So let me ask you something. What if the way that you react to your partner,
your kids, your coworkers, even strangers, somebody that you run into on the
street isn't really about them at all.
What if it's actually about the story that not your brain, but your nervous
system learned decades ago.
If you're driving to work and somebody cuts you off, your heart jumps,
maybe your grip tightens on the steering wheel.
And for a split second, your body floods with adrenaline.
There's nothing you can do about it. You did not decide to react that way.
Your nervous system just did
it. It recognized danger, even though you weren't necessarily in danger.
Or you walk into a room and somebody looks at you just a little bit too long
and you get anxious or your stomach drops and your brain starts skinning.
Did I say something weird?
Or do I know that person? Do I have something on my shirt?
Meanwhile, your body is already halfway through a threat response.
Or maybe you send a text to somebody that you care about and they don't respond
for 30 minutes, an hour, a few hours.
And the more that you think about it without even thinking, your chest tightens
and your mind starts writing this story, creating this narrative.
Did I do something to upset them? Are they mad at me? I don't even know what I did wrong.
And before you know it, you're spiraling, even though there's no evidence of a problem.
That's actually your nervous system, and it's doing its job.
It's constantly scanning the world for cues of safety or danger.
It's what's kept you alive, and it's not necessarily conscious.
It's instinctive, and it's not just responding to what's happening right now.
It's responding to what has happened before because your body remembers.
It remembers the tone that your parents used when they were disappointed in you.
It remembers the feeling in
your stomach when somebody withdrew their attention when you were a kid.
It remembers the tension that filled the room before an argument ever started
with a friend of yours in high school.
So your nervous system, in the name of keeping you safe, starts predicting,
anticipating, bracing for what it learned a long time ago might and it thinks
most likely is going to come next.
So here's where it gets kind of fascinating. And honestly, it can be a little
bit heartbreaking at times, too.
Now we bring those same nervous system patterns into our modern day relationships.
So if your partner gets quiet, your body might interpret it as rejection,
even if they're just tired or if they're thinking about something else.
Or when you sense conflict coming, your brain might go into fight,
flight, or freeze mode or fawn or fib, not because of them, but because of how
your body learned to survive connection.
That's what makes relationships so fascinating, so complex that your nervous
system is reading cues that your conscious mind doesn't even notice.
You might think that you're responding to your partner, but you're actually
responding to a lifetime of experiences, moments of comfort or chaos,
presence or absence, love or withdrawal.
Taught you what connection feels like. And that's what we're going to talk about a lot today.
Because once you see those patterns, once you understand why your body reacts
the way it does, and maybe how your partner's nervous system might be reacting
in its own way, I think you can finally start to change the dance.
But you first have to be aware of the dance and you might not actually be a
very good dancer if I'm speaking about yours truly.
So today's episode is going to give you one of the most powerful illustrations
of how our past shapes the way that we love, the way that we argue,
the way that we withdraw, and the way that we reconnect.
So, we've got that and so much more coming upon today and probably another day's
episode of The Virtual Couch.
Hey everybody, welcome to The Virtual Couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.
And today, I'm bringing back your favorite couple, Jack and Jill.
And I actually have received some feedback, jokes mainly, which I love.
Something about why haven't I responded on, did they ever recover from falling
down the hill or getting the pail of water?
I've even forgot the childhood nursery rhyme, but it's just easy to think in
terms of Jack and Jill. They are not a real couple, at least not in the literal sense.
But this Jack and Jill is a composite and it is built from hundreds and hundreds
of very real couples that I've worked with over 20 years as a couples therapist.
The names are fictional, but
the dynamics and the emotions and the struggles are as real as it gets.
And in this episode, you're going to hear two parallel stories.
If you've listened to me for much time at all, I like to reference the concept
of the choose your own adventure books.
And that is just this muse that sticks in my head often. So today I've laid
out two possible versions of Jack and Jill's lives.
One path is going to show how unresolved childhood experiences,
insecure attachment styles, how those things can lead to a classic anxious and
avoidant pattern of pursue and withdrawal dance that so many couples find themselves stuck in.
And then I'm going to show what it looks like when those same early experiences
are met with emotional attunement, with a secure attachment,
with repair, with healthy co-regulation, which is the foundation of a healthy relationship.
And I will maintain, I do not know of many, if anyone,
who had that in their childhood, because we are just finally starting to talk
more and more about emotions and differentiation and being okay as you are and
what our role is as a parent to hopefully guide and help our kids find their path.
Not just, hey, you will make me so proud if you do this thing that I always wanted to do.
So we're going to explore what their childhoods taught them about love,
about safety and connection, and how those early lessons shaped the way that
they respond to conflict and to stress and to each other.
You're going to hear a lot of terms like attachment theory and interpersonal
neurobiology, co-regulation, earned, secure attachment.
But I'm going to connect those dots as we go along. And here's what I really
want you to think about as you listen. Where do you see yourself in these stories?
Do you relate more to Jill? Are you anxious?
Are you the pursuer? Are you trying to keep the connection alive?
Do you find yourself wracked with guilt or shame or wondering what is wrong
with you if your partner isn't continually checking in and saying,
I'm here, I love you, we're good?
Or do you more identify with Jack? Are you the withdrawer?
Are you the avoidant attachment? Are you trying to always keep things calm?
Are you one who thinks, no, I need to do it myself?
And maybe secretly, I don't want to do it myself, but that's the only person
that I can trust. Often leaving your partner feeling alone, but not sure what to do about it.
And at times just thinking, you know what, we'll deal with it later.
I'm good at kicking that can down the road.
Or maybe you're both, depending on the day. Sometimes you feel a little more
anxious. Sometimes you feel a little
more avoidant. Sometimes you're the withdrawer. Sometimes you pursue.
But a way to ask yourself as you listen to these stories, what happens inside
your nervous system when somebody pulls away or when somebody gets too close?
Because I think a lot of people, especially the anxiously attached,
think, no, all I want is for somebody to pursue me, for somebody to just be
so genuinely curious about me.
But then if we find ourselves in those situations, it's so uncommon that we
don't even recognize that this is somebody that is trying to see me.
And I'll dismiss that person. No, no. I want the person who won't pay attention
to me or won't see me. that's the one that I want to see me and to pay attention to me.
Because I think once you can start to see these patterns, you really can,
I won't go as far as to say immediately change them, but you have to know what
they are. And then you have to see what your own role is.
And then you can start to change the way that you show up in a relationship or dynamic.
And that will give it a chance to shift the dynamic or the relationship.
You can at least start to change how you show up. So as you listen,
I would love for you to share with me what stands out to you.
What questions come up? Where do you see yourself?
Email me, send me messages, reach out through social media at virtual.com.
Couch on Instagram or at virtual couch on TikTok or find me on Substack.
I'm putting out a lot of content on Substack because I'm building a lot of this
content or courses or conversations around the topic of marriage,
of partnership, of relationships, of this push and pull, this anxious and avoidant,
this pursuer and withdrawal, what brings us together, what pulls us apart and
how we can repair or recover, whether we stay in a relationship or whether we
have to make that difficult decision to move on from one.
And I honestly believe this might be one of the, it sounds so cliched,
but most powerful episodes that I have shared because I've spent a lot of time
trying to capture the why behind so much of what happens in couples therapy.
So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's meet Jack and Jill and see how two
people started to become the people that they are, how they found each other
in relationships, both in a healthy way and in an unhealthy way.
So let's start with the unhealthy path, and we're going to begin with Jill.
So Jill was around seven years old, the first time that she realized that her
mom wasn't really like other moms.
She would come home from school excited about making an honor roll or burst
through the front door. She's ready to share any kind of news.
And she would often find her mom on the couch in the same position that she'd
been in that morning, maybe just watching TV or reading a book,
kind of staring at nothing, maybe her phone in hand, not really looking at it much.
One day, Jill says, mom, I made the honor roll. And she waves a certificate.
It. And her mom barely glanced up. She's like, oh, that's nice, honey.
And then she returned her gaze into the middle distance or back onto her phone.
And her mom had missed the award ceremony that can seem silly at times to a
parent, but it can be just so important to a kid.
And Jill remembers feeling something deflate inside of her chest. She went to her room.
She put her certificate in a drawer and she started on her homework.
She told herself that it's no big deal. Mom was just tired.
Two hours later, then her mom
appeared in her doorway and her mascara was smudged and her eyes were red.
I am such a terrible mom she said you made the honor roll
and i barely reacted and i didn't even make it to your school today i really
wanted to be there you must think that i don't love you you must think that i'm
the worst mom in the whole world now jill stood up she felt so bad for her mom
she crossed the room she put her arms around her mom no no mom you're not it's
okay i know you're tired i know you have a lot of things going on it's fine
really jill the seven-year-old held her mom while her mom cried and jill patted
her back the way her mom should have been patting hers the honor roll certificate stayed in the drawer.
This was the pattern of Jill's childhood. Her mom struggled with untreated anxiety and depression.
She would oscillate between emotional absence and then sometimes being emotionally flooded.
And when Jill was upset, sometimes her mom didn't notice at all.
Sometimes she noticed, but she didn't really respond. And sometimes,
most confusingly, Jill's emotions would then trigger her mom's complete collapse.
And suddenly Jill would find herself managing her mom's feelings
about jill's feelings so jill never knew what version she would get but what's
so important to recognize is this is what jill knew this was normal this was
the familiar when she came home after not making a soccer team when she was
around nine or ten her mom barely looked up when she got a b on a math test at ten her mom.
Pretty upset, spiraled into self-recrimination about her being a bad parent
who didn't help enough with homework. And then she went on to talk about how
she was never good at math.
And Jill ended up comforting her. When Jill's first boyfriend broke up with
her at 15, her mom said, well, you'll get over it. And she went back to scrolling on her phone.
Jill's father was physically present, but he was pretty emotionally absent.
He was a kind man who worked a lot of hours and he seemed relieved to go into
his workshop on weekends away from his wife's unpredictability.
He never intervened. He never really modeled a different way.
He just disappeared into what she would learn as she became an adult, safety.
What Jill's nervous system learned, that connection is unstable and it could
vanish without warning.
When someone withdraws, it means I did something wrong. I need to pursue harder.
I need to be more. I need to do more. I need to keep people engaged.
What Jill learned was my feelings are either too much or they're not enough,
and I really can't tell which.
But I know that I'm responsible for other people's emotional states.
If I can be attentive enough, if I can be just loving enough,
if I can be perfect enough, then maybe people will stay.
Now, by the time Jill left for college, her nervous system was wired for vigilance,
hypervigilance. She scanned faces constantly looking for signs of withdrawal.
She texted friends immediately, worried that if they didn't respond within an
hour, then something was wrong.
She volunteered for everything. She helped everybody. She made herself indispensable.
She was your go-to person because if she was needed, people wouldn't leave.
Now, unfortunately, when she needed others, that wasn't always the same.
There wasn't a lot of reciprocity.
There's some fascinating work by a guy named Dan Siegel. But he says that deep
in this neural circuitry, Dan Siegel describes the embodied and relational mind.
Jill's brain had wired itself for one central belief. Connection equals uncertainty,
and I have to work constantly to secure it. Now let's cut over to Jack.
Jack was nine years old when he learned that showing vulnerability was dangerous. It was scary.
He had been struggling with some complex math, long division for about a week or so.
His teacher had explained it two or three times, but something about the concept
just wouldn't click in his brain.
And he felt dumb, which made it harder to think, which made him feel more, more stupid.
And it was the cycle that he didn't have words for yet.
His father would look over his homework one evening and his dad's face kind
of hardened. What, what are you not getting?
This is basic math. I mean, I was so good at this by the time I was your age. Are you even trying?
Jack felt the heat flood his face and that horrible combination of shame and panic.
His dad said, I don't understand how. I don't have time for this.
And his father pushed the homework back across the table. You got to figure
it out yourself. I'm not going to spoon feed you everything.
You have to learn this yourself if you're going to be a man.
Jack looked toward the kitchen where his mom was washing dishes and she had
heard the whole thing. And he could tell by the way that her shoulders tensed.
She never said anything.
And Jack didn't understand why. That night, Jack heard his parents fighting
behind their closed bedroom door.
His mom's voice was pleading. It was barely audible. And his father's voice
was harsh and cutting. And then there was silence.
And then for three or four days, his dad didn't speak except for very clipped, necessary phrases.
And his mom tried to act like everything was normal, serving dinner with a bright false smile.
Nobody acknowledged the fight. Nobody acknowledged how Jack's dad had acted to him.
Nobody came back to repair. Nobody said, I was harsh or let's try this again.
So what Jack learned was when things got hard, people either attacked or they
disappeared, and sometimes both.
This pattern repeated throughout his childhood. When Jack was cut from a basketball
team at 12, his dad said, well, if you'd have practiced more,
you know, I worked a lot harder than you did, and I made all the teams I tried.
When Jack was nervous before a debate competition, when he got into high school,
his dad said, hey, at this point, you're prepared or you're not.
I don't know why you're worrying about things.
When Jack struggled after he had a dog that was close to him die at 16,
his dad told him, man up, it was just a dog.
And his mother never really intervened. She was very kind in small, quiet ways.
She would then try to pack his favorite lunch or leave notes in his backpack,
but she never stood up to his father and she never said, hey, that's too harsh.
Or she didn't create space for Jack's feelings to exist without criticism.
This is not to criticize his mom. It wasn't that his mom didn't try,
but she would find that when she tried, things got worse for her and for Jack.
So what Jack's nervous system learned, showing vulnerability invites attack or rejection.
That other people's emotions are dangerous and they're overwhelming.
So when conflict arises, disappearing is your only safe option.
If I stay quiet, if I shut down, eventually things blow over.
Being needed feels like being trapped. Feelings are weakness,
and weakness gets punished.
What Jack learned was connection means somebody will either criticize me or fall apart on me.
And Jack became the kid who seemed fine with everything. He didn't ask for help.
He didn't share when things were hard.
He learned to solve problems alone in his room with the door closed.
He learned that his father's criticism hurt less if he didn't react to it.
He learned that the safest place was inside his own head where nobody could see him.
So by the time Jack left for college,
his nervous system was wired for self-protection through withdrawal.
Emotions, whether they were his own or others, they felt like threats.
Closeness felt like suffocation. Independence was the only thing that felt like survival.
So deep in his neural circuitry, in the place where interpersonal neurobiology
tells us our relational patterns get encoded, Jack's brain had wired itself for one central belief.
Connection equals danger, and I have to protect myself through distance.
So how did Jack and Jill find each other? They met at a professional conference
when they were both in their mid-20s.
Jill was attending sessions and networking actively and making conversation easily.
And Jack noticed her across the lobby during this opening reception.
She had a warmth that seemed to just draw people in.
But unlike the other extroverts who seemed to be working the room,
which was kind of off-putting to him, she actually seemed to listen when people talked.
When they ended up in the same small group discussion, Jill asked Jack about
his work and she made eye contact. And she leaned in slightly and she remembered
details that he had mentioned earlier.
So for Jack, who'd spent his life at this point feeling either criticized or
invisible, this attention felt like he was finally seen. Somebody thinks I'm interesting.
Somebody wants to know about me. For Jill, Jack seemed different from other
guys that she dated. He was quieter. He was more reserved.
He didn't dominate the conversations or perform for attention.
He seemed solid. He seemed grounded.
So after a lifetime of her mom's emotional chaos, Jack felt like peaceful waters.
Finally, somebody who won't fall apart. Somebody stable that I won't have to take care of.
Here's what's crazy, though. What neither of them realized, they were each attracted
to a familiar dynamic, but it was disguised as its opposite.
When they exchanged numbers and they started texting each other,
Jill was attentive and responsive and she replied quickly and she asked thoughtful
questions and she made plans and Jack loved every minute of it.
After a childhood of emotional unavailability, Jill's attention felt like the
opposite of his parents. She seemed genuinely interested in him.
Jack's measured responses and his emotional reserve actually looked like secure
masculinity to Jill. He didn't dump his feelings on her.
He didn't seem needy. He didn't appear self-sufficient.
So Jill starts thinking, he won't need me to manage his emotions like my mom
did. It seems like he's got himself together.
There's some pretty fascinating research on this dynamic, and it's very consistent.
Researchers Philip Shaver and Cindy Hazen's groundbreaking work in 1987 was
applying attachment theory to adult romantic relationships, and it found that
people with anxious attachment patterns like Jill and avoidant attachment patterns
like Jack are often drawn to each other.
And it's not random. It's unconscious pattern matching.
Jill's anxious attachment made her hypervigilant to connection,
which initially looked like attentiveness and care.
Jack's avoidant attachment made him emotionally reserved, which initially looked
like stability and independence.
So in these early stages of dating, before real intimacy and before stress entered
the picture, these patterns hadn't activated yet.
There was a researcher named Stan Tatkin. He worked in this psychobiological
approach to couples therapy, which has an acronym of PACT.
That work suggests that our nervous systems unconsciously seek what feels familiar,
even if that familiarity is uncomfortable.
So, Jill's nervous system recognized Jack's emotional distance.
It was her father's workshop. It was her mother's withdrawal.
Jack's nervous system recognized Jill's intensity.
It was the emotional flooding he had learned to escape from.
But in early dating, they couldn't both maintain the illusion.
Jill wasn't yet desperate or pursuing because Jack was still responding.
Jack wasn't withdrawn yet because the stakes were still low.
So they were running their best versions of the patterns.
Now, when I first was a therapist, I started looking at couples therapy.
The first model I ever learned about was called Imago. And it was by a gentleman
named Harville Hendricks.
And Hendrix's Imago relationship theory proposes that we unconsciously choose
partners who embody traits of our primary caregivers, both the positive also
and the negative, the familiar.
The unconscious hope is that this time with this person, we can get it right
and that will heal this original wound.
It's like we're subconsciously drawn to somebody that is familiar so we can
heal because we didn't have a healing relationship with our own parents.
So Jill then unconsciously hoped, if I can just be attentive enough,
present enough, perfect enough, he'll stay engaged.
Unlike my mom, he won't disappear.
Jack unconsciously hoped, she seems warm but not overwhelming,
so she won't need a whole lot from me and she won't collapse or criticize like my parents.
They got engaged after about a year and a half. The proposal was lovely, according to Jill.
Jack planned it thoughtfully. Jill cried happy tears. Both of them felt that they had found safety.
Neither one of them at that time realized that they'd actually found familiarity instead.
What does that look like in the present day? Jack and Jill have been married for a few years.
Now, from the outside, they look pretty good. Good jobs, nice home.
They're very friendly at social gatherings. But inside their relationship,
they're locked in this dance that is slowly suffocating them both.
And it's something that has happened the more that they have encountered stressors.
So picture this. It was a Saturday afternoon, and here is where the pattern
starts to reveal itself.
Jill comes home from a mechanic with news. Their car needs a couple thousand
bucks in unexpected repairs.
She feels her chest tighten immediately, her thoughts racing. How will we cover this?
Should I have noticed something was wrong with the car sooner?
Is Jack going to be angry? Definitely my fault.
She finds Jack in the kitchen and tries to keep her voice steady.
Hey, I just got some news from the mechanic and we need at least two grand for the car.
What's happening for Jack? His body tenses immediately. His jaw clenches.
Before he's even aware of it, his nervous system is activated into defense mode
because the money issue triggers something deeper.
It's not just about dollars. It's about feeling trapped, responsible,
burdened, like he's going to be criticized, like he doesn't make enough money.
Just the very fact that Jill is expressing this must mean that she thinks he's not a good provider.
It's his dad's criticism wrapped up in this adult clothing.
He already thinks that you never handle things right. So what's his response?
He says, seriously, are you serious right now?
Oh, and his voice has an edge that makes Jill's heart rate spike.
He said, I mean, I told you that we should have taken it to my guy.
I swear I said that several times. Then Jill feels her panic rising.
This is her mom turning away, her dad disappearing into the workshop.
Jack is going to leave her emotionally, if not physically, and her nervous system screams danger.
I didn't know it would be this bad. I just, then Jack just finds himself just
interrupting without even thinking about it.
He's like, you don't ever listen to me. I feel like you don't even know who I am.
He's not even looking at it right now. He pulls out his phone.
He's scrolling. I don't even know what to do right now. I can't deal with this
right now. So fine, do whatever you need to do.
He walks into the living room, sits on the couch, his eyes on his phone,
his jaws clenched. Inside, he feels overwhelmed.
Jill's stress is radiating off her in waves and his system can't handle it.
He needs space. He needs distance. He needs quiet. And he just thinks shutting
down is the only tool I have.
It's almost like he just needs to hunker down and let the storm pass.
And you know what? Jill, Jill can figure it out.
If he engages, he'll either explode or he'll collapse. So, he doesn't either. He disappears.
But for Jill, his withdrawal is unbearable because now it confirms every fear
her childhood wired into her. I am too much.
My feelings drive people away. This must be my fault. If I don't fix it right
now, he's going to leave.
So what does she do? She follows him into the living room. Hey,
Jack, please. I just need to talk to you about this.
He's silent. He's still scrolling. He's not looking up. So what does Jill do?
Her voice gets louder. It gets more urgent.
Hey, don't shut down. We have to handle this. Her body is doing what Dan Siegel
would describe as seeking co-regulation.
This is probably one of the biggest keys to today's episode.
Her nervous system is trying to co-regulate, is trying to connect with his nervous
system to find stability.
But his nervous system is in shutdown mode. It's unavailable.
So, her system ramps up higher, trying to bridge the gap.
She's trying to say the things, make the right gestures and use the right mouth
noises, whatever she has to do to get him to engage. Because if he doesn't engage,
she doesn't know what to do.
This is the pursue-withdraw cycle. This is what attachment researchers like
Sue Johnson, who discovered emotionally focused therapy, have documented extensively.
Jill pursues because withdrawal feels like abandonment.
Jack withdraws because pursuit feels like an attack. Each person's coping mechanism
triggers the other's core wound.
So this is a dance, not a healthy one. If we can find ourselves in a relationship
with someone with secure attachment, the other person's regulated nervous system
helps regulate our own. But when both nervous systems are dysregulated,
they can't co-regulate.
Instead, they amplify each other's distress. The more that she gets anxious, the more he shuts down.
And it's fascinating, and you can't unsee it. What's happening in their brains in this moment is.
Is that when we're in relationships with someone who
is securely attached then that person's
regulated nervous system helps regulate her own anxious
individuals become more anxious when their partner creates distance or becomes
more avoidant and then avoidant individuals become more avoidant when their
partner increases the pursuit or becomes more anxious and it becomes this self-reinforcing
cycle the more that one person becomes anxious the more the other one becomes avoidant.
And the more one becomes avoidant, the more the other one becomes anxious.
And it continues and goes on and on and on.
In this scenario, Jill finally shouts, fine, just sit there.
I'll handle everything like I always do. She storms upstairs,
she slams the bedroom door, and she starts crying.
Underneath her anger is a deeper pain. I am alone. I'm always alone.
Jack stays on the couch, tension slowly draining from his body now that Jill is withdrawn.
He tells himself, I'll deal with
it later. I'll deal with the situation tomorrow when she's calmed down.
He's a master at kicking the can down the road, and he believes it in that moment.
He tells himself, you know what? She just overacts everything and he doesn't
recognize that his shutdown actually made her panic worse, just like he doesn't
recognize that his panic about being needed made him shut down in the first place.
Later that night, they move around each other very carefully.
Jill makes dinner in silence. Jack eats it without a comment.
Jill tries another time.
Hey, can we please talk about the car? Jack sighs and says, I said,
I'll take a look at it tomorrow. Can we just drop it tonight?
Jill hears, hey, you don't actually matter enough to discuss this right now.
What Jack means is, I actually think I need time to regulate,
calm down before I can think about this.
Neither knows how to actually say what they mean.
This pattern repeats itself across their marriage. When Jill tries to discuss
feeling disconnected, Jack shuts down.
When Jack needs space, Jill interprets it as rejection and she pursues harder.
They've had the same fight in various forms hundreds of times.
They're not bad people. They're not even incompatible in some fundamental way.
They're two people whose nervous systems were wired for opposite forms of self
protection and those forms of protection now trigger each other's deepest wounds
so jill's pursuit confirms jack's childhood belief that people want too much
and he's never enough jack's withdrawal confirms jill's childhood belief that
she's too much and people always leave,
they're stuck in what stan tackin calls this insecure couple bubble their relationship
amplifies threat rather than providing safety and i cannot go much further past
that without saying try saying that one a few times insecure couple bubble insecure
couple bubble okay maybe it's not that hard.
But according to attachment research, couples like Jack and Jill have several
possible paths forward. This is where we start to sniff around a little bit of hope.
Now, first though, they could stay locked in this pattern and they slowly build
resentment and disconnection.
And what that looks like as the couple's therapist is they come in and they
can't even remember what the frustration or the argument was for the week.
That's what got me started down this path quite a while ago is when I'm stepping
back, okay, let's go full vulnerability here.
To the couple's therapist, Just, it's not about the nail.
If you've ever seen that video, which is so good. And this is why I find myself
talking about Taco Bell drive-thru experiences or something,
I don't know, somebody wanting to cut the wick of a candle or the other person
not, or somebody who wanted to buy new running socks and the other person saying,
what does that mean for me?
And then we end up having four-pillared connected conversations about these
seemingly trivial concepts.
And often one of the parties can even think, man, this is ridiculous.
I'm spending how much money to talk about a drive-thru or toe socks versus regular
socks because she wants to run a marathon.
It's not about the socks. It's not about the nail. It's not about Taco Bell.
It's about co-regulating each other's emotions.
It's really from when I'm stepping back, watching someone get really big and
emote and do different mouth sounds and hands gestures until they find the right
combination that all of a sudden feels okay.
And then I'm sitting here saying, no, you guys didn't really hear each other.
They made the right facial expression and made the right sounds out of their
mouth that made you feel like, okay, that makes me feel better.
So, we're co-regulating our emotions and we feel like that was a connection,
but we're not really learning anything more.
So, they can continue building this resentment, disconnection,
learning how to try to make better mouth sounds and arm gestures.
And that can often lead to things like divorce.
Or they can do the harder thing. They can recognize the pattern.
They can understand where it comes from. And they can begin to consciously work
to rewire their nervous systems together.
But right now, in several years into their marriage, they don't know any of
this. They just know that marriage feels exhausting.
And Jill feels constantly anxious and alone. Jack feels constantly criticized and trapped.
Neither realizes they're fighting ghosts from childhood that ended decades ago.
So that's where we're going to leave Jack and Jill, at least for now.
These are two good people. They're both doing the best that they can with the
emotional wiring that life handed them.
And their stories might sound extreme or they might sound really familiar.
But if you've ever found yourself stuck in a loop, saying the same things,
feeling the same frustrations, using the same hand gestures,
uttering the same mouth noises, and these things keep happening,
then you probably lived a version of this.
And what's heartbreaking is that neither of them is broken. They are just running
programs their nervous systems wrote decades ago, and they were protection strategies
that once made sense. But now it keeps them apart.
I love the work of Terry Reel and his Relational Life Therapy.
It's becoming a very big part of my couple's practice where he talks about the
things that were adaptive as a child are now maladaptive as an adult.
It's time to let the big kids learn the right tools.
And I promise that you can have a much deeper connection.
Because what if I were to say, you don't have to stay that way.
We're going to do a part two. And in part two, we're going to revisit Jack and
Jill's lives. Same people, same world. This time, though, we're going to see
what happens when their childhoods were different.
When parents modeled emotional safety or repair or consistency.
And you'll see how that changes the story, not just in their relationship with
each other, but in how they experience themselves.
Because a secure attachment doesn't mean perfection, not at all.
It means connection that feels safe.
And we're also going to talk about what you can do in order to get your marriage
in a better spot. I did not set out.
Starting this episode with any intent to sell a course or to pitch my own services.
But I do have an update coming of my Magnetic Marriage course.
And part of the reason why there's been such a delay in getting this update
out is because I can't stop learning about ways to help you connect better in your relationship.
So if you're interested, please reach out to me and let me know or follow me
on Substack or on any of the social media platforms, because there's a lot coming
that's going to not only add to my four pillars of a connected conversation
and the work on differentiation and emotional maturity.
But we're going to start talking about this co-regulating of each other's emotional
states because that's a significant part.
And if you are a couple, you resonate deeply with my work and you're interested
in possibly working with me, reach out.
Let me know a little bit more about your story because I do find some openings
from time to time. I love working with people that are eager to work.
So take a breath, sit with what came up for you, jot it down,
reach out to me and look for part two in the next week as we explore the other
path, what it looks like when love doesn't have to be earned and connection doesn't have to hurt.
Thanks everybody. I hope you have an amazing week. Taking us out per usual is
the wonderful, talented Aurora Florence with her song, it's wonderful because
man, when you get the right tools, that can be pretty wonderful. We'll see you next week.