Relationship Expert: Your Relationship Changes When You STOP Trying to Change Him

Relationship Expert: Your Relationship Changes When You STOP Trying to Change Him

Author Name:Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Youtube Channel Url:https://www.youtube.com/@WellnessAndWisdom

Youtube Video URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Z6MbjawsI





Title: Relationship Expert: Your Relationship Changes When You STOP Trying to Change Him

Author Name: Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Description: You asked him to change. You begged, you nagged, you sent him the podcasts. Nothing moved.

Then Kristy Scher stopped trying to fix her husband and started working on herself. Within weeks, the man who had been living like her roommate started calling her sexy again.

In this episode, Kristy, relationship coach and creator of The Way of the Adored Woman, shares why insight alone never changes a relationship, how criticism and contempt block the love you’re asking for, and why the love you want from him has to start with the love you give yourself.

If you feel unmet in your marriage even when he’s doing his best, this episode will change how you see your relationship.
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Show Notes 👉 https://joshtrent.com/837

[00:00] Intro
[01:16] The Power of Self-Reverence
[13:34] Liberate Yourself from Shame
[16:54] Your Need Is Holy
[21:04] You Can Either Be in Your Story or in Your Life
[31:40] Alchemy and the Story You Carry
[38:06] Fluency VS Mastery
[45:33] The Three Fluencies
[48:28] The Dance of Masculine and Feminine
[01:00:07] Change Can Only Happen Through You
[01:01:26] The Doorless Hallway
[01:13:20] The Law of Correspondence in Marriage
[01:21:28] Polarity Is the Natural Outcome of Differentiation
[01:31:46] Children Inherit What Has Not Been Processed
[01:35:55] Men Have Relational Needs Too
[01:41:23] The War of the Sexes Is an Illusion

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Website: https://wellnessandwisdom.com
Community: https://liberatedlife.com
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Transcript:
(00:00) Mastering your attention is the first rule of healthy relating. And if you focus at all on the other person's side, you are no longer doing relational work. Criticism, judgment, nitpicking, nagging, telling him how to park, telling him how to drive, telling him what to wear. Those things are inconsistent with love.
(00:16) If I wanted love from my husband, I would actually have to stop engaging in those behaviors. Period. >> Christy Sher is a former paranatal nurse turned relationship coach and creator of The Way of the Adored Woman. We were living like roommates for a long part of our marriage. He hadn't changed with all of my requests to change.
(00:35) So one day I just said, "Okay, I'm going to start practicing like what would it look like inside of me to be a woman who's adored by a man she desires?" And within a very short period of time, he started saying things like, "You're adorable." He started to say like, "You're so sexy." We started having sex again.
(00:51) And I was like, "What is going on with us?" And he, as my husband would, thought for a moment and said, "I don't know. I could just feel your heart." And suddenly, I could feel my own. And I realized I wanted love. The space between us is intimacy. And what I'm putting into it is the only thing that I can impact. So when I embody something with you, it will absolutely influence you.
(01:13) And here's the critical piece >> right now. Let's just speak to the women that are feeling like they've done all the work. They have gone to therapy. They've spoken to Iawaska shamans. And they've done all these things. Yet, when they go home and they lay down next to a good man who's doing the best that he possibly can to provide containment and to show up in the way that's most loving, she still feels completely unmet.
(01:39) What is spiritually and emotionally missing from a woman who feels unmet even when her man is doing everything that he can? >> A healthy relationship is a system of mutual influence. So what I found in my work with women is that very often women do not know how to influence a relational system. They may think, "Oh, I've got all the insight.
(02:00) I've done all the work. I do yoga. I've been to therapy." But insight is not the same thing as embodiment. And our relationships will always show us the gap between what we know and what we're capable of. >> And so spiritually, it seems like there's a a void. Like Aristotle says, nature abore is a vacuum.
(02:20) What is that vacuum from a spiritual sense? You think >> I actually think that the purpose of of adult relationships is to grow us the [ __ ] up in love. It is for us to mature. And that that is a spiritual proposition. >> That we actually get to God. We get to source through the body. >> That we can't we we don't transcend first.
(02:44) We have it's it's imminence and then transcendence. Imminence meaning coming into the body, coming into relationship, coming into our relational capacity. >> I think if we can't actually have a functional relationship, many of us will have a really hard time finding God. >> Yeah. And even that word God has a wound for many people.
(03:02) So I will just say like whether it's creator or God, you know, we're created. We're here. So >> whatever we want to call it, source, spirit, the all that is, the things that makes the daffodils grow. I mean, I don't it to me it doesn't really matter because it's all the same thing. >> It takes three. It's a connection to that which created us.
(03:18) It's a love for oursel that's fed by which created us. And then it's also, I think, culminated really radically. Like you had said, we're here to grow the [ __ ] up and learn through love. >> The third part of of really the love circle or the triangle is learning how to love somebody else in their imperfections. >> Learning how to give and receive love.
(03:36) I was sitting on the porch with my daughter today and I was like, "What are we really doing here on earth?" This is where my mind goes, Christy, and this is where this conversation is going to go to. And I was sitting with my daughter and it was like this beautiful moment and I had this feeling like I wanted to cry because I was so grateful to just be sitting with her and the sun was coming up >> and I pulled out my phone.
(03:55) I'm just like you guys, like what else is there than learning how to give and receive love? This is what it's all about and it only happens in that third portion I talked about in relationship because that's where the wounds start for us. And I'm curious for you, you know, you you've done so much work.
(04:12) We're going to talk about so much about how a woman can receive and then what's required on the other side as well. But can you take us back to a point in your life that specifically I know that you've been a registered nurse, you were a lactation consultant, um 25 years of yoga, deep spiritual understandings that you have, but with all let's say you wiped all that away and you went back to when Christy was just a little girl >> and she had this dream, she had this knowing that didn't require words.
(04:41) >> How did that knowing you had when you're a little girl or early in your life inform what you're doing now? I vividly remember feeling something that it really took me probably 45 years to find again. I I'm 56 and I had this experience about 10 or 11 years ago, way before my marriage changed, way before that the marriage turned around.
(05:16) I was at a retreat with a a woman who's an amazing coach, an amazing business coach. And she said, "Go out and walk in in the woods. We were in Northern California." She's like, "Go out and walk through the redwoods and ask the land what's yours to teach." Like really like have a walking meditation where you ask the earth to tell you what is yours to teach.
(05:39) And so >> I I was like, I don't really know. like I don't think anything's going to happen when I do this, but I'm going to go and do this. And so we all, you know, this group of like 14, 15 women, we went out in all different directions and I walked through the woods and I came to this place where there was a clearing and kind of opened up into these beautiful rolling northern California hills.
(05:58) Like it was late autumn, so they were like just these golden hills. And I was standing right at the edge of the woods and I kind of leaned back into this eucalyptus tree and I could feel the kind of smooth bark on my back and I stared out and I just kind of let my eyes relax and I suddenly realized that over this expanse of field was a hawk just sort of soaring and dipping and soaring and dipping in on the wind on the currents of wind And in my mind, in my own voice, but a voice that was not mine, I heard that all of life exists in
(06:42) a state of self-reverence. That's yours to teach. And I'll tell you, at the time, I was nowhere near emotionally free. I was still in the grips of a multi-dead long eating disorder. I was in a deeply unhappy marriage. I felt so much shame and I didn't even know that that's what shame was.
(07:05) I didn't know that that's what I was struggling with. And when I heard this voice that was my voice but not my voice say, "What's yours to teach is self-reverence," I literally thought, "You've got to be [ __ ] kidding. I just purged last night." Like, really? And and another part of me said, "You're going to get there. You're not going to know how, but you're going to get there.
(07:33) And over the next many years, I I went through a lot of really difficult things. I had my second profound depression, which was, you know, not an easy thing to go through. If you've been through a significant like suicidal depression, it was my second. Um, it really it wiped any ambition, any desire, any intention, any any drive.
(07:56) And I'd really functioned for most of my life as being highly driven. Like when I went back to school to become a nurse, I was like, I'm going to get a I'm going to get a 4.0 and I got a 3.95. And I wasn't disappointed that time, but I lost any capacity to make myself move toward anything.
(08:15) And it really felt like my my life just kind of got wiped off the map. And I came through that depression. And just like within a couple months after that, I I resolved the eating disorder finally after like finding my own way through it after decades of trying. And then within a few months, I got incredibly sick with a mold illness that truly decimated me physically and emotionally and spiritually.
(08:40) And I entered what I call the doorless hallway, which is for many of us when we keep outrunning life and we're really good at running, it will eventually give us something that we can't outrun. And so I was given multiple things that I was given multiple opportunities to stop running.
(09:00) And finally, the illness was the thing because it it really wiped my life off the map. I couldn't even walk around the block, let alone like have a cogent thought. And I really lost my sense of self. But what I did know was happening was that I had to figure out a way to get consciousness into every part of my body. That if I was going to heal, and I did have another one of those moments where I heard a voice that was not my voice, but my voice saying, "You will heal completely.
(09:24) " But I knew that I needed to actually figure out how to get love into my body. That I I knew the idea of love. I knew the I knew the aspiration of love, but I didn't actually know what it meant to have love or what I think of as you know you know love or consciousness with a capital C because to me those are the same thing.
(09:44) >> Infinite intelligence, intelligent love, consciousness, God, whatever you want to call it, but that I knew that there in some way I had some something was keeping my body from actually being able to function and and that I knew that I was also really struggling emotionally and spiritually. like I felt forsaken spiritually and getting sick was this doorless hallway where all the doors closed and the only thing that I could do was actually meet myself honestly.
(10:13) And I spent the next two and a half years fighting for my life, but fighting in a way that was no longer about making myself wrong, but actually really struggling to forgive myself for everything that I'd done as a parent. Because there was a period in my life where I was a horrible parent. um for everything that I had failed to do, but particularly for the ways that I had really failed to understand that my first task was to learn how to love myself.
(10:46) And as I came out of that illness, I had multiple experiences of I don't know I mean I call it God or consciousness or just uni unity like the sense of oneness >> of being just energy without being a story without being an identity without being a person. And I had multiple of those experiences.
(11:11) And little by slowly, something in me shifted. And I started to remember the feeling that I had when I was really little. I remember I was probably five or six. And I felt like I can't believe I'm going to say this. It's so it this is so tender and vulnerable, but I felt like like a rock and roll cowgirl. Like that was how I thought of myself.
(11:36) like like >> on my bike, >> you know, wearing my favorite flowered bikini, going to, you know, going to the pool. It was actually here in Texas. It was when when we lived, my family lived in Texas. And I had this feeling of being indomitable that I now understand is self-possession. And that's what I think most women are lacking is the kind of self-possession that enables you to remember that all of life exists in a state of self-reverence.
(12:06) >> And that is not narcissistic. It's not selfish. It's not self-centered. Self-reverence is the unself-conscious meaning I no longer think of Christy or my story or my identity. the unself-conscious joy of being. And that's what we're here to remember ourselves as. >> And I started to have glimpses of that. And then I started to have more than a glimpse that it started to string together in moments.
(12:40) And when I got well enough to go back to work, I went back to work as a nurse. And I had long practiced as a nurse that it was a spiritual practice that when I walked into a room, I was meeting God. When I walked into a room, I I had a prayer that I said every time I opened the door because I would never know what I was going to find on the other side of the door.
(13:03) Even though I worked on the technically the happiest unit in the hospital, everybody's like, "Oh, the, you know, the postpartum unit, mother baby unit is the happiest unit on the hospital." I'll tell you that. It's not the truth. It's actually one of the most stressful and overwhelming because everyone has some sort of story around attachment and it is one of the most profound events in a woman's life but also I think in a man's life to have a child and I think it brings up a phenomenal amount of fear and can be a an incredibly stressful event for a couple.
(13:35) >> Can we just pause and go back to the cowgirl partying on the on the hobby horse or whatever it is I >> on my bike. It was on my bike. >> I could see her right now. You said something so profound. The the unself-conscious way of joy. >> Joy of being. >> The unself-conscious joy of being. I've never heard that before.
(13:54) And I love that so much because I think ultimately liberation requires us to go into the darkest parts where liberation can only live when there's no dark secrets. >> Yeah. >> And it sounds like to me, tell me if I'm getting this right. It sounds like to me that there was a lot of um things that you had come to believe that were false beliefs that were secrets that you were hiding in a closet somewhere that kept that girl from partying with her cowboy hat on, cowgirl hat on.
(14:20) >> Yeah. I think that that happens to so many of us. I believe that shame is not just a feeling that it is a mistaken sense of self that is the result of an attachment injury where our needs are not met. And this these this is comes from the work of one of of my primary mentor. When our needs aren't met with presence and contact, the outcome is shame.
(14:44) The outcome is a a mistaken sense of self. That that I believe shame is actually a belief. It's more it's a belief more than it is a feeling. >> It's a belief that has an an emotional i.e. like sensation in the body. Yeah. Has a an emotional signature in the body >> and that there are emotions that go with it.
(15:06) I heard one of your recent guests say that shame is the only emotion that does not have any like benefit to it. >> Yeah. >> Any any potential like benefit in the long run. And I think it's that's right because I it's fundamentally not a feeling. It's a belief in a in a broken sense of self >> that comes from not being seen in our need.
(15:30) And our primary needs are to be loved, to to get nurturance, to have some kind of contact, physical, emotional, spiritual, energetic contact that is safe and loving and has boundaries and and to be fed in all of the ways. And when we don't get those needs met, the way that our brain works as a as little people, as immature, as an undeveloped brain before the age of three, is that when our needs aren't met, we conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with us.
(16:07) But we don't make that conclusion at the level of thought because we don't have narrative thought until we're three years old or so. So the conclusion is a sensation in the body. The thought is actually a sensation. It's a sematic. In Gestalt they call it a sematic introject. Meaning it's something you swallowed whole.
(16:24) An idea that you swallowed whole. >> Yeah. >> That we I think we all come out of childhood with some of those. Some of us come out with some that are more ravaging than others. I came out of a I mean the only thing that I will say publicly is a really dysfunctional family and I I don't have contact with any of my family at this point.
(16:47) And that was actually one of the healthiest decisions I could have made when I finally came out of my illness. It was actually the decision that I made. And >> you said something really powerful. It's actually on your website that relates to everything you're sharing. You said your need is not a problem. It's the doorway.
(17:04) >> Yeah. I say your need is holy. >> It's holy. It's holy. Why is it holy? >> Because it's the invocation to love. Your need is the invocation to love. I realized that when I had my first son, my sons hate it when I talk about them, so I will not say anything about them other than this. When I had my first son, Isaac, we had just moved to California.
(17:29) We were both just out of grad school and we had zero money. Like, we were totally poor grad students. We had one chair in our living room and and the bassinet. That was what we had in our living room in Los Angeles. My husband got a job in the music industry and Isaac was like 5 weeks old when we moved out there.
(17:47) We knew no one and I was shell shocked at like I had no idea that you could actually like that I was allowed to even take my this little thing out into the world anywhere. But I felt incredibly grounded in tending to him, like tending his little body and feeding him. Breastfeeding was like a revelation.
(18:12) And I remember one day, like a week after we were there, I looked down at him. He'd fallen asleep at my breast. I'd looked down at him and I was overwhelmed by this sensation. And I realized, "Oh my god, that's love." Like, I had never felt that. I told my husband the next day like, "I don't think I've ever loved you." And he's like, "What?" And I was like, I had this feeling and I realized that it was love that I was feeling.
(18:38) >> Yeah. and and my body responded to him like he had a need. He had hunger. I would bring him to my body and my body immediately, automatically without me having to do anything, knew how to respond. That's what I mean by your need is holy. It's the same thing as a woman bringing her child to her breast that your body wants to respond.
(19:05) And there's a relief. Any woman who's ever breastfed in your audience is going to know the immense relief you feel when you when you actually have a letown, which is oxytocin, by the way, does a lot of other great things for us. But someone's need is our opportunity to give. someone else's need is, you know, whether we want to call it God or source or spirit or consciousness, any word that you want to use for it >> is like that sentient energies opportunity to give to us and and so giving is a giving and receiving is a full circuit. I think this is where
(19:42) women really get receiving wrong is that my receiving is your opportunity to give. And I now understand from a physical level how good it feels to give, how much my body wanted to give to my child. that that there was the relief that I would put Isaac to my breast, the milk would flow, the oxytocin would flow, I would get relaxed, I'd feel I felt I think I never was in my body before that.
(20:14) I was a pretty traumatized cookie. >> I was 26 when I had him. And I think that what we don't understand about our own needs is how deeply other people want to give to us. And that likewise that our love is good. that one of the things I realized in coming through the illness and really being able to return to that, you know, can't believe I'm saying this, like that rock and roll cowgirl kind of sense of myself was, oh, my love is good.
(20:55) >> Yeah. >> I have something worth offering and and therefore I get to hold a standard around that. When you say standard, do you mean a standard of receiving and giving or just receiving or both? >> Standard for how I'm going to show up. >> Like there are behaviors that I I I had to decide if what I really wanted was love, there were behaviors that are inconsistent with that.
(21:23) That if I wanted love from my husband, I would actually have to stop engaging in those behaviors. Period. Contempt is one of them. Contempt is inconsistent with love. criticism, judgment, nitpicking, nagging, telling him how to park, telling him how to drive, telling him what to wear. I mean, you name it. Those things are inconsistent with love in my opinion.
(21:46) And that if what I wanted was a man who would fully show up for me and with me and engaged with me, and that was not in our marriage. And I I can get to that in in this story, but I would actually have to show up differently than I was doing at the time. And so when I talk about a standard, I do mean upholding a standard for like the standard is what I will and won't allow in my relational world.
(22:09) It's why I'm no contact with my family >> because there are certain things that I'm no longer willing to allow in my world. >> And I get to do that. And that's not unkind. That's not cruel. It's profoundly self-loving. If they ever want to meet those standards, they're welcome to do that. But when you understand that your need is holy, when you understand that self-reverence means you just simply get to enjoy being who you are without having to be a self, without achieving anything, without having to look a certain way, without having to create
(22:45) anything. that you simply get to learn how to be in this moment because presence is the currency of love. I get to be love in this moment. It also means we start holding a standard for other people in our lives. >> I think when people hear you speak, they can feel the truth in their body. It's a body felt sense for me.
(23:12) Yet the mind can take over when there's projections of the past. >> Oh yeah. And these projections of the past can be so deletarious and they can also seem true in moments, especially if we're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. >> Yeah. >> So, I just had a conversation with the men that came over this morning about this.
(23:31) And what we reflected upon, I'm curious how you feel about this was that for many of us, there are moments where we actually do feel that we are giving all that we are capable of giving. >> And in those moments, it's perceived as not good enough. which then activates our wounds individually of the shame quotient that was created because we didn't have the processing power you spoke about when we were young.
(23:54) >> Yeah. >> And so I know that I trust that all of this >> wounding projection perception projection is happening for our greatest good. >> But there is a standard and a limitation that is required >> to be verbally and to be um consented upon >> between man, woman, husband, wife. How would one go about even having the courage to bring that standard to voice >> and to hold that standard much like you did with your family? >> I think first of all we have to get free of our stories.
(24:26) I think our stories are absolutely compelling and look our stories help us create projections and those projections oftentimes as Jung says or said those projections often have a correspondence in reality that's very very convincing. >> Yeah. But I want to I want to tell you a story to answer this question. And as you probably noticed, I'm going to tell you five stories to make one point.
(24:48) >> So >> that's great. Stories is how we all learn around the campfire. >> Yeah. And I I am a very contextual thinker. So I think about I I think about all these different pieces. So I'm told that people really do well if they have a notebook while they're listening to me. >> Okay. Bust out your notebooks. >> So our stories are essential.
(25:09) They're part of our history. We part of how we do our own work is to excavate our stories and become intimate with them. I had forever inside of my marriage and really probably throughout my whole life had the sense that I felt unwantable. Not unwanted, but unwantable. >> That was how it occurred inside of me. that my that I didn't register with people and that I was unwantable.
(25:39) And in my 30s, my my mother told me the story of my birth, which was that like a good Aries Stellium, I came fast and a little early. So, my mom was at a at a checkup and I was actually born like an hour after the checkup started. So, my father wasn't there. He was in law school and I guess couldn't be found.
(26:03) So later in the day when when they could locate him at law school, he arrived at the hospital, my mother was holding me in her arms. My mother's father and one of her brothers were in the room. And my father walks in and my mother says, "You have a girl." I was the second born. And my father, we don't know why, became unhinged and started to scream at my mother, "Girls are disgusting. Girls are useless.
(26:31) You disgust me. You're useless. You're both pathetic. I want nothing to do with either of you. And I'm told that my father didn't touch me for the first year of my life. And I believe it. My mom was a nurse and worked nights. And it's very possible that I was left nights without being responded to. And when I first heard that story, I was in my early 30s.
(26:57) It brought me a certain amount of relief. like it answered something that I really it named something in me that I had never really had a name for that later I would come to understand was shame >> that this feeling that had come in me my whole life I would I started to understand like oh okay that makes sense years later after I'd gone back to school to become a nurse I was working in in perinatal nursing so niku postpartum sometimes pedes and I realized realized that I was giving myself the opportunity to rewrite the the part of the earliest part of my
(27:36) story that in these moments where every time I'd be able to help a mother latch her baby or every time I'd be able to teach a father how to hold his baby really close to his body so that the baby would feel secure, every time I protected those early fragile few hours of life, I knew that I was getting the chance to return to my first few hours in my life >> and to tend some part of my story.
(28:03) And for a while that actually brought me a lot of relief. Like it felt like a tremendous relief to and very healing to be able to give women and really babies because I worked with about 8,000 babies in the course of my career to give babies something that I hadn't had. But there's a really big difference between witnessing someone else's beginning and reclaiming your own.
(28:29) And so about 10 years ago, I was really struggling inside of my marriage, really struggling around like, you know, the eating disorder just, you know, like I'm talking decades, like from 11 years old. And so I went to the hospital in Ohio where I was born. It was a humid summer day just like today here in Texas.
(28:56) You know, my hair getting frizzy. I went to this hospital and I I found a patch of grass in the parking lot and I took off my shoes and I put my feet into the earth and I did what I'd been learning, what I'd practiced, what I'd what I'd been teaching. I'd practiced yoga for a couple decades at that point and I I felt myself connected to the earth and rooting into, you know, the the original mother and feeling that connection and allowing from that connection this the recognition of this truth that I'm wanted, that I'm here because life
(29:40) wanted me. And with that, I said a prayer which was the story ends here. The story of you're pathetic, you're useless. Like the story of being unwantable, it ends here. I will not carry the story anymore in any form. And show me how to complete this. And I realized that with saying that prayer that I was staking my claim.
(30:17) I was making a commitment that not only do I get to be here, I get to be here loved. And there was something in that decision and in that ritual that also triggered a an irrevocable change inside of me which was like became the glimmer of what I have now devoted my life to which is this. You can either be in your story or you can be in your life.
(30:54) You can either be in your story or you can be in your relationship, but you can't be in both at the same time. And when we start to understand that that the story is the thing that's in the way of presence and presence is the currency of love that if we want love and that's really what we say we want.
(31:19) We have to put down the story entirely including what we think anyone else's part in is in it. We can either be in a relationship or we can be in our story. We can't have both. the other person can be in their story. It's none of my business. >> When you were speaking, I was visualizing books, you know, there's people that have burned books before.
(31:46) And I have this sense that for people in a committed, conscious relationship, I mean, that's why everyone's here. We're all here to learn how to give and receive love in a conscious union. Otherwise, don't listen anymore because that's what we're doing here, right? Hello. So, I say that with joyfulness because I I just there's so much in our industry about rewriting the story.
(32:11) >> Why don't we just burn it? >> Just help each other burn our stories and write a new one. >> And if that's a possibility that we that we can create because reality is just an amalgamation of story. >> You said it yourself. You can either live in your story or you can be in your life or your relationship. I think where our industry gets caught up in complexity, unnecessary complexity, is trying to go back and figure out why it happened, how it happened, the location, what it meant.
(32:40) It there's so much focus on the past. >> Yeah. >> That it becomes this juggernaut that is insurmountable >> when really the the clarity exists of like, okay, let's you and me versus the world, babe. You and me versus the world. Let's burn the old books right now in this moment. We can do this. And let's start writing a new story.
(32:56) And when the old lines come in, let's get white out together and we'll laugh and we'll white them out and we'll replace the text to that which serves us. >> I do think it is that simple. Now simple does not mean it's easy to execute because the old stories will pop up. >> I'm curious what your sense is on what I'm sharing.
(33:14) Well, first the first thing I think is, you know, I I got sober about 20 years ago, 18 20 years ago, and one of the things a very good friend in my recovery program would say is that why is an addict question. >> Ah, >> it's not going to get you anywhere useful. So, I don't ask why. I I think that it is a naval gazing question.
(33:38) However, I think we do need to alchemize our stories. >> And part of me going to the hospital where I was born in Ohio. And by the way, I didn't live anywhere near Ohio. It was a it was a pilgrimage. >> Yeah. >> Part of me doing that was that was alchemy. That was the work of alchemy. And it's not a oneanddone.
(33:59) I mean, years later, I would do, you know, more work around my father, including asking myself the question of what was his legacy to me? what was my father's inheritance to me and I'll tell you what it was. I long thought, you know, my father my father pretty much left when I was seven. Really have I mean, again, I don't want to say too much about my family, but suffice to say, there was really like no no fathering, no no stewarding of a from a man in my life.
(34:34) And one of the things that I said when I had kids was, first of all, I never want to [ __ ] up my kids the way that my parents did. I have a I have a sibling who is like I I was the functional kid and still am even though I'm not a kid. And the other thing was that I said to myself was that I would do everything that I could to to not [ __ ] up my kids.
(35:07) That I would turn myself inside out to really look at everything that I was bringing into my parenting. And you know, my children may, you know, go on their own podcast someday and say, you know, talk about whatever I did. And I I they have the right to do that. But one of the things that I've devoted myself to is to take total responsibility for the things that I've done.
(35:26) and the things that I had influence over that I didn't effectively influence and in the process of parenting my own kids and seeing what seeing the inheritance I had from my father because in that story of being unwantable and him calling me pathetic and calling my mother pathetic and basically you know he had to be physically removed from the room by my grandfather and my uncle.
(35:54) >> So crazy. It's a crazy. >> It's actually insane. >> It's an insane story. I mean, like, and >> knowing what I know after seeing >> thousands of babies, like I know how deeply affected newborns are by everything that's happening. Their nervous systems are just like these wide open and they can only be nurtured and supported by an adult nervous system.
(36:14) So, I understand like I now understand like how great the impact. At first, you know, I thought like I don't have anything like trauma. Now, I really get like yeah, I had some trauma. Whenever anyone I know ever has said, I didn't really have any trauma. I had a great childhood. That's the people that tend to tend to have the most.
(36:30) Like, >> yeah, >> that is that is it. >> But what I what I realized the inheritance was from my father was I'm [ __ ] relentless about growth. I have been. I always have been. From this from the time I was 14, >> I have been on a relentless path to understand love. Not just to understand love, but to get free inside of love.
(36:57) That is my fundamental purpose in life is is to get free inside of love. And I did. And what I discovered is that once you get free, once you get through that door, your job is to hold the door open. None of us gets free for ourselves. We have to turn around and hold the door for other people. And so the the inheritance, the the legacy from a father who was basically not a father was that I was like, I'm never going to be that.
(37:37) And I'll take that as a legacy because I'm a really [ __ ] amazing mother. I have loved my children fiercely and I've shown up with them in ways that my neither of my parents ever could. And I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of the men they are. I think that they are extraordinary men.
(37:57) I have deep respect for who they are as human beings. I can't take credit for who they are, but I have incredible regard for who they are. I loved so much of what you're sharing and you're right, that first question could have been a podcast of its own. Much like every single story you're sharing, I could just keep asking you about the story.
(38:17) And yes, and I think what I'm getting from you is just this really overwhelming sense of a lack of fluency. You know, people are taught to read or not. And if you're not taught to read, it's going to be a struggle in life. >> People are taught how to communicate somewhat in school. Mhm. >> Not the way I would design it, but you have fluencies that you teach that you mentioned to me and I I'm going to repeat them now.
(38:38) I'd love for you to go deep into this because without fluency from your father, he wasn't afforded fluency. >> He didn't have fluency. And if I looked back in his genealogy, it's probably that his father and his grandfather and the greats didn't have it either. >> He was abandoned at birth. >> He spent the first I I know this about his story that he was given up for adoption and he was put into two foster homes.
(38:59) >> Yeah. by the time he was adopted by my grandfather who was actually the primary male figure in my life for the first seven years of my life like adoring so he is actually >> he he is what I understood when I met my husband like that's what I knew to look for >> I married someone just like my grandfather >> a wonderful kind gentle deeply loving man >> see but it points on the fluency though right >> to which you speak because it's not that we well we can go into blaming of them but that's not going to take us anywhere
(39:29) good. But it's not that they wanted to consciously harm you. It's not that our parents actually in any capacity need to be blamed or shamed. >> No, >> it's that we all get to take a deep breath and look to the past and go, "Okay, did they do the best they could with the consciousness they had?" >> And the answer is always yes.
(39:49) Because what being that truly loved themselves would not want to teach that love to another being? Yet, if they are not loved and don't feel that for themsel and they were severed from spirit, they can't give you anything that they don't have. I mean, this is literally emotional epigenetics in practice in science. >> Yeah.
(40:06) >> There's no conversation happening more important than the one we're having right now. Because this is why I'm so fascinated with the way that genes are turned on and off for trauma or trust and what's going on epigenetically if you look at all the mountains of research. But it culminates into what you teach, a pillar of what you teach, which I love.
(40:25) You say that there's three fluencies. >> Self-eotional and relational. Can you imagine before you go into them, can you imagine if in school people were taught self emotional and relational fluency in the same way that reading is fluency? Can you imagine how the world would shift? >> I I actually can't. >> Makes my heart just like explode thinking about that potential.
(40:47) >> My life looks so profoundly different. I mean, I want to say like I understand that my father was a really wounded person. You know, I I understand that my mother was a really wounded person. I know their stories really intimately and I have a lot of compassion for them. And that doesn't that doesn't negate or change the impact.
(41:10) >> Sure. >> And the impact is then what I what I have to navigate. I think we all get some sort of impact. There is no there is no ticket here as a human being without suffering. Everybody gets like their ticket stamped with some suffering. There's there's like that's what this ride is like.
(41:30) There's going to be suffering. >> Yeah. But I think that we inherit certain things, but epigenetics, like I've heard you talk about this, and I love this metaphor, you know, or maybe this reality. Maybe it's not a metaphor, maybe it's just a reality. >> Yes. >> That that genes can be turned on and off. >> Oh, yeah. >> And and so can our so can our stories.
(41:51) So can the impact, the way that it registered in the body. Like if you look at pictures of me now versus pictures of me 10 years ago, I do not look like the same person. What did you look like in the past? >> I looked shell shocked. I looked kind of like I looked like like really strained. And you can see there's kind of like a a a lack of there's there's a lack of joy in my eyes even smiling.
(42:17) >> Yeah. And in terms of the fluencies, first of all, for me, I prefer the term fluency because I think that the the notion that anybody ex achieves mastery is ridiculous. There are very few people who experience mastery. And I don't think any of us does it in relationships. Ramdas was like, "Go spend a week with your family and you'll see how enlightened you are.
(42:40) " >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> And so fluency means it's something that we can always expand. It's and and it also speaks to the fact that it is something that's always in motion >> that it's it's it it flows. >> Well, I want to push back on that because this is fun. What do you mean there's no such thing as mastery in human form? >> Okay.
(43:02) I believe that the evidence of having done the work is humility. >> Okay. >> That if you haven't gotten to the point of humility, then you haven't done the work. Mhm. >> And humility says there's always more to learn. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. And so mastery, I don't know any masters that call themselves that. >> I mean, I think about people like Bruce Lee who is like clearly a master.
(43:32) Everyone wants to call I don't know maybe maybe he walked around calling himself a master but people who truly master something understand that the power that comes from that is a power that brings you into the ground of your being and that is what humility means humility comes from the etm the etmology is the word humus which means earth >> humility means being brought to the ground of your being so if you're doing the work and you are truly becoming more edified more enlightened, more wise in the ways of love and yourself and being
(44:06) a human, then you will be brought to the ground of your being. And that humility and dignity are two sides of the same coin. And the notion that we ever achieve mastery, I think the mo the moment that we do that, we've actually stopped growing >> because then the master stops becoming the student. >> We Yeah.
(44:29) I I mean I I'm a perpetual student >> and I mean I've been doing this work since I was 14. I still have a long way to go. I still have a lot to learn. >> Yeah. >> And I don't want to stop. I want to be like clawing for another hour when I'm in my like, you know, I'm hoping it'll be like 45 years from now. I want to I want to still be wanting another hour to explore something, to know something.
(44:54) >> Yeah. Oh, that's so beautifully said. Yeah, I push back because the word selfmastery, the two words, I I don't know the etmology of that, but that'd be really cool to find out. Y'all put it in the comment. What is the etmology of selfmastery? Seems to me like we could change it on this human continuum to the art of learning how to be in self-mastering >> because really that's what it is, right? >> Selfmastering I could get behind.
(45:18) >> Selfmastering I could get behind as well because >> because it's in process. >> Yeah. Because I actually even like in taekwond do and black belts and in many disciplines it's like oh so and so is a third degree master in this and it's like well they're still learning aren't they? So there's still something else to be learned and and it goes back to the beginning of the podcast and the core of why we're here which is if we're in love with ourselves and we truly know that it's a knowing.
(45:43) It's a it's a felt sense. We don't have to question if we're loved or not. Like you said we're we're in the being of joy and we're not self-conscious. Mhm. >> Then that's a place where selfmastering can be practiced. But if that's not a ground, if that's not the the cadence that we walk from, it's going to be almost virtually impossible to have any path of selfmastering if the ground floor hasn't been laid.
(46:05) >> Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's why when I say that the way of the adored woman is based on embodying three fluencies. Selfluency is the first. Self- fluency is I know what I want. I know what I feel. I know what I think. I know what I believe. I know what matters to me. And I can bring that forward in all areas of my life.
(46:31) I can I forgive myself? And can I love myself? Can I truly, deeply, unreservedly dig myself? >> That's got to be the ground floor. We But we can't stop there. Emotional fluency is do I know how to feel my feelings without, you know, spinning out or shutting down? Do I know how to discern the difference between my feelings and my perceptions? And do I know how to discern like do I know the difference between what's mine and what's someone else's so that I can hold on to myself in a
(47:14) relationship? And then relational fluency is built on those two because we have to go beyond self in order to have a relationship. So we start with the self and emotional fluency but the relational fluency is can I communicate clearly and effectively where I'm not in my story and I'm also not weaponizing my emotions not weaponizing my feelings.
(47:44) Can I collaborate with you in a way that makes it an us versus the problem instead of an us versus one another? >> Mhm. >> Those are the three fluencies that a woman must embody in order to know how to create, sustain, and and receive the kind of love and life she wants. Because it's not just about the relationships because everything is a relationship. Mhm.
(48:12) >> Everything we want will come to us through a relationship. So when we get to and for me that's the foundation of earned secure attachment. That was actually how I got to earn secure attachment in my relationship in my marriage. And when that happened everything else in my life started to change. >> You had said that the transformation you had was a dance of a thousand small pivots.
(48:34) >> Thousand tiny pivots. What number did you really start to feel the momentum of the dance going in the direction you wanted? Uh >> I mean it it was a really long time. I wrote about this yesterday that um I I've talked about, you know, 20 years ago my husband and I went to a workshop with the the OG of polarity, masculine feminine polarity, David Data.
(49:00) We went to >> Oh, you mean the guy that may not be in a relationship and has no kids? >> Right. Okay. >> Right. That one. Cool. >> Um, yeah. I mean, that that was actually that is actually my husband's critique, but um, and that like every time if a woman drives, every time you have to get out of the car, you have to repolarize your relationship because he was in the passenger seat.
(49:19) I just can't, neither of us can get behind that. It's like really, if your relationship can't withstand the woman driving >> and and and not get deolarized, then something is something else is going on. Anyway, I digress. I don't want to I don't want to make fun of that because I >> He's got some great wisdom, too. I mean the way the superior man was was my entry point in 2014.
(49:36) >> It it was absolutely mine too much credit to >> absolutely mine too. >> Take what resonates, leave the rest. >> Yes. As Bruce Lee would say, >> I don't want to Yeah. I I don't want to denigrate, you know, his work because >> of course >> I I found like that was my the doorway for me into this question of like how do I become more conscious inside of my marriage? But we went to this retreat with him and I sat there, you know, in my flowy silk skirts and my feather earrings because I was all about like trying to
(50:08) trying to embody the goddess, but I was there with like my perfect yoga teacher posture >> sitting on, you know, the zafu next to my husband and I asked a question which I now just cringe at, which was like basically, how do I get my marriage to be more polarized? >> Yeah. And David, you know, just kind of takes one look at me and my husband.
(50:27) And I mean, we're very very different human beings at the time, it seems. And he's like, "Well, you you have to out feminine your husband." And I had no idea what he meant. And I and I also sort of intuitively understood. >> But what it did was it sent me down this rabbit hole of trying to out feminine him, which was just being more performative.
(50:52) And also, I was so stuck in assessing and judging and critiquing him that like, oh, are you are you being masculine enough? Like, that was such an intense preoccupation for me for so long. >> And I had no idea what it was to be feminine. I mean, I I grew up being told like, you know, be pretty and be agreeable and wear dresses.
(51:10) And I was like, I like Joan Jet and Elaine Pagels, you know, like rock and roll and being a little intellectual. It was not like I I didn't understand what being feminine was. >> And you know the there were many many I say it's a dance of a thousand tiny pivots to turn a dead marriage around because it really is.
(51:32) And some of the most significant pivots were, you know, when I when I was really sick, you know, I was really focusing on, you know, not dying. And I was starting to have this overwhelming fantasy that was, you know, I I couldn't really explain it at the time because I was in a marriage that, you know, you know, my husband is a fundamentally good man.
(51:59) He was was and is an incredible provider. Super consistent. I mean, I'm definitely the like it was very hard for me to be a nurse. Like showing up anywhere at the same time, same, you know, like I hate structure. I don't like to commit to anything like too far out because like I don't know if I'm going to want to do it.
(52:18) Like it's my husband is like absolutely super consistent and always has been >> and and yet there was really no emotional connection. He was really checked out and I thought I was present. I thought I was the one I mean I hear this all the time from women. I thought I was the one who was really wanting connection.
(52:38) I really couldn't see what I was putting into the space between us. But I started to have this fantasy, this longing to submit. And this was with a man who was like, "Yeah, I have no desire to be a dom. I don't." And I was like, "Well, could I work with a professional dom to like know what that's like?" And he's like, "Nope, that would be infidelity.
(52:56) " And I'm like, "Even if it's not sexual." He's like, "Yep, I'm not okay with that." But I had this fantasy and I understand that fantasy is like our desire is a map of us and fantasy is an expression of desire. So I started to ask myself, what's the metaphor here? What am I wanting that feels like it felt like this kind of overwhelming call? And I started to reflect on the ways that I did not know how to bring myself forward.
(53:32) Like in this fantasy, in this longing, I wanted to let go. And I didn't know how to do that anywhere in my life. So the fantasy is very convenient. Someone makes you let go, but no one can make you let go. >> Mhm. >> A man I I say this all the time to women. He holds a woman who holds herself. Like if I can't hold myself, if I can't become free, if I can't surrender in myself, there's no man that's going to do that for me.
(53:58) There's no amount of containment that's going to do that for me. There's no masculine containment. There's no what? Like there's no doming. there's no, you know, whatever that's going to make me free if I don't know how to do that myself. So, I started to ask myself, what would it look like inside of me to become more free even now with this man who's kind of like not moving towards me? Is there's not a lot of sexual heat.
(54:27) There's not a lot of polarity or passion. We absolutely loved one another. We were very compatible, intellectually compatible, but we were living like like roommates for a long part of our marriage. And I wanted to feel adored by a man who desired me. I wanted to feel desired. Like I'd put this story down of being unwantable.
(54:51) Like I'd done the the ritual of like I'm going to put this story down that I am not wanted. And I had and this was like one of like that was one of the pivots. And this next piece became really probably the biggest biggest pivot which is I started to ask myself like as I was exploring this desire to surrender to submit to be taken to be wanted by a man.
(55:18) Like I'd never been able to look a man in the eyes. Like I'd never been able to flirt with anybody. I was terrified of being seen by men. I was terrified being seen wanting like wanting to be wanted by a man. And so I started to ask myself, who would I have to be to be a woman who is adored by a man she desired? Like wantingly adored, like like completely surrendered with him.
(55:52) And I thought, well, my husband's not going to know the difference if I'm doing this inside of myself. I mean, he he hadn't changed with all of the my requests to change. Like, he didn't resonate with any of the polarity work. He wouldn't he was like, "This kind of gross stuff is your thing. I don't want it." Like >> so one day I just said, "Okay, I'm going to start practicing like what would it look like inside of me to be a woman who's adored by a man she desires? How would she move? How would she walk? How would she interact with him in the
(56:22) morning when he comes out and he gives me his >> chasteed dry medicinal good morning kiss? What would I do?" And so I started asking myself that question. He gives me his chased dry little pec in the morning and I would just go inside and I would notice like the warmth of his skin or the smell of him which I've I'd always loved just the smell of who he is and I would feel that deeply and experience like the the pleasure of that.
(57:02) And I noticed that I like was like clear that I needed to stop criticizing him. And so I I stopped really saying anything that was critical or nagging or controlling or kind of telling him what to do. And I just started to, you know, I real that question like I lived that question in my body. And within a very short period of time, like a matter of weeks, I noticed my husband was doing something very peculiar, he started saying things like, "You're adorable.
(57:40) " Which is a word he had never used in our marriage. He also started saying, "I feel so blessed." Which we started to joke that we actually needed then to have like a hashtag blessed necklace like because he is not the kind of man to say, "I feel blessed." If you knew my husband, you'd be like, "Yeah, that does not seem like you, dude. He would he started to say like, "You're so sexy." We started having sex again.
(58:02) And I was like, "What is going on with us?" And after about a month of this, I you know, he he would he would come up to me in the kitchen and embrace me. He would look me in the eyes when I was talking and like with his arms by his side and I could tell he was just breathing and he was like there. And after about a month of this one day, I was doing laundry, sitting on the edge of the bed, folding laundry, and and he came in and I was like, "Would you sit down for a second?" And I I said, "What the [ __ ] has
(58:35) happened to us? You're you're telling me I'm sexy. You're calling me adorable. You're like looking me in the eye when I'm talking and just listening, and I can tell you're breathing on purpose. were were having amazing sex like what's happened and he as my husband would thought for a moment and said I don't know I could just feel your heart and suddenly I could feel my own and I realized I wanted love >> and that's when I knew the work that I was doing was working that was the pivot that really made clear to me
(59:25) that focusing on my side of the relationship was what was changing our marriage. And that that has to be a central tenant of all relational work. That your work is on your side. And if you focus at all on the other person's side, you're no longer doing relational work. Mastering your attention is the first rule of healthy relating.
(59:56) And your attention must be on what you are doing, what you are thinking, what you are perceiving, what you are wanting, and whether you are capable of bringing that forward inside of the relationship. The story example you just gave holds within it the seed of possibility to I believe transform almost all marriages.
(1:00:17) Some are not savable. But the story you just shared encapsulated in that wisdom is so much I guess you could say ignoring of one's own biology because in those moments where you've said before pay my daddy bill, right? Many many women want their husband to pay their daddy bill. >> I certainly did. >> Yours was a significant debt.
(1:00:42) >> There's like gold bars stacked on that one. >> I love that you there's so much in there. I just want to reflect on what you said. The way in which you would actually not be in alignment with your biology cuz I'm sure in many moments the little girl was like, "Pay my daddy bill. You don't love me.
(1:00:59) I'm unlovable," >> etc., etc. That was probably activated pretty severely in your body in those moments. Was it breath? Was it awareness? Was it a commitment to that which you knew was possible and that which you desired to overcome your own biology? I've always said that our greatest freedom is when our biology and our reality are aligned.
(1:01:17) They're not arguing anymore. >> But for that for that place to be real, not faked. >> Yeah. >> One's biology must be a mirror of reality. That's freedom. >> Yeah. For that beautiful way to put it. >> For that month or so, I I don't >> I don't assume that there was a lot of freedom in you during that month of recalibrating your ner.
(1:01:34) I mean, what was that like? >> Like I was that was in the midst of me being very sick. I was really re reckoning with and wrestling with how do I get free inside of the least free moment in my life. I was so sick. I like I said I couldn't walk around the block. >> I everything in my life like I had to stop working.
(1:01:54) I I so I I lost my I lost my career as a nurse. I lost my capacity to function in any way. I couldn't really do anything. I slept for several hours a day. So I understand when people say like, "Oh yeah, like it's really hard for me to change." I really get that >> because I I had when I say my life was kind of wiped off the map. It was.
(1:02:15) >> So I was in this place of who I have been being is not working. I can't keep being as in acting, showing up in these ways and behaving and thinking about myself in the way that I have been. You know, I I have to learn how to think and feel and show up differently in my life that is in alignment with who I actually am.
(1:02:46) >> And the fantasy was like like it was so far divorced from my reality. I was like, you know, I I want to be someone submissive, which I mean, if you talk to me, you're like, that woman is not a wallflower. Like, like I am a [ __ ] force of nature. I am not. I don't come across as like I want to be someone's trad.
(1:03:11) But it was so divorced from my reality >> that >> I knew it was trying to tell me something which was could I submit to surrender to my own longing for love >> and that I would never be free if I could not be the same person everywhere both inside of myself in my heart of hearts like that rock and roll cowgirl.
(1:03:40) >> Yeah. like if I could not be her everywhere because I wasn't. I was hiding in my work. I was hiding in my marriage. I was hiding my parenting. I was hiding my friendship. I was hiding, you know, in the fact that the only conversation I've ever wanted to have is how do we have great relationships? That's the only conversation that's ever mattered to me.
(1:04:02) Like here, this conversation like I can't tell you this is like this is what I was born for. So, the fact that I'm here is an outrageous miracle. But I couldn't have been this person until I made that decision that I was going to follow some crazy ass fantasy that sounded like, I want to be wanted by a man who wants me.
(1:04:38) I want to know what it is like to be cherished by someone because I had never had that experience. >> But I couldn't keep living inside of the belief that I was unwantable and have that experience. >> It's so clear to me that you were brought forth in the situation where you had to be decimated in order for your biology to be essentially retrained.
(1:05:01) I mean, you want to talk about rewiring. >> Yeah. I'm sure for that first month there was so much neuroplasticity happening, so much anteric nervous system activation like your brain, if you put your brain under a PET scan, it was probably like fireworks cuz everything in your body was probably screaming to do the opposite.
(1:05:17) >> Yeah. And I was doing a lot of things like in terms of healing my physical body, I was doing a couple different forms of meditation, very specific type of meditation for a couple hours a day. >> Yeah. I was also doing the safe and sound protocol which really helped me a lot also in therapy.
(1:05:34) I mean with an amazing therapist who I still is still my therapist. I mean like I I think that there were many many things that I was doing >> but >> they and breath work. I mean I was doing I was doing all of it you know because I mean >> more is better right? >> I'm but I'm relentless and I think when you are in that doorless hallway You know, I understand there's also a point where it's like where you're doing all the things.
(1:06:03) The gift of the doorless hallway is that you actually let go of any hope that anything will work. Because what opened a door in that hallway, I think that there's like a secret door at the bottom of our heart that when all of the other doors close and we we really drop down into the truth of your our lived experience, the felt truth of it without the story attached.
(1:06:36) I'd worked for years to let go of my stories. Worked for I worked for years to let go of my story around my father. I worked for years to let go of story around my mother. I worked for years to let go of the story around my my husband. I worked for years to let go of the story around myself as a mother and my my failings.
(1:06:52) And my illness is actually the point at which like all of those stories just started to disintegrate >> because first of all, I didn't have the energy to keep them up cuz all the things that I was doing to prop up those stories, achieving and accomplishing and I I ran 40, 50 miles a week. I taught several yoga classes.
(1:07:09) I was, you know, I was a certified lactation consultant and an RN and I had, you know, advanced certification in maternal newborn nursing. I mean, I was a driven person. >> Mh. >> And when you take all of those things off the slate and you have to just sit with, can I love myself for no reason? Can I just love myself for absolutely no reason? There is a point at which we will reckon with the shame as a sensation in the body, not the narrative.
(1:07:49) And realize that the way out is to forgive ourselves. There was one other pivot. It was about six months before my marriage changed. I had just gone back to work. I was still really sick, but I was functional enough to go back to work. And I was telling a friend the night before going to work that, you know, I was feeling a I was experiencing a lot of remorse around some of the things that I did to my kids when I wasn't sober.
(1:08:27) There's a period about five or six years that I was a pretty horrible like raging kind of mother. And I felt just tremendous tremendous remorse like like I could still feel it in my body the the regret that I carried and it can still be poignant. And I said to this friend, I think I've got to find some way to forgive myself or I will never be free.
(1:08:53) And so the next morning, as we do, getting ready for work, I was drinking my tea and I Googled, "How do I forgive myself?" >> And up came like one of the first things was a YouTube meditation from Louise Haye. And I'd never really resonated with Louise Haye. I'd had her book, How to Heal Your Life, for years.
(1:09:14) I mean, I'd always had that book. >> Yeah. >> But it it never really like landed for me. But I was like, "Okay." For whatever reason, I clicked this meditation. And I listened and in it she said a couple things that it was her voice, a recording of her and there were a couple things she said that for whatever reason I heard them and I'll tell you I don't usually say like I got a download.
(1:09:38) Like that's just not how I roll. >> Yeah, me neither. >> But I I am pretty certain that I had a direct transmission from Louise Haye because I can't explain why this worked. I can't explain what happened. But I heard her say a couple things. She said, "Within you there is a deep well of love that is just for you." And a part of me when I heard those words, I could feel this flicker of I could feel at first that no, there isn't or I don't I can't feel that, which is something that my clients now say.
(1:10:13) But beneath that, I could also hear this tiny tiny voice saying, "Oh, maybe there is." And then another thing she said was,"I will no longer withhold my own love and approval from myself for any reason, no matter what." And that also really resonated with me. Like it it's like it went all the way in somehow. >> And so that day I went to work like a lot of nurses.
(1:10:44) I didn't get to sit down to eat lunch until 5:30. So I listened to the meditation again and I started to transcribe it and I realized that those were words that I had to figure out how to live. And so I wrote them on my bathroom mirror. There's a deep well of love within you that is just for you. And I will no longer withhold my own love and approval from myself for any reason, no matter what.
(1:11:12) And so when the symptoms would flare in this illness or I would be suffering in some way, I would just say I will no longer withhold my own love and approval from myself for any reason no matter what, including this including this moment of pain, including this moment of suffering. I will not harm myself with my own suffering.
(1:11:32) And that was really the self forgiveness. Shame, that mistaken sense of self. Shame, I think, only moves when we forgive ourselves for that mistake, that I should have ever withheld my own love. that that my that I get to have my own love, that I deserve my own love, that I'm worthy of my own love, that my love is for me first.
(1:12:11) And that when we forgive ourselves for the mistaken beliefs, that selfhood starts to dissolve and it becomes less sticky. and other parts of our lives. So when when I talk about your relational work is always on your side and the moment you're not on your side, you're not doing your relational work, that's what I'm talking about.
(1:12:35) >> Mhm. >> Is forgiving yourself for the stories you carry and the ways that the ways that you project them on other people, the harm that we end up causing when we project our own shame onto other people. When we start to see it in other people as opposed to realizing that that's ours.
(1:12:53) Now look, other people may actually behave be behaving like complete asses. That is a real that's a real thing. I mean, my husband Yeah, >> my husband actually has come to the place where he realizes a he really does need to do his own work and b he caused a lot of harm in our marriage by not being present. But he didn't get there by me proving it to him.
(1:13:13) He got there by watching me embody my own standard of love with myself and with him. I hope everybody can let that land because to me that is the core of why your story is so inspirational. It really is the the argument between your body and your mind. I'm just going back to you on folding laundry on the bed and like what was happening in your biology.
(1:13:39) >> Yeah. >> The only way I could describe that would be my mediocre yet still deepening knowledge of the hermetic principles. The first one is the law of correspondence. >> As above, so below. >> And the entire time you were sharing that story, I was just reflecting back to Dr. Steven Young.
(1:13:59) And and honestly, all guests that have sit right there, >> every guest that has sat right there is in their own beautiful unique way like yours sharing their life story that in many ways always breaks down to that first law. And I say almost always because you know there's six other laws. And so I I think about the way you reorganized yourself spiritually, emotionally.
(1:14:23) You you went through this alchemization process, galvanization process where you were the sword getting pulled in and out of the fire and hit with the anvil while you had while you were recovering from potentially a life-threatening illness. >> Yeah. >> So when you're in the hallway with no doors, that's when the reckoning of I believe spirit came through for you.
(1:14:42) I can sense that this this it's not that that these are mental laws. You know, the hermetic system is a spiritual system and everything you've shared today in many ways is so deeply spiritual because a lot of this stuff we we look for mental constructs to be able to describe a model that somehow got you out of hell or got you out of the the hallless doorway.
(1:15:06) And for me, it's it's so clear that when you reorganized yourself, when you did the work to actually go against that which you were conditioned to be, that it reorganized the relationship, the marriage, and the universe itself conspired in your favor. Like I get I can feel my hair standing up on my body because this is such a hard lesson for so many people.
(1:15:27) This reorganization of the internal world that gets reflected back to us by husband, wife, work, money, everything. It's like this big video game where we're the player and we're the programmer at the same time. >> Yeah. >> It's so ineffable. I'm even trying to ramble with my words to describe it, but I hope you feel what I'm saying here.
(1:15:47) >> Totally. This is I mean because I'm a nurse and like I'm a fourth generation nurse. My grandmother kept her license active until she was in her 90s. I'm probably going to do the same. So, because I come from a a line of flinty practical New England nursers, I'm highly practical. I ha mine is a very practical philosophy of love, which is that we have to be able to embody it.
(1:16:15) That relationships are systems of mutual influence. So, when I embody something with you, it will absolutely in influence you. It will impact you. >> It can't not. >> People get hung up on intent. You know what their intention is, but impact we we have to be able to understand what our impact is. But to tolerate that, to tolerate that I impact you, to tolerate realizing the ways that I impacted my sons by acting out by acting out my own trauma.
(1:16:54) to tolerate the ways that I impacted my husband, I had to do enough emotional work that I could look at my own deficits without weaponizing them against myself. I mean, I my husband absolutely impacted me by being like withdrawn and shut down and he's he he is doing his own work around that like he's having his own reckoning with that.
(1:17:19) But I had to look at the ways that, you know, my my husband also had a really difficult childhood and upbringing. And his mother was extremely cruel. And I had to I had to realize that when when I would, you know, rage at our kids or be angry or contemptuous and he would be silent in response to that that he would not react, he wouldn't do anything that I was actually I was that that was actually his trauma response >> and that that's what I was putting into the space between us was something that looked a lot like the harm he experienced inside of his earliest
(1:18:02) relationships. >> Mhm. >> And that if what I want with him, if I want his love, I have to be thinking about what I'm putting into the space between us, cuz that's intimacy. The space between us is intimacy. And what I'm putting into it is the only thing that I can impact. It's the only thing I can control.
(1:18:23) So when I talk to women about how do you how do you have it outrageously good love? I want what I want them to understand is the way there is self-possession which is through the three fluencies and self-possession leads to relational power which is that I can be very [ __ ] deliberate about what I put into the space between us.
(1:18:43) I have no control over what you do, but I have a lot of influence. >> And everything that I put into the space between us, I have responsibility for and that's what I have to tend is what is within my control and learn that I actually can influence a lot more. But relational power comes from understanding what it means to be a woman in possession of herself.
(1:19:08) Like we have a mutual friend who talks a lot about masculine containment and you've said you've had many guests who talk about masculine containment and self-containment I think is perhaps the masculine pole in a in a relationship. The feminine pull is self-possession. >> What's the core difference between self-possession and self-containment? >> I think that there might be some nuances.
(1:19:34) I'm I really am reluctant to get into sort of a lot of binary because I think men and women have a lot more in common than we than we are different. >> Mhm. >> But feminine sensuality is far more self ignited. Like a woman who's really turned on in her life is turned on by who she is. Well said. >> She That's why I say know who you are and dig it.
(1:20:08) Like >> that's part of what it means to be self-possessed is like like I dress to please myself. This is like me like taking myself and that's that self-possession. It may include I mean a woman really does need to have self-containment but that self-possession is like oh I am mine. I choose me. I cherish me.
(1:20:32) Like I am chosen by myself >> first. That is always like as you say by the law of correspondence that will always be reflected to me because I cannot tell you since I've done this work how many men have shown up in my life to give to me. And not because they want something from me, not because they're trying to get something from me.
(1:20:55) I cannot tell you it happens everywhere I go. The way that men respond to me now versus the way that men responded to me before is unbelievable. It's like it was like I tapped into this world where it's like men the masculine is incredibly responsive to a woman who is self-possessed. >> Like I'm not I'm not needing anything from you.
(1:21:21) But I relish receiving because it doesn't mean anything about me. I don't it doesn't mean anything about my goodness. I just get to enjoy it. >> There's like bouncing energy here. So, let's just say reductionistically that there's a man and a woman in a room in a marriage. And the woman is very clear about her self-possession. >> And the man is very clear on containment.
(1:21:44) To me, that's an ingredient list of so much bountiful beauty. There's so much good that can come from that. What I see in my own marriage, it's almost like there's a flip. I feel like in my own marriage, I'm in your seat on the bed doing laundry. And I think that these things flip-flop. So, I'm with you that it doesn't always have to be one way.
(1:22:05) Doesn't have to be so binary. I think that these things can eb and flow as well cuz, you know, as you know, like Dr. Kelly Broen talks about the healing spiral where there's expansion and contraction. And this expansion and contraction can happen in different seasons for people. Specifically, when a woman has children, what I've seen is that everything comes up to the surface that hasn't been dealt with because of the immense load physiologically that she's under.
(1:22:26) And then on top of that, the man has to deal with the fact that he's no longer first burner. >> He's he's no longer being poured into. And paradoxically, he's actually pouring way more in without receiving. Maybe 90% less receiving. So then his stuff will come up. And when I say his, I mean mine. >> So So I promise I'll get to the question.
(1:22:46) I'm I'm just giving a really big preframe here because I think a lot of married men and married women can really feel the gravity of what I'm sharing. >> And that is it's not that one person wants to consciously harm the other. It's not that your husband wanted to pull back. It's not that >> it's not that I want to be anxious. It's not that my wife wants to pull back.
(1:23:03) It's that we all have these stories >> that are being decimated. And to the degree that we're conscious of these stories, >> Mhm. >> that's the way we can have containment and possession. That's so clear for me now that it can flip-flop and role reversal and none of this stuff really is is gender specific.
(1:23:21) The ultimate question here is how would one know? >> How would one know that a man is providing as much containment as he can provide? >> That is such a >> yet it's still not being received because she is not self-possessed. M so I'm a firm believer in never taking anyone else's measure like like the question is a difficult one because >> because if you're talking just about yourself you you get to assess yourself but we don't get to assess and measure our partner all we get to do is bring forward what we need what we want what we wish for
(1:24:04) here's here's the really unsexy truth about polarity. I think polarity is really important. I think the erotic arc between two people doesn't matter who they are, what roles they take, what identity they have, but if we're going to talk heteronormatively because that's my experience, that's your your experience.
(1:24:23) I'm I'm understanding the erotic arc between a man and a woman is I mean undeniably delicious and we really want that. >> It is pretty tasty. >> Yeah. It's it's really it and it's good for you too. >> It's good. Yeah. >> It and and it really is one of the things that feeds a marriage in the long term.
(1:24:46) Like I think it grows the bank account in a marriage. However, when we try to get polarity by pursuing polarity, what we get is actually just more conflict. Polarity is the natural outcome of two differentiated people. And the definition of differentiation is I know who I am. I know what I want. I know what I think. I know what I wish for.
(1:25:11) I know what matters to me. And I can bring that forward in my relationship with you. I can communicate them in a way. And this is how I this is my definition of good communication is it's throwing the ball in a way the other person could catch it and return it. It's not dodgeball. You're not trying to tag them out.
(1:25:27) It's it's like we're we're actually trying to have a volley here. >> Yeah. >> I can bring what matters to me forward. I can bring my needs, my wishes, my longings. And here's the critical piece. I can bring them forward to you and tolerate the vulnerability. So that exposure, the possibility of being wounded, vulnerable means to be woundable.
(1:25:48) I can tolerate the vulnerability of bringing that forward and not knowing I can tolerate the tension of not knowing if you're going to move toward me and meet me like you're going to be here and I'm going to be here or if you're not. So differentiation is I can be here on a subject, you can be here on a subject and we can actually still feel closeness.
(1:26:09) Differentiation is what enables us to be really really close without getting merged. >> This would be the unhealthy imshment. >> Correct. I call it symbiotic imshment where we think oh you know like we think like we feel like you know from best in show like that mockumentary from way back with from with from >> such a good movie. >> Oh it's one of my favorite and I quote this all the time.
(1:26:31) My husband and I love to quote movies, but like, you know, there's the Jennifer um what was her last name? She was she was married to the oxygenarian. >> She's this big blonde and she says, you know, we have so much in common. We you know, we both like soup. >> And I always think of that with the symbiotic imshment because the notion that that's love. That's early love.
(1:26:54) That's the early part of love where we feel like we're the same person. We want the same things. We feel like we're soulmates. We're twin, you know, we're twin flames. >> Yeah. >> Which no one will ever hear me use those language that language anywhere except in this kind of context. In that >> that merging is the early experience of love that starts to create the attachment.
(1:27:14) But the the later stages that actually usher us into mature love is when we start to realize we're not the same person and we can't be. Because if we're the same person, we don't get that arc of aeros. We don't get the arc of polarity. And so what do I like? A conflict is when I have a need and I don't know if you're going to meet it.
(1:27:35) I'm over here with this thought, need, wish, desire, and you're over here and I don't know if you're going to come to meet me in it or if you're going to stay over there. That's a conflict. A conflict is a need. A need or a wish or desire. When we want to have like a hot and holy matrimony, when we want a relationship that's alive and passionate, we will actually have to become more differentiated, not more same, more differentiated, more more capable of tolerating our difference.
(1:28:10) And that means we ask we actually have to tolerate intensity. And we have to know how to navigate conflict. The way to polarity is actually to grow the [ __ ] up in love. To be able to tolerate that there are going to be moments or seasons when you can't meet my needs. And that does not mean that the relationship is wrong or you're wrong or that my story that I'm unwantable is true.
(1:28:34) >> And I'll tell you, you know, there's a reason why it took me until like, you know, my 50s for my marriage to change. Raising kids is exceptionally hard. Most of us are doing it without any extended family, without the tribe, which is incredibly bad for all of us, but particularly for women >> because our nervous systems are are really regulated using wii with oxytocin.
(1:28:59) So, because I understand oxytocin quite well. That was a hormone I talked about all the time with breastfeeding because it's the hormone that allows the milk to flow. It relaxes the smooth muscles. So, they it allows the milk to flow. It also is what helps the uterus to contract. Um, but the the piece about oxytocin that's really important that I think if women don't know anything else about their bodies, they must know this.
(1:29:27) Oxytocin and cortisol are antagonistic hormones. When one goes up, the other has to go down. So when oxytocin goes up, cortisol has to go down. Cortisol is the primary hormone of stress. When cortisol goes up, oxytocin has to go down. Our nervous system, the feminine nervous system, a woman's nervous system is regulated by oxytocin.
(1:29:50) So if she is experiencing any amount of stress, her hormone that tells her relax and feel lovey is going to be like kind of non-existent. Mhm. >> And there is a season in life for modern women where she's touched out. She's exhausted. She's really depleted. And if she has any kind of mother story, and by mother story I mean if she had any experience of inadequate, inaccurate or inconsistent attunement from her own mother.
(1:30:26) Her mother story gets activated the moment she delivers her first child. And it will continue to be activated with each child in different ways. I found this when I was working with women that I would walk into a room and I could immediately feel the mother story and how that was taking place in her body and how was it affecting the way she was caring for her newborn.
(1:30:47) If it was her first child, how it was affecting her ability to even take in information about caring for her child. And what I realized what I was teaching women was actually how to attune to themselves so that they could like regulate themselves. So I was doing a lot of co-regulating with women before I even understood this as language.
(1:31:06) No one was talking about attunement and attachment sort of in the general public 15 20 years ago. >> But what I realized what I was doing was teaching women like I was I was learning how to attune to them. Like I was learning how to walk into a room and immediately create a connection with somebody that they could feel safe enough for their body to let down.
(1:31:24) And I would always find that the moment that a woman would cry with me was the moment everything was going to be okay. Her milk would start to flow. She'd be able to latch if she could cry with me. So I had to figure out how to become someone that a woman could cry with. and understanding that process that's happening for her that when she has kids, her mother story is going to get activated. All of her attachment stuff.
(1:31:47) And then another important piece is if there were any significant attachment disruptions or events, traumas in her life when her first child turns that age, things will get recapitulated inside of her relationship. And for me, that was when my oldest turned seven. Mhm. >> That was when I started raging. >> I've heard Gabbor Mate talk about this and Young said it too where children are tasked with the unfinished business of their parents.
(1:32:14) >> Yeah. >> It's the same. It's like this arrested development that happens and that development when the child is five or in your case it was seven. Um everything that you can't put words on starts to play out. >> Yeah. And some things like I've heard you say like like I'm I'm in this for the long run like like like like I am I am I'm committed to creating and building a family and and and and having this be you know this this is a lifetime thing.
(1:32:45) This is not a like if it works it works. >> Yeah. And when we make that kind of commitment, I mean, that means like, man, we're going to get all we're going to get the [ __ ] kicked out of us. >> And you're calling forth all the stuff from your lineage that wasn't processed or dealt with as well. And this is why the cycle breaker is, you know, Hollywood. Oh, I'm the cycle breaker.
(1:33:04) It ain't sexy. It ain't fun to be a cycle. >> I would not call that on myself. I mean, like, I would not ask for that. Like, if like I I would not announce that. I would not wish for that because like you will get it. But I mean, look, I came from a lineage of self-hating women. A lineage of self-hating women, >> self-hating and self-denying.
(1:33:22) My grandmother, my great-grandmother came here from Wales when she was 14 by herself with her 12 or 13year-old brother. She came here by herself, no other family. She enrolled in nursing school the next day. She got to Udica, New York, and she enrolled in nursing school at 14. I I come from a line of incredibly intelligent, incredibly powerful, but didn't know they were powerful and use their power relationally in ways that were really harmful to other people.
(1:33:51) >> I'm sorry, grandma and mom, but it's true. >> And my job, one of the things I realized the day that I went to the hospital where I was born was that I would also no longer be that woman in my family. I was going to stop participating in self-hatred. And look, it wasn't immediate.
(1:34:12) Like, it took me a couple more years after that to heal my eating disorder. And that was, you know, that was that was absolutely, you talk about emotional epigenetics. I I've carried a lot of stuff in my body. And there there may be more, but when we talk about young families, like you're you have a young family. Mhm. >> There are years that are really, really lean relationally.
(1:34:40) And when I look back on our lean relational years, there was a lot of distress. There was a lot of disharmony. And I don't know if there's another way. Like I wish I could tell you like, oh, there is this thing you can do and it's going to all work out. Yeah. >> But I think I think we do have to have our own proverbial wandering in the desert.
(1:35:04) And and if we can do some harm reduction along the way, that's great. That would be great. >> Yeah. There's there's so much to be said about the seasons of life. Sometimes for men, it's building a company. For women, definitely it's raising children. There's a certain, I guess you could say, adaptability that must be in place.
(1:35:24) Like one of my friends is over here this morning and we were all giving him advice. You know, he's a new father and we're like, "Okay, just like be cool with not being the first burner." And he said so valiantly, he was like, I'm going to be the whole stove. >> And I said, well, that's a really cool thing to say, but like, you know, when you're in the fire, you may feel differently.
(1:35:41) >> Yeah. >> And I think it's really, really beautiful the way in which we as men specifically can mature and be able to withstand the wind of these seasons because it gets very windy. And it's also a paradox that our stuff comes up to be healed during these windows as well. >> Absolutely.
(1:35:57) I see one of the things that I don't think that we talk about enough is that I think we have this narrative that women want more in their relationships. I think that there's this narrative that women, you know, women are more relationally intelligent. Um, I think there are certain things that women, whether it's by socialization or estrogen, I don't know.
(1:36:16) I'm not really willing to say because I am a lover of nuance and I think that there's probably so many factors. But I think I think that there is a real we do a a profound disservice and by we I'm actually speaking about women when we say that men don't want love and connection that they either they just want sex or they're always taking I think that it seems to be news that men have relational needs and I find that problematic having raised two sons >> who are Isaac and Gabe.
(1:36:51) I'm really sorry I'm talking about you. um incredibly tender. Like I realized I went to a women's college. That was my first degree before I went back to nursing school. I went to a women's college in New England. Really progressive, very like into, you know, second, third wave feminism. And I didn't understand a [ __ ] thing about men or boys.
(1:37:13) And I was I actually cried when I found out that I was having a boy the first time. I was like, I don't know anything about boys. Like I And I thought I wanted a girl. I thought I wanted a girl because I I understood what a what I understood girls and women and the feminine. I thought >> and I absolutely fell in love with boys. I fell in love with raising boys.
(1:37:33) I fell in love with who they are. And when the boys were about five and three, wild things, like just utterly enchantingly wild. We had this neighbor who is a psychotherapist and a shaman and he said something to me that I will never forget and I actually it's actually helped me deeply understand men and it's why when I work with couples I tend to have really great track record with men because I understand something about their experience that their partners don't seem to see.
(1:38:09) But this shaman therapist said to me one day when I think our kids were over at his house and like running wild. He said, 'You know, the masculine really has three questions. Can I eat it? Can I [ __ ] it? Can I kill it? >> And and I looked at my kids. I looked at my kids and I was like, "Oh, this is absolutely true.
(1:38:32) >> They want to and and I don't think it's literal." So, anybody who just like lost their mind, like, >> hold your >> hold the phone for a moment. Can I eat it? Can I take it in? Can I incorporate it? Can I take it into me, digest it, metabolize it, and use it to create something in the world? Can I Can I take it in? >> Can I [ __ ] it? Meaning, can I move into it? Can I penetrate it with my awareness, my attention? Can I merge with it in some way that is creative? And can I kill it? And I know everyone's gonna lose that their mind about that
(1:39:12) one, but can I vanquish something? Can I can I wrestle with this to the point where I get to the still point where there's nothing where it's like the zero point of of peace? >> It's like, can I vanquish? And I would watch my kids play and I'd be like, "Oh yeah, eat it, [ __ ] it, kill it." It's it's like it's right there.
(1:39:34) And when I started to understand that as an aspect of the masculine and we all have we all have some masculine and feminine I believe I really do believe that young nailed it or maybe it was Emma that might have been Emma Young's idea actually >> thatma and her writing on that is pretty amazing but when I started to understand and look at men through that lens of they are different whether it's by socialization or testosterone you know I don't really care.
(1:40:06) There are ways that we are different socialized. Absolutely. Like my sons demonstrated that to me that the the brutality of the socialization around emotions that it's not permissible for a man to have any emotion but anger. We demonize men's desire. And look, there's reason for that too. >> Like it it has been misused. And I actually would not make the case that any type of violence is an expression of desire.
(1:40:37) But I think in terms of like actually a man's desire like a rightful desire for love, connection, attention, for warmth, for tenderness, for softness, for the aliveness that the feminine offers to a man. I mean, I can understand that there are times in a man's life. There are seasons where the loss of that would be profound. >> Wow. You really do understand men.
(1:41:04) I feel like you're speaking to my soul. Yeah. The conditioning that happens. It's really sad actually. You said that there was second and third wave feminism at that college. >> I mean, it was a woman's college. So, >> yeah. The, you know, how we how we started the conversation is how we can close it as well because I think about the the delletterious forces that really feed off of this illusionary war of the sexes.
(1:41:29) And I do wholeheartedly believe that it's an illusion. >> Mhm. Even that even I think there was a movie The War of the Sexes. It's like Hollywood and the media feeds off of division >> and the way that we're at this uh at each other's throats. And if we're not careful, I've fallen into it myself when I'm scrolling Instagram. I'm like, "Yeah, my wife should be doing that and women are on the other side.
(1:41:49) My husband should be doing that." >> Right? >> We have to be so cautious and so careful with what we consume. And that's why this conversation is literally food for the soul because it's not about division or what she should be doing or what he should be doing. I think the breath of fresh air that I've gotten on this podcast with you has been just a sense of relief and a reduction of pressure that everything is on my shoulders.
(1:42:17) M >> and I think for so many men, more often than not, probably for eight or nine out of 10 men, >> I feel like they fall into a trap of I'm going to provide. I'm going to show up. I'm going to attune. And then when we don't receive back that which we desire, it feels like an abject failure. It feels like a complete failure.
(1:42:39) >> Yeah. And I don't think women understand that for the most part about a man's psyche because they have been unfortunately conditioned that a man is silent like Gary Cooper and John Wayne. A man doesn't express his emotions. It's only been in the last decade that Berne Brown's even talking about men's vulnerability, right? She got schooled by some man that came up to her and asked her a question, well, what about men? And she's like, well, I don't work with men.
(1:43:02) And he said, well, isn't that convenient? So, so I think there's there's a beauty that you bring to this space and it's so ultimately refreshing. >> You know, much respect to Alex Chararfin and I think that containment is inherently um a spinal column of a relationship. Without masculine containment, nothing really works. And I just love what you bring around a woman being self-possessed >> because I think that's really missing from any any type of reductionistic or I guess you could say myopic view of like one way being the only way. I love the
(1:43:36) fact that you both are out there in the relational space right now. Um waving the flag of love and peace and truth >> rather than pointing at the other person. And I think just me as a man, I can reflect to you that it's so relieving. there's so much of a pressure reduction that it's not all on the man's shoulders and if you don't provide perfect containment, if there even is such a thing I can hear Alex laughing right now.
(1:43:59) There's no there's no such thing as perfect containment. Um that that we're in this together and that this is a journey that we're walking spiritually together. It's such a deeply profound question that we're just scratching the surface on you and I today >> of how to love oneself and the things that come up when we go into the process of learning how to love oneself so we can love another.
(1:44:18) >> I'd love to have you back for another conversation where we go into some real deeper practical strategies that can be parsed from your work um going deeper into the the fluencies that you talked about. But I want to ask you this question. It's a question that's been on my heart probably since I was a little boy.
(1:44:39) And I remember getting my heart broken by Amanda Viodoli and and then and then Lana Johnston. Lana Johnston, I brought her flowers and she was like, I don't I don't like this. Every man has heartbreak. Every man truly has an utmost desire. Most men, I'll say, to make his woman happy, to please her, to support her, to nourish her.
(1:44:57) We really do. Like men, we're problem solvers. We want to support and love our women. We We absolutely do. Can you speak to a woman that has a great man that's doing the best that he can? And can you give her guidance to return to that little cowgirl within herself >> because that's the reason why he fell in love with her in the first place is because he smelled that out.
(1:45:18) He sensed that inside of her and she sensed his little boy inside of him. Can you put an adult frame on that? >> Yeah. I would First of all, I'd love to come back. This conversation has been so sweet. >> There's so much more. >> There's I Yeah, I feel like we could talk or not talk for hours and still have something to talk about. more.
(1:45:33) I want to get into the practicality on round two cuz a lot of this we had to start meta. It's a massive subject you guys. >> And it is highly I mean love is highly practical like you said it in your real this morning. It's a verb and it's so it's an action >> and so if it's not if it's not practical we're not talking about love.
(1:45:50) >> Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of what to say to that kind of woman, you know, I think that when we get entrenched in our sides, it's really hard to see like we get into our little silos. And it, you know, I remember how hard it was for me to see my husband from a different perspective. It was so hard for me to see his shutdown as as anything other than like he just didn't love me.
(1:46:24) And I I'll say this, you know, I'm a very animated person and you met my husband, you know, cuz he drove me here. >> He flew here and drove you here and gave you a kiss and told you that you were awesome. >> Yeah. I mean he he basically it like his his whole purpose is to you know make sure that I am I feel loved and cared for and that I am safe and know and do not have to drive a car somewhere that I'm not familiar with.
(1:46:56) >> Whatever a man wants most most men wants. >> But you know he's he's a very like quiet deep person. Like I always described him as sort of being still deep water and I am just fire. And I also for many years a little bitterly would say that his rate of change was geological and and at a certain point in the we call it the before times and the after times because it really was like a completely different era.
(1:47:31) We seem and feel like different people to ourselves and to other people now in what is really secure functioning earned secure attachment. >> But in the before times you know I as that was changing one of the things that I realized was that I would never had grown. I would never have done this growth work. I would never have the career that I have now.
(1:47:57) Helping hundreds of women and watching their lives and marriages transform, watching their relationships with themselves transform, which I'll tell you, there is no greater thrill to me than getting a message from a client saying I feel free or I was able to say the truth or this was incredibly hard and I still have myself.
(1:48:22) So there's no greater thrill for me than that. But I I realized that had my husband been receptive to all of my requests that he do his work, all of my insistence that he had to change so that I could feel differently. That the problem in our marriage was him. Because that was really what I was was saying. Couples therapy, couples coaching, like >> Yeah.
(1:48:53) it was that you know I want you to want me and you just won't do that you won't you won't show up you won't like had he been willing to do that I would never have done my own work his recalcitrance or his geological rate of growth was I mean I'm really one stubborn cookie so I was not going to let go of that idea that he needed to change in order for me to be happy so had he been more receptive, >> we would probably still be miserable.
(1:49:25) It I mean, paradoxically speaking. So, what I would say to that woman is what I say to all the women who work with me, and many of them fight me on this for quite a while until they get it and then like, "Oh my god, that was so simple once I got it." is what I did which is I simply withdrew all of my attention on what he was doing, what he was being, how he was showing up and I started looking just at myself and that included what do I need in order to feel alive right now like when you have young kids that's a
(1:50:01) very difficult question but what what are the drains like if I can't get full if I can't get replete in with my own love with my own energy If I can't feel alive, it means either there's not enough going in or there's too much going out. So, what are the things that are draining my life force? What are the things that are siphoning my life force? How am I giving my life force away? Because that's my that's my responsibility.
(1:50:29) That's my job is to be full of life. That is no one can do that for me. So what are the things that are that you are holding on to that are in the way of you being full of self-reverence of being able to access the unself-conscious joy of being in this moment now? Where do you not see your need as holy and treat it as such? Not like from a place of entitlement where like you owe me this.
(1:51:00) >> Yeah. But where I you can come from a place of humility. Where are you withholding your own love and approval? Where what is your relationship with the deep well of love within you? Because those are all things we have control over. Those are all things I mean maybe control is too strong a word. Those are all things we have a lot of we have a lot more influence over than anyone else outside of us.
(1:51:29) But when I work with couples, we don't get anywhere until each one of them can can withdraw their attention from what the other person is doing. And that means they have to learn nervous system regulation. They have to start to get really conscious of >> are they in their thoughts or are they in their perceptions? Are they actually like what can they tell the difference between a feeling and a perception? >> What's the narrative they keep speaking? Like are they even present? Are they in their body? Are they in this moment?
(1:51:54) >> So those are like those are some of the practical and there practical pieces to that. Yeah, >> but that's what I would tell her. >> It's beautiful. And people need it's actually a deep need. They need a facilitator to facilitate them to a space of which they have not visited. >> Yeah. >> Because if they haven't visited that space ever or maybe they go in and they go out, there's something like in their neural tree that needs a deep exhale that somebody can hold their hand and take them into that space where their
(1:52:21) biology doesn't get to say how they they live anymore. And that's why great coaches or guides exist is to get people to a place where they can actually clean the glass and remove all the soot and the tension and the pain >> so they can see things for actually how they are. You know, reality creation is all over YouTube for a reason.
(1:52:40) >> It's because people know how powerful it is that we create reality with our belief, thought, feeling, and action. >> Absolutely. That's why I created the BTFA model, which is like literally so interwoven in your work and and just how you speak and and how you show up in the world.
(1:52:57) Just really a lot of love and respect for what you've created, especially what you've created in where you came from. You could have chosen so many different paths. And so, I'm just honoring you as a woman, as a mother, as a human being. I love sharing messages like this because not only do they give people hope, they give people guidance on what steps they can take to get to the place where their heart knows is possible.
(1:53:18) They've just so clung on to the old stories that create these beliefs that then block their thoughts, feelings, and ultimately their actions. >> Yeah. >> So, I just want to give you ultimate grace for that. Thank you for being my guest for flying out to Austin and tell people your website and where they can connect with you and how they can work with you.
(1:53:34) >> Yeah, you can find me at christristyshure.lo. love. >> Oh, cool. >> Yeah. Had to get the love. >> That's cool. >> And the way of theadorwoman.com. That's my >> Tell them about that program. >> So, that is my signature program that I walk women through the process that I discovered through couple decades of learning how to create outrageously good love. Yeah.
(1:53:59) >> And next, the next cohort starts early next year. It will be nine months next year. Um, and they can sign up on the waiting list to be the first to know when the doors open. I also work with women and couples one-on-one, both in person in my office in Tucson where I where I collaborate with a an equin psychotherapist and we do couple sessions with horses.
(1:54:21) >> Oh, that sounds fun. >> Yeah, it's so great. >> Heard a lot about horsey. >> So powerful. It really illuminates things and and helps to get the work into like really in a language that we understand which is the body. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So those are a few ways to find me.
(1:54:39) You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook. I I have a lot of writing. I've done a lot of writing on Facebook over the years. >> Your Instagram is awesome. I like every post cuz I just want to see more of it. Y'all share this podcast with somebody who is struggling that does not have to struggle and suffer as much as they have been.
(1:54:59) If if you yourself are a woman and you feel something in your body about what Christy is sharing, trust that feeling, right? I always say whatever is being felt and not said is still being felt, >> right? >> So if somebody's feeling something, it's just a guidepost to greater curiosity and discovery. So trust your intuition there.
(1:55:16) And then also just know that like this does not absolve the man's responsibility. It is our responsibility as you know from so many other shows that there's an equal yoking that happens and I'm not talking just biblically. I'm talking like if we're moving in the same direction and we want to learn how to love each other and give and receive that love.
(1:55:32) There's an elegant intelligent way to do so. >> And I think this episode did a masterful job. Not maybe mastery but masterful masterful job of displaying that for y'all. So until I see you next week, I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. I do not believe that you can have true power unless it comes from a sense of peace.
(1:55:54) We'll see you next week.