'ts and oughts and musts and we're saying, "I shouldn't have screwed up, I shouldn't have made that mistake. I should be better than I am."  

David Burns: That creates a tremendous amount of suffering and shoulds go back - if you look at the origin in the English dictionary, maybe we did this in our last podcast, I don't recall that if you have one of these thick dictionaries, you'll find the origin of the word should is the Anglo's accent word scolde, S-C-O-L-D-E where you're scolding yourself or another person, where you're saying to your partner, "You shouldn't feel that way." Or, "You shouldn't believe that."

David Burns: We see that politically, two people are always blaming someone they're not in agreement with and throwing should statements at them. Albert Ellis has called that the "shouldy" approach to life which is a cheap joke I guess, but it contains a lot of truth. The feminist psychiatrist Karen Horney who actually I think was born in 1890s did beautiful work on shoulds - when my mother, when we moved to Phoenix from Denver, I think my mother got depressed and she read a book by Karen Horney on the Tyranny of the Shoulds, how we give ourselves all these should statements and make us feel like we're not good enough and we're not measuring up to our own expectations and create so much suffering.

David Burns: I think that book was very helpful to her and then Albert Ellis in New York saw that, he argued and I think rightly so that most human suffering is the result of the shoulds that we impose on ourselves or the should statements that we impose on others.

Neil Sattin: Well, if that's true, then maybe that should be what we take a moment to attack and I'm wondering if you have a powerful crushing technique that works with shoulds whether it's and maybe it would be a little bit different, the ones that we wield against ourselves versus so and so should know or should have done this differently.

David Burns: Right. Well, a lot of the overcoming has to do with the mystical, spiritual concept of acceptance, accepting yourself as a flawed human being is really the source of enlightenment, but we fight against acceptance because we think it's like giving in and settling for second best. We continue to beat up on ourselves thinking if we hit ourselves with enough should statements, we'll somehow achieve perfection or greatness or some such thing.

David Burns: One thing that I learned from Ellis that has been really helpful to my patients is that there's only three correct uses of the word should in the English language. There's the moral shoulds like the 10 commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, though shalt not steal or thou shalt not kill.

David Burns: There's the laws of the universe should where if I drop a pen right now, it should fall to the earth because of the force of gravity and then there's the legal should. You should not drive down the highway at 90 miles an hour because that's against the law and you'll get a ticket. Now, I had a colleague who came on one of the hikes who has a developmentally challenged child, say a son just to disguise things a little bit and she's from a very high achieving family, Silicon Valley family just to say the least.

David Burns: She and her husband are giants, geniuses and then she went to the grammar school for the parent's day and they had all the kids and they have their daughter in some very expensive private school. The kid's pictures were up on the wall and then she saw her son's picture and it was just very primitive compared with the other children who are real high-powered children from high powered families.

David Burns: Her son struggles severely and then she saw that and she felt the feeling of shame. Then she told herself, "I should not feel ashamed of my son." That's hitting herself with a should statement which it's like she doesn't have permission to have this emotion and that's what we do to ourselves.  

David Burns: That's not a legal should, it's not illegal to feel ashamed of yourself or your son. She then was also of course feeling ashamed of herself. It's not immoral and it doesn't violate the laws of the universe. A simple technique that Ellis suggested and it's so simple it goes in one ear and out the other instead of saying, "I shouldn't, you can just say it would be preferabe if or I would prefer it if or it would be better if."

David Burns: You could say it it would be better, it would be preferable if I didn't feel ashamed of my son, but that's the human feeling and probably other parents feel upset with their children, they feel ashamed sometimes of their kids or angry with their kids. It's giving yourself permission to be human and that's called the acceptance paradox.

David Burns: The paradox is sometimes when you accept your broken nature, accept your flaws and shortcomings, you transcend them. I've often written that acceptance is the greatest change a human being can make, but it's elusive and Buddha tried to teach this 2,500 years ago when I saw on TV and I don't know if was just a goofy program, but it was on PBS that he had over 100,000 followers in his lifetime and only three achieved enlightenment.

David Burns: I think it was frustrating to him and disappointing, but I can see it clearly because what he was teaching was so simple and basic and yet it's hard for us to grasp it and that's why I love doing therapy because we've got powerful new techniques now where I can bring my patients to enlightenment often in a single therapy session if I have more than an hour.

David Burns: If I have a two hour session, I can usually complete treatment in about a session and see the patient going from all the self-criticism and self-hatred and misery to actually joy and euphoria. It's one of the greatest experiences a human being can have because when my patient has a transforming experience, then it transforms me at the same time.

Neil Sattin: Can you give us a taste of what some of the more powerful new techniques are and how they might work in these circumstances?

David Burns: Yeah, they're pretty anti-intuitive and it took me many years of clinical practice before I figured it out and before it dawned on me. I would say very few therapists know how to do this and it's absolutely against the grain of the way therapists have been trained and the general public have been trained to think about depression and anxiety as brain disorders.

David Burns: The DSM calls them mental disorders. We've gone in the opposite direction and I'll just make it real quick because we're getting long on people's time here I'm afraid, but when I am working with a person, like last night at my Tuesday group, we were working with a therapist and someone who's in training to become a therapist and she was being very self-critical and telling herself she wasn't smart enough and just beating up on herself and saying that she was defective and she should be better at this and she should this, she shouldn't that.

David Burns: She was feeling like 90% depressed and 80% ashamed and intensely anxious. One thing I do before I ... She had all these negative thoughts, "I'm defective" and I don't have the list in my hand, but she had about 17 very self-critical thoughts. After I empathized and my co-therapist was Jill Levitt, a clinical psychologist who I teach with at Stanford and Jill is just a gem, she's fantastically brilliant and kind and compassionate and humble.

David Burns: After we empathized with this individual and I'll just keep it vague because most therapists feel exactly the same way so I won't give any identifying details, but we asked this young woman, "Would you like some help today?" With her depression and anxiety. If we had a magic button on the table and she pressed it, all our negative thoughts and feelings would instantly disappear.

David Burns: Would she press the magic button? She said, "Oh yeah, that would be wonderful." I guess she's felt this way on and off throughout her life since she was a little girl that she is somehow not good enough. Then we said, "Well, we have no magic button, but we have amazing techniques." But before we use these techniques, maybe we should ask, "What are your negative thoughts and feelings show about you that's beautiful and awesome?"

David Burns: Also, "what are some benefits to you in having all of these negative thoughts and feelings?" She was very puzzled by that at first as most therapists are like, "How could there be benefits from having depression? We learn that's some kind of mental disorder or major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, all these fancy names pretending that these are mental illnesses of some kind.

David Burns: But then she got in the flow, we primed the pump a little bit and she was able to come up with a list of 20 overwhelming benefits to her and beautiful things about her that were revealed by her negative thoughts and feelings. For example, when she says, "I'm defective." She will say, "Well, it shows that I'm honest and accountable. Because I do have many flaws."

David Burns: Then a second benefit was "it shows that I have high standards." I was able to say, "Do you have high standards?" She said, "Absolutely." I said, "Have your high standards motivated you to work hard and accomplish a lot?" She says, "Oh yeah, absolutely." That was the third benefit. Then the fourth benefit is her self-criticism showed that she's a humble person. That was the fourth benefit, the fourth beautiful thing it showed about her.

David Burns: Then we pointed out that humility is the same as spirituality. Her self-criticism shows that she's a humble and spiritual person and then her sadness showed her passion for what she hopes to achieve which is a role as a therapist and a good therapist and her self-doubt keeps her on her toes and motivates her to work really hard.

David Burns: Her suffering shows enhances her compassion for others and her shame shows that she has a good value system, a good moral compass and on and on and on, then we came up with a list of when we got to 20 benefits of her negative thoughts and feelings, then we simply said to her, "Well, maybe we don't want to press that magic button because when your negative thoughts and feelings disappears, then these other good things will disappear as well. Why in the world would you want to do that?"

David Burns: We have become the role of her subconscious mind and the therapist is paradoxically arguing for the status quo and not arguing for change. The therapist's attempt to help or change the patient is actually the cause of nearly all therapeutic failure both in the treatment of depression and anxiety as well as in your specialty area which is relationship conflicts.

David Burns: Then we did a little thing to help her resolve this conflict called the magic dial which is instead of pressing a magic button and making them all disappear, maybe it's appropriate to have some negative feelings fro time to time. How depressed would you want to feel when you walk out of the room tonight at the end of the evening?

David Burns: Maybe you don't need 90% to have the benefits of the sadness and the depression. What would be a good level? What would you like it to be? She said, "Well, maybe 20% would be enough." Then, "Yeah, okay." We make that her goal, we'll reduce it to 20. Then if she want to reduce her anxiety to 15 and reduce the shame to five and reduce the anger to 15 and these different goals we set for her.

David Burns: Then I said, "Okay, we'll reduce them to just that level, but no higher. Now, you have to be careful because the techniques are so powerful that we're going to use now that your depression may go below 20. It may get all the way to zero or five, but don't worry, if we overshoot before the end of the evening, I help you work your depression back up to 20."

David Burns: Then she started laughing, but at this point, we've made a deal with her subconscious mind and then she's in control. We're not imposing our values on her. She's saying, "I'm willing to go to this level." Then at that point, we're generally five or 10 minutes away from total enlightenment which is what happened last night.

David Burns: She started just crushing her negative thoughts and finding the distortions in them because her subconscious mind is now giving her permission to fight these distorted thoughts. By the end of the evening, we worked with her for about two hours including teaching about 30 therapists who are launching, teaching along the way and pretty much everything went to zero.

David Burns: At the moment of that, she suddenly received her enlightenment, she started sobbing because she was so euphoric and ecstatic. At the end of the evening, it was not just feeling less depressed and anxious because all the feelings pretty much went to zero, but she went into a transcendent state of what I would call spiritual enlightenment.

David Burns: It's just mind-blowing and most therapists in the general public, they don't even know that these new techniques exist and that these fantastic rapid changes are possible, but that's what I see. Almost every time I treat somebody now and it's mind-boggling and that's why I'm so grateful to have had the chance to be on your show today to try to get the word out more.

David Burns: I'm writing a new book about it as well. The tentative title will be Feeling Great. It will have all of these new positive reframing and resistance busting techniques along with the powerful cognitive techniques.

Neil Sattin: Just to step up a little bit, it sounds like the technique that you described is all about laying the ground work so that when you go back to doing the cognitive work, you have way less inner resistance to that change actually happening.

David Burns: Yeah. Usually there's none and all patients have within them and everyone listening to the show right now, this powerful healing voice, but we keep it suppressed because of the resistance thinking we don't want to give up our perfectionism for example. We think that if we keep beating up on ourselves, that's somehow honorable or good or motivating and that's why in all of the psychotherapy outcome studies for depression, at least 50% of the patients don't improve much at all and it's because all these schools of psychotherapy are busy throwing help at patients without stopping to think, "What are some reasons this person might want to resist change?"

David Burns: The kinds of reasons we have come up with for resistance are all flattering to the patients. We make the patients proud of their symptoms, proud of their resistance and paradoxically when we do that, suddenly they want to change and then recovery is generally just a matter of minutes away like eight minutes or 12 minutes or something in that range.

Neil Sattin: Wow. While we wait for your new book to come out, what are the best ways for people to get more information about these techniques if they're not in the Bay Area?

David Burns: On my website, www.feelinggood.com, feeling good is one word with two G's in the middle. There's tons of free resources for therapists and general public alike. There's a Feeling Good blog, the Feeling Good podcasts, there's all kinds of stuff. I probably have at least 500 or maybe a thousand or more pages of free resources there for folks and I would say that's a good step in the right direction or to pick up the feeling good handbook or the feeling good book because those tools are still incredibly powerful and helpful to millions of people in the United States and around the world as well.

David Burns: Feeling Good is now in over, well over 30 languages. It sold more than five million in the US and I have no idea how many more worldwide. Those techniques are still as good as gold and really helpful for individuals.

Neil Sattin: Wow. Well, we will have links to your site and your books available on the show notes for this episode which you can pick up by visiting neilsattin.com/feelinggood2 or you can always text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get the transcript and action guide for this episode. David, I'm wondering if we have time for one more quick question.

David Burns: Absolutely.

Neil Sattin: This is of course a relationship show. A lot of what we've talked about is ways of turning the work inward, noticing the cognitive distortions that are coming up within you and how you can attack them powerfully in order to neutralize their effect and actually be more present, more in the moment and more able to have feelings that are actually based on reality and not just on something that you're making up.

Neil Sattin: However, when I think about hanging out with Chloe tonight, my wife, who's amazing, I wonder about what should I do, not that this would ever happen, but what if I notice her saying something or let's just flip this around. What if Chloe listens to this podcast and then she notices that I am using some cognitive distortion, some distorted thinking is coming out of me.

Neil Sattin: What's the best way for Chloe as my partner to avoid the pitfalls of maybe calling me out on it, but still to turn it into a generative conversation when she recognizes exactly what's going on? "Oh Neil, he's just trapped in blame again." Or not that I would ever do that, but a should statement, whatever it is.

David Burns: Well, I may not have the answer you're looking for here, but I do have a definite answer to that. I write books for people to help themselves, not to try to help other people or to impose these ideas on someone else because if you go around saying to someone, "Oh, you're having this distorted thought or that distorted thought."

David Burns: It would just irritate the heck out of them. If you have a family member or friend who's depressed, you could give him a copy of Feeling Good or suggest they pick up a copy of Feeling Good and it will probably be very helpful to them, but when you see another person involved in distorted thinking, I think that the thing that you can do in this too is hard to learn and probably would need another podcast would be to empathize and to listen and to provide emotional support without trying to help or fix them or change the distortions and their thoughts because I can tell you that it's not going to be effective to throw help or advice at someone who's angry at you or who's depressed and angry with themselves.

David Burns: Empathy can have a certain healing power and I think is about as far as we need to go as general citizens, as partners, as family members. I think empathy itself requires a lot of training and learning to do it skillfully and it's a gift that the world needs where we're not seeing a lot of empathy and support for one another in the world.

David Burns: We're seeing a lot of attack and criticism and trying to change other people, trying to punish other people and those strategies in my opinion are usually doomed to failure or as empathy and warmth and compassion has always been a gift through the ages.

Neil Sattin: I would love to have you back on the show to chat about empathy. In the meantime, I will make sure that if I hear any cognitive distortions, I don't go offering a magic button too.

David Burns: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Thank you so much Neil and maybe another six months down the road or something we'll do Feeling Good part three, but it's always an honor for me to work with you and I have a tremendous respect for you because of the quality of what you bring to the interview and to the dialogue which I just think is tremendous.

Neil Sattin: Thank you so much David and the feeling is mutual.

Resources:

Check out Dr. David Burns's website

Read David’s classic books, Feeling Good or When Panic Attacks

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/feelinggood2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Burns

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

When you start a relationship, something special becomes possible, something unique that the world has never known before. However - how do you figure out what that “something special” is? And how can your love be a vehicle for actually helping us evolve? This episode is an invitation to you to step into an experience of “shared consciousness” - what happens when you’re able to explore the space created between you and another person. Our guest is Patricia Albere, founder of the Evolutionary Collective and author of Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening. Patricia has been guiding others on this path for years, exploring the edges of how consciousness shifts when two (or more) people step into it together. In her book, and in this episode, we talk about the practical aspects of her work - how it translates into higher levels of connectedness, personal growth, healing, feeling supported, and supporting others. And we also talk about some of the fundamental principles that are required when you want to explore and experiment with your partner (or others in your life who are up for the journey).

Here is a link to the first appearance of Patricia Albere on Relationship Alive: Episode 6 - How to Deepen Intimacy through Shared Consciousness.

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!

Resources:

Check out Patricia Albere's website

Read Patricia’s new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/patricia2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Patricia Albere

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. What we're trying to do with this show is create a change in culture, and for the purposes of our conversation here, most of that change has to do with how we relate to our partners, our lovers, our spouses, our boyfriends and girlfriends and other friends. That's the foundation of the conversation that we're having here, and we're part of a larger conversation about how we relate to each other in the world in general.

Neil Sattin: In order to talk more about that and where our relatedness is going, how to take conventional relationships and actually turn them into something that's deeper, more fulfilling, more enlivening, and part of the evolution of our species and our culture, I brought in someone really special who was here in the early days of the podcast. Her name is Patricia Albere and she is here on the heels of releasing her new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening.

Neil Sattin: She was on Relationship Alive way back in episode six, and if you're interested in hearing that episode you can go to neilsattin.com/patricia and that will take you there so you can hear what we talked about the first time she was on the show. We may take a moment this time around to talk a little bit about mutual awakening and how to do it, which is something that we talked about back then, but otherwise we are going to dive even more deeply into the skills of relatedness and how to create something even more amazing as you explore the shared consciousness created between you and your partner, or you and someone else with whom you feel that spark of an evolutionary relationship. We're going to talk about what that means in just a moment.

Neil Sattin: If you are interested in downloading the transcript and action guide for this episode, you can do that at neilsattin.com/patricia2, that's the name Patricia and the number 2, or as always, you can text the word PASSION to the number 33444 and follow the instructions, and that will get you all the information that you need. Okay, I think that's it for now. Patricia Albere, thank you so much for joining us again here today on Relationship Alive.

Patricia Albere: I am just smiling, I'm just so happy to be with you and to be able to have another conversation about something that we're both passionate about.

Neil Sattin: Yes. I don't want to set an unrealistic expectation but I will say that after our last conversation, I just remember this so clearly. I got off Skype and I went and found Chloe, my wife, and I was just like, "That was probably the most powerful conversation I've had up until that point." You know, it was just so expansive and it's such a treat to be able to have you back here today.

Patricia Albere: Thank you.

Neil Sattin: The title of your book, it's called Evolutionary Relationships, and I don't think we can really talk about the practice of mutual awakening and all of the activating principles - we will hopefully cover some of those on today's conversation - without talking about what you even mean about evolutionary relationship. How is that different than the kind of relationships that we're used to having and why is it so important?

Patricia Albere: Great question. Evolutionary relationship, you can approach it from a couple of different angles. One is evolutionary. We are lucky enough as human beings to be conscious of the fact that evolution exists, that we're actually headed somewhere. For thousands of years no one had that concept at all. I mean basically we were just on the planet, we were living, we were doing whatever we were doing, and for the most part time and the movement of time was very ... It looked like things weren't even changing. Like most people's children did the same thing they did.

Patricia Albere: If you think of thousands and thousands of years, the sense of no change was pretty strong. For us, we are now living at a time where the quality of change and how everything is moving is so crazily intense. Every day scientists are discovering things, there's technology. I mean it's like the newness of what is occurring and how we are hooking up and even consciousness itself is evolving, that to be connected to the fact that your relationships too are evolving, love is evolving.

Patricia Albere: We think love is just some eternal expression between human beings that has been the same forever, and actually love itself is evolving. For relationships, the evolutionary quality of relationships, I talked about in the first chapter, first or second chapter, I can't remember, talking about Maslow's hierarchy. If you look at relationships from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, some relationships, none of it is bad or good, it's just different. You can have a romantic or a marriage type relationship where in a way it's at the basic needs of Maslow at the bottom, it turns into logistics.

Patricia Albere: Sex is kind of very basic, you have a home together, you take care of things, you get food, you have meals, you get a new car, there can be a quality where much of the relationship starts getting devoted to just the survival needs of what it means to live together. Just even saying that sometimes you're like, "Ooh". You can feel when your relationship is sort of slipped into, that that becomes the dominant.

Patricia Albere: Even if you're doing it at a high level of going on vacations and getting another fabulous car, or something else, it becomes kind of on a survival level and the relatedness is not very awake and expanded, and there aren't tons of potentials that are going to show up between you.

Patricia Albere: Next level up you would move into safety and security. Most people navigate that in their relationships to feel safe, safe psychologically and physically with each other, and secure and able to trust. Next level up is belonging, a sense of being loved. Some relationships never get beyond sort of like third level up which is just that just to be loved and to feel like you have a sense of belonging, you belong to one another, is the scope and the territory of the level of relatedness which is also important and wonderful, but it isn't on the edge of evolution.

Patricia Albere: Evolution is always pushing into the newness into what's possible for human beings. An evolutionary relationship is like where our human potentials and possibilities are evolving into, moving into. As you move up the scale, I went through the whole thing, but on that higher levels, there's the two higher levels, one is called actualization. You can be with a partner where you experience empowering one another to really actualize your potentials to both be successful in the world, to make a difference or whatever it is that you have a value for in that way, and to love each other from more of a place of abundance rather than need.

Patricia Albere: Instead of just "I need this" or "I need a relationship for the various things", you start to feel like an overflow, like you actually have a lot to give and you can give to one another.

Neil Sattin: Right. In our first conversation we talked about how in that kind of relationship you can even be taking a stand for each other, like, "I'm taking a stand for you being the best you could possibly be."

Patricia Albere: Yes, definitely. I think a lot of the current things, you know, the courses and conversations, and the things that you can do are very much about empowering that sense of actualization where you have two independent human beings who are self-authoring. They're trying to really fulfill themselves, their higher purpose, their sense of self, their interior sense of self, and that you have two people loving each other from being more actualized whether it's in the world or also in your own consciousness and development.

Patricia Albere: The evolutionary relationship is taking it a step further which is something that not everybody needs to do but some of us need to. If evolution is going to continue to move, the thing that is worth knowing is that it isn't just about relationship, evolution itself is happening through human consciousness and human relationship at this point. We aren't creating new creatures, in fact we're eliminating many of them.

Patricia Albere: Evolution isn't fooling around with "how do we have new species", where it's interested, where the push is in the entire movement of billions of years of evolution is human consciousness is where it's happening. Where it's happening in human consciousness is no longer with just people's individual consciousness, that's been being worked with for the last few thousand years. Individual enlightenment, personal transformation, individual salvation through like religion and stuff has been -

Neil Sattin: Right, that's old news.

Patricia Albere: Kind of. The way I see it, that's been going on. We've been doing that for a few thousand years, somewhat, I guess okay, and we're failing in a lot of it, but that's not new. Science is pointing to that we're not separate objects, that actually the only thing that's real is exchanging. There's no there there, there's no atom. We think there's little billiard balls that we're made of. When they go down to the root of the root of what's there, they don't find anything, what they find is exchange. These little balls of exchanging energies. If you want to translate that, that is relating. What that is, is relationship and relating.

Patricia Albere: Ultimately, all there is, is relating on the most fundamental levels, and the way that humans can begin to push the consciousness, awaken to and begin to be a part of, being able to manage the kind of consciousness that we need to start to get access to, kind of like atomic fusion, is what is the space between us, what is actually happening in the space between humans and how can we lean into and become awake to, and sensitive to reality together.

Neil Sattin: I'm curious to know a couple of things, one is do you recall when you first became aware that that was what was happening? That there was this space between a shared consciousness that was where evolution was taking us. Was there like an "aha" moment for you around that?

Patricia Albere: Yes. I didn't know about the evolutionary part until later, but my path has always been I'm like taken into experiences and then 10 years later I understand what happened. I guess I'm mystic at heart, I'm willing to not know. I'm sure I probably shared a bit of it on the first conversation that we had, but it happened in a relationship. There was a man named Peter who was a beautiful German mystic, and we fell in love and came together. His obsession for awakening and for enlightenment was from the moment he woke up all the way through his sleep. He never was interested in anything other than that and he never stopped paying attention to awakening, to consciousness, to being fully present in every moment. He was pretty obsessed.

Patricia Albere: For me, I had had a background of working with thousands of people and I think my heart, my ability to love was very developed. I had a childhood that ... A great mom. My heart was very available. When we came together and I am convinced that he is my twin soul, it was one of those things that you couldn't not recognize and you couldn't not be in. The magnet that pulls us together was not ... There was no choice, it was choiceless.

Patricia Albere: Our being together, what happened was was as we said yes to one another and we were so focused on each other and the space that was happening between us, and with his meditative consciousness and my capacity and attunement to love and the energies and what's going on there, and then just the way we felt about each other, we were so made one, and 24/7 we were always aware of what was happening. There was never a moment where he was unaware of what was happening with me, what was happening with us and vice versa. We never were separate, we never went in to like, "I'm just me over here, and he is just him over there, and I don't really know what's going on."

Patricia Albere: Most relationships, if people look are pretty separate. There's times of relating, it's always sort of there, but a lot of the time we're functioning on two separate tracks a lot. Especially in that actualized level, you're very focused on your own separate track even though you love each other and you're supporting each other. This was being what I call interpenetrated, like we were completely inside each other and inside of this relatedness that we were together.

Patricia Albere: I had four years of that before he was in a car accident, and he was brain injured, then eventually he died. I was in something where we were opening and being taken somewhere. Evolution was definitely having a field day with us. I felt it, I felt like I'd look at him sometimes like we'd make love or something would happen and I would look at him and I'd go, "Oh my god." I felt like love itself had just gone some place where it had never been before.

Patricia Albere: Sometimes it felt more like it was just beautiful, and full and amazing, but there were times where I could actually feel the newness of existence finding new pathways because we were so available. Just like if you were two great tennis players, like if you're two genius tennis players, sometimes tennis goes some place where tennis has never been before. It was pretty exciting to have that in the level of relatedness.

Patricia Albere: For me when I later found out many years later about evolution and about the edge of evolution, and about consciousness, I could see that what I had experienced with him was part of the future of where we were headed. Where not just couples were headed, but that the multiple beloved. There is a way to be connected that has that mystical dimension, that has our divinity being evoked as much as even more than just our humanity and our limitations. That's pretty exciting.

Neil Sattin: Yes. When I hear that what I am brought to is thinking about the capacity that we have to experience the miracle of life, the blessing of interrelatedness to bring that into even just our simple day-to-day interactions which brings a quality of aliveness that once you experience it I think it's challenging to be like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna go back to paying the bills and pretending this doesn't exist."

Patricia Albere: It's true. There's even a more, to me, kind of exciting opportunity in all of it for those of us who are drawn to love, drawn to pay attention to relatedness as you are, as we are, and I'm sure the people that are obviously listening to this. The thing that's so exciting that I didn't know when I was with Peter was the quality of the consciousness that we were developing was different than nondual consciousness. Those people who have done a lot of meditation and a lot of work in nondual quality of consciousness which is usually what people consider being enlightened or awake.

Patricia Albere: It's completely different than that. There's actually a new kind of consciousness that's absolutely enlightened but it's not that. When they do brain studies they can actually see that when you're meditating which is by yourself with your eyes closed in silence, you are learning how to let go of thinking, you're learning how to move into a certain state where they find that the mind when they measure it, you're letting go of your particular relationship to the world. You go into a deep state of relaxation and the brain goes into a certain place.

Patricia Albere: When you're doing the kind of practices that we're doing, that I'm practicing and working with people where it's like super focus with the other, with the space between, your brain goes into this amazingly other place, it ignites different lobes and parietal. I don't remember the names of all of it but it activates your brain in such a way that it goes into a place of flow, it goes into a place of like joy and positive love, like different kinds of experiences and energies that lift people. Lift their mood and lift their stabilization there, and it also allows them to be incredibly engaged in the world.

Patricia Albere: Like you're in contact with this kind of intimacy, and love and care for the trees, for your kids. The feeling of intimacy, like everything is touching everything, like you feel like you're inside your cat when your petting their fur, like you're both the fur and the cat. It makes sense because ultimately with love or lovers, people that have studied tantra, you experience your lover, you're like inside them experiencing their experience, your experience and then something else simultaneously. This consciousness is that.

Patricia Albere: I think it's way more attuned to eyes open, moving around in this world, and it is what is necessary. It's a kind of flow state rather than just being in yourself, focused on your higher purpose, focused on how you feel, grounded in your body. All of that is good but it's so separate, and it's not like, "You know, as long I am completely focused on my own subjective experience, and how I feel, and how I'm moving, and what I want and where I'm headed and all the rest of it", I'm not all of that related.

Patricia Albere: That makes a certain kind of flow not possible, it also makes the fact that 7.5 billion people right now moving towards 10 billion in 2050, to me, evolution is not that interested in everyone individually really knowing themselves only, it's not going to really work.

Neil Sattin: It's going to be a lot of life coaches.

Patricia Albere: Oh my god, we're going to have a problem. We need to learn how to be like those sports teams, and the people that, well we see them become like one organism, and then spectacularly empowered to be individuals within it. Like the way basketball team that's really got that oneness, all the team members are like knocking it out of the park but they're not operating individually, there's this oneness of the way that they're flowing and moving together that's tastable. My work is about ... We've hacked into how do you bring people into that level of consciousness and relatedness without having to have like a basketball or a violin.

Neil Sattin: There are two places I want to go right now, one is giving you listening a taste of what we're talking about, like how this actually happens, and then there's the question that's in my mind around like how do you know if a certain person that you're interacting with, how do you know if this evolutionary potential is there between the two of you?

Patricia Albere: Interesting. The first thing would be, as we've talked about, people can download a couple of chapters of the book in evolutionarycollective.com. You personally need to first go, "What is she talking about? And who am I in relationship to this?" If it starts to make more and more sense, if you feel like you're a candidate or maybe you're quoted for this edge of evolution, to understand more about it and to begin to experience it for yourself.

Patricia Albere: There are ways that we take people into the practice. There are certain practices like meditation that give you a very powerful experience of being in this consciousness with another human being who's also interested in being the consciousness with you, because you need two people that are mutually interested which is one of the great things and it's one of the problems because you can't do it by yourself. You can't just do it with anybody. If you have somebody sitting across from you who's kind of going, "I don't really wanna do this and I don't really wanna be here", it's not going to work.

Patricia Albere: The first thing is find out for yourself, then from there ... You read the book together, you could start to do the practices, you could then begin to invite someone into like, "Would you be willing to experiment with me and see, and see what happens for us?", like you and your wife, and start to see if something begins to open in a way that is compelling for both of you.

Neil Sattin: Actually you were just mentioning talking about the brain activity that might be involved in this kinds of practice. We just released an interview with Alex Katehakis who, she focuses mainly on addiction, and sex, and love addiction, and the power of relatedness in healing the pathways that went offline and that created an opportunity for addiction to emerge in a person. I can imagine this practice will have an enormous healing potential for connection, like if you're in a place that feels really disconnected from your partner if you can invite them into it in a way where they feel like, "Yeah, I'm willing to give that a whirl."

Neil Sattin: The kind of presence with each other that we're talking about, and we'll get a little bit more into that I think, offers a healing experience when you're bringing those parts of your brain back online. This is total speculation, but it must be that when you set up that kind of resonance that's what allows this shared consciousness to happen.

Patricia Albere: Yes, definitely. It was so amazing. I just came from teaching for like almost eight days or nine days which isn't usual, I mean normally I have some breaks in between. We have the people that are very, very interested in what can happen between people who are really inside this way of practicing and want to work together instead on their personal work. We have 100 people who are doing these kinds of practices with each other and just spent five days together in a retreat.

Patricia Albere: They're practicing all year long and we meet a couple of times a year, so we're building this quality of the beloved, of this amazing ridiculous-like levels of our nervous systems getting hooked up. What you're saying is, like the people that understand attachment theory and the various kinds of ways in which people develop, this is first of all like when people are inside of something that's large like that and the level of connectedness is so absolute, the pathways around not having had healthy attachment, and not being able to trust, and not being able to relax literally start getting handled without even paying attention to it.

Patricia Albere: So you're not actually processing that stuff, you're actually in a larger nervous system that's already stabilizing and harmonizing and regulating you which is crazy powerful as far as healing people. We're not doing it for that reason but that is happening. The other thing ... One of the most exciting things that's happened at least up until this week, the group is from all over, everybody came. There are people from Japan, and Australia, and Europe, and New York, and Vermont, and California.

Patricia Albere: We were all together and we've all been working together for anywhere as from one to eight years, there are people that have been in that. What started to happen, we were all together is you know how like when you're working with someone, and consciousness-wise, they can all of a sudden shift their consciousness and become totally silent or totally focused, or they could drop into a certain kind of depth reliably? You can just point the there and they go, "Whop", and they kind of go there.

Patricia Albere: Our collective being, because it actually feels like something that's bigger than us, literally has new skills. It was amazing. We could be in this powerful sense of unification, and focus and depth of love, and then if I said something you could tell if somebody started to think, there was a tiny bit of fragmentation, I could just point to it and it would just be like, "Woo."

Patricia Albere: The level of unity. One of the women shared this morning, we had a call earlier, she said she's always felt like a little bit afraid to speak up for herself in certain situations that are challenging. She always thought she should and blah, blah, blah, and she said there is something that is so powerfully in her now that she can't not. Almost like something was, some strength was placed - in her level of not being alone, her level of this consciousness connection that we have, she's standing on something that she never stood on before and it's changing her behavior. Which is kind of cool!

Neil Sattin: Yes, very cool. Bringing that back to the context of romantic relationship, it's very common that the battles that emerge are around actually fighting for connection, fighting to prove that you're not alone, and it can feel like you're really alone. Again, I can just imagine how creating a backdrop of connectedness has such a powerful impact on the level of trust in relationship as one example.

Patricia Albere: Yes. Part of what the practices are, I mean there is a main one but there are some different things, is where you learn to make the connection is not on the surface, it's not on the personality level, it's not even on that subtle connection level where you're feeling your heart, and there's like a deeper place that people usually are trained to connect from. We're actually moving it from the subtle to this causal dimension which is the deepest origination point of that particular human being and yourself.

Patricia Albere: When I can work with people I can get them to drop into this place, and from that place you're not solid. You're like this opening of who you are that's very particular but it's not a solid object, it's like what the scientists are saying - you're like this space of potential as Neil. When you and I connect from that deepest opening that you are, and you can see into the deepest place of where I am, and we literally start to connect from there, two spaces could connect, two fragrances can connect, two stones can't. Things that are solid can't actually interpenetrate.

Patricia Albere: When you start to build that level of the we, like you literally become a new kind of wine. Your grape and my grape, we become Merlot. When you're deepening and deepening into that, now does it mean that your personality and the crazy things that drive each other crazy go away? No. We still have separatenesses that are still going to operate but we have that to ... That becomes louder and louder and a place to return to and stand on. So that when you're dealing with the things that are different and challenging, you don't lose each other, you do it from being connected instead of separate.

Patricia Albere: Most arguments are completely separate. That's why people love having fights and making love because when you make love and you all of a sudden go, "Oh, it's you, it's me. You know, I remember you. You know, you don't look like the evil guy who's making me crazy." You go back to that place where the real connection is, and we have a very sophisticated but powerful way to just have humans find that, nurture that, deepen that because that's also where divinity arises from.

Patricia Albere: We include our human limitations and failings, but there's some source that I know Peter and I found where I felt myself as more beautiful, and more powerful. It was like I was almost witnessing her as he was. It was like some way of me being myself that I had never experienced nor had I ever been received in that way. My work is really devoted to deepening that for people, exploring that not as a spiritual bypass kind of thing but as making that louder and louder, and clearer, and more rich and substantial so that the other levels of us are kind of put more in their place. They're not everything.

Neil Sattin: Yes. We have had Jett Psaris on the show, one of the authors of Undefended Love, I'm not sure if her conversation will have aired by the time. We may do this one first. One of the places that she comes from, I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work at all is basically getting couples to the place where they're able to be totally open and vulnerable with each other.

Neil Sattin: When we're young we start out from a place like that and then we end up suffering some wound or something happens that creates a crack in the veneer of everything being one and perfect which gives us a really hard emotional internal experience. From that our personality emerges which she talks about as basically all of our ego structures that are about protecting us from the experience, from what we're afraid will happen if we're that vulnerable again.

Neil Sattin: Her practice is a lot about going inwards when you feel that fear happening, that closing happening. I love that this is almost like the equal and opposite approach to very similar way of getting at the essential self. Like what is there beneath the veneer of personality.

Patricia Albere: Yes. It's interesting because as you're speaking I'm realizing the direct access to the core which actually is findable  - interestingly -  I don't know why but it's almost like giving people ... Like if you're doing remote viewing and you give them coordinates. The coordinate of finding this deepest place in oneself is actually findable even though people think they can't, they find it.

Neil Sattin: Is that something we could talk about now?

Patricia Albere: I'm just saying when you find that and you deepen into that then when stuff comes up there's a way in the way that we practice where we turn towards whatever is there together. If I'm feeling defended, I'm feeling hard like cardboard, and I'm sensing into like the phenomenological reality of feeling separate. That would happen with Peter, sometimes we'd go, "Wow, it feels really flat." We'd go, "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" we were like kids, like we were so curious about whatever was there, we didn't have like a certain kind of preference that it had to be always profound or deep.

Patricia Albere: Whatever was there, we were like we wanted to be close to that, and we wanted to be close together with it. When you turn that way towards whatever is there even if it's a weird defensive thing, it seems to unravel, it tends to show itself without you trying to do anything, and it tends to, in my experience, the power of things dissolving in the face of "the two" being with it instead of it's just my process and and it's my stuff. It's exciting because it moves very quickly and it feels different when you're not just by yourself working on your stuff.

Neil Sattin: Yes. It feels to me like there's alchemy in the space.

Patricia Albere: Yes, that's a good way of saying it, interesting. Yes, definitely. Part of what I'm excited about too, I mean I've worked for 40 years with people with their individual work, and I love people, and I've always been committed to people being able to express their highest, deepest selves and why they're here. For the people who are able to not make it all about them and want to explore the edges of where evolutionary relationships could go and what's possible together, what I find is that the kind of activation and healing, and empowering people to move forward is just a hundred times more powerful, and it makes sense.

Patricia Albere: If I was creating the universe, instead of having everybody selfishly working on themselves individually forever as the fastest mode, that wouldn't make sense. It makes sense that if we somehow find a way to come together that everything goes faster, that we're rewarded for that makes sense to me.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Patricia Albere: It's more efficient, it's kind of like I can't build a house by myself, if we're like a hundred people we can do it.

Neil Sattin: Honestly, I'm also thinking about the power, like in the power of relatedness. I was just reading a book by Deborah Tannen about friendships among women, and it was talking about this girl who, she was on the autism spectrum, and seemingly incurable and getting worse. No amount of therapy, no amount of intervention from a teacher, like nothing was helping, and then she made a friend who actually accepted her. I think they connected around horses or something like that, and did this amazing turnaround where she went from being completely shut down to being open, socially engaged.

Neil Sattin: It was like the power of healing that was there in the relatedness versus trying to fix something, or cure something.

Patricia Albere: That's so beautiful. Here's another thing I'll throw in that you'll probably appreciate. I don't know if everyone will appreciate this. In this evolutionary piece, when you think about evolution there are jumps to evolution. We went from nothing to matter, so there was geosphere, there was just this dead planet here, and then from a dead planet life showed up which is kind of crazy, like how did that happen. There are jumps that just are completely miraculous. From dead matter to life, and then from life, from single celled creatures, we have Einstein, we have geniuses and human beings, and plants, and birds and everything come to life, and then humans with consciousness which is just a miracle.

Patricia Albere: From humans, we have what he calls the thinking layer. Teilhard de Chardin called that the noosphere , he said we go from the biosphere which is life and human life, to the thinking layer which is the noosphere which is all of culture, and language, and art, and philosophy, and psychology, everything that you're talking about on your show, and love. All of that he called the noosphere, and you can see it in the internet, you can see the physicality of this noosphere, hooking up, hooking up, hooking up, so that we have omnsicience. We can know anything anytime, we can contact each other.

Patricia Albere: If the aliens land outside my house like in the next five minutes, if I captured it on my phone, the whole world will know in about 10 minutes. If it was real, but it was compelling enough, billions of people would be focused on the same image and the same words in a heartbeat. It is unbelievable. That didn't even exist 10 years ago, and we are hooking up, hooking up, hooking up, right? People have it on their phones.

Patricia Albere: The noosphere was the next layer that evolution was innovating and is obviously pretty excited about. The next one is what I'm going to call the spondic sphere. Spondic love, the term is this experience of I am, may you be. In the way that we practice there's this experience of love, and when you love someone, it comes from some place that's deeper than your personality loving them. There's almost like this cosmic energy that wants to just go, "Ha, I want you to have everything. You know, like I love you, I love you." You just want to imbue them with everything. We feel that for our children. Sometimes our heart bursts into this kind of empowerment that is deeper than just human love.

Patricia Albere: You can feel it when you're on the other end of spondic love, it is palpable, you actually feel like part of your life just got made because this person loves you from a place that they're in and for you in a way that's real. This mutual spondic love which is also part of the consciousness that we're working with and the consciousness that I think is next, I think that the next place of innovation will be that kind of love where we, instead of being separate, instead of not being even neutral towards each other and just surviving on our own, or competing or actively using each other and stomping on each other.

Patricia Albere: This spondic quality of love and connectivity will be the foundation for a ridiculous amount of miracles, innovation, creativity, coming together, working together, doing things that can't be done, et cetera, et cetera, that's going to be the next explosion of where evolution is going to be working.

Neil Sattin: I'm going to ask a hard question here which is what's the place of monogamous relationships in the birthing of this interconnectedness and this evolutionary consciousness.

Patricia Albere: I think when you are in fact with your twin soul, it doesn't happen a lot, but when it happens, there is nowhere to go, there really isn't. Even if they ended up marrying someone else they are yours. You are so one and there is nowhere you want to be. The kind of sexuality, the kind of love and the depth that's shared, there's no desire for anyone else because the newness of love, and the depth, and the profundity of what's there is just crazy unfolding between you. You'd have to be crazy to want to actually go and try to be with someone that you didn't have that with. Maybe you eat the best food in the world and then you decide to go have a-

Neil Sattin: Have a burger.

Patricia Albere: McDonald's hamburger. I don't know why did I even want to do that.

Neil Sattin: It's just interesting because it sounds like the experience, because we're talking about being able to evoke this kind of consciousness in an exercise with a partner, and yet it is creating the experience of deep, deep love and interconnectedness.

Patricia Albere: There is still a discernment. The thing that I find with the groups of people is, what happens is because everyone is so starving for being seen for any kind of real depth and relatedness, the moment someone sees you deeply you think you want to have sex with them or that you love them. It's so pathetic, I mean we're so starving as humans, and it's nobody's fault. We live in a world of separation. People don't look at each other, we literally live in so much separation and isolation that we don't even realize that it doesn't have to be normal.

Patricia Albere: What happen is is like in the people that I'm working with intensively, I remember two people and they're both married to other people, they did a practice and they went somewhere, and they both came out and you look at them and you were like, "Whoa, what just happened?" They've gone to a level of love and depth that they didn't ever even experience with their partners.

Patricia Albere: Initially they were kind of like, "I don't know, you know, what do I do with that?" It was a man and a woman, and I just said keep allowing it, keep holding, and then more of that started to happen in the group. Part of what comes through then as you begin to create these deeper connections and you're being so nourished and so seen and you realize how abundant that is, you can then bring that to your partner. You don't have to go being, what do they call it, polyamorous.

Patricia Albere: Polyamory is a lot of work, to try to juggle. You have to have no life I think. To navigate one relationship is hard enough as you know, if you're trying to navigate with depth, and with openness, and transparency and honesty, two relationships or more, that takes a ridiculous amount of real energy and work. I respect it, I think that there is some newness, something that's opening there and people are learning and growing within that, so I'm not condemning that, I'm just saying I don't think that ultimately that's where we're headed, not at all. Because you can experience profound connection without having to have sex with everybody.

Neil Sattin: Thank you.

Patricia Albere: You're welcome.

Neil Sattin: This really makes me want to dive in to some of your activating principles.

Neil Sattin: Great. Patricia, like I mentioned in our first episode together, we talked about the mutual awakening practice. Could you give us just a quick like 30 second rundown. If you're going to try it with your partner, this is how you try it. Then we can talk about some of the principles that make it so unique in terms of your approach and how to really deepen in that experience.

Patricia Albere: I honestly, I can't do a 10-minute version of how to do it, I can't because it wouldn't really help and if people tried to do it from there it wouldn't work anyway. You need to know enough of where to come from, you need to take the time because otherwise ... People do it from the superficial level of self, it's pointless, it wouldn't do anything. Again, if they just go to evolutionarycollective.com and they at least download the first three chapters that will start them on their way. If they listen to the other interview that we did that will help as well. If they're genuinely curious, they're going to need to invest some time and energy in actually discovering what this is and how it works for real.

Patricia Albere: The activating principles which are in the book, the chapters in the book are basically mostly dedicated to not only how to do it but then how do you turn it on, how do you continue ... If you were to do it with your wife you would start to learn how to do it and then you could take a chapter and work with that for awhile to open it, to make it even more full, and to continue to work through the pieces.

Patricia Albere: One of them is engagement. It's simple but when your turns towards each other, to really recognize how fully engaged are you and how much more can you open and give yourself into the connection. If people just think about that for a moment, the next time they listen to their small child...how engaged are you? Are you just sort of passively listening, being polite, being a good parent and hoping that it won't take too long, or do you actually go over where their enthusiasm is, get inside their little six-year-old consciousness, try to really enter into them and engage fully in what it is that they're actually experiencing? That's one of them.

Patricia Albere: In life, you don't have to know how the practice works, to just pay attention to the engagement not as someone as separate but can you get inside them, can you be inside their world and then connect. That turns something on. When people are, when you're inside their world with them and then getting engaged, something happens that's different than if you're just listening from over where you are.

Neil Sattin: Can you talk about how that interacts with the next activating principle of commitment in terms of your committedness to staying inside as you work through whatever comes up.

Patricia Albere: That's a little bit bigger. If you created an evolutionary relationship, if you are practicing with each other, if you're entering into this interpenetrated consciousness, consciousness where instead of ... Most people have a subjective experience where "I feel this", and if I'm vulnerable I'll let you in on how I feel, I'll share it with you and you compassionately listen and usually relate to it from yourself - from the way you feel like that - which is still we're very separate.

Patricia Albere: Interpenetrating is where you learn how to place your consciousness. This is like against all the boundary stuff, but you actually go inside and you feel the other as they feel themselves. You feel me as I actually feel myself. There's a way that I guide people into how do you actually do that. When that level of relatedness is being developed and built, from there and from a commitment to each other, then the committed-ness make sense.

Patricia Albere: Like if something happens or if you do something that's driving me crazy, instead of me working it out in my head by myself and then announcing to you how I'm going to deal with it, or announcing to you that I'm leaving you, I'll let you know what I worked out for myself. I stay inside with you and I share with you, and we kind of go in together into what the resistance is, what the concern is. We do it from being inside the commitment to each other, and to the relationship, and to the experience that's actually there. I don't do it as a separate something. Does that makes sense to you?

Neil Sattin: Yes. What you're committing to is that you're involved in a process that you're co-creating, and so the act of going off on your own to figure something out is a step away from what could emerge if you gave that thing to the process that you're in.

Patricia Albere: Yes, right, and that we'll share it. It doesn't mean anyone is going to be perfect, it doesn't mean that we won't disturb each other in different ways, but that we bring it forth, and we bring it in, and we bring it towards, instead of that it's a function of separation. When you have that spondic relationship too, when you activate that in and for each other, that also makes it a lot safer.

Neil Sattin: Then you can actually be invested in the truth without it being something that's about separating.

Patricia Albere: Yes, totally.

Neil Sattin: Obviously we won't have time to talk about this whole topic but I didn't want to end this conversation without being able to talk for a moment about trust. I love the way that you articulate the different levels of trust. The level that you call basic trust, how that feeds into the way that we trust each other, and then the generative trust that leads to your trust growing and the expectation of it being potentially a little messy that's included there.

Neil Sattin: I'm wondering of you could just explain, because I think what would really be helpful for our listeners is if they could come away from this with a sense of what basic trust is, and then let's see where that takes us as we wrap up this conversation.

Patricia Albere: You keep asking me for the one-minute version of something that takes like-

Neil Sattin: I'm bad, I know I'm so bad.

Patricia Albere: The basic trust is obviously - there's one of the chapters that goes through that, relative trust and generative trust. There's a course that I have online that's in evergreen that people can buy that has two whole sessions dedicated to the basic trust part. To do the very simple version is basic trust is something that we have when we're born, until it's disturbed there's this sense of being connected to the flow of life where we feel like ... It's without thought, it's like things are going to work out.

Patricia Albere: If you get fed, you get off, you get a little frustrated and you get fed, and somebody picks you up. Different things are happening without too much frustration, you tend to grow up to be a human being who has some sense of being relaxed in life. Even if something is hard that's happening, you kind of sense that it's going to work out or you're going to figure out a way through it.

Patricia Albere: The people that have basic trust interfered with, they constantly are not getting what they need, they tense up and their egos are wired to try to make it all happen themselves. Ultimately, when basic trust is restored, you relax and life unfolds. Actually, faith, true faith, the kind that saints have, is basic trust restored, and that's full relaxation. You actually feel utterly okay being in the world that even when things don't go well.

Patricia Albere: It's unbelievably important, it shapes your relationship to absolutely everything, and it's one of those concepts that when you find out about it and you begin to work with it, it can change your whole life. It's super important. Obviously with the hundred people, that is what is partly being restored.

Neil Sattin: Right. That feeds into, if you can operate from that place then it makes that that much easier to have relative trust which you talk about as the way that two people learn to trust each other based on their agreements, and their humility, and their expectations. Again in your book, Evolutionary Relationships, it's such a compelling read because for one thing, it's not like an entire book about trust, but it also distills it in such a way that I think makes it really real and practical for you to examine.

Neil Sattin: This is an area like for instance, "my relationship has tons of trust based on our commitment, but we don't actually have the capacity to communicate in order to keep our trust intact", and so we have to increase our capacities. I love how you do that. What I love too is how it evolves to this generative trust and I think this is one of the hardest things in relationship because people expect like, "Oh, we're going for it and we're really deep and we're connecting, and we're interpenetrating with each other, then all of our problems are gonna go away."

Patricia Albere: Yes, not so.

Neil Sattin: How did that emerge for you, that concept of generative trust and why that's so important.

Patricia Albere: Having worked with people forever and just having been in relationship, I mean the clarity around that was just given. Because you have to manage all of it. The relative trust is also important. If you have somebody who never keeps their word no matter how deep the connection is, you're not going to trust them and you shouldn't because they're not trustable.

Neil Sattin: Right, or if they don't have the humility to be open to influence.

Patricia Albere: Absolutely. People have to also take responsibility for having character, and I think that in some of the post-modern work everybody's working and dealing with their limitations. We get to a point where we just assume everyone is doing the best they can, and people are following the flow. They are following their subjective experience individually, but they're not taking responsibility for being related and actually showing up and having character, and dealing with the impact of a certain lack of integrity in certain ways. That definitely gets addressed in the book.

Neil Sattin: Yes. It's funny that there are people like Dale Carnegie who write on and on, and on about how to become trustworthy, how to be someone that other people will turn to for influence. You sum it up pretty well in one chapter.

Patricia Albere: Cool, thanks.

Neil Sattin: Well, Patricia Albere, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today on Relationship Alive to dive more deeply into the question of what makes an evolutionary relationship, what's possible. Again, you can visit her website, evolutionarycollective.com where you can download the first three chapters of Patricia's book, Evolutionary Relationships, and also find out more about her work and her trainings. We will have links to Patricia's book and website in the detailed transcript and action guide for this episode which you can get at neilsattin.com/patricia2, or you can text the work PASSION to the number 33444 and follow the instructions.

Neil Sattin: Like I said, our first episode together, episode six, we do talk a little bit more about the actual mutual awakening process and I encourage you to check out that episode that we did together as well. In the mean time, thank you so much for joining us, Patricia. Is there anything else? Maybe you could just mention you do in person intensives where people can come and learn this.

Patricia Albere: Yes. People that are intrigued by the possibility of being with a cohort of other human beings that are really interested in this quality of relationship, there will be a three-day in New York in April, the 13th through the 15th, we only do those twice a year, it's kind of special. If they sign up for the book, they'll have access to knowing what's happening and then people can, from the menu of what's there, see if something serves them. Thank you and thank you Neil, you do such a good job with this and with bringing just a myriad of ways to empower people with relatedness which I really respect.

Neil Sattin: Thank you, I appreciate your saying that.

Resources:

Check out Patricia Albere's website

Read Patricia’s new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/patricia2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Patricia Albere

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

Does Valentine's Day create pressure, or problems, for you? How do you get past the expectation and celebrate love - in your own way - without falling victim to the cliché? And also - on a separate but equally important note - how do you handle uncertainty, in your life, and in your relationship? In today's episode we're going to cover strategies for successfully navigating Valentine's Day whether you're single or in a relationship - and we're also going to reveal our top 3 ways to deal with uncertainty, and transform it into something positive. Plus Neil Sattin reveals a bonus "4th way" to use uncertainty in your relationship to create connection with your partner.

Resources

Interested in dogs and a way of training that harnesses your dog's emotions and prey drive? Check out http://www.preydrivedogtraining.com to find out more, and use the code "ALIVE" for a 15% discount!

Join the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

FREE Guide to Neil's Top 3 Relationship Communication Secrets

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 do you build an indestructible relationship? It’s all about how you welcome the challenges, magnify the good times, and build a web of support. Sometimes that’s easier said than done, though - because the way to do those things wasn’t something that you were taught in school. In today’s episode, we welcome Jayson Gaddis, fellow relationship coach, founder of the Relationship School, and host of The Smart Couple podcast. Jayson shares some of his favorite relationship recipes, so that you can not only collect the right ingredients for your relationship, but also learn the unique way to cook them up into something that will serve your relationship for years to come. We also talk about Jayson’s new book, The Smart Couple Quote Book: Radically Simple Ways to Avoid Pointless Fights, Have Better Sex, and Build an Indestructible Partnership. It’s a far-ranging conversation to explore how to work smarter in support of an amazing relationship.

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:

YogaGlo.com - YogaGlo is an affordable way to do yoga, or meditate, with the guidance of a world-class instructor. They have classes for you no matter what level you’re at. And you can do it whenever is convenient for you, wherever you are, with your computer or smartphone! YogaGlo is offering two free weeks to try out their service for Relationship Alive listeners. Visit http://www.yogaglo.com/alive to get your first two weeks free, and experience Yogaglo for yourself!

Resources:

Check out Jayson Gaddis's website

Read Jayson’s new book, The Smart Couple Quote Book: Radically Simple Ways to Avoid Pointless Fights, Have Better Sex, and Build an Indestructible Partnership

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

www.neilsattin.com/smartcouple Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jayson Gaddis

Amazing intro/outro music (not including the Namaste chant) 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. How do you take on your relationship in an intelligent way? How do you show up in a way that brings learning and growing to the forefront of what you do with your partner? And I guess another way of saying this is how do you avoid doing stupid shit that just perpetuates old patterns and old heartbreak and heartache, and instead show up for this dance of relationship in a way that welcomes every part of your experience, whether it's the amazing joy that a relationship can bring, or the painful moments that relationship can bring? In the words of today's guest, "There's only one place to work out our relationship issues, in relationship," and to talk about this, I have with us today a very special treat, a fellow podcast host and relationship coach, the founder of the Relationship School and the Smart Couple podcast. His name is Jayson Gaddis, and if you haven't checked out his show already, I definitely recommend that you do.

Neil Sattin: His is a great blend of what we know about neuroscience, what we know about psychology, what we know about personal growth. In many ways, a lot like what we're trying to do here on Relationship Alive, but as you'll see, he has his own perspective, and that's something that I really appreciate is being able to bring different points of view onto the show, and I'm making an assumption here because I feel like I know enough about Jayson to really appreciate the work that he's doing in the world, and I want you to be able to hear from him as well, and maybe we'll find out where we are aligned and where we are different in today's episode.

Neil Sattin: Jayson's just come out with a book called the Smart Couple Quote Book: Radically Simple Ways to Avoid Pointless Fights, Have Better Sex, and Build an Indestructible Partnership. What could be better than that? In this book, he shares quotes from his own writing as well as some of the people who have been guests on his podcast, but it's mostly his own work, and it is the perfect kind of coffee table book or bedside book where you can pick something up, open to a random page, get an amazing piece of wisdom, and have something to reflect on or to chat about with your partner. We'll get a chance to dive deep today with Jayson Gaddis. In the meantime, if you want to download a detailed transcript and guide for this episode, you can visit neilsattin.com/smartcouple, or you can always text the word "passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions, and I will send you a link to that guide and transcript.

Neil Sattin: I think that's all the business to cover. Jayson Gaddis, thank you so much for being with us today on Relationship Alive.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, Neil. I'm really honored to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

Neil Sattin: I think what I'd love to start with is to get your perspective. I feel like there should be a warmup question here, but what's calling to me right now from having read through your book, is your view of pain in relationship, and so many people, of course, come to our podcasts and our work as coaches because they're in pain, and they feel like pain is the problem, and I'm wondering if you have a perspective on pain that helps mine it for the golden opportunity that pain often brings.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah. I love pain. I don't like feeling it, but I love it because it's always what ignites transformation in me, and it's often what I see brings people to the path and to a better result in their life, so I'm a big fan of pain. I definitely don't enjoy the crunchiness of it in an argument with my wife, and I know intellectually, and this holds me through it, that on the other side of this painful experience, we're going to be better off, so I'm a big fan of helping people embrace pain as a doorway, as a gateway, and as a path to greater fulfillment, really.

Neil Sattin: When someone comes to you and says, "I'm in a ton of pain in my relationship," where do you start with that person? Congratulations?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah. It's kind of like, "Congratulations. Welcome and I'm glad for you that pain's brought you to your knees enough that you're willing to learn something new here, because clearly how you're doing it is not working," and they would probably tell me that themselves, but I might reflect something like that back if they were a little stuck in their victim seat, which we get stuck in, and I'd say, "Great. Let's zero in on what the pain is and how is it, how did it come to be, and what are you responsible for in that? Let's change it. Let's do something about it."

Interested in reading the transcript for the rest of this episode with Jayson Gaddis? 

Click here to download the full transcript of this episode!

How do you embody masculinity in a way that creates more connection and passion in your relationship? How do you avoid the stereotypes, while still getting the benefit of positive polarity in your relationship? Is there even a point to talking about “masculine” vs. “feminine” (and if so, what is it?)? Today’s episode is a conversation with Shana James, men’s coach and host of the Man Alive podcast. We take apart the myths of what it means to be a “real man” - and explore how you can get beyond what you’re “supposed to” be, uncover the true you, and bring all of you to your relationship. Learn how to break out of the box in a way that keeps you connected to the people who matter most.

Please enjoy this week’s episode, with Shana James, on Relationship Alive!

Resources:

Here is a link to Relationship Alive episode 20, my first conversation with Shana James on Sparking Passion through Generosity and Authenticity

Visit Shana James’s website to check out the Man Alive podcast AND pick up her free guide to the Unknown Skill that helps men succeed in life, career, and relationships.

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of:

The Railsplitters - Check them Out

visit http://www.neilsattin.com/128 to download the transcript for this episode, or text the word "PASSION" to the number 33444.

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: All right. Hello and welcome to another episode of ...

Shana James: Man Alive, and welcome to another episode of ...

Neil Sattin: Relationship Alive. We are your hosts ...

Shana James: Neil Sattin.

Neil Sattin: And Shana James, and we're here today to talk about some really important topics that we each wanted to cover on our respective podcasts, and so we thought, "Why not ..."

Shana James: Become each other and do it together.

Neil Sattin: Right. We will merge like you're not supposed to do, but why don't we come together and talk about it, and so we have it for each of our shows?

Shana James: I love it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: I love it. Yeah. We've been really going back and forth around this idea of the stereotypical masculine and some frameworks out there that in some ways have been really helpful for men, and have had men step into more of their power, and confidence, and have deeper connections, and in other ways have, what might you say, pushed men into shame, and feeling wrong, and feeling they're out of one box and into another box, and feeling confined, and so really wanting to look at if we are going to take on or if men are going to take on a kind of archetype or ideas of masculinity. How can they be played with versus ... How did you say it? Versus constricting or something like that?

Neil Sattin: Constricting. Yeah. Yeah, and this question too of whenever, if you're feeling like you should be some way, whatever way that is, how's that going to impact you? How's that going to impact your relationships, and because my show, like ...

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: This is interesting because my show is all focused on relationship, and Shana, your show is called 'Man Alive', so it's all about this question of how men can step into who they are.

Shana James: Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: I was wondering before we got on, I was thinking like, "Is there a difference when ...? Is there something about men stepping into who they are where that could in and of itself get in the way in relationship?"

Shana James: Interesting, so the question being if men are themselves for lack of a more specific way to say it right now. Right? Like if a man actually discovers who he is, his own needs, his desires, his truth, that it could actually get in the way of a relationship?

Neil Sattin: That was the question.

Shana James: That's the question.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I say that because when I'm looking at a lot of ...

Shana James: Interesting.

Neil Sattin: I like the word you used, 'Framework', so I'm looking at some of the frameworks that are becoming more and more popular now as a way of I think reeling ourselves back from men and women being the same, and so trying to reclaim some of the polarity and the difference, and the beards I guess.

Shana James: Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: As I look at that, I can see that there's a lot in that that actually does help us, men ... I'm just speaking for myself here, step into more of who we are. In fact, I even grew this out a little bit for our conversation.

Shana James: "This" being "a beard" because some people are not watching this...

Neil Sattin: Right. My beard. Right. You might not be watching, so I grew my beard out. That's an important thing to note.

Shana James: Yes.

Neil Sattin: That being said, when you start talking about what's involved in people actually relating to each other, then I don't think that those answers necessarily are long-term solutions. They could provide short-term solutions, but over the-

Shana James: The answers of like, "Here's how to be a more masculine, or more of a man?"

Neil Sattin: Here's how to be more of a man. Yeah. Yeah.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Take charge, buy a gun, grow a beard, drive your truck, and own all of the archetypal or really stereotypical manly things.

Shana James: This is so interesting because hearing you say that, I'm like, "Oh, that wasn't the frameworks I was talking about about being a man." I was thinking more of the frameworks of David Deida and some other people out there who talk about a kind of masculine power that has to do with presence and solidity that I'm getting a little tongue in cheek in the way I'm saying this, but I do think they're actually really powerful ways that a man or a woman ... I mean, we could talk about it. Right? Masculine and feminine to me doesn't mean man, woman, but yeah, so probably important that you and I get on the same page. Are we actually talking about the same frameworks or do we have different frameworks we're thinking of?

Neil Sattin: I think that's why it's so important that we have this conversation, and of course, I was being a little facetious about the gun and the pick-up truck, and the beard for that matter, and you might be able to hear there's a plow actually.

Shana James: Yeah. Yes.

Neil Sattin: I wish I were driving that plow. It feels so much more masculine as well.

Shana James: Manly than sitting here, doing a podcast.

Neil Sattin: Right. Right, or, "Why’d I get the plow? I should be out there shoveling like a real man."

Shana James: Right. The whole idea of being a real man. See, my sense-

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Right? This is where it gets confusing. I think a lot of the frameworks out there ... My sense is that their intention in some of these more conscious realms and tantra and personal growth is to help men step away from some kind of box of, "Here's what you have to be to be a man", and yet, I think they have a negative spin sometimes where men take it on as, "Oh, now I'm supposed to do this to be a man. Right now, I'm supposed to be more present."

Neil Sattin: Right.

Shana James: "Now, I'm supposed to lead. I have to lead every action."

Neil Sattin: Exactly.

Shana James: Right?

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. "I'm supposed to lead. I'm supposed to open my woman" if we're talking about a heterosexual relationship...

Shana James: If we're talking heterosexual.

Neil Sattin: Right, and there's no room for me to be uncertain or vulnerable, or weak, or ... Yeah.

Shana James: Which is so interesting because a lot of the work that I do with men is around how to be able to bring vulnerability, shame, weakness, desire, whatever our weaknesses and what I think makes me weak, but in a more powerful way, which again, I think could be confusing, but in a way, the way I describe it is like, "I have these vulnerable parts of me, and ultimately, I know I'm a good person or I'm a good man." Like, "I know there's more to me. I know that these things don't make me unlovable or unworthy, and so I can bring these forward in relationship" or in another, any kind of relationship, but let's say also romantic relationship with a partner, and not fall into, "I need you to tell me I'm okay. I need you to tell me I'm good enough. I need you to fix me or make me feel better about myself."

Neil Sattin: Right. Right. There is that sense of, how do you enter a relationship without either partner feeling like, "Wow. You're here to save me", and whatever that translates into, if it's one partner needing to be the hero of the relationship or one person needing to be the caretaker of the relationship?

Shana James: Right, and they're needing to be saved.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Then, what is it like to come into a relationship knowing that there's potential for healing and growth without needing to fix or save each other? Right? That to me is a kind of mastery. Can we love each other through these challenging moments of vulnerability for both of us, whatever gender we are? That's one end of the spectrum.

Shana James: That to me feels a little bit more like the Yin or a certain kind of foundation of connection, and then, you also mentioned earlier, polarity. Right? Then, how do we keep that spark alive also?

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, and this is an important place as well because I think the reason that the more stereotypical kinds of frameworks hold so much power is if you're in a relationship where that's not happening at all, then you can hear that and feel like, "That's exactly what's missing. I need that." Whether it's, "I need to be led and opened", like, "I'm tired of making all the decisions", or, "I'm tired of your" whatever it is, or it's like, "Yeah, I need to step more into that powerful presence. For some reason, I've been scared to do that, or I've been holding back because I'm not feeling confident in expressing myself that way."

Shana James: Yeah. Right.

Neil Sattin: If that's place you're in, and then you hear someone's saying like, "Yeah. Step into your power and lead, and be opened" or whatever it is, then it can be like, "Wow. What a relief!" Like, "Yes, let's do that."

Shana James: Right. It gives permission in a way like, "Oh, I can lead and I can take charge, and I don't have to be that asshole I saw my dad be or some other men in the past who were doing it without care for other people." I've definitely seen that help men feel more empowered.

Neil Sattin: Right. Yeah, and-

Shana James: And, or, but.

Neil Sattin: It's like ... Two things come to mind. One is that it could certainly infuse some energy into a situation that that feels stale or stagnant, like where it's just you need something to get the whole thing moving, but on the flip side, there is this question, and this is something I've talked about on my show, you've probably talked about it on yours, of as soon as we're stepping into roles or scripts of how we're supposed to be, that actually can kill the things that create juice in a relationship that are about being in the moment, being spontaneous, owning who you are, which to me, doesn't have anything to do with whether my wife can hold my beard while we're having sex.

Shana James: Yeah. Right. You mean that metaphorically? What does holding your beard mean?

Neil Sattin: I was just imagining like I've grown out this big beard. I don't have a big beard like that, but it's like just saying, "Yeah", that there's a point where even if we're wearing the costume that we're supposed to be wearing, and presenting the way we're supposed to be presenting, that there's a place where that play will be satisfying, but if you watch the same play over and over and over again, it's going to get old.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: If you're in that play over and over again, it's going to get old.

Shana James: Yeah. It's getting old, or if you're in a play, that I do believe that some fake it until you make it can actually work. Right? It can jump-start the engine let's say, or it can give us access to certain parts of us whether it's in the realm of leading or surrendering our vulnerability that we haven't had before, and it can be a tricky line. Right?

Shana James: Like, "When is it faking it until I'm making it, and when is it that I'm just continuing to fake it?", because anywhere I think where we keep doing something because we're supposed to, I mean, maybe that's the heart of it. Right? It's like, "Oh, I am supposed to do this thing", versus, "When I do it, I feel more", and this might take some describing, but like, "I feel more aligned in myself. I feel more alive. I feel more true."

Shana James: "I feel more open. I feel more joyous. I feel more vital." Right? Like, "Where is it that we put these roles in as a "supposed to" as opposed to, "I'm going to try on this role", or, "I'm going to put on a new costume and see how does it fit with me. Does it give me more access to my voice, and my truth, and my power, or does it have me feel stilted and constrained?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, and you can come at it from the other angle too where authenticity can also be a trap.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Perhaps you've seen this where someone feels like, "Oh, I'm just being me."

Shana James: Yes.

Neil Sattin: Like, "It's me to not take the initiative ever in bed."

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: I don't know why we keep talking about bed, but let's just say-

Shana James: It's a concrete example.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sure, and mine is right over there, so I keep looking at it, but yeah. Authenticity can also be a trap, and there's that question of, "How do you be authentic without being held back by your authenticity as its own prescription or role?"

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: I'm thinking about how you and I even met.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: I can't remember if we spoke about this in the episode that we did together for the Relationship Alive Podcast. We may have addressed it, but Shana, you were coaching for the Authentic Man Program, and I saw you in a video, and I thought, "I want to be her friend." That's like the ultra condensed version of the story, but I was in a place where I was married to my first wife, and really unhappy, and trying to figure out why I was so unhappy.

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: That was how I came across Authentic Man Program.

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: I was thinking about that as I was pondering this conversation that we were going to have, and thinking like, "Right. We came to know each other in this realm of not putting on anything fake, like learning how to be present, learning how to give attention in a way, where you're not losing yourself, learning how to stand in who you are."

Shana James: Yeah. Right. When I think about the Authentic Man Program and all the work I've done with men and you've done with people, I mean, I don't want to speak for you, but there is a paradox or an overlap or a something between helping, for me, helping support men to find their authenticity, and I guess I probably have a bias or a belief that authenticity is not ... What did you say? Something about like never making decisions, or like that authenticity is not a lack of energy, or a lack of life force in me.

Shana James: I think I have a bias or a belief that authenticity is a kind of fullness of life force and that that could be sadness, that could be anger, that could be joy, but that ultimately, there is this sense of, "When I check in with myself, I feel good about the choices I'm making, I have access to create what I want to create." Not that I should be creating something or you should be creating something in particular, but that I know that I can create what I want, and so if a man comes and he's ... I've often said this, like some men have more of a heart-based, and some men, there's humor, and other men, there's just intellect that is through the roof, and other men, there's more of like this mysterious quality, and I don't try to steer men toward one way or like a cookie-cutter mold, but more to find what is your unique expression.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that, that there's not this sense that anyone of those things is necessarily bad, though when anyone of those things is running the show, that's where you end up disconnected or you lose access to parts of you that help you connect.

Shana James: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Neil Sattin: We're talking about it in this realm of connection, and that's where I tend to dance is like, "Okay. If I'm coming to you and I'm ..." I mean, it's maybe a little easier when you think about like, "I'm angry", or "I'm really sad about something", but I want to even think like, "What if I were really depressed and exhausted?"

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: "What if I were spent?" This is like stretching what we're talking about a little bit because that is maybe a state where you're not in your energy, in your power.

Shana James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: How do you be authentically that while I'm depleted, but in relationship, how do you bring that so that it is a force that connects you, so even if you're depleted, you're still able to be with the person that you're with?

Shana James: I love that. Right, and then it doesn't have to be the most passionate connection or the most exciting connection in that moment, but it might be more of a tender or a quiet connection. I love what you're saying. I just had a thought, which may have flown out of my mind when you said about being depressed or ... It's like ... Right.

Shana James: How do ... Maybe there's something in here about, "I'm trying to be something so someone else will want me, or love me, or believe in me", versus, "Oh, I feel depleted right now. I feel depleted right, and I still care about you", or even in a work context. "I feel depleted right now, and I'm still here committed to getting this job done or something", but is there a way that we don't have to hide what's really going on, and at the same time, how do we bring those parts of ourselves in a way that creates more connection rather than pushes someone away? What might be the most authentic thing in that moment is, "Actually, I need some space. I need to move away from you, but I still believe we can do it in a connected way."

Neil Sattin: Yeah, which bumps right up against the men need their space kind of mentality, that that's somehow part of the masculine archetype is taking space and going into your cave to figure shit out, and if you don't, now you're what?

Shana James: Right. Right.

Neil Sattin: I don't know. You've been, you're more feminine because you want to-

Shana James: I was going to say a pussy, and I hate when people say that, but it's like I think that is this idea or ...

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Then, in some realms where I've seen men learn, "Okay. Don't bring your struggles to a woman or to a partner", and again, I see the paradox of if we bring all of our struggles to our primary partner, I think that can create a heaviness and a feeling of like, "Oh, God." We're always going to be struggling together, but if you don't bring anything to your partner, then you don't know each other, and it's all based on this more surface experience to get there.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and you missed the opportunity of pooling your resources with your partner, and sometimes, that one of you is depleted and the other of you carries the weight, and that's not gender-dependent or spectrum-dependent, but that's-

Shana James: Right. Yeah. Right, and I-

Neil Sattin: Go ahead.

Shana James: No, no. You go.

Neil Sattin: I was just going to say, so it's a dynamic, and the question for me is, "How do you ...?"

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: When you're talking about polarity, the whole point is to create a dynamism in your connection, so how do you keep things dynamic?

Shana James: Yes.

Neil Sattin: You don't do it by necessarily being the same way all the time. That's for sure.

Shana James: Right. I like that you just went back to, "What's the point?" Right? "What's the why? What are we going for here?", versus I've learned the art of setting context for something.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Right? Like, "I'd like to try leading you around for the next 10 minutes because I want to see what it feels like in my body to unapologetically take control while still being connected to you in your heart and what's good for you", versus a lack of context, which is just like, "I want to try taking on this role. I want to lead you around." There's a way I think when we know for ourselves why we're doing something, and when we can communicate it to others, it puts us I think in a deeper place of connection of, "Oh, now we're more on the same team, we're trying something out together, we have a sense of why we're doing what we're doing", and then I think if you have a why, there could be endless number of "hows" to get there, versus, I'm going to focus on, "What's the correct how?"

Neil Sattin: Right. Yeah.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I like that. I like how what you're talking about sounds so collaborative because that's another relationship problem where each person feels like they're alone in their silo to try and figure out how the hell to make a change or make a difference, or like they just got to figure it out.

Shana James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: That can sometimes really feel true when you're in relationship with someone who's a little shut-down and who doesn't want to have the conversation about like, "I don't want to be invited into leading you", or "I don't want to be invited into being led by you". That sounds scary, or, "I'm not even there."

Shana James: Right, and that could be a whole another conversation like, "What do you do?" Maybe you've probably ... I imagine you've addressed this in your podcast. What do you do when you have a partner who doesn't feel willing or isn't wanting to stretch, or grow, or expand, or change things if there's something that you're wanting? I mean, that's a whole another ball of wax we could get into.

Neil Sattin: It's one thing about I think what we were talking about before we officially started, which is conscious relationship, and how our relationships really do require something different, and this is something I think about a lot because I work with a lot of couples where one of them is in that situation, and the question does come up for me, like, "Does this mean that there are a lot of partnerships that really aren't destined to stay together because one is just going to be on a growth path, and the other one isn't and has no interest?"

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: For me, that balances out with having experienced actually that even that -  even like having a foundation of like, "Yeah. I want to be a better person" - there are times when I don't feel like changing. There are times where I'm stuck in who I am.

Shana James: Right. Right.

Neil Sattin: There are times where Chloe, my wife, where she will say, point out something that is represents an old pattern of mine, and I'm irritated, and I don't want to do anything about it, so there is space in a situation that feels hopeless if you can stay engaged, and that's really the art of what you're talking about. It's like - How do you show up even then in a way that doesn't become about, "You should be growth-oriented because otherwise, how are we going to have a conscious relationship" that doesn't become that, because now it's just become oddly confining, even though it's about growth and change?

Shana James: Yeah. Right.

Neil Sattin: I mean, at some point, you got to be able to figure out like, "All right. Are our values aligned enough that we're on this journey together, or are they not?"

Shana James: Back to values. Yeah. Yeah. I just did a conversation last week that where we got into ... Right. What are each person's values and how often people don't necessarily know their values.

Shana James: I mean, I remember doing some coaching before I got married, and we did some values conversations and where our values were differing and where they were the same and overlapped, and yeah. In some ways, we still ended up getting divorced, and we both I think are on a path of growth, but a different kind of growth, or then we had a kid and all kinds of things started to show up. I think I also want to speak a word to the complicated nature of relationships, and in our culture, it can seem like if you don't stay together with someone, it's a failure, but I'm also aware that now, we're ... I don't know. We're on a different topic in a way of conscious relationship, and what is conscious relationship, or how do we stay connected?

Shana James: How do we collaborate? How do we be on the same team? Maybe it's all still ... I think it all still is connected, but also, this idea of how to not get stuck in a stereotypical masculine role as we're becoming more conscious maybe.

Neil Sattin: Right. I think where I start to get a little nervous is where these frameworks, as you've been talking about for masculinity, where they potentially become problematic, where they're actually if you're not bringing consciousness to them, then they become the source of problems -  and I can't help but think at the moment of, "#Metoo", and just how much of that is about  - more like this shadow masculinity. Right?

Shana James: Then, it's like are we talking about like unconsciously masculine or consciously masculine, because I think the unconscious or the box of kind of cultural definition of masculine is be strong, be powerful, go after what you want, don't apologize.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Shana James: At the same time, I know a lot of men, especially men who come to me, who have had really loving women in their lives, and they've been taught to be nice, and be good, and not overstep their bounds, and be respectful, and I think it has often put men in a bind like, "Wait. I'm supposed to be strong and powerful and not admit to any weakness. Wait, but then, I'm supposed to be kind, and loving, and caring, and what the fuck do I do now, and how do I actually express myself, or how do I share my needs and desires, let alone, even get them met?", and so I think the next step ... I don't know. Maybe this is arrogant to say or too conclusive, but it feels like there's a step in masculine evolution where, and sometimes the way I talk about it is head, heart and sex or head, heart and balls balance.

Shana James: Right? This way of both heart and love and care and sexuality being the dials turned up in a way to a hundred percent. Like I don't know if I give up my heart and my care to be very powerful or sexual or confidence, and then I think men can get out in the world in a powerful way, and co-create or collaborate - versus the false power I see, which is, "I don't feel powerful, so I'm going to try and take because I think that's the only way I could get it."

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. What I like to add if this fits into people's paradigms in that "head, heart, balls" is also your connection to "spirit."

Shana James: Totally. I've been realizing that lately, that I'm like, "Oh, it's missing that fourth piece."

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, and how that fuels your connection to something greater.

Shana James: Yeah. Yes.

Neil Sattin: You're being part of the whole, how we're actually connected to other beings.

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: It becomes a lot more challenging to do things that are, let's just call it since you did it earlier beautifully, the unconscious masculine. It becomes a lot more challenging to do that if you're aware, if you're conscious of "Oh, we're actually connected, so why would I do that to you?"

Shana James: Right. Right. Right.

Neil Sattin: Why would I act upon you instead of bringing some ferocity in that still is able to be WITH you?

Shana James: Right. Right, and I think some of my favorite experiences of a man's expression of power, they really come with this, there's an intensity like you said or sometimes ferocity, but sometimes just an intensity. An intensity of loving or an intensity of passion, and it's so clear to me that I'm cared about and that they want something good for me too, and yeah. I love bringing in the soul element, because in the soul, in my experience, there isn't really a masculine, feminine. It's more of this pure just being.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, and it also, like as you were saying that, I started to feel like, "Right", and there's a difference between, "I'm with you so that I can get my needs met" versus, "We're together so that we can get our needs met", and how that changes the dynamic.

Shana James: Yes.

Neil Sattin: Then, it's not like you were saying earlier, it's not about taking what you need.

Shana James: Yes.

Neil Sattin: It's about, "How are we going to get this together?"

Shana James: Right, which I'm wondering, okay, if we bring that back into this stereotypical masculinization or idea of masculine, whether it's in a business context or a relationship context or a family context, when there is a sense of a man getting his own, that his own needs and desires are valuable, valued, important, and that so is "the other's" needs and desires. I just, I wonder then how that impacts, and how to move beyond like I was saying before, this conflict of, "Wait. I'm supposed to be the rock. I'm not supposed to have any vulnerability. I'm supposed to be nice and take care of others", and I do see this next stepping stone or next evolution of, "Oh, I can be powerfully grounded in myself, value myself, believe in my own self-worth, and also share I feel really vulnerable right now, and I feel moved to tears right now, or I feel really sad that there's something happening in this relationship that it's painful for me, or something I'm not getting that I don't know if I need to get it from you or not, but I'm not feeling loved, I'm not feeling affection, I'm not ..." Those things.

Shana James: Right? Can we actually come to the table and, I think express a kind of powerful vulnerability, or that vulnerability itself to me is power.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. I want your opinion on something, and at the same time, let's try to shift our conversation, if we can, to get ... let's see how practical we can get", because I don't know that this is going to be practical, but let's-

Shana James: Yeah. Okay. Let's see.

Neil Sattin: This is the question. The question is, "Why even talk about masculine and feminine?", because in my experience if two people come together and they're willing to be in who they are to be impacted by each other, to speak to that, and sometimes that "speaking" is the voice, but other times it's how you touch, how you ... It could be anything. Right? It's not just like blah, blah, "We're going to talk about it", but if two people are doing that, that's where the energy is, and it's not necessarily about leading or following.

Shana James: Being more masculine.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Exactly. It's actually about what it feels like to be more real, and we got, like I'm somehow back at that authenticity piece. It's just like be authentic with your partner, and there you are.

Shana James: Right.

Neil Sattin: You're going to find your way into masculine, feminine. I'm just looking inside, like sometimes, you might be more like the tree, or the snowflake, or the squirrel, or the bear, or-

Shana James: Or the root of the tree, or the leaves of the tree. Right.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Right. If we actually let go of, "I'm supposed to be some way that is either feminine or masculine", would things just take shape in an easier way?

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Then, I think the question of authenticity though can be so confusing for people because at least from my perspective, we've all been conditioned from such a young age that it's hard to know what's authentic, like what's true for us, but in the context, I found myself saying this recently, like I feel like an explorer. I love to explore dynamics and the inner world and the outer world, and, "What happens if I do this, and how will you react if I do that?" Yeah. I wonder if there's a context of play, and I don't know that I have an answer for this, but I like the idea of taking on experiments and time-bound experiments, and so for those who are in relationship, what might it be like for a day or a week to say, "You know what? I'm going to let go of any ideas of masculine, feminine, anything, and I'm just going to see what I feel moved to do."

Shana James: Some of that might be scary. Right? Some of that might feel like, "This is really awkward or uncomfortable, but I'm noticing I feel moved to cry in your arms even though I don't even know if I can, or I'm noticing I feel moved to take you into the bedroom and have my way with you", or like any of those things, man, woman, masculine, feminine aside. That could be a really interesting experiment, and the opposite could be interesting too, or opposite being like, "What if we really put attention on a masculine or a feminine dynamic, and what if we each took on the other?" I don't know that I have any concrete answers, but I think in practical terms, to become an explorer and to see what brings me more energy, and vitality, and excitement, and connection in the moment feels like an interesting way to go for me.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. There's something about when you said, "Let's each be the other."

Shana James: The other.

Neil Sattin: What that sparked in me was, "Right - That makes a ton of sense" because if I'm going to be more feminine, let's say in that context, hanging out with Chloe, then the odds are that I'm going to do it in a way that on some level, I'm looking for - that I feel is lacking. It's almost like if she were to be like, "Tell me how to be a woman. I don't really know", or, "Tell me how to be a man. I don't know what you're missing. I'm just being me."

Neil Sattin: Like, "Show me", and I could see that being valuable that there's some potential for it to feel ... Like you got to be in the spirit of play.

Shana James: Exactly. Right.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to be in the spirit of being critical or judgmental, or, "I'm going to show you what I've been missing from you, but-"

Shana James: Right. Right. What if it's just about me? It's not about what I've been missing with us. It's more like, "Oh, do I let myself ...

Shana James: When I look at the whole spectrum of how I could express myself and what I could do and say, where are the places I'm not thinking it's okay to go? For some people, for a lot of people, that's anger. For me, I've also noticed it's joy. I hold back my joy. If someone else feels less joyful than me, I feel a little guilty feeling joy or playful, and I have seen that for other people too, so again, maybe another practical way is starting to consider, and you could do this even with a partner or a friend, like, "Where do I see you holding back from what could be called a 'Natural expression'?", and that with anger, we don't have to take our anger out on someone or blame or attack someone, but at the end of my last relationship, I had this really interesting experience where I started getting a little more frustrated, and at the end, he said something like, "I don't think you're as nice as you think you are."

Shana James: I said, "That's totally true actually. I believe you. I try to be nicer than I am, and there are things that bothered me that I don't speak to, and I try to just shove under the rug", because I'm like, "Oh, that's not a big deal." Then, it'll come back out later, but when I went to one of my teachers and I told her that, she laughed and she said, "Actually, I think you're nicer than you think you are." It was just this really brilliant counterpoint where she was pointing out like, "That in my soul, I actually am really loving", and it was my ego or my identity that started getting contracted and started reacting in certain ways, and if I throw all that away, there's this way of like, "Oh, how can I give voice to all of those parts of myself, whether it's nice or not nice, or ...?"

Shana James: You know what I mean, and play with that in the spirit of play like you said so that we have more choice, not because now, I'm supposed to be a certain way, but so that we have more choice and freedom to be who we are?

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that we should embody what we want in our partner. I was just postulating that.

Shana James: That that could happen.

Neil Sattin: Maybe what emerges is that because our idea of what that other is - if it's something we're wanting from our, more of from our partner, then we're going to show it in the way that we've been wanting.

Shana James: Yeah. Yes. Right. That could be very interesting.

Neil Sattin: That could go for, like you could decide, "I'm going to play in the realm of being more like a tree". Like what is it like to be the grand oak that lives for hundreds of years for the next week, and what kind of perspective does that give me if I bring that to our interactions versus like, "Yeah. I'm going to be the sapling that just grew and is new, and bendy, and playful?"

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: It's a totally different ... You can play with ... I mean, who says you have to be masculine and feminine? You could be any of these things in the spirit of trying out a new repertoire, and it's something that you can do on your own without telling your partner.

Shana James: Right. Yeah. I like that.

Neil Sattin: If they are tuned in, they might be like, "What are you doing? Why are you standing there with your arms out stretched all the time?"

Shana James: I love that. I'm just wondering too as we're wrapping up if there's anything we each feel called to say, and maybe ... I mean, I feel moved to continue exploring this and see if there are anymore practical ways to apply this because I think this has been a very, in some ways, a roundabout conversation, but I like conversations and that it brings up ... It has us question our norms and structures and ways that we've held ourselves and thought we had to be, and somehow, I just felt called to what you said of these ways we think we're supposed to be and, yeah, what it's like to actually let go of.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah.

Shana James: I'm supposed to be some way, and I could see a lot of the men I've worked with or I've had these responses of like ... I actually had a man recently say, "I let go of being ..." What did he say? "It seems like women really like me for being this kind, gentlemanly person", and he was getting really frustrated, like, "That's not all of me, and I want to have to be good to be liked", and so actually, our next week session I said, "Let's really talk about this. I think this is one of my strengths is to help men move forward and connect in relationship while feeling their own strength and their own power, and their own commitment to their desires and truth, while also being able to connect and still have their care. It's like that balance again between the sex and the heart, or the whatever that kind of passion and heart or strength and heart.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I think what could be really helpful if someone was inclined to do this, and so if you're listening and you're thinking, "How can I get more related to what these guys have been talking about?", I could see listing, "I'm supposed to..." over and over again until you're ... Set a timer for 15 minutes because the first five minutes, you'll get all those things that are obvious, and then if you keep going, you'll start to discover even more about the scripts that you're playing, and it could be, "I'm supposed to be this way or I'm supposed to not be this other way" is another one, and then-

Shana James: I love that. I just thought you and I should both do that and post ours and be vulnerable with that.

Neil Sattin: Okay. I'll do that. Then, if you're in relationship, it might be great to share that.

Shana James: Share that.

Neil Sattin: Another twist on that could be, "I think my partner wants me to be..."

Shana James: That's a great one.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Again, try to exhaust yourself in terms of what you write, so it's not just the first things that come to you.

Shana James: Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's not what you already know - then you surprise yourself.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Right. Right. Then, when you can share that with your partner, there may be things where they're like, "Oh, yeah. I actually do want more of that from you, but I'm seeing how you think you're supposed to be this way," and it becomes a great opportunity for you to be in dialogue about, and to surface the roles that you each think you're supposed to be following.

Shana James: Yes. Yes. Yes. I love that.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: Again, in service of choice more than not supposed to let go of these roles and take on some other role. Right? I think that's the endless hall of mirrors that we can get stuck in sometimes and to feel that sense of choice.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting one because what do you do with like you're supposed to be present?

Shana James: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Like I'm going to tell you that in terms of how I see successful relationships, if you're not willing to be present, then you're screwed, like that doesn't mean you can't-

Shana James: Right, and that doesn't mean I have to walk around a hundred percent of the time being present. I get to actually say to my partner, "Are you able to be present right now?", or, "Can we have this? When would be a good time?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: We do have to be willing to show up for each other I think in that way.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, so we are being a little prescriptive, but I feel like what we're being prescriptive with are with values that actually allow for a lot of flexibility.

Shana James: Yes, versus stereotyped roles and ways we're supposed to be. Maybe we jut brought it all the way back.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Shana James: Yes. All right. I think we could do a part two and part hundred.

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Shana James: I think we could keep going with this.

Neil Sattin: Probably.

Shana James: I like this, but for now, that feels like a good place to come to a completion.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shana, it's always great to ... I'm so glad that we're friends and it's such an honor to have you back on Relationship Alive to talk about this.

Shana James: Thank you. I love that we're friends too and colleagues, and that you continue to inspire me, and we continue to talk about what it's like to be in relationships and new relationships in our later life, and to grow, and to be on this path of trying to figure out what the hell this is all about, so thank you for doing this with me.

Neil Sattin: It's so important. Yeah. Absolutely.

One of the most important things that you can develop in your life, and in your relationship, is your resilience - the way that you bounce back from the challenges that life throws your way. How do you recover in a way that leaves you even stronger, more connected, more inspired than before? In today’s episode, we’re talking with Dr. Peter Levine, creator of Somatic Experiencing, author of the bestseller Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, and co-author, with Maggie Kline, of Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. Peter and I explore exactly how to build your own resiliency - and how to also help your partner, and your kids become more resilient. 

Please enjoy this week’s episode, with Dr. Peter Levine, on Relationship Alive! We’ll show you how to tap into the language of sensation, which gives you a window into the deepest parts of your brain and body. We’ll explain how to show up for others in your life, to support them in the most effective way possible. And you’ll discover how to help children access their innate ability to heal as well.

Resources:

Here is a link to Relationship Alive episode 29, my first conversation with Peter Levine: How to Heal Your Triggers and Trauma

Peter’s author page on Amazon

FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide

Peter Levine’s website

Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (to locate certified SE practitioners)

Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

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. How do you foster resiliency in yourself and in your partner and if you have kids, in your kids? When it comes to relationship and how we are in the world, there's perhaps nothing as important as how resilient we are because let's face it. Life sometimes sends problems our way or things that are challenging. And if you're expecting everything to be a cakewalk, then life is going to be really hard for you.

Neil Sattin: On the flip side, if when things go wrong, you think, "Oh, my goodness, it's over now," then things are also going to be hard for you. In order to get through anything that happens to you and come out the other side stronger and more vibrant and to bring that same quality into your relationship and to bring that same quality to, if you have kids in your life, the way that they respond to the world. That is what we are going to talk about today.

Neil Sattin: In order to do so, we have brought back one of our most esteemed guests to the Relationship Alive podcast. His name is Dr. Peter Levine, and he is one of the world's experts on how to heal from trauma. He was first on the show back in Episode 29 and if you're interested in checking that out, you can go to http://www.neilsattin.com/trauma and you can hear all about how to heal your triggers and trauma in relationship.

Neil Sattin: We're not going to cover much of that material. We're going to try to cover new ground here. I invite you to listen to Episode 29. In the meantime, it's not a prerequisite for today's conversation and we are going to dive deep on the topic of resiliency. If you want a transcript and guide for this episode, you can visit http://www.neilsattin.com/levine as in Peter Levine and that's spelled L-E-V-I-N-E or you can text the word "passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions and I will send you a link where you can download that show guide and transcript.

Neil Sattin: In the meantime, Peter Levine, thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to have you back here on Relationship Alive.

Peter Levine: Thank you. It's good to be back. I enjoyed the last time.

Neil Sattin: Well, it's always exciting to be able to chat with you and you are someone who has been on the forefront of figuring out how we heal the things that keep us stuck. And there's nothing that I think defines resilience more than the ability to get unstuck when you're going through something.

Peter Levine: Indeed, I like that. I think that's right on it. It's about when we get stuck, somehow knowing we can handle it because of an inner sense in our bodies, in our organism and that we can also receive and give support at times that are really challenging.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm inspired by in your book, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past, which I happen to have here right in front me. You talked about this location in the brain where resides our capacity for wanting to persevere through adversity.

Peter Levine: Wow, you obviously have actually read it. Yeah, that is central to healing from trauma, and also for being able to stay in a supported intimate relationship. There amazingly are areas in the brain, specific areas that appear literally to be involved with the will to persevere in the face of significant obstacles.

Peter Levine: If you think about it, it makes sense because we wouldn't be able to survive as a species if we didn't have that capacity. I don't say it's the same as resilience but it's a big important component of resilience. In working with people who have been traumatized for 45 years, and I think back on it, I think really my job is to help them enlist that capacity, connect to that capacity and by doing that being able to move forward in difficult times. But I think they're very closely related, this will to persevere and resilience.

Peter Levine: I also see resilience as an autonomic exercise and what I mean by that is when we're in states of fear, our autonomic nervous system gets activated in particular ways and that really affects our whole perception of the world and our cognition really because it's strong ... But it's a foundation for many perceptions. And if we're able to experience ourselves, for example, our heart rate increasing and then experiencing it decreasing, we're doing an autonomic exercise.

Peter Levine: This is something that couples can do with each other by just being present when one of the members is feeling frightened. “It's okay, and so what happens now and what happens next? And is there anything about that? Is there anything else about that?” To be there with the person, to help them move through the stuck places is a great gift and I really believe that in one way or another, most, maybe even all successful couples have some degree of this capacity.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and in the interest of increasing that and maybe even getting a little bit more detail about what you were just mentioning, I'm thinking now because as I mentioned before we jumped on the interview, I just read your amazing book, Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: A Parents' Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience. One of the things that I loved about the book was not only feeling way more resourced in terms of how I show up for my own children but also you stressed the importance for parents of being able to understand the language of the body so that you can have those communications with your children and help them understand the language of the body.

Neil Sattin: But one thing I'd love for you to talk about is how there's this way of communicating about sensation that is how these deeper parts of our brain actually perceive the world that's not about ... Because I think the temptation, if I were sitting with my partner would be, if I were saying “what's next” and “what happens next” we would be caught in these zoo of thoughts and feelings. I love bringing it down to the deeper level of sensations. Can you talk a little bit about that and why it's so important to develop a vocabulary around sensation in your body?

Peter Levine: Yeah, for sure. All of our emotions have sensation-based components. Indeed many emotions, particularly difficult emotions, are a combination of physical sensations and cognitive thoughts or beliefs. And together, they drive an emotional state such as fear or rage and if we are able to become aware of the sensations that actually underlie those emotions, then we are able to allow the sensations to change, to transform and also noticing the thoughts that are involved, and doing that has the sometimes miraculous way to actually change our emotions.

Peter Levine: Because one of the things about difficult emotions - called negative emotions - is they just have a tendency to keep going and keep going as much as we can understand them or understand our thoughts about them. Really, it's difficult to change them and I really believe my experience is that again, the way that we can change the ... One of the ways that we can change these difficult emotions is by the alchemy of working with these sensations, the underlying sensations and also sensations of goodness.

Peter Levine: In my major book, In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, the key is in both. And restoring goodness also is a sensation, a feeling of felt sensation of resilience. When I say goodness, I don't mean like a good child, a good spouse, a good so forth and so on. I mean, more of the Buddhistic understanding of goodness - that it's a feeling of wholeness and a feeling like this, like wholeness, are some of the most important antidotes again for these difficult emotions and sensations, that allow us to move through them because we have this innate capacity to heal.

Peter Levine: Originally, I studied this in animals and how they rebound in the aftermath of prey animals and predation but it's led me to a more general understanding that there is this profound instinct similar to the instinct to persevere - they're related, I'm sure, to heal - that we yearn healing. And in a way, in relationships, I'm sure as you and many of your speakers have noted that we tend to pick people with similar traumas or complementary traumas. At first, we're very much in love, which is often the first phase of a relationship, but then what happens when the stuff hits the fan, how do we deal with that in a collaborative way, in a corrective way?

Peter Levine: Again, this is so important in restoring resilience because co-regulation is tremendously important. I'm looking forward to it and later this month, there's a big Evolution of Psychology conference in Anaheim and I'm on a panel with Sue Johnson. I think you've interviewed Sue and if any of your readers don't know, Sue is the leading person in understanding the emotions that go on in couples' dynamics and really has a strong emphasis on co-regulation.

Peter Levine: What I'm saying is that we need both co-regulation, of course, but we also need the tools for our own regulation, for our own building of resilience. I see the two blending together very nicely.

Neil Sattin: Taking a step back, I guess just to-

Peter Levine: Let me go back, one other thing.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, go ahead.

Peter Levine: We're talking about with our children. By learning to read their bodies and helping them connect with their sensations, we are building a tremendous reservoir of resilience that they will add skills that they will carry for their whole lives. Again, one of the things that as parents that we need to be able to do is when there's ... In the inevitable fall or God knows the ride to the emergency room, we need first to take care of our own sensations and emotions because children are incredible mimickers. They will pick up the emotion of the parent.

Peter Levine: You know, anybody who's flown in an airplane in the last 25 years, what do they call them? The cabin personnel, they make the announcement that in the unlikely event of depressurization, the oxygen mask will come down. If you have a child or somebody infirm next to you, put the mask on your face first and then put the mask on the child. In other words, calm yourself first so that the children are not picking up the fear. Or very often, the parents override the fear with anger and they're very angry at the child. Again, children will pick this up.

Peter Levine: If we learn to take care of ourselves, self-regulation, we then can impart that capacity or support that developing capacity in our kids. When I work with kids when there's been a relatively acute trauma, sometimes, it just takes a few minutes of play and they go right to the place where they are stuck in their bodies. I just help them move through that and then, they're off back to play again.

Peter Levine: These tools are tremendously important and probably a quarter of the book or the eighth of the book, I guess, probably is about exercises to help the parents maintain this resilience in the face of the catastrophes that will befall the children and the parents. It's a given. Kids, especially when they get into the more active phase around 18 months, 2 years where they're just scooting everywhere and climbing and falling and pulling flower pots down on their sweet little heads. They get terrified but again, if we hold our own center and then help the child contain those difficult emotions and sensations, they will calm often surprisingly quickly, sometimes in a matter of minutes.

Peter Levine: The way you support children, it's age-dependent. The way you support a baby who's tremendously upset is way different than the way you support a four-year-old. With a young child, you're going to be holding the child and rocking the child. With the four-year-old, you're going to sitting by child's side and maybe placing your hand as we suggest in the book, on the child's back until the breathing reestablished itself, the spontaneous breathing reestablished itself.

Peter Levine: The amazing thing, I think, the side effect of this is that kids start doing it for themselves and many of the children that I've worked tell me how they've done it in their school when something happens to one of the students. They sit there and they're with the student in that way. Actually, when I was designing the cover of the book with North Atlantic, I wanted it to be red. It has a picture of children in the middle. This is not red, but the rest of the cover is red and the idea, please forgive me, is Mao Zedong and the way he wanted the red book, well, he insisted that the red book be in the hands of everybody in China that had his sayings.

Peter Levine: The idea here is that every parent could have this book and could share it with other parents. One of the things that I think geopolitically is that when we're in a fearful state, any leader, and we've had ample evidence of this, who says there's an enemy out there. They want to attack us. They want to humiliate us. They want to take our jobs away and I am the only person that can protect you. No names mentioned.

Peter Levine: That's going to grab a lot of people. But if you're not in a fearful state, then you don't buy into that. You really think about it. I'm hoping also that this book in the next generation will give us more citizens, more democratic citizens allowed to or what's the word I'm looking for? Empowered, really, to make effective action.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, as I was reading the book for one thing, and actually this brings me to a question because I was reading it and I was, of course, thinking, "Wow, I wish I had read this before my kids were born." I want to fill in a gap or two but perhaps before we do that, I'm just going to ask you this question which is, let's say, my son. He's going to turn 11 in a couple of months, but there are things that I remember having happened with him. When he was two and tumbled down the stairs or three or four years ago, he jumped off a swing set and ended up breaking his arm. These are some traumatic events in his life. I'm wondering, and this is obviously going to have some bearing for adults as well. How do I know if those things are lodged within him as trauma? And if so, what's a way to invite him into releasing that?

Peter Levine: Well often, you'll see it, 11 is an age where you can really also talk to the child-

Neil Sattin: Definitely.

Peter Levine: And sometimes, we're sitting around. We'll say something like ... Maybe even if we're at the top of stairs or something like that and I would just maybe sit down with the child and saying, "Gosh, I remember when you fell down these stairs when you were two years old. Do you remember anything about that?" If the child very quickly says no, then you have a good indication there's something there. Or, if they say yes, if they reflect and then say yes, then it's an opportunity, really a wonderful opportunity to explore that.

Peter Levine: What I sometimes will do is, for example, if the child was falling, I'll hold the child or put my hand on the back of the child and hold the child and let them fall into my hand gradually and then to see what happens as they have this controlled fall. Because again, you have your hands, they're not going to fall. But they have the feeling, the sensations of falling. That may bring up images or sensations that were associated with the earlier event when they tumble down a flight. I guess, it was a flight of stairs. I think that was just an assumption I made.

Peter Levine: In games, in play, in just talking, 11-year-old, you were able to say again, "Remember, a couple of year ..." When was it that happened, a couple of years ago?

Neil Sattin: Well, that and the stairs, that was a long time ago, but I know he remembers it because it's come up before in conversation.

Peter Levine: Well, I would again make a game at it with a falling game. Sometimes, I'll do it just holding them with my hands, letting them slowly fall backwards, for example, or forward. You can do either one, and then I'll put a really big, super big pillow or combination of pillows and then they can begin to ... I'll let them down part way and see if they want to play the game where you release them and they fall into the pillows.

Peter Levine: At first, there may be some fear. You might see it in their eyes or their heartbeat might increase. They might tense a little bit, but you see when you continue with this controlled falling and they're falling into the soft cushions, the kids love it. And very often, it's something simple like that which is all that's needed. Something simple like that.

Neil Sattin: Where would it come in, for instance, just using my son as an example. Let's play a game. Let's do this thing, and let's say I notice something in him, where would it come into ask him or to invite him to name the qualities of sensation that he's feeling within him?

Peter Levine: Well, again, if you talk to him, "I wonder if you remember the tumble you took down the stairs when you were really little, when you were about two years old." If the child says yes, then the sensations are going to be right there. If they're not remembering it, you can say, "Well, when you just even think about that, think about how it might have been for you. Is there any place in your body that you can actually feel that?" Again, most children will point to some part of their body.

Peter Levine: Then, you take it to the next step. "Okay, and you feel that sensation. Does it have a shape? Does it have a size? Does it have a color? What does it feel like?" And so forth. You start asking these what I call open-ended questions.

Neil Sattin: What is it about naming those sensations that's so important?

Peter Levine: Well, of course, the most important thing, of course, is feeling the sensations, being in contact with the sensations. But naming them is also important, because that's a way that the child can reference them in the future. It's kind of like a flag attached to the sensation. "Okay, this sensation has a name. The next time I have this sensation, I have a name and when I have the name, I can also notice the sensation." You're shifting back and forth.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and that reminds me of how important it is for all of us really to have the experience of moving through - which is part of what contributes to resiliency - is knowing that the pendulum swings the other way.

Peter Levine: That's right. Yeah, I call that pendulation, because no matter what we're feeling ... What we tend to do when there's been a difficult sensation is we recoil from it. We try to push it away and by pushing it away, it actually makes it seem stronger. That which we resist persists. If you have a sensation that's coming up, imagine your hand moving upwards and your hand is in a fist, your arm moving upwards and you take the other hand and you put it over that hand that wants to move up. Well, then it's going to push harder against your upper hand and then your upper hand is going to push harder against it. It then seems like this is going to be overwhelming and we lose resilience.

Peter Levine: However, when we're able to experience the sensation and that it moves through, that it increases and it decreases, that it contracts and it expands. It contracts and expands and expands and expands. This is the expansion, which I talked about when I say goodness or wholeness. Again, I think it's very deeply related to resilience. I think we're talking about many, many, many of these different states and processes that increase a resilience.

Neil Sattin: When a child is able to get related to that inner sensation, and I think this is true for adults as well that when we're sitting with our partner and able to say, "Okay, like right now, I'm feeling this constriction in my chest and this heat in the palms of my hands. There's tension behind my eyes like I almost want to cry." When you can get really related to that sensation, then you can-

Peter Levine: I'm sorry, to which sensation? The sensation of?

Neil Sattin: To all of those, I guess, like those things that are happening in your body. Like one, just like you were saying earlier, when you feel those states again, it can remind you like, "Oh, I've been here before," and “I know what's going on” so there's that. But then, there's also ... And you talk about this in terms of pendulation, if you can get acquainted with the sensations of goodness and what that feels like in your body as well.

Peter Levine: That's right.

Neil Sattin: Then that really connects you with that full range of experience and how you move from one to the other.

Peter Levine: When you experience goodness, it stays with you and it really helps you get that whatever you're feeling, whatever the sensations are, they will change. But the bigger reservoir of goodness we have, the more resilient. A study was done, oh, gosh, I don't remember by whom or when. I think Bessel told me about it, Bessel van der Kolk, that if a person, a child has had tremendous trauma in their lives, neglect and abuse, that child will actually fare okay - in other words, you'll be able to work with that person - if one adult in their lives has cared about them and loved them unconditionally.

Peter Levine: In a way, that's amazing. Again, I think that's something that contributes to that reservoir of goodness and resilience that somebody really reflected our feelings and our states and imparted upon us that gift of being seen, of being known, of being cared for, of being loved. It's very important.

Peter Levine: Again, most people that you see have had, I believe, one encounter with that reservoir of goodness and so, sometimes actually with adults but possibly also with children, to remember together that person. When you remember that person, how does it sense in your body? How does it feel in your body when you see the picture of grandma and how she would, when you were sick, she would come and put her hand on your forehead and reassure you. These are valuable. These are lodestars that help us return to our own capacity for resilience and wholeness.

Neil Sattin: One thing that strikes me too is that that is why relationship can be so profoundly healing and allow people to reach new levels of their own thriving in life is if you're able to find that in partnership or your partner is willing to see you unconditionally and hold space for you and accept you in your vulnerable moments, then that allows your system to do what it needs to do to evolve past the things that-

Peter Levine: Right, right. Yeah. Well, unconditional love is not necessarily a given.

Neil Sattin: That's true.

Peter Levine: Hopefully, it's a given between a parent and a child. But I think that just being sufficiently centered and caring can catalyze healing. I don't think there's any question about that. I think it's really important that couples sort of work out a ritual of sorts where if one person needs something, that they can communicate that. And then the other person, their job is to try to be there for that person. And it should be relatively equal. Each person should have a relative number of things.

Peter Levine: Although, particularly, I'm thinking about couples where one of the spouses is coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq. They're very, very traumatized and it's very likely, and hopefully that their spouse, their partner is going to be able to be there for them in those difficult times. I can't tell you how healing that is. It's not easy because a lot of times, because of the fear, the spouse becomes like the enemy. It's almost like you're expecting them to throw a hand grenade at you. So, it's tricky.

Peter Levine: If people want, they can go to ... It's on YouTube, and it's called Ray's Story, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing, where I work with a young marine who was blown up by two of these IEDs and then lost ... I think his best friend died in his arms just before that, and how we worked with the shock of that. And then, how we worked together with he and his wife and their new child. And at that time, it was really helping her develop the skills to be with him and to not pursue him when he really needed to withdraw.

Peter Levine: I think it's a short documentary. It's about 20 minutes. I recommend looking at it because it really talks a lot about this. Because when you're highly traumatized, your resilience is very, very low and vice versa when your resilience is higher, the trauma has less of a corrosive effect. But then again, I think it's also important that there'd be some kind of equality that ... I guess I'm saying that one person doesn't become the therapist for the other person, that there's reciprocity - which you have to have in a relationship, of course.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, I have some faith in the pendulation in relationship as well where that reciprocity may not have to all be at the same time, that most likely if one partner is having their moment where they really need to be attended to, the other partner will have their moment at some point down the road.

Peter Levine: Yes. You can pretty well be assured of that.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. And even when people aren't coming back from war zones, and I think the fact that your work is so helpful for people who are suffering such severe trauma, that's like a testament to just how powerful your work is. And at the same time, when you're hijacked and kind of triggered by your emotions and whatever is happening with your partner, you're going to feel like your partner is out to get you. I think that one of the biggest things for partners to realize is to establish like, "Oh, I'm actually safe with you," like, "You're not out to get me or get something from me." Sometimes, there are some reckoning that has to happen for that to actually be true-

Peter Levine: Indeed.

Neil Sattin: For people to renegotiate how they even come together in partnership.

Peter Levine: Absolutely. Again, the idea of making a ritual out of it and because of pendulation, no matter what we're feeling, it may transiently ... It may temporarily feel worse but if you're able to stay with it and maintain an observing presence, it will shift. And often, this observing presence is fostered by the support that we get from our partners.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. Can we talk for a moment about what that looks like? Because I think there's a danger in being the witness whether it's with your partner or with your kids of maybe intervening too soon. What does that process actually look like where something stuck gets resolved?

Peter Levine: Well, let's just say it's a heterosexual couple. The husband comes in and he's had a difficult day at work. It's not a trauma per se, but he failed to get a promotion. The person got the promotion who he felt didn't deserve it, and he's really angry. And he comes home, and there were toys gathered all over the floor, no different than any other day when he would be returning home. He's angry, and he yells at the kids, "Dammit, pick these toys up! You always leave toys in the middle of the room," something like that.

Peter Levine: Let's say the spouse is able to maintain her center and then she can approach her husband and say, "Yeah, it seems like something is upsetting you. And I'd like to just offer myself of just being here so that you can feel what you're feeling." But again, this has to be a pre-agreed upon ritual that you give the permission. You empower the other person to do this for you. Again, because when you're angry, sometimes the tendency is to snap at the partner, not just the kids but the partner.

Peter Levine: Again, we have to find a way that we have some rules and regulations built into it.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. I like a code word sometimes in a time like that.

Peter Levine: Sure. "Okay” or “leave me alone right now."

Neil Sattin: Right. I was thinking more like something even kind of like one partner comes in and says, "This is a ..." I'm just going to make something up here. "This is a Oriole moment," or "This is a Blue Jay moment," or, "We're in code Cardinal for Red"

Peter Levine: Oh, I see. I didn't know what an Oriole moment is back then.

Neil Sattin: Right, just a way like some pre-arranged designation so that the partner doesn't have to say, "Wow, you seemed really triggered right now."

Peter Levine: Oh, got it. Got it. Okay, good idea.

Neil Sattin: If I can say, "Code Cardinal," then the other partner, "I would love to hold space for you right now. I would love to just hear what's going on with you." Then - takes a little bit of the edge of.

Peter Levine: Right. "Can I just be there with you?"

Neil Sattin: Yeah.

Peter Levine: No, code word is a good idea because each person probably knows what word is most likely to work for them and not be reactive to it.

Neil Sattin: Good point.

Peter Levine: Yeah. I think that's an idea. I think that's a great idea. I know some couples, when the other couple is really like anxious and getting ready to, in their perception to snap at them, I had couples that just say, "Eggshells." That's it, and often, they laugh together but not always. You're concerned. You're noticing that you are walking on eggshells. Maybe that's useful.

Peter Levine: But anyhow, let the person pick their own. That's the one that's more likely to work and nothing is going to work all the time. That's another given. There are times when it won't work and you don't want to be discouraged by that. That's just the nature of-

Neil Sattin: Resilience.

Peter Levine: Resilience, of building resilience. It doesn't happen all at once. It doesn't always seem to happen “increase, increase, increase” because sometimes, you're feeling more resilient and then, something happens and it feels like you're less resilient. But the overall movement is towards greater resilience. Again, I think that's just part of how we are built. That's part of our evolutionary advantage, is to have this kind of resilience.

Neil Sattin: Right. And yet so often, it doesn't happen. People do get stuck in trauma or couples get stuck in a pattern of how they interact with each other. I'm curious getting back to our example of the husband who comes home, the partner says, "Could I hold some space for you?" What's likely to happen next?

Peter Levine: Well, let's say a favorable outcome what I've seen many times. Again, let's just say it's heterosexual couple. The husband is coming home and he's obviously activated. Just by being there and being present and saying, "I'm here," saying it verbally and non-verbally, "I am here. I am here for you." Often, the tears will just start flowing from the spouse's eyes, from the husband's eyes, tears of relief and tears of gratitude. And that's another part that's really important in resilience, is not the belief in gratitude but the inner experience of gratefulness, of gratitude.

Peter Levine: Again, that's something that we can cultivate together because it's really what we want. We don't want to be angry and withdraw and isolate ourselves and become more angry. We want to be able to move through it. If people are in a relationship, they're committed to a passionate relationship. If you are committed to that, then you have to be able to work with these difficult emotions. Otherwise, there won't be the passion. The passion will die as these emotions get more and more suppressed.

Peter Levine: I think if people are committed to a passionate relationship, then they also are committed to being there for each other with these difficult emotions.

Neil Sattin: Tears are normal to experience?

Peter Levine: Tears, even sometimes, you'll see shaking and trembling and spontaneous breaths. Sometimes, there'll be even, of course, sobbing. When they're sobbing or even when there's just the tears, very often if the spouse or the partner says, "Can I hold you?" Or, "I'd like to hold you." And they give some kind of a non-verbal cue that it's okay, just holding the person when they're in that emotional pain. God, how liberating that can be to be literally held?

Neil Sattin: Right. And this really challenging because sometimes when your partner is in pain, it's hard to know, like to know what am I supposed to do in this moment. Being willing to make an offer like that. How would I know if I'm holding space for my partner and they're crying and shaking, like how do I know if everything is okay versus like things are not okay?

Peter Levine: Again, no matter what the emotion is, if you're helping to hold the space including holding the person, and I'll put in the question like, or statement like this, "I'd like to hold you. Just nod if that's okay." So, they don't have to think because they will, "Is it okay if I could hold you now?" Well, then the person has to start thinking about it, which takes them out of the feeling. But if you're able to do something like that I just described, "I really would like to hold you. If that's okay, just nod or just look at me for a moment."

Peter Levine: Then, to be held ... Because almost all of us who have been traumatized have not been held in those critical times when we should have been held - but it's never too late to have a resilient childhood. It's never too late to have a happy child because the child not only lives within us but that child's ability to rebound, to be resilient also lives within us.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I'm wondering, what does it look like? Like how do these things ... How would it typically resolve? Because I think one thing that a lot of us can feel a lot of fear going into tears and I want to offer this because if you're listening to the show, and maybe you're thinking like, "Oh, God, I got some tears to shed," or like I want you to have a sense of, that there is another side like what does it look through when you get through the tears? What does it look through like if you feel yourself starting to shake? What's on the other side of the that and how do you know when you're getting there?

Peter Levine: Yeah. Again, almost any sensation where the person … It's in a safe enough situation and the person is able to stand back enough to observe them. I can barely ever think of a sensation that didn't become more good, more glad, more whole. It's just our nature, and it's a skill. You have to practice. It doesn't happen all at once, so a couple shouldn't feel frustrated if it doesn't work at once. And if the spouse that's in the distress barks at you, just to feel your own body, of course, and remind yourself that you're not the target, that they're angry at somebody else.

Peter Levine: And then again, sometimes, the partner will say something like, "Maybe it seems like you just want to be alone right now, and if you need me, I'm here. And so, let's just talk a little bit later," because again, a lot of times and again, I know this is like stereotypic but it's also true. A lot of times, the men don't want to deal with it then. We need some more time just to be with ourselves and then we can reach out for support and help. It would be great if it didn't happen that way, that we're always open to support but we're not. We're not. We need also to acknowledge and respect that.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Peter Levine: Again, to know because if you have ... As your relationship grows and as trust continues, those skills really build. And I've seen clients, where they're just really angry at each other at one moment and then boom. They're in love with each other again, and again, and again. It does take practice. It does take appreciating that nothing is going to happen perfectly. Nothing is going to happen all at once. That it's a gradual process of deepening as relationships are about deepening the connection and deepening our skill to be with ourselves and to be with the other.

Neil Sattin: In the How to Trauma-Proof Your Kids book, Trauma-Proofing Your Kids, you talk about offering children the opportunity to tell the story of what happened.

Peter Levine: Well, that's usually after you've gone through first the bodily reactions.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Peter Levine: The crying, the shaking, the trembling, the spontaneous breaths, and leaving time for that to settle. And then, I know a number of parent who told me and say that happens like just before dinner. Well, then they'll have the family dinner together and then afterwards to sit by the child and say, "Wow, you know, when you fell off your bicycle, that really scared me. God, I bet it really scared you. Do you remember? Do you remember what it was like to fall off?" And then the child, if they want, can then start talking about the content of how scary it was, about how they couldn't get their breath, but then they could get their breath when they were crying just then.

Peter Levine: Yeah, it's fine to talk about it but again to at least separate it in time with moving through the shock part of it and moving towards a more beneficial sensations, more supportive sensations.

Neil Sattin: Right. You've moved from shock. Maybe even numbness into really tuning into the bodily sensation and the things that are uncomfortable in a moment-

Peter Levine: That's right.

Neil Sattin: And by being there, it initiates the process. I think this is what you're talking about that by attending to that sensation, there's a natural mechanism at work that invites it to evolve to a place of release, which is going to feel good in the end.

Peter Levine: Yeah. We will always, always open, almost always open to release given an adequate amount of support.

Neil Sattin: Right. What I loved too is you talked about the importance of time in between questions, so when you're asking like what are you sensing or what comes next to just leave space there.

Peter Levine: Yes, that's right. Adults tend to be linear time, this, then that, then that, then this, then that, then this, then that, like a long straight trajectory. Kids don't do that. They're much more with what the so-called aboriginal people called circular time. And children are like that. They get up in the morning. They have their breakfast. They go to school. They come back. They have milk and cookies, milk and Oreos. They go out and play. The parents call them for dinner. They come and they eat. They play. They go to sleep. They wake up. They get dressed. They have breakfast. They go off to school. It's a very different relationship of time. It's a much more right brain way of relating to time.

Peter Levine: Yes, adults will often tend to rush things when you need pauses, and the children will give you clues about that. One of the case examples I give or the examples I give in Trauma-Proofing your Kids is a play where with Sammy who had a fall, cracked his ... had to go to the emergency room for stitches and so forth. And then, we were playing the game of rescuing Pooh bear. Pooh bear was in the hospital. Each time, he would give us very clear signals of what he needed then, and our children give us these cues if we're paying attention. And in order to pay attention, we have to be able to be relatively comfortable within ourselves. Again, this is something that the parents can practice with each other, and it just spreads to the child, and it spreads to the child's playmates, and it spreads to the whole village as it were.

Neil Sattin: Peter, you've been so generous with your time and your wisdom as before. I have one more question for you, if you don't mind that, that just sprang in with what you just said, which is ... For one thing, I'm impressed by your faith in our ability to heal, to get to a place of goodness and wholeness. And what you said about the children, that they can communicate to us exactly what they need if we're willing to pay attention and offer space. And I'm thinking as an adult, how do we recognize the signs within ourselves of what we need in a given moment?

Peter Levine: Well, that takes practice because again, when we're in a scary or a vulnerable moment, our early pattern may be to withdraw. But again, we can unlearn that and learn new ones. When you talk about faith, well, I guess I could kind of relate to that. I could relate to that, but it's also 45 years of experience in seeing this happen thousands of times.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Peter Levine: I guess I know it because of experience. I guess if you want to call that faith, okay, we have to call it faith, but it's just ... The human being never ceases to amaze me. I think we're all like this meadow of different colored flowers, and there were all moving from our roots to our stems, to the flower, to the bud, to the flower and opening and opening and opening. And I think opening is basic human need, a basic human drive.

Peter Levine: I think Anais Nin said something like this, "When the pain of tightening into a bud becomes more than the pain of opening as a flower, then we will open." And there's some truth to that, of course, but I don't think it's just pain that brings us towards opening. I think it's just this innate capacity, the desire to open, to be fully alive, to be able to say, "I'm alive, I'm here, I'm real. I'm here, I'm alive and I'm real. I'm alive and I'm here." That's what everyone wants.

Peter Levine: Again, faith, it's observation. I was trained as a scientist and a lot of that is about observation. Yogi Berra said it this way, "You can observe a lot just by watching." And I would say that. Again, in the book, we give a number of different exercises for the parents to help them get more in contact with their inner sensations and their own resilience.

Neil Sattin: And I would like also, following on your metaphor, I would love for this conversation to plant the seed, that pain isn't required to get you to this place of blossoming. That knowing that it's possible to blossom will hopefully help you invite your partner, invite your children, invite yourself into that experience.

Peter Levine: Exactamente as they say in Brazil. Exactly.

Neil Sattin: Well, Peter, thank you so much for being with us today. Your books, Trauma-Proofing Your Kids, Trauma and Memory, Healing Trauma, Waking the Tiger, so many classics that are just completely inspiring, both in the level of recognizing what's possible but also understanding what is happening within us and in the world around us. It's such an honor to be able to talk to you and to share your work with the world.

Neil Sattin: As a reminder, if you want the show guide and transcript for today's episode, you can visit neilsattin.com/levine, as in Peter Levine. You can also text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. And we will have links as well to Peter's work, to his books. Peter, what do you think is the best way for people to find out more about what you're doing in the world? Is there a particular website you'd like them to visit?

Peter Levine: Yeah. There's the website of my training institute. It's www.traumahealing.org. And there are lists of therapists and you can find that, for example, therapists that specialize with children or with relationships. And then I have a website with different information of where I might be giving a public lecture or something like that or some videos that are available. That's www.somaticexperiencing.com, or dot org, I think.

Peter Levine: Yeah, you can get material there. And apparently, although, I've never seen them, people tell me there are a number of interviews or lectures that are available on YouTube. So, I guess if you just YouTube my Peter A. Levine, it will come up with a bunch of stuff.

Neil Sattin: Great. I think-

Peter Levine: And it's delightful to talk with you again, Neil, really. I so much appreciate what you're doing because really we are designed to be in relationship, and to keep our relationships alive. That's the real task. It sure is for me. Okay.

Neil Sattin: Thank you, and your work has been so helpful in my life. And I know the thousands upon thousands of listeners who listened to our first conversation together. So, really exciting to talk to you. Thanks, Peter.

When you’re in a “Yes” brain state, everything seems possible - you’re courageous, resilient, and creative. When you’re in a “No” brain state it’s nearly impossible to learn, grow, or interact in a positive way with others. This yes/no brain state impacts everything you do - how you meet the world, and, if you have children, how you show up as a parent. So how do you cultivate a “Yes” brain state in yourself? How do you teach the children in your life to recognize the signs of being in a “No” brain state - and, even better, show them how to shift back into a “Yes” brain? Today we’re talking with Dr. Dan Siegel, founder of interpersonal neurobiology and co-author (along with Tina Payne Bryson) of the new book “The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child.” His strategies for understanding your own reactivity will transform your relationships and your parenting. You can also help the children in your life understand their own emotional world, and show them how to come back online after big emotions get the best of them.

Here is a link to episode 57 with Dan Siegel: Mastering Mindfulness in Your Relationship

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host Neil Sattin. How do you show up when there are kids involved? In other words, how do you bring what we know today about attachment and the best way to parent children into the context of your relationship so that whether it's your own children or you're entering a relationship where children already exist, you know the best way to show up to help kids interact with you in ways that are positive and to help them have successful outcomes? In other words, have lives where they feel happy and fulfilled and like they really know themselves well. These are the questions that we're going to cover in today's episode and we're going to talk about it in a way that not only gets at the heart of how we parent, but also how we ourselves show up to the equation. So we're not acting on our children or with our children mechanistically or like behaviorists trying to get them to do the right thing and jump through the right hoop. We're bringing to bear everything we know about our own emotional makeup and how we interact with the world to help our kids also have positive, alive interactions with the world, 'cause that's what we're all about on this show.

Neil Sattin: In order to have this conversation, we're going to be talking with Dan Siegel, who is returning to the show after his last episode, which was all about mindsight. Today, we're going to talk about his latest book which is just coming out, co-written with Tina Payne Bryson, called "The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity and Resilience in Your Child." And I have to laugh at that a little bit only because I feel like on this show we're often talking about how to cultivate courage, curiosity and resilience in each other and in ourselves in our relationships. So who better to have on this show than Dan Siegel, the father of interpersonal neurobiology, which is at the cutting edge of the science of how we relate and how the way that we relate affects our brains, our biochemistry and our ability to be healthy and alive and effective in the world and not crippled by anxiety or depression or disconnection. So Dan Siegel, thank you so much for joining us again today on Relationship Alive.

Dan Siegel: Neil, it's an honor to be here with you.

Neil Sattin: Great, great. I think a great place to start is at the end. And I like to start there only because sometimes it helps provide a really nice context for the overall conversation. And by the end, I'm thinking about the end of your book where you start talking about what is it that we're really after in children? How do we measure success and I'm wondering if you can talk for a moment about the kind of culture clash that's happening in terms of how we encourage this kind of external success and sometimes we're missing out on the internal success that The Yes Brain is all about.

Dan Siegel: Well Neil, you've picked up on, I think, one of the central issues that Tina Bryson and I really wanted to address in The Yes Brain book and in our work as teachers and clinicians and in our life as parents and partners with our spouses, this idea of thinking deeply about what success is for ourselves and for our kids, is at the heart of a strategy for how you parent because if you're just going along with what in modern society you hear is a measure of success like what your numbers achievement is, like what kind of elite college you get into, or your bank account alone or the number of cars you have, or these things that you can measure in numerical ways that give us a feeling like, "I could always do more. I don't have enough fans on my social media page. I didn't get enough hits when I put out that photograph." You can always feel like there's someone who's doing better than you. We even have a set of circuits in the brain that are ready to give us a comparative stance toward other people and if success is measured by these very common, contemporary culture ways of saying, "Yes, I achieved this bank account and yes, I have this kind of car and yes, these are the number of things I have." Then it's a treadmill that continually leads to a feeling of inadequacy and I gotta do more and more and more and more.

Dan Siegel: In contrast to that kind of treadmill that goes nowhere but that most of us get on, even as parents thinking about what we want for our kids, in contrast to that, think about the idea that someone could develop an internal compass that gave them a feeling of incredible gratitude for being alive, for the privilege of having this journey that we call a lifetime for the honor of connecting with other people. For the excitement of having curiosity for what the world and life is all about, for the way we can have this courage to actually try new things beyond what we're just given. And when life doesn't go the way we may have expected it to go, we have the resilience to bounce back. So that resilience and creativity and courage come from an internal compass, that you can help construct in a child as you parent them in a certain strategy that we call a 'Yes Brain' strategy.

Dan Siegel: So in The Yes Brain book, what we've done is give a way to parent with discipline, with structure, so sometimes people hear the word Yes Brain and they'd go, "Oh, permissive parenting." And that's not at all what we mean. What we mean is that you as a parent have the opportunity to understand that the brain can get into a No Brain state. And that's where you're feeling threatened, where you feel inadequate, where you activate these survival reactions of fight, flight, freeze and faint, the four Fs, that come along with the reactive No Brain state. And in that No Brain state that comes when you say, "No" harshly several times, is the thing I do in workshops. That shuts down learning and shuts down your access even to connecting not just with other people but even to your own internal compass.

Dan Siegel: And in contrast, that you can cultivate a Yes Brain state which is where a person feels open to new experience. Aware that life is about challenges and disciplined effort, and that sometimes what you accomplish with your effort isn't what you expected, and we call that a disappointment, some people call that an un-success or a failure. But instead of collapsing with that experience, you rise up and say, "Wow, here's an opportunity for more learning, for me to try again, for me to learn new skills." And then when you do that, there's where you get the courage and resilience, and really the ability to say, "Let me try things in new ways," which is what creativity is.

Dan Siegel: So when we use those phrases, you know, creativity and courage and resilience, we don't use them lightly. We're literally defining them very carefully, talking about what's the brain state that enables them, and then giving parents strategies for basically creating a Yes Brain state, which develops the trait of courage, the trait of creativity, the trait of resilience, and that's what the whole approach is about.

Neil Sattin: Now, are parents going to be able to create, or cultivate, a Yes Brain state for their kids without getting to know a Yes Brain state for themselves?

Dan Siegel: Well, the first step is exactly like you're saying, Neil. It's about having the insight to feel inside yourself when you're reactive, that's the No Brain state versus when you're receptive, that's the Yes Brain state. And so the first step is to know yourself. And in a book I wrote, Parenting from the Inside Out, with Mary Hartzell, that book was all about the research finding that parents who do have self awareness, and especially awareness of how their own past shaped their present experience of being alive and their present experience of parenting. Those parents are actually the ones most likely to have a relationship with their child that cultivates security. Secure attachment is the best predictor of what we can do as parents to help our children have resilience, basically.

Dan Siegel: So, when you look at that research, it shows that yeah, exactly like you're saying, "Self awareness is the starting place." And then once you have that self awareness, then you say, "Okay, well, that's my inner reflective skills, now what do I do with my parenting actions?" And that's where you get onto the Yes Brain approach where we say, "Okay, your goal as a parent is, he has to know what a Yes Brain feels like and a No Brain feels like, so that you learn from the inside out." How... If you are doing things with your child that are repeatedly creating a sense of threat, or your child is coming home from school and feeling that threat state. Not from anything you did but from what happens with their peers, or teachers, or being on the internet. There are all sorts of things that create a No Brain state. Whatever it is, your sensing it in yourself is the starting place so you can then sense it in your child.

Dan Siegel: And then when you sense that fighting, fleeing, freezing or fainting, No Brain set of re-activities, then you can teach them how to move from a No Brain state to a Yes Brain state. So instead of being shut down in either rigidity or chaos, you actually allow them to transition into a Yes Brain state. And we teach these very practical steps on how to do that, so now your child is in a receptive Yes Brain state where learning happens, openness to new things happens, connecting with others happens, and even developing this internal compass which is basically a feeling in your gut and a feeling in your heart that gives you this literally felt experience that directs you even beyond words in your mind or beyond the thoughts you might have. It's kind of an internal compass, is what I call it, that is directing you to the true north of things that matter to you and things that are important in your relationships with others.

Neil Sattin: So perhaps a great place to dive in would be to talk about the different characteristics of The Yes Brain and how we actually can... Some actual strategies as parents for helping children understand these concepts and then to put them into practice. And I really think this is great because so much of the work that we're doing here in relationship has been about helping people recognize when they are triggered. And we had Steve Porges back on the show in episode... What was it? 34, to talk about Polyvagal Theory and basically what's happening in our brains. But what I love about your book is that it makes it really practical to see not only how it happens in a child, but also ways to talk about it that get you some place else so you're not feeling trapped by your biology. So maybe we should start with balance. That's the first concept that you talk about. And so how do you convey what balance means?

Dan Siegel: Right. Well, the first thing to say in terms of people who love acronyms is I'm kind of an acronym nut, so the whole book is an acronym of... Especially if you like cheese, it'll be easy to remember, it's Brie cheese. So the first of B-R-I-E, I don't know if you noticed that Neil, but is balance. And here the idea is just to start with I think that beautiful way you introduced this segment of our conversation is the sense of awareness we have of our internal state. In our interpersonal neurobiology series, Steve Porges has two books in our series, one is the Polyvagal Theory, the other is the Pocket Guide to The Polyvagal Theory, both beautiful books. And the idea is that you have a physiological state, which we can describe in a moment. And the key to making this practical in a parent's life is for you as a parent, or 'cause you were just talking about a relationship with... Close relationships, with you as a partner to become aware of what that internal state is.

Dan Siegel: And a state basically means a pattern of energy and information flow that's happening. And we can talk about an inner state; so the internal milieu of your whole bodily system, including what happens in your head. So when we talk about the brain, it's really the embodied brain. It's never just the head alone. Even though we're all excited about the brain, 'cause we can now look beneath the skull. But it's really the embodied brain. But you even have a relational state, you can call that an interstate, but you'll probably think it's a highway going between Tennessee and another state. So these inner states and interstates are patterns of energy and information flow. So for example, in the relational world, I work with two wonderful researchers at MIT, Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge, and we're studying something that we call generative social fields.

Dan Siegel: And in this work, what we're trying to do is identify relational fields - that is social connections, relationships, that we call a social field - that have a generative quality to them. That is, they promote curiosity, they promote creativity, they promote compassion, anything with a C. It's good stuff. I think they're what are called integrative fields. Integrative means you honor differences and promote linkages. That's my take on it, for the work Peter, Otto and I are doing. And if you look at it that way, you say, "Well, what is it really comprised of?" And from an interpersonal neurobiology point of view, the field I work in, energy and information flow is something that happens between us as well as within us. So you can look at a field, which is energy and information flow patterns, flow is change, information is a pattern of energy with symbolic value.

Dan Siegel: Energy is this process that has CLIFF variables, another acronym that's contours, locations, intensities, frequencies and forms. And other aspects to it too, that you can look at how literally energy is being shared within a relationship. And then within us, we also have these energy and information of flow states. And these are the inner states, that Steve beautifully described in The Polyvagal Theory, that could activate the dorsal branch of the vagus nerve or the ventral branch. And you can also look at how not just the parasympathetic but the sympathetic system is involved, and to say it very... In an outline kind of way, when we're threatened, a system that Steve calls neuroception, that is constantly looking for, "Am I safe? Am I not safe? Am I safe? Am I not safe?" The neuroceptive monitoring process ascertains even without consciousness, "Right now, I am not safe. I am being threatened." And when it does that, it can go down one of two major pathways. One is an activating pathway that turns on the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. That's a branch that comes down from the head brain into the body.

Neil Sattin: And that's fight, flight, right?

Dan Siegel: That's fight, flight, freeze even. The freeze part is tightening up your muscles to figure out, "Should I fight or should I flee?" [chuckle] So it's like giving yourself temporary paralysis. It's a very activating system. I know in the past, everyone called that the third part of the system. But actually what Steve, and Pat Ogden and I did in a book I wrote called The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology - we wanted make it clear for people that there's actually four Fs. That you have an activating freeze, which is sympathetic, but then that is like the accelerator, but the fourth F is fainting or feigning death, which is when you activate the dorsal branch of the vagus nerve, you shut down heart rate, you shut down blood pressure, and literally, if it's extreme enough, you faint. And there's all sorts of benefits to collapsing, because basically, carnivores don't eat dead meat. So that if they think you're dead, and you fainted, they'll throw you around but they won't eat you, and you'll survive. The other is the telephone booth phenomenon, whereas we don't have telephone booths for the most part anymore because if people heard of bad news on a telephone call, and you fainted but stayed sitting up, then it would be terrible for you. So, that's not good. So you want to, if you're not getting blood flow going to you and you're fainting, you want to be flat.

Neil Sattin: Oh, so if you're in a phone booth, keep the door open before... [chuckle]

Dan Siegel: Keep the door open for sure [chuckle] absolutely. So anyway, those are just funny little stories, but the bottom line is you have this parasympathetic, dorsal branch of the vagus nerve that shuts you down, collapses in the faint... A faint situation when you feel totally helpless, that's one response to threat. And the other three are activating, freezing up; thought, fleeing or fighting. So the bottom line, any of those three are all threat reactions either shutting down or activating you to temporarily paralyze yourself, or run or fight. And these states are not open to new learning. So, when you move from those reactive states of a threat, which you can induce in a workshop, let's say by saying no, or if you're a parent and you're constantly screaming no at your kid, you're always creating a No Brain state. So a Yes Brain state is when your neuroceptive system, that's Porges' term, is assessing, "Okay, I'm no longer threatened." And then turns on Steve's beautiful phrase of a social engagement system that then relaxes your muscles instead of getting ready for fight or getting ready to run or tighten you up or collapsing you.

Dan Siegel: You actually improve the way you're relaxing into what's going on. You're more receptive to what's happening. The bandwidth of sound that you can take in is much broader. You're open to engaging, not just with others but even with yourself, and you're ready to take risks and try out new things. And that's what learning depends on, and creativity depends on, and curiosity is nourished by this Yes Brain state. The Yes Brain state is the receptive, open, connecting state that we want to relate to our children and how we want to relate to our partners. And it's where optimal learning takes place. So as a parent, when you learn to feel the difference in yourself and in your partner and in your child of a Yes Brain versus a No Brain state, you learn to create that balance of a Yes Brain state. That's the balancing part. And the resilience of the BRIE acronym is you learn that when you're in a No Brain reactive state of either chaos or rigidity that tend to come with those states, you learn to help a person move from those reactive states of no, the No Brain, to the receptive state of a Yes Brain. And that's what resilience is - how you come back into this optimal receptive Yes Brain state.

Neil Sattin: So in an ideal world with our kids, one, how are we opening them up to this awareness of what's happening within them? And two, what is our task, when... 'Cause how many times have you witnessed or maybe experienced this yourself, where your child is going offline, [chuckle] they're getting really frustrated or whatever it is, and the impulse is to want to intervene right there and say, "You know, you shouldn't do that or you shouldn't hit your sister or whatever it is"? And what you've just explained is exactly why children aren't going to be receptive to anything that's trying to explain to them why they should or shouldn't be doing whatever it is they're doing in that moment. So how do we invite our children into this knowledge, and how do we show up as parents when we start to sense that our children's neuroception is telling them that they're not safe for whatever reason?

Dan Siegel: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Let's start with the first part of your question, which is just so clear and so elegant. The idea is as a parent to remember that there is no such thing as perfect parenting. There just isn't. And why in all my parenting books, I always put the ways I've goofed up as a parent and my kids are always dismayed.

[laughter]

Dan Siegel: In their terms, why am I sharing what a jerk I can be, [chuckle] 'cause I tell them, I want people to know, that no one does perfect parenting. Even if you're writing books on it, have your degrees in this area, you're board certified, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter. There's no such thing as perfect parenting. So we need to support each other on the journey, because when you've made a rupture to the direction you're trying to take, it's really important to make a repair. So that's the place to start. And you say, "Well, what's this whole rupture repair thing all about?" And so you start with this idea of a No Brain state. So, as you're saying Neil, if your child or an... You could translate everything we're saying, by the way, for a close friendship or a romance or anything. We're talking about the teaching part about it. That maybe a little different in parenting. But connecting it's the same fundamental issue. So when your child enters a No Brain state, fighting, fleeing, freezing, collapsing - they tend to go towards these rigid or chaotic states that can induce in you - as the parent - a similar state as you're present for them and attuned to them. That attunement is focusing on their internal world, you can begin to then resonate with that.

Dan Siegel: Now, if you've not taken the time to become more skillful at being self aware- and what self aware means is nothing fancy - it means, what's your body's state right now? Are you reactive - in a No Brain state? Or are you receptive in a Yes Brain state? That's the first question. And if you're in a No Brain state, there's no good parenting that can happen when you're in a No Brain state. So you need to use your own balance and resilience and get yourself back into a Yes Brain state no matter what your child's doing. Now that's a skill you can develop, and we teach you how to develop that in the book, which I can talk about in a moment. But in terms of directly connecting with your kid, you need to make sure you yourself are in a Yes Brain state first. Now, they keep on screaming or yelling or whatever they're doing in their reactive No Brain state, you need to realize that's going to start inducing frustration in you. If you're in public, it may induce a feeling of shame. You may start getting angry and frustrated, both with your kid and with yourself. And in that social situation, if it's public, you can start losing your temper, even though you don't want to. And even in private, you can feel like, "Wow. I'm at my wit's end. I can't do this anymore."

Dan Siegel: When you get to those kinds of places of No Brain reactivity in yourself, you need to take a break. And depending on the age of your kid, if your kid is not hurting herself, and can be left alone, you need to go for a walk, take a stretch, get a drink of water. You need to get yourself back into a Yes Brain state. So that's the first thing to say. A lot of our meltdowns in parenting, a lot of the ruptures that happen are when we ourselves are in a No Brain state, and we try to parent in that state. It is not possible. And what people tend to do is, they justify their behaviors, hitting their kids, squeezing their arm, cursing at them, demeaning them. And they say, my kid deserved it. And you see, and I've seen this even in my friends, this kind of rationalization, that what they've done in that No Brain state, which in that state felt right, and then they remember that they did it. They then, when they're out of that state, justify it. And it is the saddest thing, because it actually is not very helpful to their kid. And it's actually creating this prison for themselves as they continue to rationalize that what they've been doing and this pseudo-strategy for parenting that's coming from this reactivity is okay. They think somehow it's a sign of strength.

Neil Sattin: Can I ask you a quick question about that actually?

Dan Siegel: Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Because I think, I hear from some parents this notion that "I can't let my child see that I'm uncertain". Or "I'm supposed to be providing safety for my child, so that's going to be setting harsh limits. And even if they're freaking out, it's like me being really clear and direct with them". And what I'm hearing from you suggests that maybe that's not entirely true. That there is a way to maintain a child's sense of safety and at the same time be a fallible human as well.

Dan Siegel: Well, let me ask you something and let me ask your listeners who have asked you those very important questions. When your child gets to be an adolescent and has learned from your role modeling, do you want them to be the kind of adolescent who does something at a party, and then says, "Well, for me to look like a strong friend to my friends, I've gotta say that what I did was absolutely right, even if what I did was actually wrong, and I can learn from it?"

Neil Sattin: Right. I'm guessing the answer is, no, I would want them to have an internal moral compass that helps them do what they really, truly think is right in a moment and not be ruled in that way by the need to not stand out or to... Yeah. Or just to be in a reactive place when they are making choices or not really even making choices.

Dan Siegel: So exactly. An internal moral compass, an internal compass is what you can role model for your child. So if, as happens to all of us, you get reactive and are reacting from a No Brain state rather than responding from a Yes Brain state. I'm emphasizing the term 'Reactivity' versus 'Responsivity.' When you're receptive in the Yes Brain state, you're able to respond in a flexible way. When you're reacting in a No Brain state, it's coming like a knee-jerk reflex. So we all can get into those No Brain states. If all your child is learning is that sometimes you're acting like a complete jerk and making no sense and then standing up for what you did in that jerk state you were in, then all they're learning is that you're kinda out of your mind.

[laughter]

Dan Siegel: Seriously. And they can't make sense of it. I'm serious about that. And in contrast, if you say, "Hey, what I did 10 minutes ago, what I did yesterday, what I did two hours ago... " Whenever you got yourself back into a Yes Brain state. "I just want to tell you, I think what I did was a mistake. I was really frustrated and I was coming from a... " And now you have the language for this. "I was coming from this No Brain state of reactivity, and any human being can do it, it's the way the brain works. So it may not be my fault but it is my responsibility to reconnect with you and say, 'I think what I did was wrong. And I'm going to really try to learn it. Let's try to understand from that experience.'" Now in all of that stuff, I didn't say, "You made me act like that, you stupid kid."

Dan Siegel: 'Cause any parent can do that, and most parents do do that, and that's not helpful. You're the adult. So our kids are learning to be in life by pushing on boundaries. And so coming back to the main thread of this question you're asking, it's so beautiful, is what you can do is learn yourself what a No Brain versus Yes Brain state feels like. Sense that in your child, so that you're role modeling for them, that you're a human being too. And if you pretend like you're not, you're just creating this... Literally, a delusion - a belief that's not consistent with reality. So if you try to pretend like you're not a human, unless you are in fact a cyborg robot.

[chuckle]

Dan Siegel: But if you are a human being then you are a human being, so to pretend like you're not one doesn't make any sense. So goofing up and making a mistake is human and then making a repair of that mistake is heartful humanity. And so, what you want to do is be that full human being. So now what you're doing is you're role-modeling for your child that you're aware of these two states. Now you can very directly, and we do this in The Yes Brain book. We teach you how to understand that in yourself, and understanding your child, and even to teach you how to speak to your child about this, 'cause every child should know about their brain. So you say, "Look, what happened five minutes ago is really hard. I think you were in a No Brain state. You were reactive like that, and I understand why 'cause I got reactive too. We were both really tired, we were really hungry, and we were both frustrated. It was raining, we wanted to go to the zoo. And now we were stuck in the car, and you didn't want to put on your seatbelt. And I got frustrated and yelled at you, and then you said, you definitely wouldn't do it, so I forced... " You know, all the stuff that happens in parenting.

[chuckle]

Dan Siegel: So you can tell the story of the experience with the framework that you understand people's behavior in a No Brain state is quite different from a Yes Brain state. So what you're doing in that communication is you're saying to your child, "Behavior is shaped by the mind beneath the behavior; and the mind is shaped, in part, by the state of mind you're in, which is created by either a No Brain or Yes Brain state. So when you're feeling reactive and not open to what's going on, all sorts of things can be said that can be harmful to others or even to self. And so recognizing that that was the state driving it allows you to move from this No Brain state of reactivity and learn the skills of how to move to a Yes Brain state of being receptive." And listen, the fun thing about this, I gotta say, and it was really beautiful to have Carol Dweck write an endorsement for the book 'cause Carol Dweck has done beautiful work in the mindset of what she calls a fixed versus growth mindset.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Dan Siegel: And in the fixed mindset it's like, "I am a fixed way and my behavior just shows it. Whether I succeed or not in a race or with friends at a party or with the way I perform on a test, that shows my innate talents that can't be changed." Whereas a growth mindset says, "Hey, I have these things I do." All those things I just described. "That come from my effort, and the skills I've learned, they come from disciplined ways of learning. So if I don't accomplish what I think I was going to accomplish in a race, or get the score I wanted to on a test, or have a successful outcome at a party where I didn't know many of the kids, I can use that as a disappointment for sure, okay, but then let that inspire me to learn the skills in a more disciplined way so I can try again." That's a growth mindset.

Dan Siegel: And what Carol Dweck beautifully wrote about was that these are skills, "The Yes Brain" approach are skills that parents can use. And they're also, by the way, the skills that are beneath "Grit" - Angela Duckworth's work - that allows you to see how a child can have this kind of perseverance in the face of challenge that requires a growth mindset that you can then see the strategies for building grit and a growth mindset.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, so I'm wondering if we could just tackle something specific for a moment, because I'm imagining a situation that many parents have multiple times, which is being faced with their child in a state of frustration or disappointment. And you talk beautifully in "The Yes Brain" about this balance as a parent between being differentiated because you want your children to have their experience, but also staying linked to them and feeling with them. So that might be a great way. If you could illustrate, what would you do with a child who was feeling really disappointed about something? What's a way that you could approach that that would foster their own growth in developing some of this, I think that would be more like resiliency, which you talk about as expanding their ability to handle disappointments and stressful situations without going into the red zone of fight, flight, freeze?

Dan Siegel: Right, exactly, exactly. So if you take the four of those things, the BRIE components of balance, resilience, insight and empathy, let's do an example that illustrates all four...

Neil Sattin: Great.

Dan Siegel: With what you're inquiring about, about a frustrating experience. So let's take that example I gave you. You're going to the zoo and it starts to... You have pouring rain, so you can't go to the zoo. Your child, let's say seven, he was so excited about going to see the panda bears and now he can't, and it's really, really raining, so you've gotta have an alternative plan. And he is really angry, he won't put his seatbelt on the back seat, in his car-seat, and you're just frustrated beyond belief because you wanted to see the pandas too, and you're both hungry 'cause you were going to go have lunch in the zoo, or all these things. Okay.

Neil Sattin: Right, and now you're getting frustrated because your child is not putting their seatbelt on and not listening to you and not enabling you to move on to the next thing.

Dan Siegel: Exactly, exactly. And so you get out, you're getting wet, you're trying to reach over there and he's pushing on you 'cause he's in a fight mode, and you're trying to buckle that seat and then he hits you in the face. Whatever is going to happen, this can happen.

Neil Sattin: Right. Clearly, neither you nor I has ever experienced this before. [chuckle]

Dan Siegel: No, no, never. I'm talking about theoretical people. And so now he hits you in the face and so now you grab his arm, and now you're screaming, and he's crying and he's looking terrified of you because you look terrifying, and neither of you want to be doing this, but this is what's happening. [chuckle] This is Parenting 101. So it's really hard, it's the basics. Okay, so you take a break, you close the door so he doesn't get wet, you don't continue with what you're doing because you recognize you're really doing stuff that's not so good, and maybe you get the umbrella and go for the walk around the car, but you don't abandon him, maybe go sit in the front seat and say to him, "Joey, let's both take a couple minutes just to calm down, let's just focus on your breathing," and he's screaming, yelling, but you do not interact with him, but you're in the car. So you're not abandoning him, but you're getting yourself back into the Yes Brain state. We call it the green zone, green for go.

Dan Siegel: So once you're really in that green zone, you check in with yourself. How's my heart doing? How are my muscles doing? Is my jaw clenched? You look for, I call it SIFTing the mind. So the S is the sensations in your body we just went over, the I are any kind of images, so maybe you're seeing red and maybe you're really furious, and maybe you're thinking of images of how you've spoiled him because you take him to the zoo all the time or whatever. Feelings of frustration or anger. Thoughts. "God, I've done a terrible job. This is horrible," or, "This is what my father always did with me. I've made a big mistake in becoming my father." All these things. So you're SIFTing your mind.

Dan Siegel: And now, as you sift through this stuff, you're naming things so you can tame them, because what the studies show is that when you name an emotional state, you can actually regulate it. So this is the insight part of BRIE. And now you're going to do the E of BRIE, the empathy. You're going to say, "Well, of course he was frustrated." He entered a No Brain state 'cause he was hungry and tired; maybe he had a sleepover the night before at a friend's house or something. And you both didn't expect it to rain and he loves going to the zoo with you, so of course he's really disappointed. He's seven. He's not 47 like you are; he's seven.

Dan Siegel: Okay. So, now once you get yourself SIFTed through, you get back into the Yes Brain state. He's still kicking or whatever he's doing. So here's the move. You connect before you redirect, and what you're doing there is you're able to say to him, "I can understand why it would be so frustrating for you that we couldn't go to the zoo." And then you pause. Now, in that moment what you're doing is, instead of reacting to his reactivity by saying, "Stop yelling! Stop screaming! It's okay, blah, blah, blah," you're actually attuning to where he's at. I remember this with another acronym, PART. You're present for Joey, that's the P. You're attuning, this is the A, which means focusing attention on his inner world, not just his kicking legs and his screaming voice. You're attuning to his inner mental state. In this case, he's fighting back 'cause he's in the No Brain state. He's really mad and upset 'cause he's really disappointed, so he feels threatened because he didn't get to have his time with you, all these things. That's attuning.

Dan Siegel: Resonating is, you are being shaped by his internal state. Maybe initially it was too much and you've lost differentiation because you became him. Now you can resonate without over-identifying with him, and that's fine. You can feel that frustration. And the T of PART... So presence; attunement is focusing on the internal world; resonating is feeling, some of his feelings not becoming him. T is trust, and now trust is created, 'cause you say, "Joey, of course you were frustrated, of course it was so hard. I even understand why - it's not okay but - you hit me in the face, 'cause you were feeling so mad, because I didn't recognize how frustrated you were. I get that."

Dan Siegel: And then you just sit there. Now in that moment, what's happening to energy and information flow that's within you and within him, is you're becoming joined, because you're not judging his state, you're not trying to teach him a lesson, you're not trying to criticize him, you're just being with him. Instead of being alone, you two are now together. And if you look at the mathematics of that, basically two separate systems becoming joined, as differentiated and now linked, allow the whole system to do what's called "increased complexity." Basically it's becoming more integrated, and the thing that's really fantastic about that is it becomes more regulated.

Dan Siegel: So instead of being alone in his frustration and fear and fury, he's now joined with you, and in that joining things start to shift. And in that joining, he moves, little bit by little bit from No Brain reactivity to Yes Brain receptivity. And now, in the joining now, you can then problem-solve together. "We both got really in a No Brain way, didn't we?" "Yeah, we really did." He starts to cry, "But I really wanted to see the pandas." You go, "I know. I did too. Gosh! Oh, my God! I just realized there is a panda movie at the movie theatre. We can go to the movies, if we can get in 'cause maybe everyone is going, so we don't know we can - but why don't we go get some lunch first, see when the movie is playing and let's go to the movies." "Okay, dad, that's great."

Dan Siegel: And so what you've done there is so many things. You've taught him how he can go from reactivity to receptivity, so that's the resilience part. You've taught him how to feel the joy and the balance, that's the B part. You've taught him that when he's now joined with you and can reconnect and redirect his focus of attention. The insight is, you've taught him that you were aware you would become reactive. And you're teaching him to become aware of his own state by saying, "Yeah, I guess you were in that reactive state when you hit me. You didn't want to hurt me but you hit me." And then the E, the empathy part is, you're teaching him that you can look beyond the outwardly manifested behaviors, at the mind driving the behaviors.

Dan Siegel: And so often parents don't learn that skill, and yet it's a mindsight skill that's at the basis of... The way we teach an internal compass is, by ourselves, tuning into the internal experience of our child, and then the child learns to focus not only on the internal states of others but on their own internal state. So when we come back to that first question, Neil, would you want your adolescent to have an internal compass that drives their moral decisions? And you said yeah, the answer is yes. This is how you do it. You get them in touch with their internal state beyond just outwardly manifested behaviors. That's the key. Mindsight skill-building, is the basis of a Yes Brain strategy approach and being real. You are a real human being who is in the real position of being a parent.

Neil Sattin: Well, and I notice with my own son that the more that I show up that way, joining him first and then doing problem-solving, then I've just seen his whole emotional state really flourish and blossom just from adopting that approach more and more, and I've even... I was experimenting a little bit more aggressively while I was reading "The Yes Brain," and what I love about this work is that you illustrate it so clearly in the book, and it's not a very long book, it's a really easy read, and it's really practical and has very immediate effects in terms of the lightness, that I was perceiving anyway, in my own children.

Dan Siegel: Exactly. Well, this is the thing that's so incredibly rewarding for Tina and for myself is, we get together and we think, "Okay, where have our parents in our workshops been asking questions? And what could Tina and I do to try to articulate in a very simple way?" And believe me, it is hard to write a short book [chuckle] 'cause often I write long ones. So to really write in a short way for busy, tired parents, something that actually has immediate, practical things you can do and also a conceptual framework that we're trying to build in this library of books. We have "The Whole-Brain Child", "No-Drama Discipline" and the others down the pipe that parents can take in, and instead of them being just separate things, it builds this kind of mindsight approach to parenting.

Neil Sattin: Well, Dan, I really appreciate your work and Tina's work with this book, and I just have so many questions I could ask you but we've reached the top of the hour and I want to honor our time commitment that we made. For you listening, if you're interested in finding out more about Dan's work and mindsight, you can listen to episode 57 of the Relationship Alive podcast. You can also download the transcript and the action guide from this episode if you visit neilsattin.com/yesbrain, and we will have a link to Dan Siegel's website, this book, his other books, so that you can get all the information that you need about Dan Siegel and his work. In the meantime, Dan, so much to talk about - so I hope we have the opportunity to chat again in the not too distant future, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan Siegel: Neil, thank you and thank you for all your wonderful work in bringing me this material for the world out into access for everyone.

Neil Sattin: It's my pleasure. You're most welcome!

Resources:

Check out Dan Siegel's website

Read Dan’s latest book (with Tina Payne Bryson) The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child

www.neilsattin.com/yesbrain Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Dan Siegel

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of:

The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Does jealousy affect you in your relationship? Or has it impacted you in the past? One thing is for sure, jealousy has a destructive impact on any relationship, leaving both partners feeling unsafe and under attack. So - how do you know what's really going on when one of you is jealous? And how do you get to the other side, so that you can experience a relationship where you can experience the freedom to be yourself AND the safety of a secure partnership? Whether you're getting jealous, or on the receiving end of your partner's jealousy - this episode will lead you through the steps of discovering what's really going on - and how to reconnect in a healthy way.

Resources

Episode 47: How to Come Back into Balance When You're Triggered

The Relationship Alive Community on Facebook

FREE Guide to my Top 3 Relationship Communication Secrets

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

Amazing intro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

How do you separate fact from fiction when it comes to creating and sustaining sexual desire? In this episode of Relationship Alive, our special guest is Emily Nagoski, author of the New York Times bestseller "Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life." Her work has been cited by both John Gottman and Esther Perel as a must-read for understanding how desire works, and how to nurture a sexual connection over the long term with your partner. Emily Nagoski and I dispel some modern-day myths about sexuality, and then we reveal some of the new science to help you create more pleasure in your life. And, as Emily says, "Pleasure is the Measure!"

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. What if everything that you've been told about sex and desire was wrong? Or maybe not quite wrong, just missing really important bits of information that would help you understand the big picture. As it turns out, there's a lot that we've come to know through science about what turns us on and what turns us off. But this information is relatively new and hasn't quite made it out to the mainstream or the cover of Cosmo, at least not yet. How do you know if what you're experiencing is normal? And what can you do to discover more about who you are as a sexual being and to find more connection and sex in your relationship, without creating pressure on yourself or on your partner? Today's guest has many of the answers to these questions.

Neil Sattin: Her name is Doctor Emily Nagoski and she's the author of the New York Times bestseller "Come as You Are", which John Gottman says is the best book he's ever read on sexual desire and why some couples stop having sex. Esther Perel also refers to Emily's work. So, if John Gottman and Esther Perel, who, at the moment, come from different camps on the question of sexual desire, if they can agree on Emily Nagoski's work, then you know that she's done something truly magnificent. There's gonna be a lot to cover and, as usual, we will have a detailed transcript and action guide for this episode available to you at neilsattin.com/normal. Or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get your copy. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive.

Emily Nagoski: I'm so excited to talk to you.

Neil Sattin: So let's start at the very beginning.

Emily Nagoski: Very good place to start.

Neil Sattin: Exactly. Where did this book come from for you? It's about desire and it's about understanding what makes us tick. And in particular, it's written for women and about women's sexuality, though there's so much relearning for men to do as well. And I'm wondering if you can just create our garden here for us for this conversation. Where did this book come from and why was it so important for you to write it?

Emily Nagoski: Sure. I'd been teaching sexuality in some form and some context, for at least 15 years when I started teaching a class called Women's Sexuality at Smith College. Smith is a women's college so I had a class of almost entirely women, 187 of them. And Smith students are not ordinary human beings. Smith alums include Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan, and Catharine MacKinnon, and my favorite, Julia Child. And so the very first day, I'm teaching the anatomy class, of course, I just start with the anatomy. And a student raises her hand and says, "Emily, what's the evolutionary origin of the hymen?" And 15 years I'd been a sex educator, I had never even wondered the answer to that question. So I knew it was gonna be an intense, interesting semester. And it really was. They pushed me really hard. I shoehorned in as much science as I could into this beginner level class. After a semester of really hard work, my last question on the final exam was just tell me one important thing you learned. It can be... Just take the question seriously, you can have your two points no matter what you say. Just tell me one important thing you learned after all this cutting edge science.

Emily Nagoski: And I thought they were gonna say the evolutionary theory, or attachment theory, or arousal non-concordance, or responsive desire, or any of these other things. And more than half of them, of 187 extraordinary students, more than half of them just wrote something like, "I'm normal. I learned that I'm normal. Just because I'm different from other women doesn't mean I'm broken. I can accept my sexuality as it is, and my partner's even when it's different from mine." I'm grading final exams with tears in my eyes thinking, I don't know what happened in my class, but I think it must have been something extraordinary and I wanna do it again, and I wanna do it on a much bigger scale. And that's the day that I decided to write "Come as You Are." And five years after that is when "Come as You Are" actually got published.

Neil Sattin: And I love these... There's so many quotes from your book, and one thing that I really enjoyed about reading "Come as You Are" is that literally every chapter revealed something new. So while it all builds on itself, at the same time, I felt like I was walking through a labyrinth and around every corner I found some amazing gem, which is just so exciting when you're reading a book. But this quote toward the end really was powerful for me. And all it is, is this, "The sexuality you have right now is it and it's beautiful, even especially, if it's not what you were taught it should be."

Emily Nagoski: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: And that really hit me hard because I think so often we do get lost in thinking it's supposed to be some other way. And when we learn to tune in to what is actually happening in our bodies and accept that, and then use that as the springboard for what happens next, there's so much power in that moment.

Emily Nagoski: And in one way it's really obvious that the fastest, easiest way to shut down your sexual well-being is to judge and shame your own sexuality as it - is like is that gonna be a turn on in your brain? For you to hate what's happening in your sexuality, obviously not. But if you can release the judgement and shame and be like "Oh, look, here's my sexuality. Being what it is, doing what it does, I know that I've been given a sort of like phantom sexual self of what I'm told I should be, what I'm supposed to do, what it's supposed to be like, and I know I'm supposed to beat the shit out of myself until I meet that standard, but what if? What if just hypothetically I stopped beating the shit out of myself and just enjoyed my sexuality as it is?" It turns out our ability to stop demanding that our bodies be different and allowing them to be as they are, is maybe the single most powerful thing we can do to maximize our sexual well-being. Is it easy? Nope. But it's almost magical in it's power.

Neil Sattin: And this might be a good time to start with talking about the dual control system. This is something that probably most people don't know about in terms of how they think about their own sexual operating system. Can you speak a little bit to what is the dual control's mechanism and how does that affect whether we're into sex or not into sex, or feeling desirous and aroused or not feeling desirous and aroused?

Emily Nagoski: Yes, absolutely. This is the fundamental hardware between our ears in the way our sexuality functions. It's a model developed at the Kinsey Institute starting in the late '90s, early 2000s, by Erick Janssen and John Bancroft, and it basically posits that sexuality works the way every other system in our central nervous system works. Which is a dual control mechanism. If there's a dual control mechanism, how many parts are there?

Neil Sattin: Two.

Emily Nagoski: There's two parts. Exactly, right? The first one is the sexual accelerator. And if the first part's is the accelerator or the gas pedal, the second part must be?

Neil Sattin: The brakes.

Emily Nagoski: Brake. Exactly. The accelerator is the part most of us are already sort of familiar with... It notices everything in the environment that it codes as sexually relevant. This is all the things that you're seeing and smelling and tasting and hearing and, crucially, imagining, that your brain codes as a sexually relevant stimulus, and it sends that turn on signal that activates arousal and desire. But at the same time that that's functioning, there is also a brake that is noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now, everything you see and hear, smell, touch, taste, or, crucially, imagine, that your brain codes as a potential threat, a reason not to be sexually active right now. And it sends the turn off signal. So your level of arousal or desire at any given moment is this balance of how many ons are turned on and how many offs are turned off. Sexual well-being is maximized, that is to say, sexual pleasure in the moment is maximized, when you're turning on all the ons and all of the brakes are turned off. And when I was talking about self-criticism and contempt for your own sexuality being a turn off, obviously, if you're judging your own sexuality, is that hitting the accelerator? Almost certainly not. That's one of the very common things that hits the brakes.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. And I think what is confusing is that it's common for us to idealize one and to completely ignore the other. Or, one thing that was really enlightening in reading about these, is that we come with our own set level for these things. So some of us could have an accelerator that's really sensitive and easy to turn on, whereas others may not. And that doesn't necessarily represent a problem that needs to be fixed. And same with the brakes. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that and why that... Why that's so.

Emily Nagoski: Yeah, there, there are individual differences in the sensitivities of the brakes and the accelerator in each person's brain. As far as we can tell from the science so far, they seem to be pretty set. They're not as set as IQ, but we don't know of any specific interventions to change their sensitivity. Let's just assume they're like personality traits like introversion and extroversion, they are what they are. Most of us are heaped up around the middle. We're just sort of all about the same, but a handful of people, for example, will have really sensitive accelerators, and a person with a sensitive accelerator, vroom, right? That's a person who is easily activated, which can be great under the right circumstances and can be pretty dangerous under the wrong circumstances. If a person is experiencing a lot of negative effects, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, helplessness, repressed rage we've all got it, and they don't have good mechanisms in place for coping with that negative emotion - they may begin to use sex as an outlet, a way to avoid experiencing those negative emotions.

Emily Nagoski: And that's where sexual risk taking and sexual compulsivity can come into play, in those folks who have higher sensitivity accelerators. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the folks, for example, who might have really sensitive brakes, where the least stray thought, stray fingernail, stray noise in the hallway can just shut everything right down. And those are the folks who struggle most with sexual dysfunction, desire disorders, desire differential in their relationship. For most of us though, it's not that our brakes are overly sensitive. It's that we have just a truck load of stuff hitting our brakes all the time and it's much more common. The usual party line about sexual issues is that, well, you should try adding more stuff to the gas pedal. Try role play, and lingerie, and toys, and porn, and fantasy, and all the things, and those are great and you should try them if you like them. Great. And most people when they're struggling with sexuality, it's not because there's too little stimulation to the accelerator, it's because there's too much stimulation to the brake, which is gonna be - some of it - is that self criticism and body shaming.

Emily Nagoski: For some people, it's a trauma history. For some people, it's straight up stress. 80 to 90% of people find that stress and other mood and anxiety issues negatively impact their sexual desire. For some people, it can actually increase it, but that's a different story. And relationship issues, of course are the major factor in things that hit the brakes.

Neil Sattin: What's a good way for someone listening right now to get a sense for themselves of what we're talking about and how it impacts them? Like how do I identify what my brakes are and what my accelerator items are?

Emily Nagoski: Yeah, most people have a good sense - if they just sit down and think about it... I'm interested in sex when these things are happening and I am not at all interested and don't experience pleasure under these circumstances. You can start in a general way with just lists, like what are the things that stress me out that prevent me from being interested in sex? What are the relationship issues that get me stuck so that when I get in bed with my partner, I'm not just getting in bed with my partner, I'm getting in bed with this laundry list of crap, that's just like gunking up the pipes, and you gonna clean out the pipes before you're gonna be interested in sex. Another concrete specific way rather than just generically...if you could think about one really awesome sexual experience you've had, doesn't have to be the best one you ever had, just like a really great sexual experience. Consider what the context was that might have been hitting the accelerator and keeping the brakes off. So what was your own mental and physical state? What were your partner's characteristics? What were your relationship characteristics? What was the setting? Was it in person? Was it in public? Was it over skype? Was it texting and photos?

Emily Nagoski: Was it in the closet at a stranger's house, at a party, against a wall of other people's coats? Or was it in your own bed with the door shut and the kids over at somebody else's house? What was the setting that worked? Other life circumstances is a really important factor. How stressed out and exhausted were you from work and impending nuclear holocaust? What was your overall stress level? And then my favorite relevant factor is that called ludic factors. Ludic related to the word ludicrous. It just means play, how curious and playful and fun could you be? What games were you playing with your partner that were really working for you? There's actually, if you go to my website, there's worksheets, the worksheets are in the book and you can also just download them for free, that walk you through these contexts. I recommend that you think through three great experiences and three not so great experiences, not three terrible sexual experiences just three like, "meh" kind of experiences and look for what wasn't working for you. And when you actually... It takes some time. But when you sit down and take the time to think through what contexts were really working for me. I don't know why that made that sound. Could you hear that?

Neil Sattin: No, what did you hear?

Emily Nagoski: Oh, sorry, my sister is texting me and the alert came on.

Neil Sattin: Okay.

Emily Nagoski: Sorry.

Neil Sattin: That's okay.

Emily Nagoski: It distracted me. Let me go back. It takes a little time to sit and actually think through six different sexual experiences, but people really do have surprising insights. People who really feel like they know a lot about their own sexual functioning, when they sit down and think in this concrete, specific way, will notice things they never heard before. A friend of mine went through it and what she realized... She's in a long distance relationship, and when she actually did get together with her partner, what she noticed was that the expectation that, "Now that we're finally together, we should be having sex." That expectation, that sense of obligation, was absolutely the key to her shutting down her sexuality. And she only figured that out by thinking critically through the factors that were hitting the accelerators and hitting the brakes.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. And that's huge, you talk about that particular one like how you feel about whether you are or not having sex, or how you feel about whether or not you should want to have sex in this moment as being another really important factor in whether your accelerator's on and your brakes are out of the way, or your sexual car's coming to a screeching halt.

[chuckle]

Neil Sattin: I'm curious to know from, yeah, from your perspective. One thing you just mentioned was the people who do have a really light touch accelerator and the danger for those people that sex could become a compulsion if it's that's easy for them to get turned on and to potentially use it as a way to mitigate and cope with the stress and things that are going on in their lives, and in my experience with my clients, and people I talk to, and in my own experience as well, sometimes that those people tend to find themselves in relationships with people who do not have as light touch of an accelerator, and in fact often have quite the opposite. I'm wondering what do you do, and I think part of this is maybe in what you were just talking about with that, the way that you think about whether you should or shouldn't be having sex, but what do you do to give someone hope who is in a situation - and you describe in your book one of the amalgamated characters, someone named Olivia, a woman who it's really easy for her to get into the mood to have sex and she's with a partner named Patrick for whom it's not so easy. And how do you give a couple in that situation Some hope around shifting that dynamic in a way that, that feels positive for both people?

Emily Nagoski: This actually touches on what has turned out to be one of the most important ideas in the book, which is the nature of desire itself, how desire is supposed to function in our bodies and our relationships. In the case of Olivia, who is the composite character with a sensitive accelerator, she represents about 15% of women who have pretty sensitive accelerators, it means that she also happens to be a person who, when she is stressed out, her interest in sex actually goes up, which is true for, again, about 10-20% of people. And there's not a gender differential on that one. And she's with a partner, as so many of these folks are, for whom the opposite is true. So if they're both stressed out at the same time, Patrick's interest in sex hits the floor and Olivia's hits the ceiling. And that's not in and of itself a problem, but if they start having opinions about which one of them is doing it wrong, that's when things can get really tricky. Because it's... If you don't have a judgement about who's right and who's wrong and you're just like, "Well, our brains are wired differently. That's how it is," And you can rationally negotiate a compromise, great.

Emily Nagoski: But if you start feeling bitter and resentful towards your partner for either being too demanding or too withholding, and you're judging and shaming yourself for wanting too much and being too much, or you're judging and shaming yourself for not wanting enough and not being enough, that's when things get really sticky, which is why the "You are Normal." Mantra comes back over and over the book, You are normal, nobody's doing it wrong. Both people are right and healthy and fine. The emotional weight that we attach to different experiences of sexual desire is just a social construct that we're laying on top of it. You get to feel again, totally normal about the way you're experiencing desire. And the practical solution is just to negotiate. What are we gonna do about the fact that I would like to have the sexy sexes and you are not interested in having the sexy sexes right now? How about we compromise in some way that works for both of us, where you stay with me and put your hand over my heart while I masturbate to orgasm? That way you don't have to do anything you're not into and I get to have the connection and the sexual release.

Emily Nagoski: How's that sound? If we can let go of our judgments of what sex is supposed to be and what desire is supposed to be, that's a perfectly reasonable compromise. That's a really helpful compromise. It's only not helpful compromise if you're like, "But it doesn't conform with my expectations about the aspirational culturally constructed ideal of what my sex life is supposed to be."

Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so this is great because I'm wondering if you can suggest a good way to notice that in oneself. How do I know whether what I want is culturally constructed, or what I actually want, and what would be really important to have on some level?

Emily Nagoski: Dude, I don't know.

[laughter]

Emily Nagoski: That's the million dollar question, right? I would say that the distinction we're thinking about here is not so much what I want, versus how I feel. The word that I use in the book, that comes from John Gottman's research is meta-emotions. There's how you feel. There's how your sexuality... And this is also language I came up with after I finished Come as You Are. I was traveling all around the country and I was talking to students all over, and a student raises her hand and says, "You say in the book, Emily, confidence and joy. Over and over, you use these words, confidence and joy. Can you tell us what you mean by confidence and joy?" And I was like, "No, I have no idea what those words actually mean." And I had to think about it for a long time. And I finally realized that confidence is knowing what is true, knowing that you have a sensitive accelerator and your partner doesn't, or you have a sensitive brake and your partner doesn't, knowing that the context that works for you is one that is really safe, and familiar, and calm, and quiet, whereas the context that works for your partner is one of novelty, and adventure, and risk.

Emily Nagoski: And okay, now you know what's true. Joy is the hard part, and that's loving what is true. Even, as I say in the book, when it is not what you were taught, it was supposed to be true. Even if it's not what you wish were true. Boy, would things be simple if two partners always all the time wanted the same level of sex. Desire differential is the most common reason why people seek sex therapy. Desire differential is also really universal. There is no such thing as two people whose desire tracks the same day-to-day.

Emily Nagoski: Sometimes you have a rough day and your partner doesn't, so you're not interested in sex and your partner is. Some days the opposite is true. There is no such thing as people with exactly the same desire all the time. Just being like, "Hey, that's cool." That's what's true. Fortunately, I also love my partner, and so, we're gonna work it out together. We're gonna have conversations that can be calm and loving and affectionate, because we understand what's true about ourselves, about our accelerator, about the context that work for us, and we love each other and the things that are true about our two different sexualities. There are no judgement, there's no shame, there's just accepting that we are two different people, and it's not just that people vary from each other, it's also that people change over time. When you're in a relationship that lasts over multiple years, you and your partner's sexualities are gonna change and they may not necessarily change along the same trajectories. Joy is loving what is true about both of your sexualities and the ways that they change, whether that feels comfortable and easy or not.

Neil Sattin: And this conversation, I appreciate that you brought up the requirement to as much as possible have it in a loving way, because those desire differentials can create a lot of stress. And as you just mentioned, for most people, no matter where they are in terms of brakes and accelerator, I think somewhere between 80% and 90% of people, that stress it's going to turn the brakes on.

Emily Nagoski: Yeah.

Neil Sattin: Can you talk a little bit about this... How the stress that we're carrying around with us every day... What can we do about that? Why is it so important to do something about it, rather than just sweeping it under the rug or pretending it doesn't exist?

Emily Nagoski: Right.

Neil Sattin: And what's on the other side of doing something about it?

Emily Nagoski: There's a whole lot of telling ourselves not to, in a lot of aspects of our lives. We tell ourselves not to feel that way about sexuality. We try to force ourselves to feel a different way than we actually feel. We fight against the truth and reality, and we do that with our stress too. We tell ourselves that we're supposed to experience, "No, I don't need to be stressed out about that." You try to tell yourself, "Relax, just relax." When your partner, if you're stressed out and your partner is like, "Why can't you just relax? Just relax." Is that helpful? Does that help? Does that make things better?

Neil Sattin: No, right.

Emily Nagoski: No, it doesn't make things better, right? No, obviously. What has to happen is, instead of trying to just like not be stressed out, you have to move in the direction of the stress, sink down into it, and allow your body to experience it. Stress is a physiological process. It's like digestion. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. And if we don't interfere with it, our bodies will move through that entire cycle in a healthy, normal way that doesn't interfere with our lives. But as human beings with giant prefrontal cortexes and massively social tendencies to wanna control our emotions in order to make other people feel good, we tend to keep the brakes on, on our stress in the same way they keep our brakes on, on our sexuality. And so, we're walking around with all these activated stress response cycles, stress is the adrenaline, and the cortisol, and the hypervigilance, and the muscle tension, and the digestion changes, and the cardiovascular changes, and like your whole body, and your immune system is suppressed.

Emily Nagoski: Every body system is influenced by the fact that these stress response cycles have been activated. And if you just tell yourself not to feel it, those stress response cycles will stay spinning inside your body waiting to finish and they will wait forever. Most of us are walking around with decades worth of incomplete stress response cycles, just sitting like rocks somewhere in our body waiting for us to let them go. Fortunately, there's lots of research that tells us what the effective strategies are for completing the stress response cycle. For example, physical activity. This is the obvious one, because the stress response cycle is designed for us to survive threats like being chased by a lion. When you're being chased by a lion, what do you do?

Neil Sattin: Right, you get the hell out of there.

Emily Nagoski: You run. Yeah. Our bodies do not differentiate between stressors, so your body responds basically the same way to a lion as it does to your boss or to your partner shaming and guilting you about sex, right? It's basically the same physiological stress response. It turns out, dealing with the stress itself, the physiology in your body requires basically totally different things from dealing with the thing that caused the stress. There is the calm, rational planning and negotiating that you have to do with your partner and then there is the dealing with the physiological stress itself. Just because you've dealt with the stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress. Physical activity is the single most important thing that you can do - when people tell you that physical activity is good for you, that's for real-sy, every day, 20 minutes if you possibly can, literally any form of physical activity, even if it's just like jumping up and down in your bedroom, any form of physical activity is helpful.

Emily Nagoski: We know that sleep is effective, creative self expression, writing and painting, music. We know that sleep is effective, did I say sleep already? Oh, and affection. So, calm, trusting, especially physical affection, but it doesn't have to be physical affection, it can just be the loving presence of another human is great. You know what's also great? The loving presence of a dog. You know what's also great? Loving presence of a God. If that's what makes sense for you. Whatever counts as a loving presence for you sitting and being with that presence helps to return your body to a state of calmness so that your body knows this is a safe place to live. I am safe right now. But it takes doing something for real, not just telling yourself.

Neil Sattin: Right. And if you're doing that over and over, especially finding a way to regulate with another with your partner, then that brings about its own level of healing in terms of your right brain coming back online and your ability to operate from the parts of your prefrontal cortex that...

Emily Nagoski: Right. To think critically, to be curious and creative, all of that comes back only when you have reduced the adrenaline and cortisol levels and reduce the threat level so that the creativity can expand instead of being so focused on just survival.

Neil Sattin: Exactly. Just for your reference listening, if you want to learn more about healing trauma and ways modalities that can help with that we did have Peter Levine on the show, the creator of Somatic Experiencing, that was episode 29. So it's something for you to bookmark and listen to later, and he'll be coming back on the show as well. But somatic experiencing is just one. There are all kinds of modalities if you wanna work with a practitioner to help you...

Emily Nagoski: Pat Ogden is another really key person in body based therapy. Pat Ogden and somatic... I forget what it's called. Pat Ogden is amazing and great, and does really, really good work around healing trauma through the body. What I love about body based strategies for dealing, not just with stress but with a trauma is that you don't ever have to have insight. You don't even necessarily have to think about whatever it is that caused the stress or the trauma. It's a different process. You can choose an insight process if you want to, but if you don't wanna go there, if you don't wanna think about it, sometimes you can release this shit from your body without ever having to think about the event that activated the stress. You can just deal with the stress itself without dealing with the event itself, especially if the event is in the past and there's nothing you can do about it now. Body based therapies are wonderfully gentle, indirect, tremendously effective strategy for helping to return your body to a safe state.

Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm, big recommend from me as well.

Emily Nagoski: There's a chapter on stress and love, and the stress section is pretty much entirely based on the polyvagal theory and Peter Levine's work, somatic experiencing, and Pat Ogden's work in the body-based approach to stress.

Neil Sattin: Great. Yeah, and if you wanna learn more about the polyvagal theory, which Emily just mentioned, check out our episode with Steve Porges, which is episode number 34.

Emily Nagoski: And so you've just interviewed my entire shelf of reference books.

[laughter]

Neil Sattin: Basically. That's my goal, Emily. [chuckle] You shouldn't have sent me that photo of your bookshelf, and actually send me more 'cause I don't wanna run out of people. I'm curious if we can talk now about the... 'cause one of the concepts that you discussed that was so fascinating for me was how you broke apart the process of arousal and desire into these different systems in our brain, and there was the enjoying system, the expecting system, and the eagerness system. And I felt like taking it apart like that made it so much easier to understand in a way that's actually practical for people. Can we dive in and just give a little bit more information to our listeners about what I'm even talking about?

Emily Nagoski: Yeah. When you read sort of mainstream popular science journalism about brain science, they'll refer to this thing, the pleasure centers of the brain. And if they do that, it's a pretty good cue that they either don't know what they're talking about or they're simplifying it in a way that's really unhelpful, because it's not just the pleasure center of the brain. And calling it the pleasure center is like calling your vulva the vagina, like there's so much more to it, and if we ignore the other parts, we're ignoring some fundamental aspects of how the thing works. So if we break it down, yes, there's the pleasure part, which is just the part of your brain that responds to whether or not stuff feels good, and that's a little more complicated and we can talk about the ways that your brain responds differently to different stimuli as pleasurable or not depending on the context. Should we do that now? Or should I wait?

Neil Sattin: Sure. Yeah, let's...

Emily Nagoski: Okay.

Neil Sattin: And I'll bring us back.

Emily Nagoski: Yeah, the pleasure piece of it is slightly complicated because the nucleus accumbens shell in your brain has an affective keyboard. Everybody's asleep now, sorry.

[laughter]

Emily Nagoski: So the deal is, if you're in a sort of a neutral mental state and somebody tickles you, meh. If you're already in a fun, flirty, sexy, positive, playful, trusting state of mind and your certain special someone tickles you, that even if tickling is not your favorite, in principle, like that could feel fun and lead to other things happening, right? 'Cause your brain interprets that stimulation as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure because you already feel safe, and trusting, and playful. But if you are pissed off at your partner and they tickle you, you wanna punch them in the face. It's exactly the same stimulation, right? The same tickling stimulation but the state of your mind is different, your brain state is different and so your brain interprets the sensation entirely different, not as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure, but as a potential threat to be avoided or even attacked.

Neil Sattin: Right.

Emily Nagoski: And the only thing that is different is your state of mind, so pleasure is not simple. Pleasure is sensitive to the context in which you're experiencing it which is why hot and heavy early on in the relationship, you're in the middle of making dinner and your certain special someone comes over and starts kissing on your neck or whatever. And your knees kinda gets off and you're like, "Oh, that's cool." And things happen. 10 years later, you're trying to make dinner and you've got kids waiting for food and screaming at you and you got 10 years of accumulated frustrations in your relationship. Your certain special someone comes over and kisses on your neck then. You're like, "I'm trying to... Get away from me. What are you doing?" And again, it's exactly the same stimulation, but because the context is different, you experience that sensation in a totally different way, and that is a normal way for us to experience sensations.

Emily Nagoski: The problem is not the way we experience the sensation, the problem is that the context changed. And it's not that the context is broken, that's just life. There's always the solution, we don't have to change us in order to find a solution, we just notice what it is about the context that's hitting the brakes and making our brain interpret the sensation as something that makes you wanna smack the person in the face and change the context if you possibly can to something that makes you interpret this person's sensations as something pleasurable to be approached with curiosity. That's the pleasure component of it. The nucleus accumben shell, woohoo. The second part of this pleasure center is actually the desire part. Eagerness, I called it in the book. Kent Berridge, who's... Have you interviewed Kent Berridge?

Neil Sattin: Not yet, no.

Emily Nagoski: Oh my God, that's the next guy on my shelf.

Neil Sattin: Okay.

Emily Nagoski: Kent Berridge or Morten Kringelbach.

Neil Sattin: Okay.

Emily Nagoski: They're the two key authors on this batch of research that distinguishes between wanting and liking. We talked about what liking is and the ways that it's dependent on context. Wanting is moving toward, is the actual activation, the desire, approach piece of it, not just the liking of, like, "Woo!" Or "Gleh!" Right? The classic example, that I actually cut from the book, so this is a thing that you will not read in the book, just to differentiate between wanting and liking, in an experiment, they gave... I always imagine it as one of those beer hats where there's a bottle on one side and a bottle on the other side and straws going into your mouth, do you know what I mean?

Neil Sattin: Uh-huh.

Emily Nagoski: So they gave one of those to a rat, it's not really like that, but just imagine it's like that. And in one of the cans, there's sugar water, which is delicious to the rat, and in one of the cans with a straw going into the mouth, there's salt water with the salinity of ocean water. How does that taste?

Neil Sattin: Salty.

Emily Nagoski: Yeah, it's gross.

[laughter]

Emily Nagoski: It's just a really innately disgusting flavor, because it's a dangerous flavor, it will give you way too much sodium and make you sick. They teach the rat that certain bells are associated with the sugar water coming in. When they get the sugar bell, they get excited. "Yay, here comes the sugar." And when the salt bell comes on, they go, "Ah! - gaddigah - I don't want the salt." But then they give the rat a drug that reduces their salt level. Now, so this is an animal that has zero pleasurable experience with the salty water. It's gross, they don't like anything about it, but when you deplete their salt levels, they will go over to the salt bell and start pushing it and gnawing on it and trying... Be like, "Make this... " They want the salt desperately because you've depleted the... You have a sodium drive that makes you desperate for salts if you don't get it. If you don't have the right sodium levels, you can literally die. So their whole body is in this huge activated, "I want the salt." Though they have zero experience of liking the salt. Does that distinction make sense between wanting?

Emily Nagoski: So pleasure, liking is the pleasure part, enjoying. And then there's eagerness, there's desire, there's moving toward and they're overlapping certainly, but they are not identical and it is really important that we distinguish it. And then the third component of this mechanism that we usually just call the pleasure center is associative learning, is basically what it is. When I do PowerPoint presentations, I represent it with a drooling bulldog because of Pavlov's dogs. He trained them to drool with a ring of the bell, all you do is you put food in front of the dog, it automatically starts drooling and you ring a bell. Food, bell, drool. Food, bell, drool. And eventually, you just ring the bell and that's all it takes to get the dog to start drooling. Does that mean that the dog wants to eat the bell?

Neil Sattin: No, of course not.

Emily Nagoski: Does it mean... Right, of course not. Of course not. Does it mean that the dog finds the bell delicious?

Neil Sattin: No.

Emily Nagoski: Of course, not, right? It just means that the bell has been made food-relevant. It's associated with food stimuli. So it's now a food-relevant stimulus. Our genital response, blood flow and all the rest of that, is the associative learning component where if you're presented with a sexually relevant stimulus, you will get genital response. This is your activating, this is a sexually relevant accelerator response. It turns out there is a not very relevant overlap, there's not much of an overlap, between what counts as sexually relevant stimulus and what is actually liked, particularly in heterosexual women, so that a person's body can respond to sexually relevant stimulus... In the research, it's almost always different kinds of porn, sometimes it's visual porn, sometimes it's like they're being read an audiobook of an erotic story, sometimes they're even watching bonobo chimpanzees copulating, right? And women's genitals will respond to this, not as much as to the human porn, but significantly above baseline. If their genitals are responding, does that mean they find the bonobo sex like they really want to have sex with the bonobos? Does that mean they like monkey sex?

Neil Sattin: This is so important. This is like one of the things in your book that... Not about bonobos necessarily, but...

[laughter]

Neil Sattin: But this question of how does our genital response correlate to our actual desire, and this might be a great time to talk about non-concordance.

Emily Nagoski: Right. And for a lot of people the answer is, it doesn't - particularly for women. There's about a 50% overlap between genital response, and perceived arousal, or subjective arousal in cisgender men. And about a 10% concordance overlap between genital response, and subjective arousal in heterosexual woman. One of the pieces of research that's come out since Come As You Are was published, is the distinction that this arousal non-concordance appears to be a factor really just in straight women. We have no idea why there's a difference sexual orientation, why there's a difference in gender. It doesn't matter why there's a gender difference. We do have this tendency, like is anybody who's sitting here and thinking right now, "Really, there's that much of an overlap for guys, what's the matter with men? There must be... I mean, that's so strange that they have so much concordance between their genital response and their subjective desire. What's going on with that?" No, everybody automatically thinks, "Really, women have 10% overlap. That's really - what's wrong with women?!"

Emily Nagoski: That's the patriarchy, that's the androcentric model of sexual desire, arousal, and response that all of us got raised in, assuming that the way a man works is the way a woman is supposed to work. And the extent to which a woman differs from a man is the extent to which she is broken, and needs to be fixed. And that's just not true. When a person's genital response doesn't overlap with their perceived arousal, when their genitals are responding, and they're like, "Nope. Not doing it for me" - what that means is that they've been presented with a sexually relevant stimulus that they do not want or like, which we can only understand if we know that this pleasure center of the brain does have these three separate channels that interact, of sexual relevance, sexually pleasurable, and sexual desire. They're related to each other, but they don't necessarily overlap. And we live in a pretend... In a fucked up enough culture that we're presented with plenty of sexually relevant stimuli in contexts where we neither want nor like what is happening.

Neil Sattin: Right. And I would think that another way of looking at the statistic for men, the 50% concordance, is that men have the potential to be victimized by their sexual... By their genital arousal, basically.

Emily Nagoski: Yes. Yeah. This narrative shows up a lot in stories of sexual violence against people of every genital configuration. The typical model is a person with a vulva being sexually assaulted, and the perpetrator says, "Well, but you were wet. So obviously, you wanted it or liked it." I cannot tell you how many students have told me, "Oh my gosh, this explains that experience I had where I was like, "Eh, this isn't doing it for me," and my partner was like, "No, you're turned on. You're wet." As though a person's genital response tells us more about what they're experiencing than the person does. And the same thing happens when a person has a penis. If blood is flowing to their genitals, they've been taught that that's an indication of who they are. Like their whole identity is tied to that, and it certainly indicates that they must want or like what is happening. But no, it's a reflex. We would never tell someone, if they bit into a wormy old apple, "Well, your mouth watered when you bit into that wormy old apple, so you must have actually really wanted or liked it. We would never do that. When your doctor taps your patellar tendon and your knee kicks out, nobody is like, "But deep down though, you really wanted to kick your doctor." We don't make this assumption with any physiological reflex, except for genital response. And we do it no matter what a person's genitals are, and it perpetuates a lot of myths around sexual violence.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. In fact, I loved your rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey.

[laughter]

Neil Sattin: Which I can quote here. In the next edition, Emily thinks that Grey should say to Ana instead of... 'Cause he, right, he spanks her, and she gets wet, is what basically...

Emily Nagoski: Yes. She consents to it. She doesn't want it. She doesn't like it. There is not a single word about pleasure. Her face hurts 'cause she's squirming so hard to get away. And then, Christian Grey, the spanker/hero/douche bag, puts his fingers in her vagina, finds that she is wet, and says to her, "Feel this, Anastasia. Your body is soaking just for me."

Neil Sattin: Right. "See how much your body likes this."

Emily Nagoski: "See how much your body likes this." Likes this. "See how much your body likes this, Anastasia."

Neil Sattin: Yeah. So, you're...

Emily Nagoski: And I wanted to say.

Neil Sattin: Yeah?

Emily Nagoski: I want the next person to say, "See how sexually relevant your body finds this. Which tells me very little about whether you want it or liked it."

[chuckle]

Emily Nagoski: Did you want it, like it? No? Double crap! Double crap is a thing they say a lot in Fifty Shades Grey.

[laughter]

Emily Nagoski: Let me say that I am a romance reader. I read it with an open mind. It wasn't for me. I value a lot of things the Fifty Shades did for opening up a conversation about erotica and sexuality for women, and it also sold many millions of copies and perpetuated this myth that genital response... 'Cause here's the really bad thing about the book, about this particular aspect of it, is that even though she, in an email, goes on to describe the feeling of being debased, degraded, and abused, still, because he said, "Your genitals responded. Feel how much you like this." She believes him instead of believing what her own internal experience was telling her. 'Cause isn't that what we all get taught, is to believe other people's opinions about our bodies, what they are and what they should be, more than we trust and believe what our bodies are trying to tell us?

Neil Sattin: Yeah and that theme runs throughout your book, of learning how to shed the messages that you've been given and the ideas about how things should be, and learning to more deeply trust what comes out of you, what you know about yourself, and what does give you pleasure and what doesn't, and to bring that to the conversation.

Emily Nagoski: And I'm remembering the question you asked about how do we tell what's socially constructed and what's what you actually want and like. And sort of almost everything is socially constructed. Nobody is born with any innate sexually relevant stimuli other than just plain old genital sensations. Like nobody is born being turned on by cars, or high-heeled shoes, or smoking cigarettes, or power play. That's all learned from culture. That doesn't mean that it's not real for you and it's what you really do want, it just means that that is what you learned, it's what your culture taught you. And some of those things are just sexually relevant. Like your brain has been taught that those are sexually relevant stimuli. And some of them are things that, in the right context, really do give you gigantic pleasure, and you really do desire them in the right context, in one that facilitates pleasure. Somehow my go-to example of this has been if you fantasize about being cornered by five strangers who just want you sexually and so they take you.

Emily Nagoski: If you're alone, safe in your bed, masturbating to that fantasy, in reality, the context is you are 100% safe and in control of that. Whereas if, in reality, five strangers cornered you and wanted to have you sexually, that would be physically unsafe, your stress response would kick in, you would only want to get away, it wouldn't actually be sexy. And the difference is the context. You can, if you wanna create that fantasy for yourself, you can ask five friends to participate in the role play, and communicate really clearly about what everybody's limits are. But that's, again, a really different context from five actual strangers.

Neil Sattin: Yeah, so it's important to revisit for a moment... When you were describing context at the beginning, you were talking about all the factors that shape context. It's not just like, "Oh, well, the context is the bedroom's messy and the kids are knocking at the door, so I'm gonna send the kids to Grandma's and clean the bedroom." There's more than just the physical context, there's all of that...

Emily Nagoski: Yeah. The stuff in the here and now tends to be the easy stuff to fix, the easy stuff to address. I heard someone joking at a romance writers' conference, "Characters in romance novels have sex when they're being chased and shot at by the Mafia, and I can't have sex if there's still a dish in the sink."

[chuckle]

Emily Nagoski: That's the easy stuff. The difficult stuff is when what you're bringing to bed and bringing to the context is years of shame, or years of judgement and blame, or relationship conflict, or a trauma history, or body shame, or gendered roles and ideas about how sex is supposed to work and if it's not working that way then it's working wrong. Those are longer term projects. And most of them can be undone through simple, daily mindfulness practices. It does take time. In the same way that it took time to get you to this place, it takes time to shift you out of that place and into a different, more neutral, self-accepting, partner-accepting place. But noticing the gunk, as I call it, the gunk that gets in the pipes, and making a decision to consider the possibility that you could live without the gunk and maybe clean it out is the way to clear up the channel, so that when you get to bed, the context is not one that's bringing with it all of this historical shit.

Neil Sattin: Yes.

Emily Nagoski: I've been swearing a lot.

Neil Sattin: You have!

Emily Nagoski: I don't know if that's okay. Sorry.

Neil Sattin: This is an explicit show. It's totally fine.

Emily Nagoski: Oh good.

Neil Sattin: I'm wondering if, before we go, since you just brought up mindfulness, if you could offer just a simple approach to how you've seen mindfulness work. What's something that someone can do that, over time, will effect that great kind of change?

Emily Nagoski: The simplest version is simply... So when you're in the process of a sexual experience, you will notice that maybe body-critical thoughts, or sexuality-critical thoughts, or partner-critical thoughts will enter your mind. You just notice them and are like, "Oh, hey! There's that critical thought. I'm gonna have that critical thought literally any other time that I want. For the moment, I'm gonna put it in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And another critical thought will float through your mind, and you'll be like, "Oh, hey look! There's another critical thought. I'm just temporarily, I'm gonna put that in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And with practice, over and over, we become really skilled at noticing those emotions before they dig deep, and even reducing the frequency and intensity with which they float into our minds. It makes a tremendous... There's a huge body of research. Another person for you to interview, Lori Brotto, does all this research on the impact of mindfulness on women's sexual well-being, especially women who are in recovery from gynecological cancers, and breast cancers, and other diseases, the impact it has on their relationships and their sexuality, and how to use mindfulness and sex education as a way to maximize sexual well-being in the recovery process.

Neil Sattin: Amazing. Amazing. And I loved how you brought that in your book as well, not only in how you just described, but also in talking about how important it is to see the ways that you do judge yourself and you're critical of yourself, and how all of those responses are turning your stress inward. You're creating more stress for yourself, which is putting the brakes on for yourself and gets you in that negative feedback loop. Versus...

Emily Nagoski: And it takes...

Neil Sattin: Being able to heal it through your mindfulness. Yeah? Go ahead.

Emily Nagoski: It requires the decision to prioritize turning off the brakes. You have to decide that it matters to you and to your relationship that you access your own sexual well-being. The couples who... What we learn in John Gottman's research is that the couples who sustain strong sexual connections over multiple decades are not couples who, hot and heavy, can't wait to stuff their tongue down each other's throat all the time. They are the couples who, one, have a strong foundation of friendship for their relationship, and two, prioritize sex. So they decide that it matters for their relationship that they set aside this half hour when they stop dealing with the kids, and work, and family, and friends, and Game of Thrones, and all of the other things that they could be paying attention to. They stop all that and they just pay attention to each other in this, frankly, pretty silly, fun way that humans do, because it matters for their relationship that they have that time to play, and touch, and connect. It's not the case for every couple that connecting in this way matters for their relationship, but the couples who sustain strong sexual connections, it's what they do. They make the decision that it matters that they cultivate sexual pleasure and curiosity.

Neil Sattin: Well, you're blessing us with a great way to end our conversation, while at the same time reminding me of all the things that we could have talked about. I just wanna say...

Emily Nagoski: We could talk about responsive desire, oh... [chuckle]

Neil Sattin: Yeah, oh my goodness. Well...

Emily Nagoski: Read chapter seven. That's all. Just read chapter seven. They know enough for that to make sense now.

Neil Sattin: Do you have time to give a quick blip on that before we go?

Emily Nagoski: Okay, really quick. Yes.

Neil Sattin: Thank goodness.

Emily Nagoski: The standard party line about desire is that it's spontaneous. It just sort of comes out of the... You're walking down the street. You're eating lunch and... Erika Moen, who is the cartoonist who illustrated Come as You Are, she draws this as a lightning bolt to the genitals. Just kaboom! You just want the sexes. And so you go to your partner with, "I have a kaboom. Can I have the sex? Uh?" And your partner's like...

[vocalization]

Emily Nagoski: So, that is, absolutely, one healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, is to have it just be... Feel spontaneous and kinda out of the blue. And there is another, totally healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, it's called responsive desire. See, spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure. Responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure, bearing in mind that pleasure is sensitive to context and not simple. The way this works, there's really sort of two narratives of how it works. One is the sort of cuddle, snuggle narrative, where you're just sitting on the couch watching Netflix and your partner comes over and starts touching you, and your body's like, "Ah, that feels really nice."

Emily Nagoski: And your partner starts doing other, more interesting things, and you turn and maybe start kissing on your partner, and your brain receives all this stimulation, it's like, "Ah, that feels really nice." And you turn and do maybe some more things, and there's a hand that goes up a shirt, and your brain's like, "That's... You know what, how about the sexy times?" Right? It's kaboom that emerges in response to pleasure. The cuddle, snuggle model. And then there's the Liz Lemon, "Let's do this," model, Where you dump the toys in the toybox, it's 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, you'd said that you would. "You, me, and the red underwear, here we go. Let's just get in the bed and go."

[laughter]

Emily Nagoski: And you put your body in the bed, and you put your skin against your partner's skin, and you remember that you like this. You like this person. You enjoy these sensations. And you allow your body to remember that this is fun and good. That's responsive desire. And all three of those are 100% normal...

Neil Sattin: Normal.

Emily Nagoski: Healthy ways. Right? That's... Many people feel that if you have to set appointments, if you don't already crave it when you get in bed, then there's something wrong. Nope. That's how it works sometimes. Most people will experience all of these different kinds of desire in their life. Some people never experience spontaneous desire. Some people have no experience of responsive desire. What matters is that you just notice that there are differences, and there are changes, and they are all 100% normal. And you can maximize responsive desire. The main way to maximize responsive desire is not to judge or shame it, but simply allow it. You allow desire to emerge from pleasure. My three-word... It rhymes and everything, so you can remember it and tell your friends, is, "Pleasure is the measure." Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. It's not how much you crave it, it's not how often you do it, or where you do it, or what you do, or how many people, or even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you like the sex you are having.

Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm.

Emily Nagoski: There's this sex therapist in New Jersey named Christine Hyde, who uses this party metaphor, she says to her clients, "If you're invited to a party by your best friend, of course you say yes 'cause it's your best friend and it's a party. But then as the date approaches, you start thinking, 'Ugh! There's gonna be all this traffic. We gotta find childcare. Do I really wanna put on pants on a Friday?'"

[chuckle]

Emily Nagoski: But like, you go because you said you would and it's your best friend and it's a party and what happens? Most of the time you have a good time at the party. If you are having fun at the party, you are doing it right. Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being.

Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And just as a quick addendum because I love how you suggest this in your book and it's something we've talked about on the show before, sometimes in that context taking sex off the table or making it okay to... That this isn't leading to sex, this is just about exploring pleasure that can, I think... That's one of those things that takes the brakes off. Yeah.

Emily Nagoski: It reduces the performance demand. Yes. Absolutely.

Neil Sattin: Yeah. So...

Emily Nagoski: I have actually started recommending that couples, when they... If they set an appointment, they set a date of like Saturday at 3:00, you and me, we're gonna do something, they set very firm limits on what they're allowed to do. Sometimes, it means not actually touching each other. Sometimes distance is... And this is the reason why I find both Esther Perel's model and John Gottman's model to be helpful, because people vary a lot in what works for them. Some people crave the closeness in order to facilitate desire and some people really long to have distance to have a bridge to cross to move toward their partner. People just have different strategies in the same way our brakes and gas are different. So figuring out what to do in that chunk of time that you set aside for you and your partner to do something or other that feels good, is gonna be different for you versus from everybody else that you know.

Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So take the time to get to know yourself and what you might actually want in that circumstance.

Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Right.

Neil Sattin: Oh, so many things, and yet we have run out of time. Emily Nagoski, it is so great to chat with you. I think your book, Come As You Are, is really required reading for people to just come to understand themselves as sexual beings in a totally new, actually based on science and not based on fable, way. And especially if you're a woman, especially if you're in a relationship with a woman, and even if you're a man and not in a relationship with a woman, there's just so much in here that I think will help you...

Neil Sattin: And non-binary people too.

Neil Sattin: Yes. And anyone, wherever you are on the spectrum, this will help you come to understand yourself and how that all works within you. I'm so appreciative of your contribution through writing the book. And if people wanna find out more about you, where can they find you on the interwebs?

Emily Nagoski: The main place to go is my website, which is just emilynagoski.com.

Neil Sattin: Great. And we will have a link to that, along with a detailed show guide, if you visit neilsattin.com/normal, though I'm tempted to make it Pleasure is the Measure, but neilsattin.com/normal, or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Emily Nagoski, thanks so much. Hope to have you back again sometime!

Emily Nagoski: Thank you so much!

Resources:

Check out Emily Nagoski's website

Read Emily’s book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform Your Sex Life

www.neilsattin.com/normal Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Emily Nagoski

Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of:

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