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SuiteHop dives into the Premium Buyers Group Conference with Nancy Koors, Founder of Premium Buyers Group, and Cory Shakarian, Vice President, National Accounts for Live Nation. Learn about the best practices and insights of companies in corporate hospitality who purchase or utilize premium seating in sports and concerts venues nationwide.

Do you want one surefire way to know if the way you're interacting with your partner is something that they're into? Get their consent! Is there a place for getting consent even in a long-term relationship where you're pretty sure you know what your partner wants (and doesn't want)? Absolutely! It turns out that getting consent is a pathway to deeper intimacy and presence - for ALL relationships. In today's episode, you'll learn how to re-introduce the language of consent into your relationship in a way that's empowering for both you and your partner, and you'll discover exactly why your "no" creates even more relationship health than your "yes". Along the way, you'll strengthen the trust and fuel the passion in your connection.  As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Or email YOUR recorded questions to questions (at) relationshipalive dot com. Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. This episode is also sponsored by Native Deodorant. Their products are filled with ingredients you can find in nature like coconut oil, which is an antimicrobial, shea butter to moisturize, and tapioca starch to absorb wetness. They don’t ever test on animals, they don’t use aluminum or any other scary chemical ingredients, and they’re so confident that you’ll like their deodorant that they offer free shipping - and returns. For 20% off your first purchase, visit http://www.nativedeodorant.com/alive and use promo code ALIVE during checkout. Resources: I want to know you better! Take the quick, anonymous, Relationship Alive survey 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 outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

Beneath anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame, are core emotions that are hardwired into our circuitry. When you’re able to tap into the core emotions - and move through them - you’ll feel a new sense of freedom and empowerment - with the ability to handle anything that life sends your way. Our guest today is Hilary Jacobs Hendel. She’s a psychotherapist and the author of the new book, "It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self,” which will definitely be a game changer for you. Today she has some practical tips for you on how to identify and work through these core emotions, so that you don't get stuck in the secondary emotions that can get in your way. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Find a quality therapist, online, to support you and work on the places where you’re stuck. For 10% off your first month, visit Betterhelp.com/ALIVE to fill out the quick questionnaire and get paired with a therapist who’s right for you. Resources: Visit Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s website to learn more about her work. Pick up your copy of Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s book, It's Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle To Listen To The Body Discover Core Emotions And Connect To Your Authentic Self. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/triangle to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Hilary Jacobs Hendel. 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. It's been my mission of course to give you the best tools that I can find to help you have an amazing thriving relationship. And some of those tools are relational and how you interact with other people, and some of those tools are all about the inner work and how we can come to understand ourselves better and experience life more fully, shine more brightly and to get past the obstacles that stand in our way. And today, I hope to synthesize both of those things for you. Though, we're gonna start with the inner work as we unearth how to get to our core emotional experience and just why that is so important. And along the way you're gonna learn how to identify when you're in a core emotional experience and when you are not and learn exactly how to handle that situation. We are diving more deeply also into the work known as AEDP: accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. Which is a mouthful but if you listened to Episode 176 with Diana Fosha, or episode 189 with David Mars then you're getting a sense for how this way of working with people can be so profound in its ability to create positive change. Neil Sattin: Today's guest has taken the model even further in showing us how we can apply it for ourselves. So, it's great when you're doing it in, in therapy it's great when you're doing it in couples therapy. And this is going to show you how to do it on your own so that you can experience this kind of change in your daily life, using what's known as "the change triangle.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Our guest today is Hilary Jacobs Handel and her recent book: "It's Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle To Listen To The Body Discover Core Emotions And Connect To Your Authentic Self," is, I think, a game changer for you in terms of deepening your experience and being able to bring that fully into your relationship with your spouse, your partner, and your relationships with others in general. As usual we will have a detailed transcript of today's episode. You can get that if you visit Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle, because we're talking about the change triangle, or as always you can text the word passion to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. So let us dive in to the change triangle and discover how to get even more in touch with who we are at our core and how to bring that into the world. Hilary Jacobs Hendall, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you Neil. I am delighted to be here talking about my favorite subjects, of emotions and relationships. Neil Sattin: Perfect. Well we're on the same page then, definitely. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes we are. Neil Sattin: And I do want to mention before we get too deep in, that if you are a visual person and need a visual representation of the triangle that we're talking about then that's also available both on Hilary's Web site, which will announce in a little bit, and also at Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle, where we have the transcripts. You'll be able to to see it in front of you if that's required. But we'll do our best to to make it, make it real for you as we're talking about it. Neil Sattin: So Hilary, why, why is it so important to get in touch with our core emotions and and how do we distinguish core emotions from just that emotional wash that can come, come at us or come over us throughout our day? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Well, it's, there's many reasons why it's important to get, not only get it, well understand the different types of emotions and to get in touch with emotions and to be able to discern what you're what you're feeling and what you're experiencing. Because most of us live up in our heads. And thoughts are fantastic and we need them. And I love my thoughts but it's half the picture of knowing who you are and what you need and what's good for you and what's bad for you. And core emotions are these biologically wired survival programs that really tell us, at the core, so much about what we who we are and what we need that if we're not listening to them and our society really teaches us to avoid them and block them, which I think is responsible for the epidemic we're seeing in depression and anxiety and so many mental health issues, that, and we don't learn anything about emotions, that, that without knowing about emotions and understanding how they work, we're really at a huge disadvantage to thrive in life. Neil Sattin: Right, when you're able to identify the emotional experience that you're having, it gives you clues as to how you need to best respond to the world in the moment with whatever is going on in your life. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly and I think what's become more and more important for me, just to say from the beginning to the people listening out there, is that this is not about wearing emotions on our sleeve. This is not about looking for an excuse to act out or behave badly, to rage or to cry, experiencing emotions is a wholly internal process it has nothing to do with what we actually then show to others, or, or enact. It may, but I'm, we're always trying to think about what is constructive for us, constructive for the person we are with. It's not about an excuse to behave badly and I think we live in an emotion phobic culture partly because people don't understand that, they think "Oh my gosh, you know, if we're all into our emotions it's just gonna be you know not good. It's just, it's..." I'm only thinking of curse words now that would come out and explain like a shit show, but I'm just you know that type of a thing. And this is a very thoughtful process that I am talking about that only helps us. There, there is no downside to getting in touch with emotions the way that I am thinking about it and the way that I try to educate others. Neil Sattin: Right, what you just said is such an important distinction that we're talking about a constructive way to meet your emotions and to metabolize them into something that's beneficial not just for you but for the other people in your orbit or for life in, in general. And you know we had Harriet Lerner on the show to talk about her seminal work, "The Dance of Anger," and turning anger into, into a constructive emotional phenomenon. And I love how in your book it's not always depression you talk about each of these core emotions and we're talking about emotions like sadness and fear and anger and disgust, and we're also talking about emotions like joy or excitement or sexual excitement. Lust I think is the way that Jaak Panskepp talks about it. And we're talking about all of those core programs that you just mentioned and looking at how they lead to our common good. The common benefit and also ways to know when, when something's coming at us that really isn't healthy and and how to respond effectively to that. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly right. In particular with using anger to set limits and boundaries and to assert ourselves without being aggressive. Neil Sattin: Right. Right which you're able to do when you've figured out "Wow I'm, I'm really angry. And here's why I'm angry right now." And so it becomes less about telling someone that you're angry and more about setting an effective limit with them. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes, and I would add an additional piece: it's, it's also working with that anger internally to to discharge some of that energy that causes us to, to act too quickly, and act, and say mean things or do hurtful things, so that there's techniques to work with the energy that, that most emotions have and that grip us into impulses right and these impulses have to be thought through very, very up, down and sideways, before we decide to say something or do something that we really want to be thoughtful about ourselves and the action that wants to come out. Neil Sattin: Right. Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: It's hard work too,  this is a lifelong process. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So important to name that and, and for you, listening, we're going, we're gonna get to some of these techniques of how to really integrate and and process your emotional experience in the way that Hilary was just naming. And I want to say too that well, as you know I read a lot of books for this show and I love the ones that just right out of the gate, I'm like, "This book is gonna make a difference in my life." And I definitely felt that reading your book it's so practical and in some ways the title is misleading because I think people see it and they think "Oh this is a book about depression. I'm not sure that impacts me." And so I want to encourage everyone listening that this is really a book about what we're talking about: how do you encounter your own emotional experience and chew it up in a way that's beneficial for you and then bring that into how you how you interact with the world around you. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah exactly. And I think you're right about the title. I guess if the title was exactly what it should be, it would say "This is a basic emotion education that you should have received in high school," and hopefully one day people will. But it's something that every, everybody knows that the title came from the article that I wrote for The New York Times back in 2015 and because the article went viral and so many people responded to it, that Random House said let's just name the book that. And you know it's not always depression what is it? It's really life, and how surviving our childhoods and all the adversity that life entails affects us emotionally and what happens when you block those emotions and what happens when you embrace those emotions and learn to work with them. And it's it's it's a fork in the road. And it matters. Neil Sattin: Yes. Yeah. So let's start with talking about "the change triangle," because I think identifying the three different corners of the triangle will be really helpful for everyone in understanding what we're talking about because why is it a triangle, why isn't it just like well you've got to have your core emotional experience, and there, there's more to it. And this was where your book was so eye opening for me in many ways, was getting to see oh these kinds of things that I experience< they're happening because I'm, I, I'm trying to I'm trying to protect myself from a core emotional experience as an example. So, I think as we as we dive in this is going to make a lot more sense for everyone listening. So, where's a good place to start, Hilary? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I think just a quickly, describe it and and what I, I'll try to bring it to life a little bit. Neil Sattin: Great. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: So for everybody listening you want to imagine an upside down triangle superimposed on your body. The point of the triangle is in your core, you know, somewhere between your stomach and, and your, under your ribs. And that's because, and that's, at the bottom of the triangle is where core emotions are and they're in the body and that's why I'm asking you to imagine them in your core. And they're, the core emotions to say them again are: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement. And each of those have their own unique programs and they're very simple in a way, you know, when something, when somebody hurts us... Well let's just take anger because it's something that we all struggle with in our culture. And there's so many myths about anger, but anger is there basically to protect us. Anger and fear. And when when somebody attacks us. And I always think about how these were designed to be sort of, hundreds of thousands of years ago, if somebody wanted to kill you, and, and had a threatening pose or gesture you would evoke anger in the middle of the brain, like where all core emotions are evoked, and then it sends out a myriad of responses to all organs of the body to ready the body for an action and that action is meant to be adaptive for survival. So anger will make us kind of want to make a fist and put up our dukes and get ready to attack. And it come, it's visceral. We all know that experience of when someone we care about insults us or doesn't do something that we really needed to and there's energy in the body and our, and we get tension in the body and we really feel like we want to lash out. So it's a full body experience and each of the core emotions have their own program that has an, uh, an uh, group of physical sensations that we can learn to recognize and name, and each of the core emotions has an impulse to action that we can learn to recognize, and, and explain and name, and, and an impulse to action, that we are, that it's pulling for us to do. And it's that whole experience that we want to get really good at recognizing and that is really just a part of knowing ourselves. The, the emotions react similarly in everybody. But there is nuance in everyone. So the way that I experience anger will be differently than the way you experience anger, Neil. And that's the same for all the core emotions. Neil Sattin: Great. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: So that's the bottom of the triangle. Does that make sense? Neil Sattin: Perfect. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: OK. Now there's uh, there's three corners of the triangle, which I'm going to explain. But there is a fourth point here and I'm just going to share it real quickly now because when we have a core emotion, we're at a fork in the road and there's base likely two ways it can go. We can bury that emotion and push it away and block it and then we're going to be moving to the top of the triangle. Or, we can validate it, name it, and work with the experience that it's evoking, in which case we get to this place that I put on the bottom of the triangle. That's called the "open hearted state of the authentic self." And what that is basically, a more practical way of saying, is it's a regulated state of mind and body and that when we are with our core emotions, and we let them process through, and we are allowed to experience them, and again nothing has actually happened yet in the outside world it's wholly internal, it's a way that comes the body back down. Because core emotions come up they kind of cause an arousal of the nervous system like a wave. You ride the wave and then they come down. And if we don't block them the energy kind of naturally will dissipate over time, and in ways and techniques that we can help with that, and then we come back to this kind of calm state, where our mind and body feel relaxed, and in that state good things happened, and there's a bunch of c-words that I borrowed from Richard Schwartz with his permission, where when we stay in this kind of calm regulated state, we are more curious, we feel more connected, we have a greater capacity for compassion for ourselves and other people, we tend to feel more confident because we can deal with our own emotions and we feel more courageous in life and we have more clarity of thought. So you obsess less. So this is where we all want to spend more time. Neil Sattin: Definitely. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: And it's not that it's the goal to spend all our time there, right? That's impossible because life happens but that's where we want to spend more and more time. And so working this change triangle to get back to core emotions and to go through them down to this calm state is the whole point of this. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I think it's important to mention that too, that we're describing this, this static image but it implies a process that you can go through in order to get to the openhearted state of self energy that that Hilary's just described. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Right, because we're moving around this triangle all day every day many times and it's what we do that matters and then we're also kind of moving around in this triangle in life on a macro level spending less time in our defensive states and more time in the openhearted state. So. So that's sort of a sort of a micro and a global way to look at it. Neil Sattin: Great. So then when you have that core when you're when some core emotional response comes up, you said you're at a fork in the road and you can head, you can ride the wave and and get to that core self state or... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Or like most of us do, because that's what we're taught to do in our society, is we tend to block them. And so the top of the triangle if we move to the top right that corner is labeled inhibitory emotions and the inhibitory emotions which everyone will recognize are anxiety, guilt, and shame. And again what they have in common is that they all push down, and block, and bury core emotional experience, in purpose for the purpose of pretty much getting along in our society. There are more social emotions, so that if the core emotions are the selfish emotions what's good for me the inhibitory emotions are, "How do I curb my own impulses and desires, so that I stay in the good graces, good graces of initially my mother and then my father and my siblings, my family, then my peer groups, my uh, by then you know as you broaden into society, my religious groups, my, oh, my collegial groups..." That we it's so important for human survival to get along. So in a way there's a fundamental conflict here. So, so the inhibitory emotions when we it's the way that we block our core emotions. And so what we end up doing is noticing that we have anxiety, for example, and if we have anxiety we know that we're on the top right hand corner of the triangle. But what that means practically, is that we also know that we are inhibiting some core emotional experience that if we can get to and name, and, and, and use, we will likely feel less anxious. Feel much better and I can give an example of this, but, then the way we do this is with muscular contraction, all sorts of maneuvers that anxiety, shame, and guilt block these core emotions and for different purposes. And some of us will feel more shame, some more anxiety. You know, we have to mix in genetics and disposition here, and then the environment for why we end up feeling ashamed or guilty or anxious. Neil Sattin: Right and something that feels important to name right here is the way that you can feel those inhibitory emotions from a core positive emotional experience as much as a core negative. And I'm kind of putting those words in quotes because I think what we're getting at here is that they all have the capacity to be positive but one might not think like, "Oh you know, I'm, I'm experiencing shame because I'm feeling too much joy right now," or "I'm too excited. And so my anxiety is coming in to to block that, or my guilt about being excited about this thing.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That is so crucial and the more that I do this work in psychotherapy and just observe the people that I'm with, the more I believe that it's the larger emotions. I wouldn't even say so... I think you're right, that people block joy and excitement and pride in the self and anything that makes us feel physically bigger. It's kind of fascinating you can almost reduce all below the neck deep experience into emotions that have energy that makes us feel larger, which is dangerous when we take up more space and we feel bigger, we tend to experience some inhibition either anxiety, guilt or shame. And so people tend to stay small and in a way people go negative... I'm not so sure anymore, which came firrt, err, do people kind of move into negative thoughts to keep them small? Because there's some core fear? Or is it that it's a it's a way not to feel big? I dunno if it gets sort of too complicated. But you can start to think of everything as almost like amoebas like am getting bigger or I'm getting smaller? And to begin to understand one's experience as, "Is this an expansive emotion now, that I'm feeling, like, joy and pride, and anger?" In which case it's going to make me feel vulnerable and then I'm going to come down on myself with some anxiety or shame or guilt. So that's just getting to what you were saying about people struggle with feeling good. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. So it could go either way. And, and what I love is this sense of, "Oh. When I notice shame or anxiety or guilt that the problem isn't the shame or the anxiety or guilt." That's, the I don't want to spend all my time there, because they're indicating that there's a deeper core experience that's happening and that's where the the gold is. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. That's where the gold is. Now. I think it's also important to mention that that, we're talking about kind of detrimental levels of anxiety, shame and guilt here, that the shame has a purpose too. Guilt has a purpose. Like when we do something that hurts somebody else it's good that we feel guilty. That means that we're not a sociopath and so we want to listen to the shame. Listen to the guilt. Listen to the anxiety. And we also know that we have to look for our core emotions. So, it's, it's both because the inhibitory emotions are going to bring us to the relationship piece. But we also need to know what we're feeling so that we can express ourselves to, to yourself and to others. Neil Sattin: Yeah and I will say just as a side note your, your chapter on dealing with anxiety shame and guilt. I think it's also super helpful along with creating self compassion but for understanding the other people in your life and what might be motivating certain behaviors that you experience from them. That was, in many respects, worth the price of admission for the book because that's part of what's going on is not only understanding yourself but being able to see these things happening in other people and to, and to recognize how it might be impacting them as well. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. So we can understand ourselves and others and I've had so many people read the book and tell me that they thought it should be in the Parenting section of the bookstore because we also want to understand our children's emotions so we don't unwittingly cause too much shame and guilt and anxiety when it can be avoided just by the education and emotions. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah they should have a "self parenting" section in the bookstore. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Self parenting, and parenting though, there's so much you know parents mean well, I made so many mistakes. If I had had this at this book in my 20s that would have spared me and my children a lot of heartache and I know most people feel that way. Most people have intent to do good. And if you don't have proper information, and you're just basing things on what you sort of intuition and how you were raised and what society says then it's easy to make mistakes anyway, easy to make mistakes, and we're not free that you know there's no way not to screw up your children on some level but you just want to know what's going on in the emotion department. It's really, really helpful. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So we've covered the bottom corner of the triangle the core emotions, and the top right which is these inhibitory emotions that are are meant to block or suppress the core emotions. Neil Sattin: What's up with the with the other corners triangle. : So and again if we go back to that this is superimposed on the body. The point is of course in core emotions as in is in the gut area and then we're coming up. So anxiety and defenses are kind of sitting above the shoulders, is how I imagine them because they're out of, they kind of take us out of our body, they take us up into our head. And so because emotions, core emotions feel so at best they feel weird and new if you don't know what they are, and, and at worst they feel awful emotions and core emotions, and inhibitory emotions when they come in, in large doses and they come, many at one time and they're all mixed together... It's a horrible experience and a horrible feeling. And so we then tend to want to avoid the whole enchilada and we move into defenses and that's the topped, top left corner of the triangle. And defenses are basically anything we do to avoid feeling something that we don't want to feel and I don't even mean it in a pejorative sense I always say that that defenses, as I learned in AEDP training, which was so helpful, are really these brilliant creative maneuvers that humans can do to spare themselves pain as opposed to in my psychoanalytic training... I don't want to sell psychoanalysis down the river because I got a lot out of my studies there, but there was always this negative sense of bad, that you're doing something bad, and you're resisting and that defenses are bad and I think that defenses really need to be appreciated for one when they hold up. They get us through life. And two, when they don't hold up and we break through and start to have symptoms of depression or anxiety or many other things that we needed them at one time those defenses and now they're not working so well and then we need to embrace other ways of being that bring us peace and calm. Neil Sattin: So defenses are like toward the, the last stop on the on the train. They're, they're, they're meant to help you not feel anything. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Exactly. Or to for, to exchange one emotion for for something else like defenses... Emotions can be used as defenses. For example, I would, you know, my whole younger life, if I felt scared or vulnerable I sort of had a more of an irritable, crusty armor and I would get angry and I would try to curtail it a lot because I had a really sweet, gentle mom and a really sweet, gentle sister and I was kind of the, the, the, the tougher one in the family. So I was always working hard to be quote sweet like like my mom. But I felt it. I felt it and I really didn't understand. I would beat myself up for you know, Why, why do I feel angry?" And it was really a big defense against fear. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I had no idea I had no idea even I was the one that I was anxious when I was younger because it was just kind of covered by this kind of this kind of tough armor. Neil Sattin: Right. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Or how many people do we know that might be feeling fear but instead go to like humor or lightheartedness, instead of instead of being able to go to that place. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. And so there are so many ways we can use defenses can be emotions. They can we can use behaviors as defenses. Self-destructive behaviors like, like cutting just behaviors like joking, making, being sarcastic, eye rolls, shrugs this is like body language defenses, not being able to make eye contact. There is, there is a myriad of defenses and I list a ton of them in the book and on my website. And you can try to recognize your own defenses which is probably one of the hardest things to do. It's much easier to see other people than ourselves and so you could probably much more easily recognize the defenses in the people in your family. But it's good to begin to recognize our own defenses so that we can loosen them up a little bit and know what the feelings are underneath them and then it kind of, gives us more resilience, more choices for how to be. Neil Sattin: Yeah if we wanted perspective from an outsider that we more or less trusted about our defenses what would you say is a is a safe way to ask for that from another person? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That's such a wonderful question. I think it's not only the safe way to ask for it, but I think you're saying to make sure that person is safe is a safe person to be vulnerable with. Yeah, because what we really want to spare ourselves, as much as possible, is the excruciating experience of being shamed or humiliated. So, I think I would say and I do say this to my to my husband and my children, even friends sometimes: "Please let me know if I do something that..." I mean it's not so much as a defense, I would say, "Please let me know if I do something that you don't like or that hurts your feelings or that doesn't feel right." And then I guess if I was asking it I think I would just leave it at that. I'm concerned for the people out there listening who might say that to somebody they care about who doesn't have a lot of therapy background or understand emotions that might not be so gentle. So, I think you could always say: "But, be please be gentle with me." You know and I believe in using humor and lightheartedness in relationships a lot, but you know be be gentle. But I do want to know.... Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. No, I think that's great to name that desire for for gentleness or just to point out like, it's, "It's kind of tender or vulnerable for me to even be asking you this but I know that you may see, something that I don't see." Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That's it's such an interesting question Neil. No one's ever asked me that and I think it's because most people get feedback from their family, when they're, when they're acting in ways that are are not pleasurable and they they might not all be defensive maneuvers some may be just like self care. Like I don't want to do this. Setting a limit or a boundary and then somebody reacts badly to that. But some of it would be defensive. So again, it's sort of interesting to think about. Neil Sattin: Right and I think if you're not inviting someone into that conversation, then the feedback that you're getting is most likely not coming at you either at a moment where you're truly receptive to it, or in a manner that's that's constructive.   Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Mhmm. Exactly. Constructive being the operative word. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So we we found our way up to the top. And let's talk about what the process would look like if I noticed, "Oh I'm about to do that defensive thing that I always do." So maybe for someone like I'll just kind of out myself here, I might go to a political blog or to Facebook or something like that. I'm doing that, it doesn't serve any real constructive purpose in my life. So, even though, you know, you could argue about being informed or whatever but when I notice that I'm doing that, what would be the steps that I would want to take to help bring me into identifying whether or not there was a core emotional experience at work? And I think, especially because we as adults... Like these patterns are pretty well developed for us. So, so it may be a bit of a journey to find your way down into into your core, but what's, what's the map look like? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Yeah but I think very possible, and, and I like your example, which I'm going to address. And you know, we could also use the example of reaching for a snack when you're not hungry or reaching for a drink right after work. Right? These are all these kind of they're just sort of automatic defensive behaviors and they don't serve us. So what I do is, you know, for all these examples is the first thing we have to be able to do is notice, right? If we don't notice what we're doing then we can't work the change triangle at all. And the way you get good at noticing is really by slowing down. We can't really notice much about how we're feeling if we're moving fast, it just tends to obscure or we just stay up in our head and our thoughts are churning and it kind of numbs us out below the neck. So, I when I'm teaching new people this you know you can just set aside, you can write in your, in your inner, in your, in your calendar, in your phone, you know, just set aside three times a day and remember to kind of check in and observe what you're doing. Meditation, obviously, is a great practice for this. So, let's say you actually notice that you're about to go check, what did you say Facebook or the political blogs? Neil Sattin: Right side or more or more likely I'd, I'd be you know five or 10 minutes in, and I'd be like, "Wait a minute here I am. You know here I am on Facebook again.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Good. Good. OK. So before, or during... Neil Sattin: Just being, just being honest. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah of course. You know, join the rest of humanity. That's great. So what you would do is stop what you're doing. And you would, kind of feel your feet on the ground like you instructed me to do before this, and, before we started, and maybe take a few deep breaths to kind of set the stage for noticing. And then I personally especially in the beginning would ask myself I would kind of scan my body head to toe, and toe to head, and just kind of see what I can notice about my physical state. Am I tense? Am I anxious? I might even go through all of the emotions and ask myself, "OK Hilary,or Neil, you know, do you notice any anxiety now check? Do you notice any shame? No, not right now. Do you notice any guilt? No. OK, so we've got some anxiety. What else? Let's see if we can get below that anxiety and see what else we might be feeling". And you may want to bring in the context of what's going on in your life also and what might be affecting you. So let's say, uh, this is the day my, my, my kid goes off to kindergarten. What else is happening today? I have work stress, what not. So then I might ask myself, "Is any of these things in life causing me fear? Check." And then we want to go through all the core emotions, do I feel angry? No. Do I feel sad? Check. And you want to name all the emotions that you possibly can but kind of holding them all together like, as I tell my patients, try to hold all the emotions but imagining them with lots of air and space between each one, because we have to, we have to attend to each emotion separately. Another way that I say it, is don't say "I feel afraid but I also feel sadness." I want to change the "but" to an "and." "I feel sad, and I feel afraid, and I feel excited, and I feel happy." And once we get a lot of emotions going at the same time it's a lot of energy. We can automatically push those down because we don't know we can handle it all. Feel some anxiety and then boom. Reaching for a political blog. So, that would be the idea to try to start to name the emotions and then just by doing that just by naming emotions and taking that time to slow down and do that, you might feel much, much more relaxed and in fact it gives you space to think, "OK do I want to continue with the blog? Because this is a good distraction that I need now." Because defenses aren't bad by definition it's only if they're hurting us or if we rely on them all the time. So you may continue to read or you may decide, "You know what. I'm going to go exercise instead or I'm going to go tell my partner how I'm feeling about everything going on." That type of thing, and that's the last step is to think through, what's the best thing for me right now? If I don't feel better and I'm trying to change my state what are some things that, that helped me feel better where I can take better care of myself. Or you may want to work with one of these emotions using some of the techniques that I, that I outline in the book. Staying with them in the body or imagining using fantasy to discharge some of the energy. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I definitely want to talk about fantasy, but before we go there, I, I just want to name that for me even though I knew this to be true it was really a revelation to stop and think about what that's like, that we can be experiencing fear and disgust and joy and sexual excitement that we could be feeling all of those things at the same time. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Neil Sattin: Each one calling out for potentially a completely different kind of response. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Neil Sattin: So, no wonder we get all bound up with anxiety or overwhelm or feel any any of those things that just kind of paralyze us in a moment. Or if we, if we name one and we just kind of go with the first thing, "Oh, I'm feeling sad right now," and then you neglect the others, how you could feel incomplete in terms of actually processing the experience that you're having. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Exactly and that's why it's so important to keep sort of searching when you notice one particular emotion to just keep looking around. What else is there? And to, it really helps to kind of run through that checklist. I still do that I've been practicing this a long time and I, I run through the different emotions and once you name them and search for them you know you might even find them. I say to my patients, "Even there's you know just check for like a little molecule of joy there, or a little molecule of sadness, and then if you find it you know, Oh maybe I need to actually make space for this particular emotion I spend so much time, you know, really orienting myself towards my anger, that I'm missing out on what the sadness or the fears telling me.". Neil Sattin: Yeah. I was I was searching for a good acronym while, while I was reading the book, I was like there must be a good one for those core emotions to like help people just kind of do the, do the checklist. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Did you find one? Because I looked hard also. Neil Sattin: Not yet but I'll let you know if I can. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Yeah. Neil Sattin: And there's not a good one for all those C's when you're when you're... But I do like how you also offer that as an example of looking for you know am I feeling calm, right now? Am I feeling clear? Am I feeling compassionate? To be able to go through that list to find the nuances of your experience right now and to highlight, "Okay here are ways that I am feeling courageous even though at the same time I'm getting all this, this tremulous fear going through my body. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes, exactly. And I think even sometimes you can bypass the whole thing and just really try to shift into those states if you don't like what you're feeling right now and it's a particularly a great idea when you're about to have a conversation with somebody important to you, to before you do try to, try to just see if you can shift into a calmer, certainly more curious standpoint, more state, where you can try to take a couple of deep breaths and access some curiosity, so we don't make assumptions about another person's motives because they're often incorrect you know we make up our own stories and then we believe them without checking them out. And to try to lean into connection, so that, let's say you know again your partner really pisses you off. It's important, and the brain doesn't naturally do this, you have to push, put energy behind this idea of remembering the good things somebody has done to kind of take the steam out of the uh... You know, we can rev ourselves up with anger and start to think it's like chaining, you then, everything that someone ever did to hurt you comes back with a vengeance. Unless we really pull the other way and say, "OK, what is why do I love this person." Or if I can't remember that I loved him at one point, you know what is it that I used to love about this person and try to conjure those that part of it as well. It takes energy. It's not easy because we're really pulled to tough places and we have to use mental energy to pull ourselves back and it doesn't feel good at first, always. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah. Wow so many different directions that I'm going in at the moment. I think first I just want to name, it's really lovely the way that you show the integration of AEDP work through the vignettes, vignettes that you offer in your book, and also internal family systems and working with different parts of you, younger parts. If you're a listener for, and you have been for a while then you've perhaps heard the interviews we've done with Dick Schwartz, the most recent one is episode I wrote this down episode 140, where so you can you can get a sense of how the two modalities work really well together, fit super well together. And so all of that work to get to understand and process and metabolize your emotional experience, and to learn how to show up for yourself can come through what we've been talking about today and can also be helped by getting to identify the places in you that are stuck in a past experience. And the reason that I wanted to bring that up is because you were just talking about like the the possibility of skipping to connection and calmness, or doing what you can to to get to that place especially if you're going to reach out to someone that's important to you. And I liked how you also bring in the work of Peter Levine and talk about how all of this energy that emotions bring up in, in us when they're not processed when, when that energy isn't metabolized, then that is what creates trauma in our bodies -- that, that stuck energy that never quite got released. And so some of those stories in your book are just were so moving to me, as I, as I read them and got to see like oh right there's another nuance of how this could apply to me or to my clients. And so really beautiful, I think, to to see it written out like that but let's get into a little bit more of the... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you by the way. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah you're welcome. Let's get into the metabolizing and in particular let's talk about fantasy, because that use of the imagination and how it can help I think can be so powerful for us when we, when we're wrestling with that question of: "Well, I feel so angry or I feel so sad or bereft or whatever it is, and I don't know like I want to bring it to that person I want them to feel my anger. I want them to see the depths of my sadness." How can we do it in a way that's actually going to be more productive and give us the satisfaction of truly handling and, and, and giving our body some relief from those unfulfilled impulses? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's a question that has many levels because I think what I'm first responding to is this idea of wanting someone to see and wanting to really be seen, in with one's emotions. And so I think that is legitimate. And, and then there are times when that's all somebody sees and they get weary. So it's it's really... you have to keep a lot in mind. So, I thought you were just going to kind of ask me about working with child parts and releasing stuck energy as a sort of either, either as an alone process or with a therapist and then you surprised me when you brought in this idea of, if you bring it into relationship and that makes it all sort of like it, I think we have to deal with one and then the other. Neil Sattin: Yeah let's start with a first part.: Yeah, let's start with the first part... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Neil Sattin: ...which would be that the inner process that we might go through, and then and then we can bridge into bringing that into relationship. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Great. Great. So, I now I really consider myself a trauma therapist and I now think of trauma as something that everybody has just from surviving their childhoods. And so then we were changing the definition of trauma. This is still very controversial. You hear the word trauma, which most people still think of as a, as a some major catastrophic event happening, that is trauma. I'm adding on to that something that is also called small-T trauma -- which many people in the trauma field object to because it's it's sort of putting a value judgment on trauma. That one is smaller or bigger, which is, I want to say, that, that's not the case it's just some way to to differentiate different types of trauma. And small-T trauma is really what I believe everybody has, and small-T trauma is really, um, can be from so, so many, so many things that actually happened in our childhood. But the bottom line is, and I'm sure Diana Faucheux and David Marr spoke about this in the other episodes, that whenever we have too much emotion which happens a lot when we're children because our brains are full of emotion and very powerful emotion. So when there's too much emotion and too much aloneness at the same time, then the mind figures out a way to kind of block it. So it's not overwhelming. And then once that happens a lot where we're kind of blocking whole parts of ourselves and whole experiences and those are these little kind of child parts that we all have that are alone these kind of child parts of us exist alone because they had to be kind of cordoned off. So this, this happens you know if you have... In most families there's a parent that doesn't tolerate a certain emotion and so when you feel that emotion you are really told, you know, to put it away or get over it or you're yelled at or it's not acknowledged. So that kind of thing, on a small level, becomes big because when we have to exclude parts of our experience then they are literally excluded in the mind, they're not integrated. They're not connected to other parts of the... of us. So these are the the parts when I use the word parts from Richard Schwartz or in psychoanalytic literature they were called interjects. That we might have absorbed parts of our parents in us. It can be many, many different things but these are the parts that sort of live on with us, within us and they can get triggered and then we can start to react. The reaction is, is not really commensurate with what happens in our adult relationships. So, I think everyone can relate to like just when somebody pokes you in that just wrong place and you felt the feeling many, many times before and you can kind of track it back into fourth grade when you were bullied or ostracized, or you can track it back to sixth grade when you started to know that your sexuality or gender wasn't the same as the people around you or you were punished too severely, yelled at, you know all these or somebody you loved died when you were young or got sick or there was substance abuse, active substance abuse in the family, all these type of things and then these parts of us hold... They have their own triangles in a way and we need to be with those parts and liberate those old emotions so that they don't fire off and cause havoc in our adult relationships and inside us and make us feel bad all the time. Neil Sattin: Yes. So we can, so you can get related to in a particular moment. The part of you that is feeling, that is having this emotional experience and to what was happening at the time and the way that you portray that in the book, I think is, is a great illustration of how to go through this process for someone and then talk about if you could, that, taking it to that next level of where you incorporate fantasy as a way of helping either a younger part or just helping yourself in the present with an emotional feeling how you could actually kind of burn off some of that energy before you're bringing it out, into how you connect with the world. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah I guess I'll use the, we could take any emotion and you can change this, but I'm going to, I'm going to go with these big energy emotions that are common like how you burn off as you say anger energy and also kind of feeling good about the self prideful energy both of these create a lot of anxiety and depression in people when they're blocked. And so I really like to, to harp on let's liberate this, this energy and how can we do it in a safe way. So one of the the the most effective ways to work with anger is, and I use this a lot myself... And I'm sort of pausing here because as people listen to this, it may seem kind of crazy. But we begin with the fundamental idea that the brain doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality in certain, in emotional ways. And we know this from experiments where somebody imagines running and they're hooked up to an FMRI, that they imagine they're running. And there is movement in the in the parts of the brain as if they were actually running. So... And we see this every day in clinical practice. So, let's say I am angry, I'm going to take my sweet and wonderful husband John as an example here because I use him all the time. Let's say John does something, and he really doesn't anymore, we really get along quite well. But let's say he did something that really, really threw me into a rage. What I have learned to do and practice many times is before I go talk to him about it, I will, I know I will be able to identify that I am angry, right? And rage is sort of all emotions are on a spectrum from a little irritation or annoyance to outright rage. I will know, I will be able to say to myself: I am enraged. I will be able to feel that deeply in my body a burning energy in my stomach and a, and a movement of energy that wants to come right up and out, and I will not do anything, but I will focus in on that energy, listening to it with a kind of curiosity, kind of tuning in like a radio receiver feeling it deeply and seeing what that energy wants to do to John and it might want to just, so I and then I try to make it into a fantasy. So the idea is I'm noticing that if that energy could come up and out of me in a fantasy or a movie like, let it play out in a movie I would see myself just like punching the crap out of him. Like that's how angry I am that I really want to hurt him. And then I will allow myself in a fantasy to imagine doing that. And I do this in sessions for people that have a lot of pent up energy from being abused as children and neglected and various very hurtful things that were done to them. So I can see myself actually doing what this anger wants to do and trying to really even feel it as I see myself making contact with skin. And just let it... Imagining it and imagining it, watching it and watching it and watching it, and doing it and doing it and doing it in fantasy, until it feels done. Like the the energy will discharge and will drain out. And then when I tune back into my body, I'll feel probably tired and a little more calm so that I can then gather my wits about me and go back and say, and say, "We need to talk about what you did. I was so furious because you hurt me so badly when you did this this and this. And I never ever want you to do that again." That type of thing as opposed to storming out, I wanted divorce, you know this isn't working or attacking him you know verbally abusing him for everything that he's ever done, and which isn't going to help, it's going, it may feel better in the moment. And then I'm going to feel guilty afterwards. He's going to withdraw. It's going to escalate a fight and it's going to increase our disconnection. Neil Sattin: Yes. . Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Does that make sense? Neil Sattin: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And one thing that I think you mention in the book is how often you can go with that initial like you're feeling all that anger and rage and seeing that. And then when that is finally discharged through imagining this scenario, that it leaves room for another core emotion to rise up. So it may not end there, it may be that after you experience your rage, you then experience your sadness or your fear. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Neil Sattin: And so there's there's a lot there to be processed and what you named so beautifully was the problem not only with having those experiences, but, or emotions but having them and feeling alone and how showing up for yourself in this way also undoes that aloneness. I think that's such a powerful aspect of the work as you describe it. It's also so powerful in my experience of Dick Schwartz's work in IFS, that it it's kind of undoing aloneness with yourself not that you don't want to get to a place where you're inviting other people in. But, it also just builds such resilience knowing that in a moment like that, a powerfully charged moment, you actually have the capacity to to do something about it. Just you. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. And in that sort of reminds me to say that when you are connecting to yourself in that way, one has to have the utmost compassion and empathy as though you were relating to your own child or pet who you love or someone that you really cared about that you would never hurt. It's really unconditional love and positive regard, and not shaming yourself not judging yourself. Right? Because fantasy is so fabulous it doesn't hurt anybody. Even though some people get scared you know, when a lot of people that have a lot of trauma or even a little trauma, and I first kind of try to teach them how to do this. They... Guilt comes up and they're like," Well I don't feel good about myself. You know good people don't do this," and and I was like, "Well I'll explain. You know, you don't do it out in real life. That's what we're trying to to prevent." But, the capacity to use fantasy is very, very healthy and that's why it's so important when you have little children to use imaginative play and even as parents listening that when you're one child let's say wants to hit your other child, when they're young, because it's not always easy to have a sibling. Just use this as an example. You don't kind of block the anger and say no you have to love your your sister or brother, and, and we don't hit, you have to find a way to, to accept and to channel it, like we don't hit grown ups and we don't say mean thing -- we don't say we don't hit people and we don't say mean things to people. But here's this doll you can imagine it's your sister. And we can beat it up together and have a good old time. And that way the kid is learning to sublimate -- how to use emotions and play at the exact same time and that it doesn't have to be a toxic experience that the emotions are validated and they have to be released. And it doesn't have to be with again beating up like or even a fantasy of beating up like I just shared about myself. It could be writing these things out, unedited, just writing what you want to say to someone drawing a picture of what you want to say or do to someone. The idea is to just get it out, and it has to work so we not only have to get it out but you have to sort of the next step after this is do I feel calmer. Do I feel better. And if the answer is no, there's either more to be done or there's inhibitory emotions that are getting in the way and complicating it or other emotions that need tending. And it may be that you need to bring it to someone who is a professional to help you do this. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I was going to say this could be a good place to get support. Especially at something. If you're like, Oh, that feels like a big river of rage or grief or whatever it is. Well great. Like it's awesome that you identified that and sit with someone who knows how to help, how to hold you in that. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Exactly. Neil Sattin: Well what a rich conversation. And before we go today, Hilary I'm wondering if we can just take a moment to bring this back into the relational realm and, and talk about how, like, if you identify something going on with your partner or something is going on with you and we've talked about taking this space so that you can process and metabolize, is there a way to bring what you now know about the change triangle, maybe into your connections so that you and your partner can now be on the same team with seeing how this dynamic is at work as the two of you come together? What's a good first step, I think, for people to bring this into their relationship? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Well, what what I would say as a, as a good first step is to make sure that both of you have the exact same information. So when possible, I really wrote the book to be used in many ways as a, as a workbook and to read the book together with your partner and to go through the exercises gives you just that, you're on the same page. And even though it will take practice over a lifetime to work it together. That at least you have the same bit of knowledge and you've gone through the same exercises which are pretty simple and, and, and, and, and just to say why I put case examples is because emotions have to be experienced. How do you help somebody get a sense for an experience? And that had to be through the stories. So, I would say just to make sure that the person that you're wanting to connect with has some basic emotion education. And... Neil Sattin: Perfect. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: And then after that established ground rules. I wrote a little blog on this for, for, for how to find your life partner on medium that you want to establish ground rules that you won't be mean that nobody is going to attack or retaliate in ways that are dangerous and hurtful and that you don't abandon, so that if a conversation has to stop because it gets hard, and one person gets too anxious, then you then you have to be able to say to each other. I'm overwhelmed I'm not able to really think as I'm talking to you, anymore. Let's take a break but we'll come back and finish this because really in relationships all there, all there is is talking. You have to just keep talking. And then lastly I would say is you want to try to use the change triangle to make sure that, that both people are relating as much as possible from a core place. Either from that openhearted state or from the emotional state of the core emotions where you're saying, you're using I statements like, "I'm afraid," "I feel anger about this," "I feel sadness about this," as opposed to you, you, you, you, you. And that, when you're, when both people move to the top of the triangle, when you're either you're they're anxious or ashamed or guilty or defensive, you really have to stop. Like, I make a time out motion when I'm working with couples or even working in my own relationship, let's stop and then I say let's rewind to where we were going fine and then somehow we went off the rails and then it's usually a miscommunication, or let's stop and take a break and calm down and let's come back tomorrow again sit and have coffee or tea and begin again and see where did we go wrong, where, where, literally if you sort of track moment to moment: You're having a discussion. Everything is going fine. I want to talk about you know, why we, we don't have more fun together and then all of a sudden one person starts to get anxious or you start to, one person starts to get angry then you can literally stop and say, "Let's rewind to right before you, like I felt like I was with you we were connected and then all of a sudden I said, 'Well I don't really you know. You know, you're no fun anymore.' And then I noticed you got defensive." And then that's where you have to work because the person might say, "Yeah. When you told me that I wasn't fun anymore it hurt my feelings. And then I, I went up into the top of the triangle. I started to get defensive." Neil Sattin: That's great. And, and I see to this opportunity for couples who really start to get this together to like, in a state of shame or anxiety or guilt those inhibitory emotions to learn how to show up for each other in those moments to help, settle whatever is going on or to help navigate their partner back into a place of like feeling understood or seen, and that might be a good, a good return visit for you on the show to talk a little bit more about how how they can collaborate in a moment like that to bring themselves back to a core emotional state. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah I would love to. Neil Sattin: Hilary Jacobs Hendel, thank you so much for being here. If people want to learn more about your work where can they find you? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I have a website with tons of free resources all about emotions and that's Hilary-Jacobs-Hendel-dot-com. Or you could just google "the change triangle" and you can also get there by going to "the-change-triangle-dot-com," and there's articles that I've written for major media outlets. There's my blog which the titles are pretty explanatory of what they're about. And then there's a tool box section that has a lot of resources. So that would be the best place. I also have a youtube channel, so I could go over and explain certain aspects of this and I do something called 1 minute videos on emotional health, because everybody's so busy and nobody has an attention span anymore, so that's "The Change Triangle" YouTube station and then my Website. And then of course the book is the whole enchilada because it was what I did is it's got exercises so that you work The Change Triangle along with me as I'm working The Change Triangle with the people in my practice and then there's little bits of no jargon science to explain what's going on because I wouldn't have been interested in any of this had it not been deeply grounded in current neuroscience. That was really important to me. So, that's really gives you the whole kind of flavor of what's going on. Neil Sattin: Great. And again the book is called "It's Not Always Depression" and we will have links to all of that on the page for this episode where you can download the transcript. And that's Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle or as always you can text the word passion to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. Hilary... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Can I just say one more thing? Neil Sattin: Yeah of course. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: The book just won two book awards that won the 2018 Best Book Award for psychology and mental health, and the Nautilus Award for personal growth. So I just wanted to share that because I'm hoping that people will read this book and that eventually the, our entire society will be very well educated from an emotional standpoint. I think it can really change things for the better. Neil Sattin: Absolutely and congratulations on those awards. They are well-deserved. You definitely have a gift from taking all of this information and making it really practical for people who read the book. So, big recommend for me. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you. Thank you.

As much as we don't like to admit it, we all hold a vivid image in our minds of our partner at their worst. When things start to go a bit off the rails in our relationship, this negative image can sometimes be all we see. And the bad news is, your partner also holds a core negative image - of you! Thankfully, we also have a core *positive* image - which is part of what keeps us in relationship when things get challenging. Based on the groundbreaking work of Terry Real, the core negative image is an important tool in elevating your relationship. In today's episode, you'll learn why it's so important to get to know the core negative images that are at play in your relationship - and also how to use these negative images to help improve your relationship. Don't deny that they're there - know them and use them as a force for good! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Or email YOUR recorded questions to questions (at) relationshipalive dot com. Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: I want to know you better! Take the quick, anonymous, Relationship Alive survey 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 outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

What do you do if you want to have conversations about emotions with your partner, and all they want to do is talk about how they think about things? Or vice versa? In today’s episode, we dropped in with Sue Johnson for a few minutes to get her take on this question. Sue Johnson is the author of “Hold Me Tight” and the creator of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) - and has trained thousands of couples therapists in her methods. Sue also reveals one thing that you can do, today, to add positive energy to ANY relationship. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Visit Sue Johnson’s website to learn more about her work. Pick up your copy of Sue Johnson’s book, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/sue4 to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Sue Johnson. 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 Satin. Today we're gonna do something a little bit different. We are going to dive in quickly with one of the world experts on relationships to get answers to some of your questions. I dropped into the relationship alive community on Facebook and said, "Hey if you had 10 minutes to talk with Sue Johnson, today's guest, what would you ask her?" And then I was like, "asking for a friend. Okay, I'm asking for myself." And so we got some great questions from people and so I wanted to take this opportunity to ask them and to share just a few moments with our guest - as I mentioned her name is Sue Johnson, she is one of the world's experts on relationships and specifically on how we use attachment theory and attachment science to build stronger bonds with our partner and to thrive in connection. It's also a great way to understand when things are going south, why they're going south, and how to rebuild your relationship. Neil Sattin: Sue Johnson is also the creator of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy also known as EFT, and has trained thousands of therapists around the world in using EFT, to help couples. And it is one of the methods that has been empirically shown through research to be effective at helping couples build stronger relationships. Sue has been on the show before. If you've been a long-time listener, you know that. To listen to any of her other episodes, you can visit neilsattin.com/sue, S-U-E, and then a number. And so, there's just sue or there's sue2 and sue3 she's been on all of those times. So this will be sue4. And we will have a detailed transcript as always, that you can get by visiting that URL or by texting the word PASSION to the number 33444 and following the instructions. Sue Johnson, so great to be here with you again, on Relationship Alive. Sue Johnson: Hey, it's always fun. Nice to be here. Neil Sattin: Great, great, so thank you for being willing to just jump in and go with a few quick questions. As opposed to our long conversations that we often have. It's so easy to talk to you for a long time 'cause there's so much to say about this topic. Let's start with, I thought this was a great question. And this comes up all the time, what can you do if you're in a relationship where one person loves to talk about emotions and feelings and have those conversations and the other person would rather talk about things and events and when you start having an emotional conversation with that person they start to shut down. And that often creates this dynamic where they're each kind of wanting more of the other or in some cases less of the other. What advice would you give a couple in that situation? And maybe you could speak to both members of the couple and how they might come to a better place. Sue Johnson: Well, if we saw a couple like that in EFT, in therapy or if we saw a couple like that in one of our educational groups, our Hold Me Tight groups, we would get them to talk about just what you said, to talk about the process. Everybody stays with the content, and with their own kind of dilemmas and their own kind of issues. And from that point of view all you're left with is that these two people are different. Yup people are different. Everybody's basically incompatible on some level but they're not. Because you can talk about the process. So if I was sitting down with that couple, I would ask the person who wanted to talk about emotion, "Could you share with your partner what's happening for you and what it's like for you, when you're... What is so important for you about wanting to share your heart?" And you make it simple. That's the other thing, "What is so important for you about wanting to share your heart, about wanting to understand something about your partner's emotions? Can you help him understand that?" And the person might say, "Well yeah, there's times in the relationship where I kind of feel lonely, it's like I'm in a relationship, but I can't quite put my hand on you Tom, I don't quite know where you are, I don't quite know how you're feeling about me, and I kind of feel lonely." Sue Johnson: And when people talk on this process level, it's usually new to the other person. The other person says, "I didn't know that you felt lonely, I felt like you were just fed up with me and that I wasn't emotional enough for you." So this is how it kind of goes. Usually the person who's looking for this emotional connection is saying, "Where are you, where are you, where are you? Can you connect with me? I need this emotional connection." And we know how important that is to people. Psychology pathologized that for a long time saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't need that. It's somehow immature." And now, what we're understanding is, no, no, no, it's just who we are. It's how your brain is structured, you're a bonding mammal and you need this sense of connection. So that person would say, "I don't need to talk about my emotions forever." That's the other thing, that people have fears the other person who's more withdrawn or more introverted would say, "Well, like if we start talking about emotions, are we gonna have to talk about it like for a week?" Usually the fear there is, "I'm gonna get overwhelmed." I'm not gonna know how to do it right. Sue Johnson: So it's important for the person to say, "No, I don't need to talk about emotions for a week, I just need to be able to check in with you and connect." And the other person says, "Oh well, that's really not so hard." And then the other person needs to be able to say, "I'm slower than you. I'm more externally focused than you. I'm not as embedded as you in my emotions. I need to think about it a bit and I'm not always sure how I feel. And if I'm gonna share with you my emotions then you got to like understand that. And I also wanna connect about other things." The joke with me and my husband is that, his favorite place to go is a hardware store. [laughter] Sue Johnson: So I can't remember where we were, we were somewhere exotic. Oh, we were on this beautiful little island, a couple of days ago. And we're wandering around after coffee, and my husband's looking across the street and he's looking at the hardware store, and I said, "No. You don't wanna go in the hardware." He said, "I just wanna go in and find... " Right, so I wanna go look in the art galleries, he wants to go to the hardware store. The point is, if you can talk about them and talk about your needs and your softer feelings, and you can be responsive to your partner, you can deal with all kinds of differences. Tricky part is, that so many of us, that's not what happens. Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: What happens is we get stuck. We get stuck. The person who's wanting connection gets upset and angry and says, "You never talk to me." And that's a challenge and it's an accusation, really. And then the other person feels like they're failing, they can't do what they're partner wants and they say, "Well I don't wanna talk right now, I'm busy right now." So they shut down more; the more they shut down, the more the other person gets upset, and that is what brings so many people into seeing someone like me. And that's what I try to lay out for people in my book for the public, Hold Me Tight, because so many people don't understand that we can get trapped there, and then the dance takes us over. And before you know where you are, the other person looks like the enemy, and looks like somebody who's so different than you, that you don't even know what to do with it. So it's a good question. And we think it's always about gender, but it's not always. I've worked with folks where it's the man saying, "I wanna talk to you or I wanna get close." And it's the woman saying, "What are you talking about? I come home from my law practice, I'm exhausted." And so people have to be able to be emotionally accessible and open and responsive to each other. It's not about making cognitive deals. Cognitive deals, they don't go to the right level. It's about being able to share what's going on with you. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: I don't know if I've answered your question. Have I answered your... I think I have. Neil Sattin: You have. Yeah, in detail. And one little point about that, that I'm curious about, because I was thinking about the question and thinking, "Okay, so we reached this point." As you said, it used to be pathologized when someone was emotional in a relationship. How do we avoid pathologizing the other partner who is less emotionally oriented? Sue Johnson: I think what we've learned over the years in emotionally focused therapy, is we think of emotions and how we deal with emotions as somehow random or irrational. And what we've learned over the years is emotions aren't irrational for a start, there's always a good reason for why you feel the way you feel. Emotions are all about telling you what matters in the world and what is important for your survival. And people have very good reasons. They have learned to focus on certain things and to deal with their emotions in a certain way to survive. And they're standing in front of you, so it worked, it worked on some level. Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: And now, that's what they know how to do. So I remember working with a man who could hardly... He could not look into his wife's face, for sure, and talk about his inner world. If he was going to do it, he had to go very slowly and stare at the rug, stare at the carpet. But what he told me was, he grew up in a very violent family, where the music to their dance was all kind of hostility and rage and violence all the time. So any time he heard that music, his brain would go into alarm. And his brain would start looking for ways out. And he needed to be able to tell this partner that, but they were very good reasons why when she would up the emotional music, he would start to freeze and go still. Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: And there's no point in telling him that's bad or you mustn't do that, that doesn't help at all. The most useful thing is to say, "Well, you must have a very good reason for that. Obviously, that was important for you to be able to do that right now. And can you tell your wife how can she help you? How can she help you not move immediately into that shutdown?" Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: He said, "Oh, she can talk slowly." And his wife roared with laughter, because, of course, she spoke very fast. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Totally. Sue Johnson: He said, "She can speak slowly, because everyone in my family spoke very fast and all this fast emotional stuff coming at me, and I feel like I'm in a hail of bullets." Listen to his image, "I'm in a hail of bullets, I'm gonna get hurt." Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: No, we must not pathologize. People have certain ways of regulating their emotions. And the thing about that is, if we accept them and we understand them, people can then add to them. Relatively withdrawn folks can learn to come out and talk about what's happening inside and know that it works, and that the other person listens and actually it creates connection. And people who are really hungry for emotional connection, for all kinds of good reasons, could also learn to trust another person and to not have everything so urgent all the time. Like, "You've got to speak to me now." Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: Can translate into, "Basically I know you care for me, and I'm gonna take a deep breath here, and I'm gonna give you some space after you come home from work. And I'm gonna trust that, then if I come and talk to you, you'll be willing to talk to me." Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: So it's a lot of distress in relationships comes from partners triggering each other and ending up feeling disconnected and insecure, rejected, or abandoned. And as human beings, what people don't get is that feeling rejected and abandoned by someone you count on, your brain translates that into a danger, straight danger, just like walking up on a freeway, crossing a freeway is danger. Your brain says, "Uh-oh, emotional isolation. If you call no one will come. Danger!" Right? Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: And people don't understand how they trigger each other. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And so the words that come up to mind for me is: One, I'm hearing that there's this sense of moderation. The "emotional person," I'm putting that in quotes, like learning how to be emotional without overwhelming another person. And the less emotional person learning like, I don't think anyone is devoid of emotions, but learning like, "Oh, there's actually something happening here." And it could be useful, it doesn't have to overwhelm the system. But it's not like you're gonna turn a non-emotional person into emotional person unless they discover some joy in that. I'm reminded of a conversation with... Sue Johnson: I think that's a good point. Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm reminded of a conversation with Dan Siegel, where he talks about... He was doing mindfulness work with someone who was in their 80s or 90s and woke that person up to their physical sensation and their emotional experience, and suddenly the world was a rich place where they really wanted to be and we're enjoying it more. It's not to say that that's required, but I think that's available for people if they're willing to dip their toe into that water. Sue Johnson: Yes, and also in relationships, the bottom line is, relationships are all about emotion, relationships are a dance, and the emotion is the music, and relationships are all about emotion. So when I'm working with a couple and one partner says something pretty loaded they're like, "Well, sometimes I think about leaving. I get so desperate I think about leaving." And I say to the other person, who might be the rather shutdown person, "What's happening for you?" And they say, "Nothing." I mean, I deal with it respectfully, but the bottom line is, in my head I say, "No. That's impossible. If you care about this person and you're not dead, and you're not a lizard, you are feeling, because she just sparked alarm in your mammalian brain. In your mammalian brain that knows that emotional isolation and losing someone who's a huge resource for you and who you depend on is a safety cue. Your mammalian brain knows that, your whole nervous system sings that song." So when people say, "No. I feel nothing." I just go, "Aha!" Neil Sattin: Right. And I think with what you're... Go ahead. Sue Johnson: Then I say, "Let's try that again. She turned to you and she's dead." And I run it past his amygdala again and finally he says, "Well, well, well, I don't know. I just wanna get out of here." So then he starts to tell me, "My body tells me to just get out of here. So then we go with that." And the whole thing opens up. We haven't taught people to trust their emotions and listen to them and make them their friend, we haven't taught therapists that. We've taught people that emotions are sort of dangerous stuff, they get out of control, they're associated with women. [chuckle] Women kind of going hysterical. Neil Sattin: What's wrong with that? Sue Johnson: Yeah, that's a bad idea. So there's a lot of interesting stuff in our society about putting rationality on a pedestal and ditching our emotional realities, actually, when the bottom line is, it's our emotions that organize our inner world and it's our emotions that organize the signals we send to others and the way we dance with others. So from my point of view, we might as well get to know them and start to use them well, but then I do something called emotion-focused therapy. So I am gonna feel that way. Neil Sattin: Right, right. Thank you so much. I'm wondering before we go, 'cause I promised something quick, and it's so easy to talk to you, and we could keep talking about that very topic, probably for an hour. Sue Johnson: We could. Neil Sattin: I'm wondering if you'd be willing to just... Anyone listening, if they wanted to do one thing today that would infuse their relationship with some positive energy, and if they're not in a relationship maybe just infuse their relationships with others in their life with some positive energy. What's one thing that they might be able to do? They turn off this podcast and they can go and do it today. Sue Johnson: Oh my goodness, there's so many things you could do. Neil Sattin: I know, I know. Sue Johnson: There's so many things you could do. What we see when couples have repaired their relationship or when they've gone through our education groups, is that they reach for each other. They reach for each other, and they risk sharing. So that's what we do when relationships are working. So that doesn't have to be a big thing. I worked with somebody last week, for a whole week. This young woman was helping me, and at some point during the evening I looked across at her face and I saw... And she was starting to talk about something and I saw the emotional music change and her face change, and I suddenly really got in my body that this was something... She was in pain, she was certainly in pain. She wasn't just chatting anymore, she was in pain. And usually, I don't know what we do with that, we kind of don't want to embarrass the person, so we stay away. And I just had this incredible feeling, so I saw that she was vulnerable, so I reached. Sue Johnson: So what did I do? I didn't want to embarrass her, so I just went around the table and sat beside her and put my hand on her arm and looked at her. What I was saying to her, we do so much non-verbal. What I said to her with my eyes was, "I see that you're in pain." And she just turned into my neck for a minute. Some other people at the table might not even have noticed. She just turned into me for a minute and put her hand on my hand. It was like, "I see you. I see you and I care that you are there." And so, I reached to her and she... It's like her whole body told me, "Thank you. Thank you for this." People love it when we see them. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: We do this with our dogs, we do this with babies, we forget the adults want it too. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: My dog will come and drop his toy at my feet, and I'll say, "Oh, you want to play? You're such a good dog." And my dog will quiver in joy. Why can't we do that with people? Just see them, see them and respond to them. It's so powerful, and in our busy lives, we don't do that very... We don't listen, we don't honor, we don't say, it's like we say to people with our actions, "I see you. We're two human beings on this planet. In this short little time we have here, I see you. I'm with you, you're not alone here, you matter." That's a very powerful message. Neil Sattin: I agree. Such a gift to give someone else your care, your attention, to actually see them fully. Thank you so much, Sue, for joining us for this quick dive into your world and your world of relationships. Sue Johnson: So is this sue4? Neil Sattin: This is sue4. Sue Johnson: It is sue4 and do I improve every time, Neil? Neil Sattin: I think we both improve. I think we both do. Sue Johnson: Okay, that was very insensitive of me. Yes, you do improve, Neil. We both improve every time. That's right. Okay. Neil Sattin: Thank you so much for your willingness to join today and yeah, for you listening, neilsattin.com/sue4 to check out the transcript and download it. And Sue, I'm so looking forward to talking with you again sometime soon. Sue Johnson: Yes. Take care. Neil Sattin: Take care.  

What do you do if your partner tells you that they don't love you anymore - or, maybe, that they think they never actually loved you? What are your next steps if your partner had an affair? These are all varying degrees of "leaning out" of your relationship. So - how do you respond in a way that has the best chance of not only preserving your sanity and dignity - but also, potentially, re-igniting your relationship? In today's episode I answer two listener questions and get to the heart of what to do, and how to get to the truth, in these situations. Also, announcing that tickets are on sale for Relationship Alive...LIVE! featuring Terry Real. We'll have a musical guest (Katie Matzell trio), and you'll also have the chance to ask YOUR questions. The show will be on June 6, 2019 at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. Limited seats available. Click here to buy your tickets now! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Or email YOUR recorded questions to questions (at) relationshipalive dot com. Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Click here to get tickets to Relationship Alive...LIVE on June 6, 2019 featuring Terry Real and musical guest Katie Matzell I want to know you better! Take the quick, anonymous, Relationship Alive survey 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 outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

With so many different potential approaches to helping your relationship, how do you choose the one that’s right for you? And how do you make sense of them all together? John and Julie Gottman, Sue Johnson, Esther Perel, David Schnarch, Stan Tatkin, Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, Terry Real - they’re all describing different ways of getting the same thing - a loving, thriving, passionate relationship. Today we’re going to tackle how it all fits together, so you’re better prepared to steer your own relation-ship. To help us integrate in a way that makes it practical and clear, we’ve invited Dr. Keith Witt back to the show. Keith Witt is an integral psychologist, which gives him a unique perspective in making sense of all these roads that lead to Rome. His most recent book, Loving Completely, details his approach to bringing all of the essential parts of you to your relationship. Along with having written 7 other books, Keith has conducted more than 55,000 therapy sessions with his clients! If you’ve been wondering how to make sense of it all, this episode is for you! Also, please check out our first three episodes with Keith Witt - Episode 158: Loving Completely,  Episode 80: Bring Your Shadow into the Light and Episode 13: Resolve Conflict and Create Intimacy through Attunement. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode has two great sponsors, each with a special offer for you. For a unique gift to discover meaningful stories from the life of someone important to you, visit Storyworth.com/ALIVE for $20 off a subscription. Share the memories with your family, and preserve them in a beautiful hardbound book. It’s a perfect Mother’s Day gift! Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Check out Keith Witt’s website Read Keith Witt’s new book: Loving Completely: A Five Star Practice for Creating Great Relationships Check out Keith Witt’s other books as well! FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict… Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/integrate Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Keith Witt. 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. And if you can hear it in my voice, I'm particularly excited for today's conversation. Of course, we've had so many different viewpoints represented here on Relationship Alive because there are so many roads that lead to Rome, the Rome of romance and romantic partnership, and how we sustain loving, thriving, monogamous relationships, and it's not always that one road works for any one person. And this has come up several times in the show, this question of, well, “so and so says their way is the way and they sound so convincing when you're talking to them, Neil, so what do I do when it doesn't work?" And this happens sometimes. Neil Sattin: So, if you've tuned in for a while then you know that the reason that I have all these different voices on the show is because I really believe strongly that it's whatever works that's important. And I suppose for myself I might put some boundaries around that; what I'd be comfortable with or where I'd feel a little edgy or stretching, but for the most part, I think that it's up to you to really get informed about what's possible and then make choices that really align with you or maybe stretch you in a direction that feels like a light way to be stretched. At the same time, they all form part of this big puzzle that makes sense. And so, I wanted to have a conversation today about how we integrate as much as possible the way that we think about all of these different methodologies so you can see how they all fit together, they don't exclude each other, for the most part. They actually all find a place in the big picture of how we make relationships, what we want them to be. And as much as some of the people on my show might want you to think otherwise, this is my personal belief. Neil Sattin: And so to have this conversation, I've invited one of my favorite guests to have here on the show who also happens to be someone who's very good at integrating all these different approaches. His name is Keith Witt. He has been here before to talk about his books, "Loving Completely", "Shadow Light", "The Attuned Family"; and he is an integral psychologist among other things. And so the integral perspective, I think will help us understand how all of these different pieces fit together in a way that actually does make a coherent whole, it makes sense. So, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Keith Witt: I am always happy to be on your show and it's one of the pleasures of my life, our conversations. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Awesome, well, the feeling is mutual. I do want to say before we dive in deep that we'll have a transcript of this episode. If you're interested in downloading it, you may want to read it a few times, you can visit neilsattin.com/integrate 'cause we're going to be integrating everything today. Or, as always, you can text the word "PASSION" to the number 33444, follow the instructions and you'll be able to download the transcript to today's episode. So, Keith, let's start with maybe where you orient in terms of this conversation. And before we got started, you were talking about this sense of, as we talk about all these different schools of thought, we're really talking about the founders of modern relationship theory. So, where do you put yourself and how do you make sense of where you are in this conversation about how we're tying all of these things together? Keith Witt: Well, first of all, being a founder is a peculiar thing. I've developed various systems, all of them interrelated generally, under the integral umbrella. And integral has worked for me greatly. [chuckle] The reason why integral has worked for me greatly is the integral is a meta theory, not a theory. And so, I had actually generated systems and written some books about systems before I encountered integral. But then the integral, looking at the world through the objective and the subjective, the individual and the collective; looking at the world through types of people, states of consciousness, through people being at different developmental levels, including therapists, I realized that when you put any system into that, including the systems I developed, it expanded. And it made me just fascinated with the commonalities that affective systems, particularly of relationships and of love because I think everything's relationships is. Keith Witt: And so, one of the things that's different for me and other founders is that, even though I've... If you look at my eight books, there's essentially seven different systems interrelated of doing psychotherapy and of doing couples work. I'm not particularly invested in any of them. Those systems are useful, they're coherent, they have a lot of technical and theoretical interconnections with everybody else and with the research. But I agree with exactly what you said. Ultimately, when a couple or an individual wants to love better, they come in, it's the goodness of fit with the therapist and it's how effectively they move forward, and there's an alchemical experience that happens with that, that can only be described in the intersubjectivity of the session. And meta research on psychotherapy has shown this again and again, and one of my favorite meta-analyses, which they took lots of studies and put them together, they found out a couple of very fascinating things. One, therapy helps people, okay? That's good news for everybody. Neil Sattin: Good to know. Keith Witt: The second thing that the variance of change was explained by 40% in this meta-analysis, 40% of the variance of change was client variables; how resilient they were, what kind of social networks they had, what kind of resources they had; 30% of the variance of positive change was the relationship, what was the solidity of the intersubjectivity of the alliance between the clients and the therapist; 15% was placebo effect. If you go to somebody, give them a bunch of money and they expect to change, you're going to change. [chuckle] Keith Witt: In fact, that's something that has completely confused the field when it comes to the whole psychotropic thing. Probably 30% or 40% of the effect of most antidepressants is placebo effect, 8%-12% is probably the drug. Okay, so 15% placebo effect, 15% method of treatment. Okay, well, method of treatment 15% is significant. In poker, 7% is skill and the good poker player always wins but that 15% isn't as big as the client variables and it isn't as big as that 30% of the alliance. And so, I'm aware of that and so I hold my systems lightly, even though I love them. And so, I look at the other systems and I look at my relationships with the other systems, and I get a lot out of all of them. But also, I noticed that as we moved through the fields, our own little blind spots tend to affect how we absorb systems, how we enact systems, and how we integrate them. And I find that interesting because every time I find a blind spot, that's an opportunity to wake up. And this is where our conversation went when we were talking about this. So, how do they fit together? Well, as it turns out, even though they look very different from the outside, most of them fit together quite well in terms of the constructs that the various therapists bring to bear with couples and individuals for that matter and what they have to do in a session to help people move forward. Keith Witt: So, that's pretty much it. My Loving Completely approach is approach that I love a lot, and you can check it out in my book, "Loving Completely". And my book, "Waking Up" that was the first book that I wrote after I had my integral awakening, is one of the first texts on integrally-informed psychotherapy, and it has sections in it around integrally informed sex therapy and marriage counselling. And I'm quite proud of that, and I think that works a lot, but are those more effective than Gottman's approach. Schnarch's approach, or Perel's approach, or Tatkin's approach? I don't think so. I think pretty much you have a good therapist, who's enacting their system and is attuned to their clients, they're going to do pretty well. And this goes for me, all the way back to my doctoral research. I was always interested in this, and so my doctoral research was I took three different kinds of systems and researched them in terms of how much they enhanced the health of clients. Talking plus touching, talking without touching, and touching without talking. And I found that the people got better equally, which led me to conclude that in psychotherapy, people have a natural healing style. Keith Witt: And what you want to do is you want to identify it and enhance it and let it and help it grow as you grow throughout a lifetime. And I think that's probably the best way to go, as a psychotherapist and as a marriage counselor, and certainly when I train people and supervise people, that's my perspective. What's your natural healing style? How can we help you expand that and grow within that natural healing style? And that natural healing style has to involve, not just your style expanding, but you expanding. If we don't grow as individuals, we're limited as clinicians. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's... I really appreciate your saying that and it's making me think about that problem of when someone comes to me and says, "I tried. I found an EFT therapist and that didn't work, or I found a Gottman therapist and that didn't work." I wonder sometimes if that might be, because the particular therapist isn't necessarily 100% aligned in terms of their healing style, which you just mentioned, with the system that they've learned. It may be that they believe 150% in the effectiveness of that system, but if it doesn't tap into their own natural alignment and integrity and how they create resonance with their clients, then I could see it falling flat at times. Keith Witt: Oh yeah. Before, let me see, probably 2000, I've been doing this since I first started studying therapy in 1965. I mean, I've been studying bazillion systems. And so for me, until I was around 50, every time they discovered a new system, I go, "Oh, damn." Because I knew that I was going to get disintegrated. I was going to learn this system and it was going to disrupt my understanding of the psychotherapeutic universe. I would have to climb into this system and enact it until I could actually enact the system naturally, I could answer questions from the system. And I knew that it would re-organize my understanding of the universe, and it was a lot of work. So, every time I found a good system, I go, "Oh Jesus, not another one." And then I would study it and I would... Sometimes for years, and it was always difficult in the beginning because it would destabilize, and that's very much how development goes on any developmental line. You expand into the current world view, and something comes and causes that world view to not quite be enough, and so the old one disintegrates and you go through that period of disintegration before you re-integrate into a more complex system. And I kept hoping that it would be the end of it. I'd finally get a system that was so great that I wouldn't have to have go through that experience. Keith Witt: And then after I was 50 and studied integral and wrote about integral, I realized that I was enjoying the process now, that when someone came up with a new idea, like EMDR that it actually was... EMDR is wonderful in certain situations dealing with trauma. And so that was great when as soon as I identified it as a great system, I saw a research that persuaded me, I dived in and I had a lot of fun learning and acting EMDR until I could bring it into my repertoire of theoretical and practical understanding. Now, what did that reflect? That reflected my consciousness changing. Keith Witt: I shifted from being more egocentric in my understanding to being more open, so my unconscious was actually aware. Keith, there will be great systems that will happen and when they arrive, they'll help you grow and be a better therapist, they're wonderful. And so, my subjective reaction to them shifted from, "Oh, no," to "Oh, boy." And this is how you notice that you grow. You don't notice that you grow particularly because you have a new idea, you notice that you grow because you have a different natural reaction to something that you had a different reaction to before. And it's very difficult to notice a shift of world views from the inside. It's easier for other people to give you feedback about it until you get to a certain level of development in the integral, we call that the "second tier" and then it's just easier to see that kind of stuff. And so that's been my experience with this over the decades. That's my current experience with it. Neil Sattin: Great, yeah. And just to give you listening, a full sense of what I'm bringing to this conversation, I mentioned in the introduction that a lot of this is about you finding tools that work for you. I also have another bias that comes from my position of being able to talk to so many of the founders of relationship theories, which is... And it comes from my upbringing I think, which is this kind of like, "can't we all just get along" mentality. In an ideal world I'd be having this conversation, Keith, you would probably still be there and we would have everyone on a stage as a panel, but the express purpose of that conversation would be like, "Let's figure out how we can all work together." And my understanding is that, that's been challenging in the field to bring everyone together like that, but that's another thing that... My own agenda that I bring to this conversation is, I want everyone to get along and to commit to the overall betterment of how effective we can be in our lives or as therapists or coaches, or people who help others. It's really important to me. Keith Witt: Well, Amen. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And some other things that you were mentioning made me think immediately of John Gottman. And I can't remember if he mentioned this actually in our first interview, if it was part of what I recorded or if it was just part of my conversation with him. But he talks about how important it is for him to know when he's wrong. He keeps a very detailed record of all the ideas that he's ever had and I think he might have said that he's wrong more than half the time. Keith Witt: Yes, he says that. More than half of his hypothesis have been proved false. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so for him, this is one of the things that he stakes his claim around is that, he's distilled a body of work that statistically has been shown to work more than 50% of the time I think, in fact it's like 86 or something percent of the time. And that being said, he's also... What I love about that statement is one, his embrace of the willingness to be wrong, which is so important at any level of relationship, relationship to an idea, relationship to your spouse, so I really appreciate that. And also it seems to be his major critique of people who would use other systems that maybe haven't been empirically proven to be effective because what if you put it under a scientific scrutiny and found that it only worked 10% of the time, like your best placebo on its, without; or sorry, your best drug without the placebo effect. So, that's where it gets confusing for people I think, because they're like, "Well, if my local shaman hasn't undergone scientific study, what do I do with the fact that it's actually been really helpful for me? Versus going to my Gottman-certified therapist? Keith Witt: John Gottman is the only founder that I know of whose psychotherapeutic approach and theoretical approach literally arose out of his research. That's not true for any of the rest of us. Everybody else was doing stuff that worked really well for them in certain situations and they saw how things fit together, and then they fitted it together with other stuff that they found out and created a structure. That's not a bad thing. That's how theories historically have arisen, in my opinion, except for say, physics. And John Gottman started out as a mathematician. Keith Witt: I went to a three-day workshop with him and Julie, and at the very end, I went up to him, I said, "You know, John, I've done a lot of this stuff, okay? And your system has the most amount of good stuff and the least amount of bullshit than any other system that I've seen." And he laughed because he got it. Another thing that endeared me to him, and I gotta say I am biased towards John Gottman, I love that guy, I think he and Julie are great. Keith Witt: In a conference where everybody's talking about how their system is the best, he went up on stage and says, "You know, I think about my treatment's failures." And I thought, "God, John, thank you." I think about my treatment failures too, what the fuck. What can I do different. What's the new stuff? He is a researcher. Now, I use a lot of his research to validate my approach, I've changed things that I've done in response to some of his research. I've changed some of my understandings in response to some of his research. Why? He's just the best and most comprehensive couples researcher around. In terms of my approach, almost every psychotherapist and all couples counselors to a certain extent through psychoeducation, you're basically teaching people about themselves and about how relationships work. Keith Witt: The nice thing about Gottman's approach is that he didn't really, in most of his work, he didn't really have confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is what most founders bring to their research, if they do research. Okay, well, if you're doing research to show that your system is great, that's confirmation bias. Now, human beings, when they develop, when they develop from fundamentalist, which is I'm going to enact the EFT system or the crucible system exactly how it's supposed to be, and I'm not going to really think about whether it's working or not, that's a fundamentalist system. I'm going with the structure, but because it's the structure. Keith Witt: When you go to a more rational system, a rational system is, "Well, I want to cross-validate things and see how they work, and if they work better, I'll shift into a new system." In between that conformist and that rational system, there's an in-between stage. Susanne Cook-Greuter and Beena Sharma who studied developmental stages, they call it the 3-4 stage 'cause 3 is conformist and 4 is rational; they called it the 3-4 stage. In that stage, people experience themselves as open to input, but actually they have confirmation bias, they're looking for data that support their preconceived notions and they very much resist change. Keith Witt: You know, back in the '90s, I went to a David Schnarch workshop. And so, David Schnarch was all about differentiation, a concept he obviously lifted from Murray Bowen and never gives him any credit for, which pissed off Dan Siegel enough in the conference so Dan Siegel called him out on it. It was one of those little conference snafus that happen, it fascinated everybody. So I went up to Schnarch, I said, "You know, I think there is a more fundamental construct than differentiation." He said, "What?" I said, "I think it's health." He said, "That's too broad." Now, maybe he's right. Maybe my orientation towards what's healthy and not healthy is a too broad concept. But his immediate reaction was dismissal. He didn't want to consider that there might be a more fundamental organizing principle than his, okay? There was confirmation bias. Now, he's a good counterpoint, to me, to John Gottman. John Gottman doesn't like people making assertions without doing research, but I don't care, I still love John Gottman. Keith Witt: David Schnarch spent minutes on stage during that workshop warning people to not use his stuff 'cause it's all trademarked and I found him arrogant and narcissistic, and to this day, irritating. Now, what is that? Both of them have their own critiques. Why do I find myself really liking John Gottman and irritated with Schnarch? Even more importantly, whenever you get irritated with someone, there's a tendency to dismiss what's great about their system. And this is what is beautiful about integral, integral says, "Everybody gets to be right, nobody gets to be right all the time." And Schnarch's concept of differentiation and holding on to yourself and the whole crucible approach to couples is a really good approach. Okay, that is very effective, particularly with some couples where they keep trying to move out of the container and you keep them in the container until something pops, and out of that pop come something new. And sometimes that newness is a new discovery of love for each other. Now, Esther Perel does a similar thing, but she's more of a practical romantic. I see Schnarch and Susan Johnson as more practical moralistic, in that they seem to literally have moral disgust for other people who disagree with them. [chuckle] Keith Witt: I go, "Okay." [chuckle] Maybe that's what irritates me about them. Like Susan Johnson says, "If you do your work, you have to be slow and soft." Okay, well, that works for her with couples. But you know, as people might have noticed so far in our conversation, I'm not a particularly slow and soft guy, okay? So, my natural healing style, sure, I can get really gentle with people, and I actually was critiqued by Gestalt therapists in the '70s by being too nice to my clients. "You're too nice to your clients, Keith." "Oh, I'm sorry. Just because Fritz [Perls] is an asshole doesn't mean I have to be an asshole when I do therapy." [chuckle] Keith Witt: And so, sorry, Susan, slow and soft is not my natural style, okay? It's alright. Now, does that make me less effective than her with a couple? Probably with some couples, I don't know. Neil Sattin: Right, and it would probably make you less effective if you were implementing her system. Keith Witt: Yes, that's exactly right. And when you learn a system, it's good to implement it. Now, even though I love John and Julie, John and Julie, when they talk about implementing their systems, they use a lot of their research tools. They give people like questionnaires, they give them cards and stuff, and they have their structured things that they recommend people doing. I'm sorry, I don't like doing that stuff. [chuckle] Keith Witt: My clients don't like doing stuff like that, but even if my clients liked it, I don't like doing it. If you go to a risk management workshop, they give you a five-page thing your clients are supposed to sign about all the horrible things that they can report you for and that the therapy does and doesn't do. I'm sorry, I don't do a five-page thing. We all have our different styles. Now, that being said, I just love that guy, love him, and every time he gets a new thing out... I studied his last book from the beginning to end several times, and except for the math, just found it utterly fascinating. And I see him as a practical scientific guy. He is a true scientist. John Gottman will change an opinion on a dime if you give him persuasive data. And that's just not true for many people. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so, since you've brought up David Schnarch, and unfortunately, he hasn't been on my show yet, so we haven't had the benefit of being able to hear from him directly. I still... I reach out to him every so often and I'm hoping that one of these days he will. That being said, it's funny. I have my own bias when someone doesn't want to be on my show. [chuckle] I'm like, "Well, what's your problem?" What you just mentioned about your experience with him, that seems in some respects, to make sense given that he's staked his claim on differentiation, that that's where he's coming from, differentiation being that sense of holding on to you and your sense of who you are no matter what someone else is throwing at you. And so in preparation for this conversation, I really dove into his passionate marriage work, which is sort of the lay person's approach to crucible therapy, which is what he calls his work in the therapeutic realm. And I found myself really appreciating it, in fact, and it got me irritated because even... I was listening to this one recording of him and he said something that was dismissive of attachment theory and... Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And I love what attachment theory brings to the conversation about relationships, both how you come to understand your own dysfunction in a relationship or how you come to understand the function of the dyad, what that does for you. And concepts of safety and how that enables you to differentiate. I love that, and it kind of bridges into Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson's developmental model too, which we can talk about in a little bit. But that all being said, when I heard him talking about the importance of knowing who you are, and at the same time being able to remove your distortions of who you are. And he talks about part of crucible being that your partner being there, that's a great way for you to learn where you actually aren't who you think you are, just as one example. Or you get to, through self-reflection, see some of the dysfunction in who you are, and actually work towards growth and improvement. But when he talks about differentiation, he talks about some things that I think are key. You talk about, not only holding on to who you are, but also your ability to self-soothe, so to take responsibility for yourself when you're triggered. How many times have we talked about that on the show? He talks about getting over your reactivity, so taking responsibility for not freaking out at your partner when they trigger you. Neil Sattin: Again, so important, and fits right in. And then, he talks about, and I love this concept, the idea... And this is a place where I feel like he's kind of unique, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Keith, 'cause you have a broader perspective, perhaps, than I do. But he talks about... He names his approach as a non-pathological approach. In other words, if things are going wrong, then nothing is wrong. It's like, that's what you would come to expect. And that part of what he holds as an ideal in a relationship is the ability to hold onto yourself, to self-soothe, to not get reactive with your partner, and to hold the container of a relationship when things get uncomfortable. And that does seem so important, being able to grow with your partner. If you're so focused on fixing things and one of you capitulating to the other, it's not that there's never a place for compromise, but it's like, I think, and so many couples rush to that, they overlook the actual growth potential that happens in truly experiencing themselves as separate individuals with different ideas about how to live and how to be in the world, or how to be with each other. Keith Witt: It's a wonderful approach. It's a wonderful understanding. I like it. And I use those concepts and those understandings, and have, ever since I learned the system. That the system has great efficacy, practically speaking. Now, that being said... So let's just expand. Okay, so it's great to say it's a non-pathological system. Okay, fine. And basically, effective therapists operate from that perspective. Here's two people, they want to change, they want to grow. That power of a human consciousness wanting to change and wanting to grow is so robust that there's a lot of details of self-regulation and moderation and holding on to yourself and understanding. But there's that basic core of power, of human consciousness wanting to grow. That's true, and psychopathology has existence. If somebody has a personality disorder, there's no couples approach that is going... In my experience, maybe I'm wrong, because I've been doing my own work. My lab is my practice. I've done 65,000 therapy sessions. And so, I take stuff into my lab, so to speak. So psychopathology has existence. Sometimes you need to go into that to help people grow. You have tell somebody, like, "You have a distorted view of the world," and need to have some individual work to deal with that, or, "You are so overwhelmed by your trauma history that you have to go resolve that trauma before you can experience sexuality and intimacy with your partner comfortably." Keith Witt: That needs to be normalized and there's a subtle bias. In integral, we would call that a pluralistic bias or a green bias, to treat everybody like they're the same. This is what causes David Deida to dismiss psychotherapy in general. Now, that's an interesting thing. I'm a psychotherapist, I teach psychotherapy, I write about psychotherapy, I've generated systems, I'm a founder of systems, I go to David Deida workshops. He generally puts down psychotherapy as being kind of a pluralistic, limp-wristed, egalitarian, second stage, you know, wimps, so to speak. And I still love the guy, okay? [chuckle] Keith Witt: Okay, so why is that? Probably part of it is because I see him as a kindred spirit, as a fellow warrior. But when you and I were talking about this earlier, but part of it is I probably have more projections with people like David Schnarch or Susan Johnson, like that moralistic... Maybe there's a part of me that has moral disgust that I don't like and I project onto them. I do that a little with Dan Siegel. I love Dan Siegel's work, I've studied his books, I've listened to his lectures endlessly, I've enjoyed his lectures. And every once in a while though on stage, he starts complaining about how somebody treated him badly or how somebody doesn't understand him or he had to push back, and I just find that icky. I go, "Dan, don't say stuff like that. That makes the rest of the cool stuff that you talk about. You know, you're a brilliant man, and you've changed everybody. Your book, The Developing Mind, was my foundation of neurobiology, interpersonal neurobiology." Keith Witt: Alan Schwartz is similar. He says everybody bow to evidence-based treatment. He's irritated with this American Psychological Association privileging the research of, particularly, cognitive behavioral therapy, I suspect because cognitive behavioral therapists and the labs around the country get a lot of money and other people don't. So there's a lot of personality that comes through and yet all these systems have wonderful things about them. So, Schnarch is more practical moralistic in that sense. Esther Perel is more practical romantic, she's practical. All the good therapists are practical. You're with a couple, we're going to help 'em move forward and understand them individually and as a couple, and we have a vision of good relating that's for effective therapists is similar. But she has basically a romantic approach. You have your own way of understanding yourself, and of love, and I support that as a therapist. And you have your understanding of what you want with this relationship and I support what you want. And your partner is similarly. And we deal with that and from an accepting standpoint and a practical standpoint, how can we move forward? Keith Witt: You feel enlivened by your secret affair that devastated your partner, I understand how you feel enlivened by that. I understand the draw of that. I understand your resentment at your partner for not being more cooperative and creating better love, the partner is outraged that you did this. Well, I understand your outrage. I understand your desire to love better. It's a very romantic approach, but it fits very well with all the scientific approaches, the moralistic approaches, with even David Deida's mythological approach. David Deida is basically a practical mythological approach. He draws from the wisdom, traditions of masculine and feminine. He used to teach the Shiva and Shakti scale, just brought it out of the Eastern traditions. And yeah, it's practical. This is how we can help you understand yourself, understand your partner, and understand how you enhance the polarity to have the intimacy and safety and love and the passion that you want. And if you get down to it in the psychotherapy session, if you watch any of us doing a session with people, you'd see very similar constructs that we're applying and you'd see very similar interventions. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's so funny I was listening to the first season of Esther Perel's podcast that she put out with Audible. I think it's called Where Do We Begin? Or something like that. And one of the sessions I was like, this might as well be Harville Hendrix that I'm listening to, just in terms of how she was showing up for that couple and talking about safety and the way they were constructing their communication and it was like right out of his getting the love you want workshop practically. So that was fascinating for me and I think worth noting because if you're just a bystander and you're like, say, listening to the Relationship Alive podcast, you can be so persuaded by one person's viewpoint or the other. And in fact, I find myself, like you were mentioning earlier, Keith, persuaded over and over and over again. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: Because everyone's system has so much merit to it, that you might lose sight of where they both offer you something important. Sue Johnson and David Schnarch, it's interesting that you've paired them together because, obviously, they're in some ways they would see themselves as being in opposition to each other. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And yet, how many times have I seen with clients how important creating safety is to them, taking a stand for who they are? And vice versa, if they're all about the safety and they never take a risk by being who they are, I've seen that be problematic too. So, it's like everyone is reacting to the... What's the word? The distorted, the extended version, like if you go way too far into differentiation, that's not going to be a relationship. If you go way too far into creating safety or your couple bubble, like Stan calls it, Stan Tatkin, then you might lose the edge or the eroticism, which is what Esther would hone in on. You've lost your sense of the other person as other, you're too safe. Neil Sattin: So, it's so interesting because even in just this past three sentences or so, you've heard me jump from one to the other to the other trying to show you, like, "Yeah, they all actually feed into each other." If you're really, really stuck, like a lot of people are, I think that's why Esther's TED Talk took off because so many people are stuck. I think she writes in "The State of Affairs" that sexless marriage is one of the top Google searches or something like that. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: So, if you're in a sexless marriage, then when someone starts talking about how you feel too safe and you've come to not think of your partner as someone else. And so here are some ways to get you back to a more erotic, playful space with your partner, then you're going to listen and that's going to make sense to you. But it wouldn't make sense to you if you had no safety in your container and your partner was constantly texting other people and flirting with the waiters and waitresses at the restaurants, and if you were in a totally unsafe world, then that's not going to be a place where Esther's work might, or at least what you might initially think she's getting at. But again, this is just her TED Talk, you hear her in a session and she's talking about creating safety within a couple. Keith Witt: Exactly. That practically speaking, everybody comes from constructs that involve relational patterns, a developmental orientation, that people are influenced by unconscious influences and trauma programming. Everybody has a vision of happy relating for every couple they work with. No effective couples counselor doesn't do that. We all, if we have a couple, we immediately start having a vision of how they could be getting along better with each other. And all couples counselors are informed by the psychological and psychotherapeutic traditions, therapeutic relationship attunement, and that kind of stuff. Keith Witt: Now, when you look at it, for me, the breakdown between Schnarch dissing attachment theory and Susan Johnson saying, "I have the only couples therapy. We never had a theory before me." Okay? Well, look, if you say to a bunch of founders who have their own theories, "You never had a good theory of couples until me," everybody's going to get pissed off. So, Susan Johnson says that, I go, "Susan, you've got a good system, you got a good theory. You don't have to piss us all off by saying that. You can say, 'I got a couples thing that I prefer to yours.'" And so, John Gottman will go up in a workshop and say, "Well, we have our theory." You know he's speaking directly to that. Keith Witt: Now, that being said, Esther Perel and Schnarch make a point that a lot of other couples people miss, they go, "Look, sexuality is a big deal and it's been neglected by the field," and they're right about that. That was true. In the '70s, therapists wouldn't even ask their couples about sex, it just drove me crazy. I did a lot of sex therapy training in the '70s because I realized that to be effective with couples, I need to be really good at helping them have better sex, and integrated that into my work and have ever since. And David Deida's stuff has been priceless around that stuff. Keith Witt: And so, the field has grown to that. And to their credit, once again, John Gottman and Julie, they have their system of expanding the conversation about sexuality and the behaviors about sexuality because they've demonstrated from their research that it's not enough to just down-regulate conflict with a couple, you have to up-regulate good times. And as I make... The point that I make in my Loving Completely approach, a marriage is a friendship, a love affair and a capacity to heal injuries and ruptures. That love affair is a big deal. That first star, this erotic polarity between me and my partner, gets more space in my book than any of the other stars. Why? If that love affair isn't happening then there's a lot of problems that arise out of that, and that's that sexless marriage statistics that Esther mentions in her book. I wrote a book called "A Hundred Reasons to Not Have a Secret Affair", I couldn't find a publisher for it. And I read "State of Affairs" and I said, "Well, I like this a lot better than my book." [laughter] Keith Witt: And really I think that's a really good book about affairs and you can just feel that practical romantic orientation on her part. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and when you say romantic, let's just... Can you get more clear on what that means, just so we get you there? Keith Witt: Esther has... Now, this is just my reading of her, okay? And I've never talked to her. I hope I do some day. There's this sense for her about love. There's a mystery, a cross-cultural mystery about love, that there's love is, I want to be loved, I want to love and I want to do it in a way that works for me. And if it's not happening, I'm suffering and I want to make it happen. And if it's not happening and I'm suffering, I need to take that suffering into the world and into my own development, into my relationship and make love happen. And there's a certain mysterious quality about it. And yes, there's things that interfere with it like lies and abuse and all that other stuff. And to a certain extent, because she works an awful lot with infidelity and that kind of stuff, you can see our practices shape our theoretical understanding. There's that sense of, if we open that up, then love will happen. Now hopefully, it happens with us as a couple, but if it doesn't, okay. It didn't happen. Love, the relationship just because it ends wasn't unsuccessful, we lose each other, we move on and we find love some place else. Keith Witt: Okay, to me, this is very romantic. This is a subjective love-based, romance-based orientation towards eroticism and sexuality. And it's very effective because that's how in terms of the neurobiology of bonding, yes, we go from our various arousal systems, into attraction, into distracting attraction, into romantic infatuation, into intimate bonding, into life stages. Now, what I think Esther misses, because she doesn't seem to be as interested in the science, is that it's an apples and oranges comparison that early attraction, distracting attraction, romantic infatuation, sexual drives, with the sexual drives that exist in intimate bonding, okay. Keith Witt: In intimate bonding, I have discovered or it's been my experience, to go into those romantic infatuation circuits, it's very, very intricate and detailed and it's not nearly as easy as finding a new person that you don't know. And so you can't compare, "Well, it's very hard to develop romance and passion with my husband, but really easy with my lover." Well, of course it is. We're wired to have that be the case. That's not the point. The point is that... And now we're getting into an integral understanding of evolution of consciousness. As we expand our consciousness, as we get more world-centric and more compassionate and less bullshit, our relationships are more demanding. And so it's very, very difficult. I haven't found relationships where people have the depth of connection that they want, knowing each other and accepting each other and loving each other deeply, that they have that and that that container, which is powerful but fragile, can tolerate one of them going out and falling in love with another person. And also, that container suffers if they don't do what they need to do to take care of their love affair. They have a love affair that they believe in that they're sustaining with each other. Keith Witt: So, why is that fragile? Well, because it requires an awful lot of attention and knowledge and understanding and self-regulation. Why is it great? Because there's deeper intimacy available in that container than in previous containers over the last 10,000 years and it's more demanding. If you have a very, very primitive... Say you have a relationship that's pure conformist. We're getting married, we're going to have kids, we're going to do what the Bible says or the Koran says. In those cultures, women stop having sex with their partner when they stop being of childbirth age, in general. Fascinating study. They just go at that point, they go, "Well, I'm not going to do it anymore." A lot, not always, but a fair amount. Why is that? Because there isn't a developmental layer of intimacy that they and their husband are working for, because they're in a system where he's in charge. She has to do what he says. I say "yes" to sex, until I can't have kids anymore and then I can say "no" if I want. Keith Witt: And if we don't have a certain level of intimacy and a commitment to depth, why would we be interested? He would be going after youth and beauty and maybe I'll have an affair or maybe I won't. It just depends. If you're going in, but if you both have the sense of equal depth, if you both are post formal operational, if you both want to sustain your friendship and your love affair and expand it and expand each other, well, then that requires a different kind of inner subjectivity. So these are very complicated forces that are operating on all of us. Now, they're explicit in integral psychotherapy because we always look at lines and levels, and probably, you're going to tell me about Ellyn Bader, probably in their developmental model, because developmental models notice that people's worldviews change, and that relationships, demands of relationship, change as we go into different developmental levels. Keith Witt: The other ones, the effective ones, unconsciously adjust for different people's worldviews, but sometimes don't consciously do it, because it's not visible to them, consciously, but unconsciously, in the session, they get a feel for it and they attune to it. Just like if you're an effective therapist... Stan Tatkin has practically nothing about sexuality in his system, but I'll bet if people come in to his system suffering from not being sexual, he climbs in, understands their experience from the inside, finds out where they're turning each other and on and off, and helps them find the kind of safety that they need to move into eroticism. Keith Witt: And eroticism's very central, because it's like the canary in the coal mine. Everything else has to be going pretty well for you to be good lovers with your partner. It's very rare, as a couples counselor, for people to come in saying, "Yeah, we're both fulfilled, sexually. We enjoy sex, we have sex regularly, and we want a divorce." That actually happens once in a great while, but that's like one in 100. Usually, when people come in and say, "Sex is great," there's a solidity to their relationship, and they're coming in to talk about other kinds of issues; money issues, sometimes... Often child issues and parental issues, sometimes physical issues, that kind of stuff. Neil Sattin: Okay, so... Yeah, there are several different directions that I feel myself being pulled, and... Keith Witt: Great. Neil Sattin: I think where I'm going to go right now is on this practical level, because I want this to all be practical, and we're talking about all these systems as practical systems. I think I heard Schnarch say that... And I don't think this is an actual statistic, I think he was just making a point, which was, in a good relationship, sex makes up about 10% of what you think about and care about, but if the sex is bad... No, if the sex is good, then it's about 10% what you think about and care about. If the sex is bad, it's 90%, or non-existent. And so, I'm thinking about that in light of what you just said and wondering, okay, for people listening who are in this place where they're like, "Okay, well, I'm not connecting with my partner erotically. Should I be going to a sex therapist? Should I be going to an EFT therapist to work on my safety? Should I be... " I could feel... I can feel confusion there, around, what do you do, practically? 'Cause so many people might see like, "Oh, you're not having sex? Well, then, let's talk about sex." Others might say, "You're not having sex? Well, that's a symptom of so many other things going on in your relationship, so let's talk about the other things, and we'll talk about sex later." Keith Witt: Well, first of all, go to a good couples therapist who understands eroticism. It doesn't matter what system they're operating in, if they're a good therapist, a good couples therapist, experienced and know how to attune, and have the things that I mentioned, those qualities, and understand eroticism. One of the reasons that Schnarch says that is that, in general, human consciousness goes where the pain is. We have a half-dozen sex drives, we don't just have one, we have lots of them. And so, if one of those sex drives is activated in a negative way, say jealousy, that's a lot of pain. Say frustration... Frustrated... This happens a lot with guys after the first baby is born. A baby is born. Okay, their wife kinda gets over the birth, and he finds her utterly adorable and desirable. Yeah, this is adorable and she's in love with his kid, she's full of love, "We're sharing this thing," and he wants to have sex. She's in love with the kid, she's got follicle-stimulating hormone up the wazoo, her desire is down, biochemically. If she doesn't have a commitment to re-establishing their love affair, then he's in pain. Keith Witt: And so, what does he do? He makes jokes about it, and there's all these bazillion jokes about men wanting more sex, mothers with small children, and guys... Women don't want to have sex. And these are hostile jokes and these separate people. And, in general, three years after the birth of the first baby, according to the Gottmans' research, 70% of couples are doing worse. But what if you teach them about affection and eroticism and sensuality and say, "You need to sustain this after the birth of the first child. You need to both be onboard with it." Well, if you teach them that, then three years later, 70% of them are saying, "Yeah, we're actually better as lovers." Now, you need... In my experience, that's useful information for me to have, as a couples therapist. Keith Witt: And it's useful for me to know the parameters of that. Just like it's useful for me to know about psychopathology. You know, if somebody has some kind of trauma thing or a personality disorder or some kind of debilitating or God knows, you know, bipolar. That kind of stuff. That has to be addressed. That really has existence. You go to a therapist that has a general understanding, and is good with sexuality in general. I don't know if I'd want to go to any couples therapist who didn't understand the principles of sexuality, and the sex drives, and the stages of sexual bonding, whether I was working on sex or not. It's such a central part of the life stages of a relationship, you know. You don't just have one marriage, you have many marriages. And there's different demands at each developmental level of marriage. And you want to be true to those demands and help each other with them, and good couples therapists all do that. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously doesn't really matter, you know. They do it. Because, they're inside the universe of these couples helping them grow. And they discover these blocks, and they have their own orientation to help people through them, and help people into deep inter-subjective, into love with each other. Keith Witt: And so, that's... All good couples therapists can attune. They all interrupt people all the time. 'Cause you gotta interrupt toxic patterns, and they all have some sense of what a positive pattern is. You know, all couples therapists suspend their ego in service of their clients. If you have too much ego in the session, you lose your capacity to help people. All good couples therapists are willing to share their clients' pain. All good couples therapists tell vivid enough stories, have vivid enough metaphors that they register, they land with people. They're bringing their best selves into the work, so that's... If you took anybody from any system and saw them work, and they were effective, you'd see that in my opinion and so, that's their natural healing style. And, you know, you keep expanding that and after a while... And what breaks my heart about this is since people resist change, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of natural healing styles in existence being embodied by great practitioners, that we'll never find out about. Because, you know, there's a resistance in the field to new systems. And these people don't have as much... I don't advocate much for any of my systems. Keith Witt: As a founder, I haven't like pushed to make one of my systems famous. Okay, well, that means a lot of people haven't encountered a bunch of my systems. Okay. Well, that's kind of a weakness in my approach as the founder, really. Because if I want to make an impact, I should go out and beat drums about my systems and I don't. I go, "Well, yeah, I like my systems but the other ones are great too. Use the one that... Study the ones that turn you on. Turn that and have that enhanced and expand your natural healing style." What lights me up is people doing that. And if they want to use my system, if they like it, of course, I get a little ego rush from that, sure. That's great. [chuckle] Everybody likes to be told they're great, you know. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: You're great, Keith. [laughter] Keith Witt: Yeah, there you go. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and... Keith Witt: Well, I'm actually a little embarrassed, but you know, I often do if my clients compliment me extravagantly, I'll get embarrassed. Partly because of the transference stuff, you know. Okay, so people go through stages, and partly because, I'm uncomfortable with my ego. I don't want it to show up in my session. Anyway. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking of something you said earlier about systems that maybe do or don't actually handle mental health all that well. That there's, you know, a lot of these systems work well in the context of someone isn't suffering with major depression, or borderline personality disorder and that made me think of certain modalities that are helpful with that. Like in particular, what came to mind was Internal Family Systems, Dick Schwartz's system, and... Keith Witt: I love that. Neil Sattin: And there's been an evolution of that intimacy from the inside out which is basically applying Internal Family Systems to couples therapy. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And that Toni Herbine-Blank, she's been here on the show to talk about that. This is something that I feel particularly connected to, is this question of how we, in a relationship, actually show up for each other to help heal. 'Cause I don't think that there are many people in our world that have escaped some form of trauma or another. I think we all have like places where we're wounded or where we don't want to go. We're talking about all of these systems in many ways from the perspective of going and seeking help, which I definitely encourage you to do. It's a good idea to go and, as Keith was talking about a little while ago, to have that outside perspective until you're really good at getting outside perspective on your own. Neil Sattin: But that being said, I like those modalities because the more conscious I think you get of how you heal from trauma, so I'm thinking of, yes, Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing, the things that really enable you to identify what's happening within you, both your body awareness and how you attune to your body, but also what Dick talks about in Internal Family Systems, literally identifying the different personalities in you who are competing and at war, he calls them parts. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And then you can bring those dialogues into your conversations with your partner. Then I think there is a lot of potential through that, through co-regulation to actually heal with each other. But I don't know about any studies that show that that's going to be curative if your partner has depression, for instance, but I do have a pretty strong belief that that's going to help you show up in that relationship in a way where you're still feeling connected and you're in integrity. Keith Witt: There are studies that show that it is curative to expand into your intimate relationship, your family relationships, and your social relationships to be curative with depression, just like there are many studies, overwhelmingly, that show that exercise is a better anti-depressant than any drug. So, that's all true. And your central point, I think, is huge, and that central point is when a couple has mobilized to, one, have compassionate self-observation of both their healthy and unhealthy sides. In my Shadow Light book, I talk about growing your shadow, and that our unconsciousness is constantly giving us constructive and destructive messages, and that we have resistances, defenses against being aware of them, and to the extent that we do that, we have problems with ourselves and in relationships with other people. Because, let's face it, the more intimate you are with yourself, which is having compassionate awareness and acceptance of yourself and self-regulation, the more able you are to be intimate with other people. So, that's just how it works, ask any therapist, any couples therapist. Keith Witt: And Dick Schwartz's approach is wonderful in that, one, he develops... You'll notice there's always a compassionate witness observing these inner parts, okay? Just like meditation increases the capacity of the compassionate self-observation, the witness, as we say in the wisdom traditions, so do these systems that look at these inner parts. Because if I'm looking at inner parts, who's looking? The compassionate witness is looking, and awareness regulates. So, as I'm looking at these parts and I'm identifying the constructive and destructive ones, already I am unconsciously up-regulating the constructive ones, down-regulating the destructive ones. Okay, that's a great language, and it's nonjudgmental, but it's very, very powerful. Now, say you do that with your partner. Instead of taking offense when your partner says something nasty, you go, "Wow, that was that nasty sub-personality." And you go, "Whoa, that was kind of nasty." And they go, "Ooh, that was my nasty self, I'm sorry." Now, at that point, the nasty self isn't in charge. The compassionate witness is in charge regulating the nasty self and now bonding with that partner, and they are collaborating to help shape each other to be their best selves. Keith Witt: When you get to that point with a couple that are doing that with their friendship, their love affair, and their capacity to repair injuries, that's a self-sustaining system that creates the great relationships. And you see the great relationships, you see that, it's called the Michelangelo Effect, it's been studied, and people, they end up talking more like each other, and looking more like each other. But even more, they get up... Long-term couples will tend to get happier with each other because they're receiving influence to be better. And it takes a lot of courage and a lot of openness to receive influence, and a lot of self-regulatory capacity, and that always runs from some kind of compassionate witness, and all the systems encourage that. They all have their different names for it, but if you don't have that, then you're kind of left with raw behaviorism. And if you do have that, which most of us do, or formal operational or post-formal operational. Keith Witt: Having that compassionate witness be more robust gives us more options, response flexibility and interpersonal neurobiology, they would say. And response flexibility isn't random. I want to choose the healthy responses, which support love and support health and I want to say no to the unhealthy ones. But I have to be aware of them, I have to be able to regulate them. That's where Allan Schore comes with regulation theory, that's where Harville Hendrix. His systems basically force people to self-regulate because they can't go into their fight patterns 'cause he's given them different patterns to do. Keith Witt: And so, probably the power of this system is as much by not allowing people to do their hostile patterns as it is giving them new patterns, and I think that's true for Dick Schwartz too in Internal Family Systems, and it's especially useful in trauma because we get overwhelmed with trauma. So, anything that causes us to observe trauma without being overwhelmed, whether it's somatic re-experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, all those things are drawing from the same well in terms of helping us be aware and regulate and then attach and then connect, love other people and be loved by other people. These are the things that the affective systems have in common. Like, practical mythological, somebody might do better if they see themselves at a particular stage of the Hero's Journey. Great, I love the Hero's Journey, I'm all over that, I've been studying it all my life and practising it. Keith Witt: Somebody might do great in seeing, "Well, I have this destructive... An Internal Family Systems thing. One of my firemen is just driving me crazy by giving me all these impulses to regulate myself in unhealthy ways." You go, "Oh, yeah." But he wants that fireman and he wants to feel better and what's a healthy way to feel better? Oh, now, I'm going to these other selves. Okay, these deeper ones. Oh, and here's this injured self that just really never felt good and still doesn't. Oh, well, we need to love that self until it begins to feel like a legitimate person who's in pain. When that begins to happen, say a childhood injury, most people hate that little kid who was abused, if you had early abuse. Once you start loving that kid who was abused, feeling the pain but loving him, saying, "Hey, look, it wasn't your fault they molested you or beat you up," things change, there's more freedom of motion and you can love better. Neil Sattin: Right. And this goes straight to the strengths of a system like EFT, and that's based around attachment and why it's so important to recognize the bonding, the safety, the ways that you are trying to regulate your safety in relationship. And if you're not conscious of that, how the ways you do it are probably going to be jeopardizing, ultimately, the safety of your relationship, even though, ironically, you're trying to keep yourself safe in those moments. Keith Witt: Yes, and now here's the paradox of the whole attachment stuff. The attachment theory just kind of blew the lid off of the developmental orientation. People have been resisting psychoanalytics... The cognitive behaviorists, the cognitive therapists have been resisting for decades the psychoanalysts' assertion that infancy and early childhood really matter. Well, attachment theory showed that it really does, that we do get set up for secure and insecure attachment, and that there's elements of that that go all the way to the adult attachment industry that the researchers in Berkeley, I forget their name... Mary Main came up with. Yes. Keith Witt: Now, there's a little switch here because that attachment has to do with mother/infant attachment. Okay, now, we go on to couples and then we gotta add that sexual component. Adding that sexual component to secure attachment is tricky. I really don't want to be having to be secure with my wife exactly the way I was secure with my mom. I want to have elements of that, but there's not a lot of eroticism there, or hopefully there isn't, and if there is, there's more problems, that would be more complicated. And so now we have to add that erotic component. Now that erotic component has a lot of other elements in it. It has adventure, it has transgression, it has change, it has whoever we discovered we are from a gender standpoint or whoever we discover we are in terms of our own kinks, whatever our culture told us about our sexuality, whether it's good or it's bad. Keith Witt: People discover their sexuality, and if they're lucky, the culture says, "Oh, that's fine sexuality." Say you discover you're a heterosexual g

How do you actually heal old attachment wounds in partnership - so you can create passionate, secure attachment with your partner? Today you’ll learn how to connect with your partner powerfully, in the present moment, to rewire your brain, break unhealthy patterns, and find the joy and wonder that’s waiting for you just below the surface. Our guest today is Dr. David Mars, the creator of AEDP for Couples. He specializes in helping couples heal attachment wounds and traumas, find each other again in the present, and create a joyful, passionate vision for their future together. His work can help you if you’re in a new relationship, or if you’ve been with your partner for 30 years. David integrates more than 30 years of experience as a couples therapist with today’s cutting edge neuroscience - and you’ll see exactly how that allows you to get into really deep touch with your own experience, with your partner’s experience - and how to bridge the gap between you. I’m so excited for you to experience David Mars’s work, and to see how AEDP for Couples can offer you something new in how you show up in your relationship! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Visit David Mars’s website to learn more about his work and therapist trainings. If you’re in a relationship and interested in experiencing David Mars’s work, visit https://www.aedpforcouplestherapy.com/ Check out David’s AEDP for Couples' Training DVDs. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/mars to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Mars. 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. It's been my mission to bring to you the most powerful healing modalities, the most powerful ways for you to find yourself in a deeper state of connection, with the people in your life that you're closest to. And of course, this can travel into all aspects of your life, but nowhere is it more important than with our partners, our spouses, our beloveds. And so it's been really important to me, not only to bring you what I consider to be the best of the best, but to also be uncovering new avenues that we haven't explored yet, because as fun as it is to have John Gottman on the show over and over again, he's a pretty cool guy, at the same time, there are so many modalities available to us that are effective and powerful. Neil Sattin: And you may have heard my episode fairly recently with Diana Fosha, which was all focused on AEDP, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. And even though that's a mouthful, in its most basic form, it's about helping us heal the attachment wounds and traumas, the things that get in the way of us having the richest experience of life that we could possibly be having. It's important stuff. And of course, my goal for you is that you can not only access that, but that you can also bring it to your relationship. Neil Sattin: So you get to overcome what it's like, not only to feel alone in you sometimes in some challenging experiences, but also what it can be like to feel alone as a couple, or alone in your couple. How do you bring connectedness in a powerful way to your experience of being with each other, in a way that deepens and leaves you feeling safer, more connected, more passionate, etcetera? So in order to dive more deeply into this topic, today we have an amazing guest with us, his name is David Mars and he is the creator of AEDP For Couples. Neil Sattin: So it is the application of this work for therapists, in... So in a therapeutic setting, towards bringing couples into deeper connection with each other, and bridging the gaps of disconnect, bringing them into a more of a sense of peace and justice with each other, and also how they enter the new phase of their life, like that new phase that happens after the work that they do together, so that it can really be a powerful send-off into this new phase. And in preparing for this conversation, I've had the honor of being able to watch David work with couples, and it has been amazingly powerful. Neil Sattin: So I'm really excited for you to be able to experience him here with me today and to get more of a sense of how this approach to healing some of our deepest wounds can actually be this amazing, life-giving, joyful, burst of experience that you can then bring into your relationship. That might sound like a lot for an hour-long conversation but I'm pretty sure we'll get close. So as usual, we will have a detailed transcript of this conversation, and in order to download that, you can visit neilsattin.com/mars, M-A-R-S, as in David, Mars, today's guest. Or, as always, you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. I think that's it. So David Mars, welcome to Relationship Alive, and thank you so much for joining us today. David Mars: Thank you so much, Neil. I'm so touched by your introduction. And I'm just so aware of your dedication to watching all four of these three DVD sets of video training, and just so happy to have this honor of talking with you and with our audience as well. Neil Sattin: Well, it's great to be here, and I appreciate your generosity in giving me access to your work. And as people who are regular listeners of this show have hopefully come to know, it's so important to me to be able to have that level of familiarity so that we can dive more deeply. And otherwise, we could talk for an hour about how you came to be an AEDP therapist, but I want to go more deeply into what you do, in ways that also are in the context of other conversations that we've had here on the show. So for example, we spoke to Diana, so you don't need to give us the full run-down on AEDP. We may do... David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: A little bit of that just to bring people up to speed. But if you're watching or listening to this, then I invite you to also check out the interview with Diana Fosha, which is really powerful, and where this, the AEDP, part of the work originates. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: And David, you mentioned to me that you were a couples therapist for 30 years before coming into the AEDP realm. David Mars: Yeah. Yes. Starting in 1975. So it's 43 years. It's hard to believe [chuckle] but that's true. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's amazing and let's just say that I was one-year-old when you first started. [laughter] David Mars: I should say that my beginnings with psychotherapy and couple therapy were really also working with families and with the groups, and it's a lot of aspects of work that was beyond couples alone. But the couple therapy has always been my strongest affiliation and connection, and my favorite work to do, partly because it's so darn difficult to do well, so it keeps me growing through these four and a third decades and continuing in my personal relationship also with my wife of 35 years, it's so wonderful to be with her and to see how what I learn and she learns because she co-teaches the work with me. Karen Pando-Mars and I teach together and being married together with a 19-year-old daughter and a 46-year-old daughter, from a previous marriage, really gives me a sense of the meaning, a deep meaning of how it is to be alive, how it is to have love be a guiding force and a guiding principle for how to be making decisions and how to exist even in conversation. Neil Sattin: So David you were saying that you have been in, you've been a couples therapist for 30 years, and I'm curious for you, in terms of, as we think about the landscape of what's possible in the couple's world, what was it like for you, even having been a therapist for 30 years to discover AEDP and just can you give us a glimpse of what that brought to you and what that's brought to the way that you've seen your work unfold with couples? David Mars: Yeah, I want to give a little context. In the decades before finding AEDP, which was 13 years ago, that I came to AEDP, I had done work that was very related to AEDP in process work through Arnold Mindell, and in respiratory psychophysiology, meaning the knowledge of how the breathing and the body co-relate and I would... For two decades plus would use monitoring equipment, computerized and very accurate monitoring equipment to look at breathing, heart rate, hand warming, muscle tension etcetera of the couples that I worked with, so that I could see how they're being affected by each other, but even more important, they could see how they were affecting each other, and realize that, for example, if I'm a man who speaks to his heterosexual wife in a way that's very firm and strong and sharp and clear and as expected of me at work, but when I see that her hand temperature drops her breathing rate increases. Her heart rate increases and becomes more agitated. David Mars: And I find out that, wow, that's strong masculine... How I'm speaking actually turns her off rather than on, [chuckle] except for stress arousal gets turned on. But not her closeness to me, if I'm that man, I can learn to speak more kindly and softly and firmly in a way that's more meaningful and sourced by my own experience rather than my judgments, very powerful. And in these decades that I'd worked before finding AEDP, I also was very much oriented toward positivity and would have to be kind of apologizing sometimes because people would find that over the decades, that positivity wasn't really regarded yet as being optimal for psychotherapy. David Mars: Many people felt that going darker, going more into the harsher aspect of life or a scream therapy or whatever it would be [chuckle] in the 80s, for example, or 70s, was really more important than the attending to love, to kindness, the feeling of really modulating harsh impulses and speaking even when angry, about what is really meaningful, what you really want to be understood about where I don't take my "Hurt" and hurt someone else with it, but rather maybe choose a more vulnerable side of feeling sad which is a part of hurt, feeling sad that I'm hurt and angry that I got hurt, but I go with sorrow, then the partner is much more likely to come close to me. David Mars: So, that preceded AEDP. What was different with AEDP, in 2005 for me was that in meeting Diana Fosha, within the first 20 minutes of her presentation, I knew I wanted to study with her. And work with her and come to New York and get trained by her and by the morning break... David Mars: I decided on that first morning break to come to New York and study with her, with my wife Karen Pando-Mars, and in going to New York, I found that I was able to share video of my work even during the first five-day training called an immersion course, and had that thrill of experiencing the cohesion of how I'd been working with AEDP, but also the organization of AEDP's scientific principles, the effect of neuroscience in particular, the understanding about attachment research which has been immense in my life since, to understand how attachment research informs me, and helps me as a person and as a therapist, and also Diana as a person, her remarkable intellect and, genius really, and kindness and humbleness, an odd package to find in a person, [chuckle] and it was so inspiring to me, that within a few years of study and intense work, I was able to become a faculty. I guess it was four years or so, of really intensive study and supervision with Diana. David Mars: And so the quality of, the felt experience of love that I already started with, got more deepened by understanding how the work of AEDP, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, holds out for individuals and then transfer that understanding into the couple work and adding to it my own background in bio-feedback and understanding how the heart, and breath, and mind correlate with each other, and how we can enhance that loving vibe, which is literally a pulse wave from the heart that can be felt, that that power is so gratifying to be part of an institution. The AEDP Institute in New York is so moving to be a part of. All the people in it, the 24 faculty plus Diana, are so resonant with the values that I hold, it's quite, quite a joy. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I mean, if you get the sense of like... I was watching these DVDs of you working, and found myself moved, moved to tears so many times and laughing and, or accessing even in a really sorrowful moment, we'll talk about this in a minute. But, so tapped into my own experience that I would be starting to cry and then, I'd notice "Oh my goodness. The person in the video is also on the verge of tears right now." David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: So it's all about developing that. And so this is just watching DVDs. So imagine the power of bringing that into how couples really learn to experience each other. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: So it's not like glimpsing that level of positive effect, but also living there. David Mars: Yeah, I so agree with you. And I just saw a couple last night, for example, where the couple came in with the dynamic actually, like the one I described, of the harsh speaking pattern in the male in this heterosexual couple, and the woman being quite well-meaning, quite dear, very sensitive, and not used to being talked to harshly. And how she was raised, for her it's shocking to be disrespected, but for him, he grew up with a lot of disrespect, and a lot of challenging behavior from his elder brothers, and lack of protection by the parents, so for him, harshness, is part of a defense structure that is survival-based, and as he lets go of it and becomes kinder and loving with her... David Mars: I was able to say to the couple, "You know I just see how much progress you're making between sessions, how many great examples you've given me today of how I see you becoming more loving with your wife, and she's responding so warmly. My thought is, let's just shorten the session today, I could see you doing the work in between sessions, and you can see this recording of the session and rehearse it at home," And he said, "I'm so glad because I'm exhausted, I would love to go home early." [chuckle] It's a very unusual situation of knowing their work is between sessions right now. David Mars: With their two-year-old son, and that's a joy from me, that that work comes home, and shows up in the next session, as evidence of the work, really, I mean, part of the natural lived life of this couple. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's an interesting feature of your work. And my understanding is that obviously, it's not a requirement for couples to have their work with an AEDP for couples therapist videotaped, but that is something that you do encourage as... And it gives them the opportunity to see themselves... David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: In these, sometimes less than ideal states with each other. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: And also to witness their transformation moments and... David Mars: Yes, absolutely. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that seems really powerful for the couples that choose to do that, and choose to watch the videos that are taken. David Mars: Yup, yeah. It is true that in the therapists that I supervise and train, most do not videotape all their couples. But all videotaped some of their couples, a couple, so they can get trained. And for me, I videotape all the work that I do, and I'm so joyful that my couples that call, I let them know over the phone, that's how I work. And for me, my first experience of video being used with me was in 1970, and I got to see myself several times a week, on video as part of my undergraduate training interacting with others, trying to solve problems and seeing how my brilliant idea when expressed in a certain way, would shut down the conversation. In another way, I could be more humble and come forward in a more soft way, a more relational way that would bring the conversation up, and all of us would rise together, like the tide rises, lifts all boats. David Mars: So, I got to see in 1970, how that is, had that blessing. So for now, all the way from to then, I have this continuous relationship to video as a way to enhance learning, into how people understand, how the reflective function can increase, and the capacity to reflect on oneself accurately is a direct relationship to secure attachment and developing more earned secure attachment. If I know actually how I am being, and I'm aware of myself, I can be aware of you, and by being aware of you and me together, I can become more attuned, and this attunement is so precious because, without it, it's like driving a car around with newspaper glued over all the windows, not knowing where one is going. It's so important. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that reminds me of really learning any skill, and the process of myelination, and how important it is to slow things down in order to get to a new place. And I think particularly around self-reflection, that's something that, it's not easy to, a lot of us don't learn that as we grow up. So I can see that video-ing, process as a way of actually slowing down the circuit, and bringing people into that cycle of self-reflection in a way that would eventually accelerate and become just part of how you operate, from practicing it that way. David Mars: Yup thank you for that. In attachment research, it's very clear that when babies are reflected by their mothers or their fathers, and they are shown that they exist and are recognized in a harmonious way that's reciprocal, that goes back and forth and it's contingent, where the baby's response and the loving parent's response are in harmony with each other, and there's a conversation called the proto-conversation before speech, that baby learns, "I am safe, I am loved, I am delightful, and I'm with delightful people who delight in me being delightful." It teaches that love is a guide, as opposed to fear being the guide, and it's a powerful, powerful example of reflection. David Mars: I'm going to mention something else, Neil, that you mentioned about a couple seeing themselves when they're in these regulated states and realizing how they unconsciously and habitually, they drive their partner away rather than bring their partner closer. What I also really enjoy, is couples seeing each other in love. Pinking cheeks, reddening lips, eyes becoming more vivid in color, bright like shining light, and seeing the light in each other and the love in each other and learning to enjoy love. For many people, love was not something that they had joy with. It's loved mixed with fear, love mixed with danger, love mix with avoidance and dissociation. And so to find that love is safe to soak in, safe to send and receive, and visualize it on the video, visualize it and see more clearly how I can see love in my partner, and feel love for my partner by choice. These are immense, immense powers to possess and to cultivate. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I noticed over and over again as I was watching your work, the refinement with which you were able to notice what was happening in a couple, and then to draw their attention both the person who may be having the experience to, their own experience that they were having, and then to bring their partner in, to invite them into the experience. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: In a way that kept them in dyad with each other. David Mars: Yup. Neil Sattin: Can you talk about that part of your process and why that's so important? David Mars: I'm having such an experience of delight that you've seen these videos, and they're so dear to me, I've seen them so many times in the process, [chuckle] of doing them, creating the workshops etcetera. For me, there's something of great, great delight in being a bridge of consciousness, somatic consciousness, and to see the best in people, and reflect the best of them back to them, and for them to see, hear, feel, sense, even knowing their own movement, that they are vehicles of love when they want to be, with increasing skill, with increasing pride, because it is such a deep deep shame for people and deep sorrow to feel not competent to love. David Mars: It's such a feeling of loss, that I can feel I'm speaking of it. And to be able to love, to be able to be loving, and to be lovable, being loveable, is a skill that many, many people did not learn to do. Survival is not enough in my point of view, and thriving in this world to me, actually, it really requires people to love and be loved. And that's really, I think one of the core elements of how I can help couples to see the best in each other, and to see the moment of a smile before the frown appears to cover it, and just to be there as an open channel for the couples to see, and hear, and feel, and sense each other more vividly in each session. Neil Sattin: Now, if I'm listening, then the question that comes up for me is, "Okay, but how do you address problems then if you're so focused on finding the goodness," I mean the goodness sounds great. Yeah, sure, right. So if you're having this kind of question, maybe one thing to ask yourself is, how open are you to the experience of love, like David was just talking about? And at the same time... Yeah, because people come in right with big, big stuff. "You cheated on me, you're always negative, you're... " right? David Mars: Absolutely. One of the parts I really enjoy about couple therapy is the challenge of having a couple come in, who already is coming in with a dryness, with an anger, with a revenge impulse, with feelings of bitterness, hopelessness, deep, deep, deep even rage, about, let's say, betrayal. And the challenge for me as a therapist, to find the sweet spot with them, in the first question I ask them, which is, "What do you want with each other?" David Mars: What do you want to develop with each other, not for each other or to get from each other? What do you want with each other to experience, should this therapy be successful? And the couple might say I just came in, we have just came in from an argument. I can't think about that right now. I said well I understand this is a transition that's difficult to make. I do see this intention between you, but all the more reason in this therapy, to choose to remember what you want with each other. Because that's our purpose in being. We can certainly talk about what happened in the car before you came into the waiting area. But I would rather have you approach that in a place of loving each other and valuing each other and feeling that you are worth working this through to each other. And from this place we can do great things, working out your conflicts, but only from this place of love can we do it successfully. Neil Sattin: So you're grounding them in that sense of, why are we here? And if this could work, what would we want with each other. And how would you help someone who, for instance, is really landing in a sense of, "Wow, I'm struggling. I'm struggling to even want to answer that question for you". David Mars: Right, so in that case, I might say. I wonder there's a part of you that wants to want to know what you want with your partner and find that part of you that wants to want to be close to her, and just to suspend for the time being the doubting part of you, or the angry part of you that is here. I understand that's a real part of you, but for the time being, to practice a mindful choice to occupy the place of choosing her, just to take the moment. Now, if you will please just see her right now. As you see your partner, "What do you love about her? Just set aside all the rest, just find that 10% of you maybe that really is willing to do this and occupy this part of you". Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: What would I find Neil is that it may be almost unbelievable to imagine people can do this the first session, but it is true. I have video to show it. What I have permission to teach from videos, is very clear that people can choose love over revenge and love over aggravation or love over dissociation because they want to, they get better and better at it. Yes, more, more complete at it, yes. David Mars: Some people can get out one phrase of what they love about their partner, what they want with their partner, and the next Non sequitur is what they're mad at them about. I just need to say, "Wait wait wait, so that lasted 20 seconds. On the positive side, please would you go another minute, just stretch to go a minute of being positive with your partner what you want with your partner. Just one minute." And they go another 14 seconds, another complaint, and I say, "Wow okay, 14 more seconds we're now 34 seconds in, see if you can go another 26 seconds and just be with this that you really want something with your partner, and just hang in." And I'm smiling when I'm saying this, I'm really getting how difficult it is, particularly in contentious couples who come often, at least one of them comes from argumentative family systems. Where learning to argue and have conflict was a skill. And to set it aside, you could hear the armor clinking on the floor, to release that armor is scary, it's downright, terrifying. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And what I love about what you're offering is the way that love and tapping into that energy gives people the strength, and safety to then visit harder places. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Because I definitely saw that in your work, that there were times when one member of a couple would get to this really vulnerable place and offering something and then the other person just like... And as you're watching it, you're like, "What do you think is going to happen right now?" And of course what happens is it's like, is that love received? No, it's met with some harshness, or disbelief or doubt. And something that I'm curious about is your ability to hold the love and the vulnerability that one person offers and I think this is a valuable skill as a therapist, and also in relationship to be able to... Neil Sattin: For instance, hold that you're offering something that's vulnerable, and at the same time to be met with a no from your partner, a refusal, and to allow them that experience without it necessarily sending you into a shame spiral or a dorsal vagal response. So yeah. How do you hold that dynamic as a therapist? Because I was impressed by how powerful it was to honor, like, it's okay that you're resisting this love right now, I'm not going to force you to accept it. David Mars: Absolutely. Neil Sattin: In this environment, even though that, it's probably what you think. I want you to do... David Mars: Exactly. That's very well put, Neil. Yeah, it isn't about compliance, it isn't about love your partner because I'm saying you should. It's much more really to remember for example in the... That volume one volume two from New Jersey the 30-year marriage DVD set that is a two-part set, when Joanne is refusing Mike's overtures to being loving and at a point, she says I've had 30 years of difficulties with you. I am not going to simply just collapse with my upset with you just because you're nice to me in this session, I'm not, I'm still mad at you. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: And I have a right to be, and I'm not going to... I'm not going to just set it aside. I'm really, really hurt and lonely. And you haven't gotten it, and I want you to get it. Of course, the way she does it, puts him into dorsal vagal again, but I just love that her assertion is so clearly based in her sense of her rights to be a person who has truth with self as the first prerogative beyond behaving herself with a partner and complying with me or her husband and her ferocity I think is really an essential response to being deprived of having rights all through her life growing up. Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: So, it was such a... She taught me something there in that. Because it went on. [chuckle] It was like a 13-session series of sessions. It wasn't a super long treatment, but it was one that sometimes felt long to me because the setbacks were almost every session. There would be some part of her that just needed to be mean to him and, thump him one, not physically, but with contempt. And I would just go, wow, okay. [chuckle] Ouch. That actually hurts from over here. And that kind of transparent response that often bring humor to her. She said, "Oh that was really sharp. I don't want to be that aggressive 16-year-old right now, I'm sorry". And she'd apologize to him sometimes. It's that subpart of self that really wasn't quite in her conscious knowing, that would sometimes reach out and do something of an ouch to him. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. David Mars: In the sweetest, most vulnerable moments. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. So much here to unpack, first I love that you incorporate that notion of multiplicity and parts that are operating. We've had Dick Schwartz on the show to talk about internal family systems and also Toni Herbine-Blank, which is her incorporation of that into couples work. So I find that to be so helpful in people being able to give a voice to the more challenging aspects of their experience, but in a way that keeps a healthy distance from it, while at the same time honoring it, so that they are not becoming it. So I love that you've incorporated that into your work. And I also just want to give some context, to everyone who's watching and listening to that... So David is talking about this two-part DVD set so it's actually six DVDs that are this couple's Conference and in it they show video of David working with a couple, and this couple had been together for 30 years and they were on the brink, the woman partner had had enough, she was done with things being the way they were, and so... Neil Sattin: And I often get emails from listeners like I've been married for 30 years. Is there any hope for me? I think I literally got that email, like three days ago. So one, yes, there is hope for you. And then we get to watch over the course of 15 sessions how they progress together. So it's not like an instant fix and it's also not an un-enduring length of time that it took for them to achieve a lot of progress as a couple. David Mars: Yeah. Neil Sattin: So, just setting some context. The DVDs are amazing. And if you're a therapist or a healer, that immersing yourself in the approach like that is one way that I think would be super helpful for you. David Mars: Can I add something to this Neil? Neil Sattin: Please yeah. David Mars: I'm thinking about how Joanne and Mike, and they had given me permission to use their first names. Neil Sattin: Great. David Mars: In discussing their work, they're very, very joyful about being of service in the world. So that their couple experience can inspire other couples to grow and develop past traumatic ways of interacting and deadening ways of interaction, to ones that are really truly conscious and enhancing. And the couple was on stage with me, and in the... In showing their videos. So they were being interacted with the audience of about 100 therapists in using language, I-language like I use with them, like they use with each other, with the channels of experience, which are sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, visual, and imaginal and using these seven channels along with I-language. They can communicate about their internal experience, what's moving in them, what they sense in their bodies, what emotions are coming up, what kind of energetic experience they're having. David Mars: And the intimacy of that speech with the audience of 100 therapists gets combined when the therapists are also speaking level, not speaking and pontificating, giving ideas or advice but are actually being moved and speaking from their own experience of their own hope that's being opened in them by Joanne and Mike and speaking from that hope and that joy and that honoring of Joanne and Mike for their struggle and for their breakthroughs, and for their being present with us. They flew all the way from San Francisco Bay Area to New Jersey to be there at that conference, and [chuckle] it's just quite a statement of their dedication to wanting to transform. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. Joanne, just to revisit something, we were talking about a moment ago, she mentions that one of the most powerful moments for her to witness was the moment where you... To say called her out isn't really exactly the right phrase, probably, but you highlighted how she was coming at Mike in a very cutting way and the beautiful way you said it, it was something like, "Are you perhaps mocking him right now?" but you said it in a way that wasn't at all talking down to her, it was just like, I'm inviting you to ponder, was that maybe mocking him? And she spoke to just the impact of, "Oh my goodness! Right, I am doing that. And that is, as you mentioned, not what I want to be doing." David Mars: Yeah, that's huge, that's huge. And I love this part about tapping in the middle of my forehead, the orbitofrontal cortex, the third eye in more mystical traditions. The orbitofrontal cortex is the senior executive that chooses how to be relational, how to be conscious or it can lay relatively dormant. [laughter] David Mars: If we're really actively choosing our partners in an atmosphere of love, choosing to want to be with them or even to want to want to be with them, as I mentioned earlier, to find the parts of us that are really open to moving away from argumentation and toward really saying, "What do we want to be understood?" As opposed to going for revenge or for an impact, to go instead for understanding is a major, major shift in consciousness and is an invitation to be recognized for the depth of what one wants to say and to bring the partner closer, even though it could be in the context of conflict. It does not have to be in the context of conflict, because I can speak about the part of me that wants the closeness. David Mars: I can also say how I feel saddened that I'm not reaching that, and particularly for a male in this world that I live in, to be soft, the one that I grew up in, in my family it was not such a wise strategy. To be tough, to be resistant rather than resilient, a lot of what I learned, and now in these many years, decades really of practice, how to be soft and responsive, is such a joy in marital relating, because it's so conducive to being understood. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. For me, what comes up is this vision of true responsiveness. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Like the more... What I particularly love of the many things in AEDP for couples is, how you're bringing people more and more online into their present moment experience and all the different channels, you just named the different channels of experience, we can maybe talk about that a little bit more. David Mars: Sure. Neil Sattin: But as a way of enhancing how you show up in the moment. So when you say softness, what I feel is my own like, "Oh yeah. It allows me to take in the world, to take in my partner." David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: And to not be bowled over by it, but also to really respond to it. I don't have to push back at it, I don't have to react to it, I don't have to shut down typical fight-flight responses. I don't have to do that because I'm learning how to feel that in the moment. David Mars: Yup. I like that. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I wonder if you could give... Just because I'm noticing we've been talking a little while without naming... I would love to hear from you what you feel are the unique features of AEDP for couples and how people learn to experience each other, and how therapists learned to work with couples and bridge, be a bridge of consciousness, as you were mentioning earlier. David Mars: Sure, yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. I want to spring from what I heard you just saying about when a person knows they don't have to do anything, they're not required to do anything, but it's simply a choice. That's the key to me about AEDP for couples, it's about choosing, about the freedom, the liberty, the liberation from feeling constrained. I must do something for you. For many people already brings up resentment and a hardening inside, to submit one's own wishes to do the wishes and biddings of another. Part of the control struggle that is phase two in marriage. First stage, falling apart... [chuckle] into love, kind of disassembling into love, merging into love, being, kind of losing our senses into love. For many of us, it is how we fell in love, not all, but for many. And that merger state moves into the next state, which is control phase. Who's in control? David Mars: Who's driving this bus? "It's me." "No. It's me. I drive the kids and you drive at work." How do we actually have a life with two steering wheels in the vehicle and not have it be a battle? There's something about the quality that for me is in AEDP for couples, that is symbolized by a marriage ritual where there are three candles and that the two lit candles are the candles that represent each of the couple members, be they same-sex or heterosexual, and they come forward and they light together. The middle candle represents the marriage, but they don't blow out their separate candles. In some ceremonies, the individuals blow out their candles and the union is always left. David Mars: This is a major problem. It gives me chills to think about the fate of that couple that gives up their individuality to become merged into one, and for me, it's a mess that's invited, where one couple gets absorbed... One couple member gets absorbed into the other perhaps and submits to the other and the dying of the self is a tragedy that does not go well, for most couples in my experience. So when all three candles are lit, both individuals are thriving and bringing light into the world and to each other and the middle candle of their marriage is also doing this, that the children that come from that marriage can be, if there are children that come from it, can be loved and loving, and feel the joy the parents share with them as well. As part of that AEDP for couples model, that if the guiding light of love, the consciousness of love and the guiding principles of the whole body. David Mars: Mind, heart, and gut helping the couple members to discern what is right action, what is the correct and wise way to be right now with you my partner, my beloved, my chosen one? How do I be with you in a way right now because my habit right now would lead me into another direction, that I know is going off a cliff of sorts. I'm going to run into a brick wall of sorts. That habit is not my friend right now. How do I, in this moment of activation, of anxiety, of pressure, how do I find myself? Of exhaustion perhaps. How do I find myself freshly, consciously and be guided by my own body to do the un-thought known. David Mars: That's something that I haven't given thought of yet, but it suddenly springs to awareness. I can be like this with you. It's an actual creativity, and that creativity and living is so much part of how we humans, in fact, all sentient creatures can be creative, and I'm thinking about hummingbirds, for example, who are so, to me, remarkable in their durability, and resiliency to get through storms, and cold and rain and to still be there the next day at the hummingbird feeder at the Mexican sage getting sap from the flowers. How they do this is a miracle of their, to me, divine nature to be following their own guidance. They know how to raise a family, how to be directionally wise to go where it's warm, to go where there's food. David Mars: This is part of what the research of Northoff and Panksepp brought forward before Panksepp's untimely death this last year, the trans-species, neuro-biological core self, and this is a consciousness that's in living beings that is not just the high brain, but it's in some cortical areas as well, that guides us toward wise choices and it's tapping into this that AEDP for couples is specialized in, tapping into sentience and the knowing of the self, is biologically corrected and overrides early defenses and early habits that are not necessarily helpful. They're just habits. David Mars: And I want to say one more thinking about this, part of my joy is seeing couples take the best of each of their lineages, the best attributes what they learn through modeling through their parents through being raised, and surviving in that home their, true strengths, but they simply don't need to be all the space junk of everything else that their parents brought through their unresolved trauma that can be moved out of the back yard of this couple's lives and just cleaned up. It does not need to be that the replication of traumas with the couple has to endure together, but rather the healing of trauma through kind firmness. There's a clarity of mind and heart that are really dedicated to having a life that really thrives. That's really the core of AEDP for couples. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple things one like a really kinda broad concept and one like a very specific thing. The broad one being, what we spoke about in the very beginning of our conversation, that the work is about accessing those core states of being and how we bring them to each other. And along with joy and sadness is your lust and sexuality. This is the work you were just referring to and your ability to bring all of those things online is related to your ability to shed your defenses and your defensive states, not in a like laying yourself bare kind of way, but in a practicing new habits of interaction, new habits of handling big emotions, which also seems like something that AEDP and AEDP for couples is really strong at helping people with. Neil Sattin: And then the specific thing that popped into mind is, when you ask people, "How do you know that you're having this experience?" Can you talk a little bit about that question because I think it's such a lovely invitation to bring people more into their awareness and also, to combat the projection, that so often is happening. David Mars: Very well put Neil. Yes, and rather than operating by projection which is... Projection is necessary if you don't have sufficient information of what's going on and projection is not a bad thing, it's just that it's sort of inaccurate often, its approximate and often has our own stuff laced into it or it very confusing and sort of it condemns the other person if we follow projection as our way of understanding our partner, it condemns them to having our internal material put on them rather than really seeing them truly for who they are. Its very lonely to live like that. Neil Sattin: Right. David Mars: So for me, one of the beauties is when couple members have an experience of discernment. I'm noticing, oh, my gosh, my partner right now is smiling at me. I could have totally missed that had my therapist not pointed it out. She's smiling at me and I love her smile and I suddenly realize that her eyes are bright, she still has a light in her eyes even though it's just being disassociated, just that I lost track of where she was in the room even. Lost track of the fact she was actually here. And I was just talking to myself in a way and that moment of seeing more clearly in the foreground awareness that my love for her is in my heart, and I can actually feel heat in my heart. And then this is a quote from a session where the man says, "This is weird, there's heat in my heart. It's so weird." And she says, "I've been waiting for you to say that for 23 years." [laughter] David Mars: "I am so glad to hear you have heat in your heart looking at me when I'm smiling at you." And then he says, "It's actually more like warmth. It's so weird." And I could just... It brings tears to my eyes to imagine a lifetime of his life before meeting her then 23 years later, that she's still waiting for him to feel a warmth in his heart and know the warmth is real and he can trust it and therefore he can trust her and relax his defenses against her hurting him or being less than. And there's something so liberating that that moment changes everything. David Mars: Once the feeling heart isn't just a pump, is actually a heart that feels and knows that sentience of being is with him. This is not a man who studies consciousness. He's a businessman. It doesn't matter, he could be a military person, he could be a dentist, it could be a doctor, whatever it is, we all have hearts of knowing, particularly if we can train ourselves to listen to them, and hear our whole bodies how they can speak to us and get this tingling in my fingertips, I'm having right now, as I'm speaking with you, as an energetic state that relates to the excitement I feel in this conversation and that if I can relax myself a little bit and slow my speech I can feel a heart movement. David Mars: I can start to notice how my muscles can start to relax. I can start to let my excitement tone down some, so I can feel more of the sense of grounded-ness in my chair, the sensation of my chair seat and my chair back behind me and the floor beneath me, supporting me, I can feel I'm really here more grounded with you. I can begin to hear that in my voice, so the auditory channel, come online. I can feel the deeper resonance of my voice coming in. The quality of this self-reflection in this moment that is so much about the sensations, the movement, the auditory, the visual, the whole imaginal field that come alive in me when I imagine the possibility of this being heard by so many of your listeners and just there's something about that awareness and any moment for any couple member's life, any therapist's life, to know I can choose right now to get more grounded and connect more deeply with myself, simply because I want to, is a great freedom. Neil Sattin: So this is so powerful and I want to spend just a little bit more time here and the invitation for you listening or watching, if you're watching is to tune in to each of these aspects of your experience, because at any given moment, you can bring your awareness to them and that will help do what David has been talking about, to bring you more into a sense of presence with your partner and more of a knowing, "How do I know that my partner trusts me, right now, how do I know that I'm safe with them? How do I know that I'm angry? How do I know that they're angry with me because I might be interpreting something that isn't actually happening?" So and to be clear too, you use these channels of experience in a therapeutic way as well, because as a therapist being able to tune in to what's happening in your experience and the overall field experience of what's happening between you and your clients, you're able to wake up in them, all of these dimensions of their experience with each other to things that are happening in their body that they may have not even been aware of. David Mars: Yes. Thank you for that Neil. I'm aware of this two-part way, that I can interact with a couple. One is, how do you know that right now you're feeling sad, or I could even say, how do you know that the wetness on your shirt, the wetness on your cheek is saying something to you and the person literally says, "Really. Oh, right my cheek is wet right." I guess I'm sad. Oh, I am, I'm sad". And then he says to his daughter... Sorry his step-daughter, who is on a video monitor, cause it wasn't really safe for her to come into the session. Cause they had such rancorous exchanges with each other, she's on a video monitor instead, on Zoom, as we are in this session, you and I. And he says, "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I'm sad that I hurt you." David Mars: And she's so shocked because his boarding school in Britain didn't train him to be this way, the beatings that he got from age seven on taught him to never cry. And the tears are leaking out unbidden unknown until he sees them on his shirt and he feels them on his face, and suddenly it brings chills into my legs and my back to feel the power of his being able to apologize for that totally shocks his wife, that totally shocks his wife of 22 years. David Mars: Totally shocks his step-daughter and she begins to weep just weeping and he's weeping and she's weeping and her mother's weeping in this couple session with the daughter there, who's 43, and we're all with tears and the feeling of the mercy of his breakthrough based on him for seeing the tears on his shirt. Answering the question, what do the tears want to say? How can you tell what the tears want to say? And suddenly his apology comes completely out of the blue. And a man who does not apologize particularly not from the heart. I could say as him, "I'm sorry you feel that way." Which, that's not an apology. But in this case, that dearness of his true self, the true core neurobiological self of him breaks through the defenses and suddenly his face is soft, his eyes are loving and his wife and daughter get to see him. At this moment she's his daughter, not his step-daughter, she really is in this united experience that she wants to be in with him as part of family. And the reunion happens this way. It's just so touching. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I can feel that, that that is an example of how we transform in an instant. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: This is very true. Neil Sattin: And can you highlight because you've gone through them quickly, but can we just spend maybe 10 seconds on each of the channels of experience so we can all really take in what they each are? David Mars: Sure. Neil Sattin: Yeah? David Mars: Yeah. So sensation right now, probably I'll just say, the sensations I can notice are a fine hum that I feel throughout the surface of my body, the sensations of the hairs of the back of my neck, the sensations of my muscles becoming more relaxed, the sensations of my vocal cords and my voice again slowing down. The sensations of resonance in my chest as I'm speaking. Neil Sattin: Great. David Mars: And the auditory channel linking with the sensations that validate that what I'm feeling in my vocal cords and in my chest vibration is related to the pitch of my voice dropping and the quality of hearing my own breath coming in, the friction of my breath is part of that auditory channel that helps me to pace myself in my breathing which is central to self-regulation as a therapist or a partner in a marriage, and the quality of the tonal, the slight raspiness of my voice, the gravely-ness of my voice, the drop in for me is part of the feeling of gratitude for the grace of being with this couple that I just spoke of from last Thursday and to think of the channel of emotion. Mad, sad, glad, scared, disgust and surprise are the six categorical emotions. David Mars: Many of us have one emotion that we specialize in that we can really access and regulate quite well. Perhaps there are other emotions that we don't do quite as well with that are very difficult for us to regulate. But to be regulated in all six emotions is part of the goal of AEDP for couples and AEDP. To be able to be with surprise for example and say, "My gosh, I was surprised you said that. And now I'm still surprised you said that and I'm still feeling the delight in surprise that I'm having this experience with you right now, Neil, I feel so joyful and so connected. David Mars: And to feel surprise is not a fleeting moment, but one that I can continue to experience again and again as a surprise of the enlightenment of moments that are so... Are so precious and dear because they are literally unbidden, they just come sometimes. And if we go on... Surprise really is one of the categorical emotions that is most often missed by therapists because it happens and comes and goes so quickly. Present tense experience of surprise can remain for a lifetime. David Mars: A surprise for example, when I'm 13 years old and I'm really asking for a sign that God exists and suddenly I feel, and see, and sense energetically I'm filled with this purple energy in my... Above my solar plexus, just between my heart and my gut, and it stays with me today at age 67. I was 13 years old, I am 13 years old in this hand dug cave and I have this energy of response and this powerful, powerful combination of imaginal seeing the purple energy, the body sensation of the energy filling my whole body as light, the body sensation throughout my body still now feeling a head to toe experience of being occupied by a sense of some deep surprise, that also is something that was so deeply longed for and wanted as a sense of validation that I'm not alone. So when we think about the emotion of this, for me, it's a combination of the gratitude and the sadness of having missed that in the previous 12 and a half years of my life, and now to feel that joy and connection with still having this as a presence. David Mars: So in terms of what we've covered now, are sensation, energy, emotion, think about movement, as I'm giving these, counting these out my fingers are involuntarily showing automatically showing a counting of four, and these movements are moved by the anterior cingulate in the brain unconsciously, but they inform what I'm saying as I move from my heart out to you the audience to be able to know I'm really wanting to come from my heart and speak, knowing that I deeply, deeply care about, about AEDP for couples and about love and the healing power of love and how hand gestures can also be involuntarily showing push away or put down, or harsh measures of threat that are unconscious, and seen by the other more clearly than by the self often. That is part of the value of tracking movement channel, to my mind its the most unconscious of all channels because it's also clearly visible that it's happening to others but maybe not to us. David Mars: So we have sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, and imaginal. Let's speak about the imaginal channel. The imaginal channel contains the other six channels. I can have imagined emotion, I can have imagined experiences of moving of being free when I'm feeling stuck and I can imagine my couple member and I being joyful, my partner Karen and I being joyful, and in that imagining of joy I bring the biochemistry of joy into my body, the oxytocin, the dopamine, the citicoline come into my body and my brain cells. All the neurons of my body are affected by the imagination of love, being pure and true, and reliable and resilient. David Mars: So for me, it's an upwelling of a combination of energetic thrill and emotional gratitude that it's possible to be 35 years into a marriage and be joyful about it and feel tears in my eyes, the sensation of tears in my eyes that we have this. Not that it's a permanent... That could be just uncultivated because marriage always has to be cultivated. In my mind, either a marriage is improving or devolving at any moment. David Mars: This is not a guarantee. Oh yeah, we're set now. There's no set part of it for me. It's a living organism. So for me that's the channels of experience. I'll just say them again sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, visual, and imaginal. I didn't overtly say the visual part. I just want to mention visual channels are essential to us humans, to see eye expressions, to see facial coloration, to see markers of tension, in ourselves and others, and to be very conscious about our own peripheral vision of our movement. So I'm aware of what I'm actually signaling. It's a great gift to know what I'm actually signaling to my partner or just someone else in the grocery store, whatever, I'm actually showing myself. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Perfect, thank you for giving us the rundown, and I like too in terms of the imaginal, I love that it contains all of those, and I also find that they're such a gift often in those images that come to us. I often offer those in my coaching sessions with clients and Chloe and I, that's part of how we interact with each other, my wife. This image just came to me of blah, blah, and so often that has a really positive and deepening impact on our interaction. David Mars: Absolutely. What a transcendent function to have, to share between you and Chloe. Neil Sattin: We're lucky. David Mars: Absolutely. Neil Sattin: And we practice it, as you were just alluding to. It requires attention. David before we go, this has been such a rich conversation, I could talk to you for another hour easily cause this time has flown by. Hopefully, we will have the chance to talk again. David Mars: I hope so. Neil Sattin: First, I do have a question for you, but I'm wondering... Let's just talk about how people can find out more about your work and if they want to work with you, or if they want to train with you, what's available to then? David Mars: Well, there's a website, the Center for transformative Therapies website, which is, the URL is C-F-T-T site, so it's C-F-T-T-S-I-T-E.com, and also the AEDP Institute site, A-E-D-P Institute, both have programs and training that I'm giving. A five-day program in Cape Cod that will be happening this summer and also in July and also one in Vancouver, Canada will be happening, another five-day training in Vancouver in June, and also other workshops that I give that are local and international and ongoing that'll be on their websites. Also, I give intensives for couples that want to fly in to have a weekend intensive, and also group work. Where a group work can come together and decide they want to fly in to work with me or fly me out to work them to facilitate group work that's transformational. David Mars: And that's direct delivery to people that may want that, couples groups, for example, can fly me in or religious organizations, church organizations can fly me in. And the power of the work is so joyful to deliver because in a day or in an afternoon or two days so much can happen that really changes lives in a forward-moving way. You mentioned coaching, Neil, I'm so glad for that because it's something that's so important in the world to have this capacity, not just psychotherapy to work deeper but also coaching to work deeply. Neil Sattin: Thank you, and we will have links to your sites on the show notes for this episode, and as a reminder if you want to download the show notes and transcript you can visit NeilSattin.Com/Mars, M-A-R-S, which is David's last name, or you can text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions, and David, I'm curious, do you have time for one more question? David Mars: I do. Neil Sattin: Okay great. David Mars: I do. Neil Sattin: There are actually so many more, so it's challenging for me to pick one, but I'm curious so many couples who listen to this show, so many are married, many are not married. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: And I'm wondering, there's something about being married obviously that elevates our levels of commitments to each other, most of us. How do you work with couples who aren't married, and who are in that dance around, I'm not even sure... You know they could be asking the very same questions that a married couple would be asking like, "Are you the right one for me, do I still want to be in this. Wow, this is really hard, part of me has a foot out the door." Is there something extra that you bring, or that you would invite for a couple that's not hitched as a way of helping then actually stick with the work that's required in order to figure out maybe those questions that they have about each other? David Mars: Yeah, I appreciate the question. You know the DVD set called Infidelity that is about trauma treatment and a case of infidelity, was of a couple that was not married, and they are still not married. They're still very deeply connected and committed, in having a joyful experience of relating, which I just saw one of the couple members just in a restaurant just recently and she was quite radiant and very grateful for the work, which happened five years ago. We're not doing the work anymore, but it's still living in their lives. So the marriage part isn't required, but it certainly does help from my point of view for many, many of us to have a commitment of marriage, to have that knowing my partner is with me in a way that has some kind of a substance beyond our decision making unto ourselves. David Mars: And for me, a couple I'm working with now that is actually not married and they have a child and they're in the process of dissolution of their living together due to some pretty ingrained issues that are not, they're not remedying. I've only seen them twice, but they came in really this direction of unlinking with each other but keeping, of course, the responsibility of parenting. And for me it's a major joy in my life and a major piece of meaning to see that even couples who have never married can be deeply committed, even couples that have a child and who end up not continuing to be in a relationship can be loving parents of that child and can be wonderful co-parents even without living together, even without being married, but can still be in that place of that child coming up with a strong and secure attachment. If they haven't gotten that secure attachment already, they can develop that secure attachment over time by living with parents who are growing and transforming themselves. Neil Sattin: And so for a couple who's let's say, there may be a little bit more in. So they're not actually dissolving but they don't have the, we're married to rely upon. Is there something, is there a way that you invite those couples to find safety, the safety that's kind of inherent in a marriage vow, because I know, as you just mentioned, "Okay, we're in this. We got married". And divorce as common as it is hard and challenging and requires a lot to make happen. So yeah, how to deal with the paradox of safety in a relationship where they haven't spoken vows with each other. David Mars: Yeah exactly. And for me, I want to give the example of polyamory, which is funnily one of the most challenging ways to be in relationship that exists on the planet. I know many people are very keen on that. It works for them but the couples that I've known who have done that work on polyamory, it is a very, very complicated process, and for me, the safety experience is really, in many cases about how securely attached is this person to themselves? There's a recent song lyric I was listening to of an old song, "And I know you won't let me down because I have my feet so firmly on the ground". David Mars: In truth, we're all vulnerable to having our heart broken, no matter how strong we are, and it's one of the greatest agonies that can be, to have a lost love in my experience, and also in research as well, but to be able to feel the truth of one's words is real, that one's actions and one's words match to me that's part of the integrity of married or unmarried, whatever it is, that can help couples to feel truly safe and truly believable and believed is to really make sure that our actions and our words match. That our apologies are followed by corrected action, not just words that sound good, and actually a commitment to live differently. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and a commitment to be in that process of the experience of earned secure attachment with your own being, and I've seen how that even changes what people ask for in relationship. I've experienced that myself, I've seen it in others, so yes, that I think is a great way of confronting that, I'm always safe in me and then I can bring that into however complicated this situation is to try and resolve it for the better. David Mars: Yeah. Wonderful. Neil Sattin: David. It is such a treat to have you here. I really appreciate your time, your wisdom, your work. AEDP and AEDP for couples is such a powerful modality and I'm really delighted that you were able to be here, to share with us, and I hope that for those of you watching and listening, that your curiosity is peaked and you're going to seek ways out of experiencing this for yourself. But, David, I have such appreciation for your work in the world and the way that that's rippling out from here and from the other ways that you're training people and working with people, it's super powerful. David Mars: Thank you so much. What an honor to be in this conversation, with you and to be asked questions I've not been asked, before. Neil Sattin: Oh. Good. [laughter] David Mars: Yeah. It was a joy to be with you and I hope we get to speak again in another podcast another time. Neil Sattin: Great, great, we'll make that happen for sure. David Mars: Okay, bye. Bye.

We’re all talking about attachment style now, and how it relates to the way that we show up in relationship. It can be enlightening to learn about your attachment style, and to see how it plays out in your relationship. And...to see your partner’s attachment style - it can explain A LOT about how the two of you interact. But how do you avoid being victimized by your attachment style? Is there a way to get beyond the unhealthy ways that we related to each other and break the cycle? And, if you’re a securely attached person, how do you avoid being pulled into the potential challenges when your partner has an insecure attachment style? Of course you could write a book about this issue, but we’re going to cover some of the finer points on today’s episode. Also, announcing that tickets are on sale for Relationship Alive...LIVE! featuring Terry Real. We'll have a musical guest (Katie Matzell trio), and you'll also have the chance to ask YOUR questions. The show will be on June 6, 2019 at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. Limited seats available. Click here to buy your tickets now! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Click here to get tickets to Relationship Alive...LIVE on June 6, 2019 featuring Terry Real and musical guest Katie Matzell I want to know you better! Take the quick, anonymous, Relationship Alive survey 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 outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

This episode is brought to you by Booking Protect, the global leader in refund protection. Visit www.bookingprotect.com to find out how you can offer your fans more peace of mind in their ticket buying, how offering refund protection improves the customer experience, and how partnering with Booking Protect can give your organization a new line of revenue.  Today's episode is one I think you will love and likely one that many of you have been waiting on because I am talking with Mike Guiffre, SVP of Business Development with SuiteHop.  Mike is like me in that he doesn't have time for the status quo or the way things have always been done.  You'll know Mike from his time with TicketCity, the AAC in Dallas, and the Penguins.  In this episode, we cover a lot of topics like: * Pricing * The secondary market * Digital marketing * Discounts * Wise and unwise decision making * Leadership And a whole lot more.  You can find Mike on Twitter and LinkedIn.     

Nick Baucom has served in the Marines from 2002-2008, deployed to Iraq in 2003, and got out as a SGT. Started Two Marines Moving at age 24 Profitable in year one with $600k in revenue Projected to do $4M this year. Two Marines Moving hires veterans to provide local, long distance, commercial, and residential moving services to clients in the Washington D.C. area.  They hire those from the Marines, Army, Navy, and Air-Force with an honorable discharge and a strong work ethic.  They made INC Magazine's list for fastest growing companies in America and should do it for a third year once the numbers are in at the end of this year Kimleigh Smith best- selling author, critically acclaimed actress and playwright, a life coach, speaker and the founder of the “Embrace Your Cape!” philosophy. She is dedicated to helping people discover their personal superhero, own their power, and find emotional freedom Todd Lindenbaum Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SuiteHop, which provides an easy way for fans to enjoy a luxury suite experience at sport and entertainment venues across the United States.Todd foundedSuiteHop after having been the President and CEO of Sports Shares since 2007. Sports Shares,a luxury suite club which brings stadium and arena luxury suites to a new universe of businesses and individuals powers SuiteHop and was honored on Inc.'s 500/5000 list in 2014