Welcome to episode 462 of The Virtual Couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay.
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified mindful habit coach,
writer, speaker, husband, father of four.
And I am really excited to talk about...
A couple's aha moment. And I often say with individuals that you can never be
the one to give someone else an aha moment or an epiphany.
But when you see a couple work together, there's just something really special
about that as a couple's therapist.
But before I tell you more about what the episode's about, I want to take you on my train of thought.
I would love for you to imagine a few scenarios with me.
Scenario one, your partner comes home from work and you can tell that they are
visibly stressed. You can see it in their face, in their body language.
And then immediately before they've even said a word, you feel yourself start to tense up.
And part of you wants to ask, hey, what's wrong? But another part of you is already calculating.
If I ask, then they're going to vent for 20 minutes or maybe I'm already supposed to know.
Then I'll probably say the wrong thing and we'll end up in a fight.
So maybe if I just stay quiet and I just let them decompress,
that will be the right thing to do.
So you say nothing. or you retreat to another room.
And then later that night, they're upset that you didn't seem to care about
their day. He didn't ask him anything.
Or scenario two, you forgot to do something that you said you'd do.
And again, not a big thing, pick something up from the store,
make a phone call, whatever it is, something like that.
But let's say it's the third, maybe fourth time this month that you forgot to
do some things that you said you were going to do.
And you really mean, well, you really do mean to do them when you say that you're going to do them.
So your partner brings it up and then you can kind of hear the frustration in their voice.
And then here's what happens in your head. Okay, here we go. Here we go again.
They're building this up to be a bigger conversation about how I never follow through.
And if I just go ahead and apologize right now, maybe I can head this off.
Or maybe this is the time I defend myself.
Maybe what I'll do is I'll point out all the things that they didn't do today.
What's the right response that will make this go away the fastest?
So you're not actually listening to what they're saying. You're calculating your next move. Okay.
Or let's go with one more. You're trying to tell your partner about something that really hurt you.
Something that they said last week that's really just been bothering you.
It's just been kind of eating you up.
And as you're talking, you watch their face start to change.
They're starting to shut down. Or maybe they're getting very defensive.
And you can feel the conversation slipping away before you're even finished making your point.
So you escalate. Your voice gets louder. And your examples get a little bit
more dramatic and a little more hurried. because some part of you knows if you
don't land this right now, if you don't really get them to hear you,
the moment will pass, nothing will change.
And all of a sudden, you're in a full-blown argument about something that started
as you just really trying to share your feelings.
So if any of those sound familiar, you are a regular human being.
Here's what's happening in all three of those scenarios.
And this is going to be the thread that runs through everything that we talk about today.
Both people are trying to manage
the other person's emotions instead of really being present to them.
Now, earlier this month, I did a two-part episode on the concept of co-regulation
in relationships or how our nervous systems learned in childhood to either seek
connection when we're distressed or to protect ourselves through distance.
And honestly, I am grateful for your feedback. The feedback I got from those
episodes was incredible.
So a lot of people reached out and said, hey, this explains a lot about my relationship.
And they love the fact that it explained the things in their relationship because
if there's these origin stories that make sense of why we're together,
then maybe that will help us figure out how to get out of these negative patterns.
So here's what I want to do today. I want to take those concepts and then show
you what they actually look like in real time and a real couple's journey from
that stuck place to something profoundly different.
Because here's the thing about co-regulation that I didn't fully get into in
those earlier episodes.
When your nervous system learned as a child that connection is unreliable or
dangerous, you don't just carry that forward as a belief. You carry it forward as a state of being.
You carry it forward as a survival strategy that most likely plays out every
single day in your adult relationships, not just in your romantic relationships,
but in the relationships with friends, colleagues, you name it.
So if you're anxiously attached, if your childhood taught you that connection
is unstable and you need to work constantly to secure it, then you develop strategies
for managing other people's emotions to keep them close.
You become hypervigilant to their moods. You try to anticipate their needs and
you calculate what to say to keep them engaged because disconnection feels like
abandonment. It can feel like death.
Now, if you're avoidantly attached, if your childhood taught you that connection
is dangerous and people will fall apart on you and it will be nothing but criticism
and you need to protect yourself through distance, you develop strategies for
managing other people's emotions to keep yourself safe.
So you may withdraw or you minimize or you give calculated responses designed
to make uncomfortable emotions go away as quickly as possible because emotional
intensity not only feels dangerous, but it feels like a trap.
And then here's what is wild. Both strategies are about the same thing, emotional management.
One person is managing to pull closer and the other is managing to push away.
But both people are trying to control the other person's emotional state rather
than actually being present to it.
And this is exhausting for everybody involved. And it's not going to bring you closer.
You're just trying to get out of the moment. You're trying to manage someone's
emotions without even probably knowing what you don't know about how to communicate more effectively.
Today, I want to share a story about a couple that I worked with,
and it's more based on a accumulation of couples. So, I've changed details so
that we're not breaking any confidentiality.
I can only describe what they had in session that really drove me to create
this episode as a profound breakthrough moment, almost an aha moment.
And I've been doing the couple's work for over 20 years.
I really do enjoy it. A lot of times people tell me that they don't really even
know what a healthy relationship looks like.
I want to do more of these kind of episodes to say, here's what it can look like.
I want you to at least have something in mind because when you witness these
moments, these genuine shifts, it never gets old.
It's actually one of the reasons I love doing couple's work so much.
But before I get to their story, I want you to think about something.
And this connects directly to those three scenarios that I described at the beginning.
When your partner is upset, and I mean, you could even say when one of your
kids is upset, again, a work colleague, you name it.
But when your partner's upset, and I mean really upset, how often do you find
yourself calculating what to say?
Not what is true, but what will manage their emotions or what will diffuse yours or get rid of yours?
What will get them to calm down? What will make this whole thing go away?
What are the right mouth noises and arm movements that will be the right combination
that will get us out of this moment?
What will keep them from shutting down or from escalating?
And then here's the companion question to that. How often do you find yourself
escalating or withdrawing based on whether your calculated response is working?
When your attempt to manage their emotions isn't landing the way you hoped,
do you then pursue harder? Do you get more frantic?
Do you talk faster, louder, or do you retreat?
Do you shut down? Do you hunker down and wait for the storm to pass?
Hold those thoughts because we're going to come back to them.
So let me tell you about this couple.
I'll call them Mark and Sarah. And they came to therapy after Sarah discovered
that Mark had been hiding a significant amount of debt from her.
And we're not talking about forgetting to mention a credit card bill or an extra
Netflix subscription. We're talking about tens and tens of thousands of dollars
that she had no idea existed.
Some credit cards, maybe we'll call them secret loans that he'd taken out without
telling her money that had been slowly accumulating while she thought that they
were working toward their financial goals together.
When Sarah found out, and unfortunately she found out the hard way,
when a collection agency contacted her, she felt completely betrayed.
The foundation of their relationship felt like it had crumbled underneath her
because here's the thing about financial infidelity, and that's what we're calling
it. It carries a lot of the same elements as even things like a physical affair.
And I know it's not exactly the same.
I'm not trying to say that, but there's the secrecy, the lying,
the breaking of trust, the separate life your partner was living that you knew nothing about.
And Mark, at first, he did not handle it well, not well at all.
He was defensive. He minimized. He got angry that she was overreacting.
He felt like she wasn't giving him a fair chance to explain himself.
A lot of signs of emotional maturity. He'd say things like, hey,
I was trying to protect you, or I was going to tell you when I figured it out,
or hey, you're making this into a bigger deal than it is, not like you're perfect yourself.
And I would imagine that some of those things sound familiar.
For the first several weeks of therapy, they were stuck in this pattern.
Sarah would come in desperately needing assurance, and she would get upset,
and she just needed Mark to take it, to take a tongue lashing of sorts.
But she also needed Mark to guarantee it would never, ever happen again.
She needed him to prove that he was trustworthy.
And when we dip back into the world of emotional immaturity,
she just needed to feel that way, but she did not even know what it would take to feel that way.
So, Mark needed to put on his tap shoes and start dancing. But here's what he was actually doing.
He was calculating, not in a twist his mustache being very nefarious way.
It's something that I think most of us do.
Every response was reactive or it was designed to manage Sarah's anxiety.
He'd say things like, hey, I promise I'll never lie to you again.
Or you can check all the accounts anytime you want, or I'll do whatever it takes
to earn your trust back. Now, those sound like the right mouth sounds.
They sound like good things to say, right? And they are good things,
except when they aren't genuine, when they're just words designed to make the
other person feel better so you can stop feeling so uncomfortable.
Or if we're looking at the world of differentiation and David Schnarch's four
points of balance, there is a concept where it sounds like he is taking ownership
of his part and not projecting it onto Sarah.
But there's a little extra part that I think is overlooked very often.
And that is, but is he making meaningful effort for change or is he just saying the right things?
And I believe he means it in the moment, but then once he says the right things and it feels good,
then what does he do to make sure that this isn't going to happen again,
as well as what role does Sarah play in being able to share her true emotions
or feelings as well? And Sarah, she could feel it.
She'd hear these promises and apologies. And after a few weeks or months where
they sounded good, but then a day or two later, she was back to being upset.
So now he would say them, but they would land flat.
And she would say things like, I know you're just saying what I want to hear.
Or she would look at me and say, he doesn't really feel bad about what he did.
Or if he was truly sorry, it would sound and look a lot different than this.
They would have these explosive conflicts, Sarah pushing for certainty and Mark
giving calculated responses to manage her anxiety.
And then boom, everything would blow up because his answers didn't sound good
enough. They weren't enough.
And probably because they weren't genuine. They weren't authentic.
They weren't real. They weren't coming from a place of true confidence or him being grounded.
And as we worked together over several months, we started identifying their
patterns. And this is where the real work begins because you can't change what you don't see.
Sarah started recognizing something about herself. She told me,
okay, when I'm feeling apathetic toward our relationship, then I know now I
withdraw, I shut down, I don't engage with them at all.
But if I'm feeling hopeful when I think maybe we're going to get through this,
then I try to connect and I'm happy and I suggest we go do something together
and I'll try and talk through things. she was recognizing that she was oscillating
between complete withdrawal and then attempts at connection.
And it was entirely dependent on her mood, on her level of hope.
And that could be dependent on what kind of day she had with the kids or with
friends or just how she felt overall.
When she felt discouraged, she was out. When she felt hopeful, she was in.
And it was so wonderful, even though that doesn't sound so wonderful as far
as how she was feeling, but for her to start to recognize this,
that this is something that was happening.
And it wasn't so that I could tell her she's doing it wrong or tell her,
well, here's what you need to do. We first just had to say, this is happening.
So when she shuts down, again, won't engage. When she's feeling hopeful,
we're going to get through this.
She was essentially riding a very, very unsteady emotional roller coaster.
And Mark was right there along for the ride, whether he wanted to be or not.
And then Mark, he started seeing his own pattern. He said something in one session
that really stuck with me.
He said, in those conversations when she's upset, it really does feel like what
matters most to her is eliminating all uncertainty.
So he said, I'll do this calculation, I guess, in my head.
And things aren't really great right now. So the chances of me messing up financially aren't zero.
I can't say that. So, I just try to say what I think will give her the clarity
or the certainty she wants.
I tell her what will make her feel better. Hopefully, you can see what he's doing there.
He's using logic and this calculated way to share information with her to manage
Sarah's emotions instead of just sharing his genuine thoughts and experiences and feelings.
He's being a little bit more of a feelings manager instead of a partner.
But let's talk about the breakthrough session, the session where everything
truly shifted. And I want to be really clear as well. They didn't solve their
problem in this session.
Mark still couldn't guarantee with absolute certainty that he would never make
another financial mistake again.
And Sarah still wanted that. She said she still needed that guarantee to truly feel safe.
But something fundamental changed. We're about 40 minutes into the session.
We'd been going a little bit in circles. Sarah was saying that she needed to
hear that Mark would never lie to her again.
And she even said, you don't understand saying it to me and to him what that feels like.
And she said, I guarantee I could pull somebody in off the street.
They would get it. They would understand.
But she said, I have to hear that he will never do it again.
She wanted him to say that he was trustworthy, even though she didn't feel like he was.
And Mark was still trying to find the right words, the right tone,
the right level of emotion to convince her.
And I stopped him. And I said something like, hey, Mark, what's happening for
you right now as you're trying to respond to Sarah?
And he paused and I could see him really thinking about it. And he said,
I'm trying to figure out what to say that will make her feel better.
I'm doing it again. I'm calculating how much emotion to show in hopes that she'll believe me.
But the truth is, and he took a breath, he said, the truth is,
I don't think the likelihood of me hiding money again is very high.
I really don't. But I know I can't guarantee it won't happen again.
I can't guarantee that I won't lie in some way to her again.
I can't make that promise with absolute certainty. And the room got pretty quiet.
And Sarah looked at him and said, oh, so you're saying you're going to do it again.
And this is where Mark could have backtracked. And he could have said,
no, that's not what I meant.
He could have tried to soften it. He could have played the victim.
He could have tried to manage her response just to make her feel better, but he didn't.
And he said, what I'm saying is I'm a human being who makes mistakes.
And I'm saying that what I can promise is to be honest with you going forward
and to work on my own stuff that led me to hide things in the first place,
to keep showing up to therapy, to keep having these hard conversations.
So we hopefully don't get that disconnected again.
But I know that But I can't promise perfect behavior forever.
That's not realistic. And saying that it would be is actually another lie.
And what did Sarah do? She didn't blow up.
She didn't storm out. She said, okay, that's the first time that you've sounded
real to me since the whole thing started.
And then I worried he was going to say first time. She said something that really
showed how much work she'd been doing on her own.
She said, I've been waiting for you to say the perfect thing that would make me feel safe again.
And I'm realizing that probably nothing that you're going to say is going to
do that. You can't actually make me feel safe.
I have to figure out how to feel safe, or at least how to be okay with not feeling completely safe.
This was differentiation happening in real time. They were both being totally
open and honest, and they were holding space for incompatible truths.
Sarah still wanted and needed certainty, and Mark couldn't give it to her, and they were both okay.
I mean, not okay, okay, but they were present with that reality,
and they did not attack, and they didn't withdraw.
They were owning their patterns. Sarah did something that really moved the conversation
forward. She started talking about her own contribution to the dynamic.
And I really want to be clear, I'm not talking about her taking responsibility
for Mark's choices, the financial deception, that was his responsibility.
But she started talking about the pattern that she'd brought into the relationship
that made it harder for Mark to be honest with her.
She said, I really didn't understand how much pressure that you felt to be perfect.
When you'd have a setback at work or when something didn't go the way you planned,
we get an extra bill, something would come up.
She said, I get anxious and I make it about us, about me, about our security,
about how frightened I was.
I would catastrophize and you would shut down and you couldn't talk to me about
your stress without me adding to it.
And Mark was just listening and you could see him take it in.
And I have to tell you quick there, but side note, I wanted to say something in that moment.
Look at how good you guys are doing. And I realized, oh, that's me wanting to
jump in and get a little validation myself.
We just let Sarah go and continue to talk. And she said, I'm starting to understand.
I'm not saying it excuses what you did, but I understand how you got to a place
where hiding things felt probably easier than facing my anxiety on top of your own.
And I'm really sorry for how that dynamic was. I can't imagine what that would have been like.
And this is what taking ownership without requiring reciprocation looks like.
It's not, hey, I'm sorry. And then, oh, no, I am too.
She wasn't saying, I did this. So now you have to acknowledge what you did.
She was just saying what was true for her.
And Mark didn't immediately jump in with his own apology or acknowledgement.
He just said, thank you for saying that. It means a whole lot to hear.
No calculation, no performance. That was a genuine response.
Now, later in the session, we got into something really uncomfortable.
And Sarah said, I want to be honest about something though.
When you apologize to me, it really doesn't land. I hear the words,
but it doesn't feel real.
And I've been sitting here thinking that you don't actually feel bad about what you did.
And now I knew from our previous sessions that Mark had apologized a few different
times. I had heard it myself because yes, I've been in sessions,
plenty of sessions where somebody literally cannot apologize, but Mark had.
So, then I just gently point this out. I said, Sarah, I have actually heard
Mark apologize in our session.
So, I'm wondering if you are hearing that or if maybe the issue isn't whether
he's apologized, but whether his apology sounds the way that you need it to sound.
And Sarah sat with that for a moment and then she nodded. She's like, yeah, probably.
Yeah, he has said, sorry. Yeah, I've heard that, but it doesn't sound,
she said, I don't know, emotional enough, big enough. It doesn't seem like he really cares.
And I brought up the concept from emotional maturity of if I feel it, it is true.
And she did not think that it was serious. So then therefore it wasn't.
And now he needed to prove to her that he was serious.
But again, she doesn't even really know what it's going to take to have her feel that way.
And he thought he was explaining himself or apologizing.
Again, get those tap shoes on and start dancing and see if you can get it right.
But she said, I really need him to feel it. And Mark said something that was honest and vulnerable.
He said, this is genuinely how I express remorse.
I don't know how else to do it. I've tried, but he said, I'm really not a big
emotional guy. I don't cry easily, but that doesn't mean I don't feel terrible about what I did.
It just means I express it differently than I think what you're expecting.
And then Sarah said something that I think is really at the heart of what they've been struggling with.
She said, okay, I guess what I probably want is for you to sit there and take
it until all my anger is out of me.
And I want you to feel as bad as I feel. And I want you to hurt the way I hurt.
And I want you to do that until I feel better.
And I just let that one land for a little bit. And I just said,
man, Sarah, thank you so much.
Because what you're describing sounds to me like you're wanting Mark to manage
your emotions. If you can dump them all off onto him, then you're hoping you'll
feel better. You're wanting him to absorb all your pain until you don't have to feel it anymore.
And I can understand why you would want that. Who wouldn't want that in hopes
that it would take all that pain away?
But I don't think that's something that he can do. And I don't really believe
that anybody can do that for another person.
And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what a moment here. And then she starts to get upset, starts to cry.
But then she said, so I guess I just have to sit with this pain forever.
I have to accept that. and said, oh, no, thank you so much for sharing that.
You don't have to accept it. But yeah, you do need to sit with it.
You do have to feel it, make room for it.
And here's the thing. Mark can be present with you while you feel it.
He can witness it. He can validate it. He can stay connected to you through it.
He can't take it away. And this is where we get to the real work of differentiation.
They were both starting to understand something profound. And it is something
I just want couples to really get to embody, to understand.
Intimate connection doesn't come from partners meeting all of each other's needs.
It comes from the courage to be honest about what you think,
what you feel, what you did, what you need, what you can offer.
And then that gap between them while staying present with each other through
the discomfort, not attacking, not withdrawing.
Sarah still said she needed absolute certainty that Mark would never deceive
her again. Mark could not give her that certainty without lying, without performing.
Those are incompatible truths. And they were learning to hold both of those
truths simultaneously without one of them collapsing into the other person's
position just to make them feel good.
Sarah wasn't saying, okay, I guess I'll just accept the fact that you might lie to me again.
And Mark wasn't saying, I promise I will never make another mistake ever for
the rest of my life. They were both holding their ground, speaking their truth,
staying in the relationship.
Later in the session, I asked them to reflect on what had been different about
this conversation compared to the previous ones.
And Mark said, okay, I stopped trying to find the right answer.
I stopped calculating what would make Sarah feel better. And I just said what was true.
And Sarah said, I stopped pretending that if he just said the right thing, I'd feel okay.
I guess I faced the fact that I'm not okay, but that's where I'm at right now.
And they were recognizing that their reactive patterns were there and they were
making space for him. They didn't have to get rid of him.
They didn't have to defend them. But they weren't saying, I do this because you do that.
They were saying, this is what is happening. This is what I'm doing. This is how I'm feeling.
And Mark could then see how he'd been using logic and this managing of her emotions
to avoid genuine vulnerability because he was so terrified of that criticism.
And Sarah could see how she'd been oscillating between withdrawal and pursuit
based on however she felt that day. and they both noticed how exhausting that
had been for both of them.
And near the end of the session, Mark said something that I thought really captured the shift.
He said, okay, Sarah, I realize now I'm genuinely sorry for deceiving you about
our finances. I really am.
I made choices that I had good reason for, but I broke your trust and I'm going
to own that completely and I can't undo it.
And I know I can't promise perfect behavior going forward, but I will promise
to keep showing up, to keep being honest, even if it's uncomfortable.
And if you think something's off, I would love for you to come to me and ask,
and I will make space for that.
I'll do my best to not be reactive or defensive because he said,
I want to work on those parts of himself that led him to hide things in the first place.
And Sarah said, that is probably the first apology that's felt real to me.
And again, I worried that he would take offense to that and say,
that's not the first one, but he sat with that. That was her experience in that moment.
And she said, because you're not promising to fix everything,
you're just being honest.
So what does all that mean? What can we take from Mark and Sarah's breakthrough?
First, recognize the managing of your partner's emotions, that that's not the same as loving them.
When you're calculating what to say to make them feel better,
you're not being genuine and your partner can feel that.
Now let's get into the woo-woo energy vibes that I'm so enjoying as a couples therapist.
If somebody is operating from a place of authenticity and vulnerability and
being, this is what I am thinking and feeling, turns out you can stay a little
more grounded because this is what you're thinking. This is how you're feeling.
Because if you're trying to find the right thing to say, your partner might
not be able to articulate what is off, but they know something's off. They feel it.
Second, your patterns make sense. If you're withdrawing when you feel hopeless
and pursuing when you feel hopeful, it's not wrong.
It's just important to notice it. We have to identify it. If you're using logic
to avoid vulnerability, not bad.
It's just something to start to notice and understand. And third,
you really can't make your partner okay with uncomfortable truths.
Sarah couldn't make Mark promise perfect behavior and Mark couldn't make Sarah
feel safe through words alone. And that's actually okay. It's not failure. It's a reality.
One of the questions I get asked often, I've had it several times today in therapy,
is somebody saying, hey, how do I say this so that my wife won't get mad?
And I say, oh, you can't. And at first they think, well, you must not have understood the question.
But it's, I need to say this thing and then allow my wife to feel the way she's
going to feel and then be able to stay in the conversation.
Or if you're finding yourself saying, man, I don't want to say this because
I don't want this person to think this about me.
Well, I'm actually managing their emotions. I'm not even giving them a chance to feel.
Now, if somebody still wants to do that, it's a thing. It's okay.
But then accept the fact that you're not allowing that person to have their
own emotional experience and you're not allowing them to truly know you of what
you're thinking or how you're feeling.
Fourth, genuine intimacy requires the capacity to hold incompatible truths.
Sarah needs certainty. Mark can't provide absolute certainty.
Both of those things can be true and they can stay in the relationship.
Whole object relations.
I can view myself. I can be my partner in the relationship all as an entire entity.
So I can love things about it and I can be frustrated about things about it
and we can still have a relationship.
And last, taking ownership of your patterns doesn't require reciprocation.
When Sarah acknowledged how her anxiety contributed their dynamic,
she wasn't doing it to get Mark to reciprocate.
She was doing it because it was true. It was how she felt. It was what she was
recognizing. And that actually freed both of them.
Mark and Sarah didn't leave that session with their problem solved.
They're still working on rebuilding trust.
And I thought it would be really funny to do an epilogue now and say,
you know, a few weeks later, went right back to the same old patterns.
Now they're not doing so great. But that's not necessarily the case.
But Sarah still has days where she's triggered by anything financial.
And Mark still has moments where he wants to hide his stress instead of sharing
it. But they have something they didn't have before.
Honesty or the framework to get there too. And not the kind of honesty that's
designed to manage emotions, but the kind that creates genuine connection,
even if it's uncomfortable at times.
They're learning to stay present with each other through the discomfort instead
of trying to eliminate the discomfort.
They're learning that I can't guarantee that is sometimes more loving than I
promise. And they're learning that their job isn't to make each other okay,
it's to stay connected while each of them does their own work of becoming okay.
I've got a bonus section that I think you'll enjoy, but before I get to that,
a little reflection from what I've shared,
I would love to ask some questions and have you consider these in your own relationship
and reach out to me and let me know your answers. And I want to cover those on an upcoming episode.
Where are you managing your partner's emotions instead of speaking your truth?
Give me your examples. And what patterns do you see in yourself,
but you continue to defend?
And what truth about your relationship feels impossible to accept?
And then how might honesty, even uncomfortable honesty, create more genuine
intimacy than emotional management ever could? Or do you, yeah, but that?
Is it hard to even understand what that could look like? And that's okay.
And can you identify times when your engagement in the relationship shifts based
on your hope levels, how you're feeling that day, whether you had a bad ice cream sundae or not?
When you receive an apology or an acknowledgement that you've asked for,
does it sometimes still leave you feeling unsatisfied?
And if so, that's okay. Kind of normal. because that's, oh, I think this is
what I would need to feel better.
But that person's now finally able to try and give that to you and it may not feel good.
And then you have to have the courage to say, oh man, I thought that that would
clear everything up. It didn't though. Check that out.
The goal isn't to eliminate relationship discomfort.
The goal is to increase your capacity to stay connected to yourself and your
partner while navigating that discomfort because that's where real intimacy lives.
Not in the absence of problems, but in the presence of honesty.
Okay, so before we wrap up today, I do want to give you a bonus section because
I got such incredible feedback from the two-part series I did on the origin
stories of the anxious and avoidant attached.
And especially around the concept of co-regulation and relationships that I
thought, okay, you know what?
Let me give you a little more because I want to show you theoretically how Mark
and Sarah could have gotten to this breakthrough point.
And if you are coming off of those last two episodes, the role of Jack in the
two-part episode will be played by Mark and the role of Jill will be played by Sarah.
Because I really think understanding co-regulation helps explain why the progress
that they made in couples therapy was so significant. So let's start with where
this concept comes from.
The term co-regulation was really brought
in the mainstream by a couple of researchers, a guy named Ed Tronick.
And some of his colleagues in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
which shows my age because I want to say, so it wasn't that long ago because
that's when I was getting out of high school.
But if we're talking about the foundational work, we go all the way back to
Mary Ainsworth and her strange situation experiments back in the 1970s.
And then you've got John Bowlby and his work with attachment theory back in
the fifties and the sixties.
But what's fascinating, the specific mechanics of co-regulation,
the moment to moment dance of this emotional attunement between parent and child
really came into focus through Ed Tronick's work.
He did this famous experiment called the still face experiment.
And if you've never seen the video, I kind of recommend that you go look it
up on YouTube. It's fascinating, but it's also heartbreaking.
It's one of those where I don't know if it would be something that people would
do today. So here's what happens. A mom is playing with her baby.
Let's say the baby's six months old and the mom is engaged and smiling and talking
and responding to the baby's coos and movements and the baby's happy and engaged
and reaching out and everything looks great.
Until. But then the researcher asked the mom to turn away briefly and then turn
back with a completely neutral expressionless face.
And I don't think I could do it without laughing, first of all.
But she turns back, no smiling, no talking, no responding, just a blank face looking at the baby.
And then if you find the video, watch what happens. The baby immediately tries
to get the mom to re-engage and the baby smiles bigger and coos louder and reaches out.
And when that doesn't work, the baby starts to get distressed.
And so they might start crying and arching their back and looking away and then
looking back to check and see if mom's face has changed.
And what you're watching is the baby trying to desperately co-regulate.
The baby's nervous system is dysregulated, meaning it's in distress.
And the baby is doing everything it knows how to do to get the mom to help regulate those emotions.
And when the mom is finally allowed to re-engage, when her face lights up again,
when she responds, the baby kind of needs a moment.
There's a brief period where the baby's almost suspicious. check in to make
sure if it's real and then relief and the baby settles and the nervous system
regulates and connection is restored.
So here's what co-regulation is. It's this process by which one person's regulated
nervous system helps regulate another person's dysregulated nervous system.
So when we're talking about in infancy and in childhood, this happens through
what researchers call serve and return.
I'm thinking tennis or maybe more applicable now, pickleball,
the baby cries, there's a serve, and the caregiver responds with soothing. There's a return.
The baby's system begins to calm. The cycle repeats thousands and thousands of times.
And when this works consistently, when the caregiver is attuned and responsive
most of the time, the child's nervous system learns something crucial.
When I'm dysregulated, connection helps.
Other people can help me feel safe and my emotions are manageable and,
Here's the key, and this is where it connects to Mark and Sarah's story.
The child is also learning to self-regulate by internalizing these co-regulation experiences.
It's like the child's nervous system is learning the rhythm,
the pattern, the dance, the pathway that goes from dysregulation back to regulation.
But let's talk about when co-regulation fails.
If you remember from this episode before, and you can reach out,
I've got a cheat sheet, contact me through my website.
But I talk about Mark's childhood.
Well, it's Jack's childhood. So the role of Jack in this previous episode is
now being played by Mark, but he had a critical abusive dad and an emotionally withdrawn mom.
Think about what that meant for co-regulation. When Mark was distressed as a
child, when his nervous system was dysregulated, what happened?
If he showed his distress to his dad, he got criticized or dismissed.
Man up, stop being weak. His dad's response did not regulate Mark's nervous system.
It actually dysregulated it further and it added shame and fear on top of whatever
Mark was already feeling.
If he showed his distress to his mom, she withdrew. She was not equipped to
handle his emotions because she could handle her own.
And her withdrawal communicated, hey, your emotions are too much and I cannot help you with this.
So Mark's nervous system learned something devastating in childhood.
When I'm dysregulated, connection makes it worse.
Other people are either dangerous or unavailable and I have to handle my emotions
all by myself. And this is why Mark developed an avoidant attachment style,
not a character flaw. It was an adaptation.
His nervous system learned that the safest strategy was self-regulation through
disconnection, sitting this one out, shutting down the emotions,
withdrawing from people, handling everything alone.
And then look over at Sarah and here's her origin story when co-regulation is unpredictable.
She had an anxious, depressed mom. So when Sarah was distressed,
when her nervous system needed co-regulation, sometimes her mom was responsive.
Sometimes she wasn't. Sometimes Sarah's distress would cause her mom to completely fall apart.
And now Sarah, as a kid, was managing her mom's dysregulation on top of her own.
And this is inconsistent caregiving. And it's incredibly confusing for a child's
development and their little developing nervous system.
So Sarah's nervous system learned connection.
Actually, it's unstable. And sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it makes things worse. And I can't predict which. I don't know which
version of people are going to show up for me. So I have to stay vigilant.
I have to work really hard to keep people engaged because they may disappear at any moment.
And this is why Sarah developed an anxious attachment style.
Her nervous system learned that the only strategy was hypervigilance and pursuit.
Keep people close, monitor their emotional state, constantly try harder when
connection feels threatened.
Keep doing, you're a human doing, not a human being.
So now you got the anxious avoidant trap. Here's where it gets so fascinating.
When Mark and Sarah came together as adults, their nervous systems were actually
playing out these childhood co-regulation patterns.
When Sarah was dysregulated, when she discovered the financial betrayal and
her nervous system went into threat mode, what did she need?
She needed co-regulation.
She needed Mark's regulated nervous system to help calm hers.
She needed him to stay present and attuned and connected while she processed
the enormous stress that she was experiencing. But what happened?
Mark withdrew because his nervous system learned that other people's dysregulation
is really scary and dangerous.
So when Sarah showed her distress, Mark's system said, threat,
protect yourself, disconnect.
And when Mark withdrew, what happened to Sarah? Her dysregulation intensified
because her nervous system learned that withdrawal means abandonment.
Her system said connection is disappearing.
Get it, pursue it, go after it, get him to engage however you can.
So Sarah pursued harder, which made Mark withdraw further, which made Sarah
pursue harder and neither of them could co-regulate.
They were stuck in a pattern where each person's attempt to regulate their own
nervous system was dysregulating the other person's nervous system.
This is the anxious avoidant trap in neurobiological terms.
And it's not about bad communication or different personalities.
It's about two nervous systems that learn incompatible strategies for regulation.
Now they're triggering each other's deepest wounds.
So what changed in that session where Mark and Sarah had their breakthrough
and what made it different is where the co-regulation piece started to show up.
First, they both started staying present with their own dysregulation instead
of immediately trying to get rid of it, stuff it, bring it up in an immature way.
When Sarah was distressed about not feeling safe, instead of immediately pursuing
Mark to make her feel better, she stayed with her own discomfort.
She said, I need certainty and you can't give it to me.
She acknowledged her dysregulation without demanding Mark fix it.
And when Mark felt the pressure of Sarah's need for certainty,
instead of immediately withdrawing or giving a calculated answer to make her
go away, he stayed present and he said, I can't promise perfection.
And saying, if I could, it would be another lie. So he stayed in connection
even while setting a boundary.
And this is what adult co-regulation looks like. And it's different from childhood co-regulation.
In childhood, the caregiver's job is to regulate the child's nervous system
because the child can't do it alone yet.
The child is dependent on external regulation. But in adult relationships,
co-regulation is about staying in connection while each person does their own
work of self-regulation.
It's about being present to each other's emotional experience without trying
to manage it or without being consumed by it, without shutting down.
And this is where it gets to be pretty fun to be a therapist because I think
it's important and why people need a third party, why they need a good couples therapist.
Because as a therapist, part of what I was doing was providing a regulated nervous
system that both of them could latch onto for a little bit.
When Sarah was expressing her pain and Mark was starting to shut down,
it's my job to stay calm and curious.
And I don't necessarily get activated by Sarah's intensity or frustrated by
Mark's withdrawal. I noticed those things. I'm a.
My regulated state was helping create, we'll call it a container,
where both of them could feel safe enough to stay in the discomfort.
This is why therapy can be so powerful for individuals and mainly for couples.
Not mainly, and especially for couples.
It's not just about learning skills or insights or my beloved four pillars of
a connected conversation of how to communicate.
It's about experiencing co-regulation in a new way with a third person's regulated
nervous system helping both partners stay present when their own systems are
screaming at them to fight, flee, or freeze.
So in that, what I'm going to call breakthrough session, here's what happened
at the nervous system level.
Sarah's anxious attachment system was signaling danger. He's not giving you
what you need. Pursue harder.
But instead of automatically following that impulse, Sarah was able to observe it.
She could feel the urge to pursue without being completely controlled by it.
She could say, I want you to promise you'll never do it again while also recognizing.
And I'm realizing that nothing you say is actually going to make me feel completely safe. That was huge.
That is her nervous system beginning to learn that she can tolerate dysregulation
without immediately trying to eliminate it through pursuit and control.
And Mark's avoidant attachment system was saying, danger, she needs too much.
And all I'm trying to do now is express myself and she's telling me I'm wrong.
She's criticizing me. So withdraw, protect yourself.
But instead of automatically disconnecting, Mark was able to stay present.
He could feel the urge to shut down or to give a calculated answer without following
it. He could say, I can't guarantee perfect behavior and stay in the conversation,
maintain eye contact, remain emotionally available. And that again is huge.
This is his nervous system beginning to learn that he can stay in connection,
even when somebody is distressed, even when there's pressure,
even when it's uncomfortable.
What they were discovering together, and this is the path forward for them,
is a new way to co-regulate that respects both people's nervous system patterns
while slowly teaching those systems something different.
Sarah's learning, I can feel anxious and uncertain without needing Mark to immediately
fix it. And I can express it. And I can tolerate not knowing.
My dysregulation won't destroy me. And pursuing harder doesn't actually help.
But Mark is also learning, I can stay present with Sarah's distress without
being consumed by it or responsible for fixing it and without shutting down.
Her emotions aren't a threat to me. I can set a boundary or I can be honest
without disconnecting. And here's what's so beautiful.
As each of them learns to regulate their own nervous systems more effectively,
they actually become better at co-regulating with each other.
That's where I go back to the concepts around emotionally focused therapy.
We're designed to deal with emotion in concert with another human.
This is what we're talking about. When Sarah is less desperately pursuing,
Mark's nervous system doesn't get as triggered.
When Mark stays more present and engaged, Sarah's nervous system doesn't go into panic mode.
They're slowly interrupting the old dance and they're learning a new one.
And there's neuroscience behind why this works because our nervous systems are plastic.
Neuroplasticity, they can change and adapt throughout our lives,
but they can also dig in deeper and deeper rutted neuropathways if we aren't
willing to do something different, to self-confront, to admit that there are things we don't know.
Our nervous systems adapt throughout our lives.
Every time Mark stays present when his instinct is to withdraw,
he's creating new neural pathways.
Every time Sarah tolerates uncertainty without pursuing, she's creating new neural pathways.
And it's like they're building new highways in their brains,
new routes from dysregulation to regulation that don't depend on the old childhood strategies.
And the research is actually really clear. Secure attachment can be learned.
You're not stuck with the attachment style you developed in childhood.
Through relationships, Whether that's therapy, a secure romantic partner,
close friendships, or your own conscious effort and practice,
you can rewire your nervous system for a secure connection. But it takes time.
It takes thousands of repetitions. It takes being willing to feel uncomfortable
while your nervous system learns something new.
Mark and Sarah are in the early stages of this process, but that breakthrough
session showed me they are capable of it.
So why is understanding co-regulation so significant for Mark and Sarah and
the healing process? Because first, it helps them depersonalize their pattern.
When Sarah understands Mark's withdrawal isn't about her being too much,
it's about his nervous system's learned strategy for handling threat,
she can have more compassion for him even while holding him accountable for his behavior.
And when Mark understands that Sarah's pursuit isn't about her being controlling,
it's about her nervous system's learned strategy for trying to secure connection,
he can have more compassion for her even while setting boundaries about what
he realistically can or can't provide.
And second, it gives them a framework for understanding what's actually happening in the conflict.
They're not just bad at communication. They love each other.
They care about each other, but they're two nervous systems with different regulation
strategies trying to coordinate.
That's a very different problem and it requires a different solution.
And then third, it shows that the path forward, they can't just decide to change
their patterns through willpower alone.
They need to slowly, deliberately, intentionally create new experiences of co-regulation
that teach their nervous system something different.
And they need to be practicing when they're not together and when they're outside
of sessions. They can't just show up and do it and then get it kind of right
and then go about the week.
They need to practice and read and do and stay present with discomfort.
They have to practice reaching for connection in new ways. And ideally, it's both of them.
And fourth, and this is really important, it helps them understand why the breakthrough
felt so significant. In that session, They weren't just communicating better.
They were actually experiencing a new emotional reaction, a new form of co-regulation.
They were showing their nervous systems. Look, we can both be dysregulated and
we can actually still stay in connection.
We can hold incompatible truths
and not collapse. We can be honest without destroying the relationship.
And what that eventually leads to is we can express our needs and the other
person can say, man, I don't know.
I don't know why that's so hard for me to try to do, but I care about you. So I want to try.
I want to lean in. And that's powerful.
That's nervous system level learning. That's the foundation of secure attachment
that's being built in real time.
So that's the piece I wanted to add about co-regulation and understanding this
concept. I think it really helps explain why the anxious and avoidant partners
struggle so much together and why the path forward requires more than just better
communication. And you can't just kick the can down the road.
You can't just say I'm working on it and not be doing anything.
I'm sorry, but you can't.
It requires nervous system level healing and it really, you both need to be doing it.
Mark and Sarah are learning to co-regulate as adults, which means staying present
to each other's emotional experience while each taking responsibility for their
own regulation, their own healing, their own self-confrontation,
their own why am I not able to show up for my partner?
And it means Sarah's learning that she can survive uncertainty without getting
immediate reassurance.
And Mark's learning that he can stay connected even when things are intense.
This is the work and it's not fast and it's not easy, but it is possible.
And that's what I see as a couples therapist. It can work.
If it's not, it's often because one of the parties is not really doing the work.
If I'm being honest and understanding, hopefully the neuroscience and the attachment
theory behind it makes it a little less mysterious and a little more hopeful.
Okay, everybody, that is it for today's episode, the bonus section and all.
I hope it resonated with you. And if it did share it with somebody who might benefit.
And if you're working through any kind of betrayal in your own relationship,
financial or otherwise, or if you're recognizing these anxious and avoidant
patterns in yourself, please know healing is possible, but it's not always linear.
It's not always comfortable, but it's possible. And as always,
you can find more resources at my website, tonyoverbay.com or go to my Instagram
at virtual.couch or TikTok at virtual couch or my sub stack really at no sub
stack.com slash the virtual couch.
You are interested in working with me, you can reach out through the website.
There are times where I will have some space and I will be honest,
I'm becoming an old man. I'm becoming a little more picky.
I want people that are up for the work and they're familiar with my content
and hopefully it resonates and we can get somewhere pretty quickly.
Thanks for spending the time with me. Thanks for sticking around for the bonus
section. I know it was a long one, but I really wanted to give you the full
picture of how co-regulation works and why it matters so much in healing attachment wounds.
Until next time, I hope you take care of yourselves and each
other and i am grateful to be putting
out episode 462 of this there's 140 something waking up the narcissism podcast
it's still phenomenal that i get to do this and i'm grateful for your support
taking us out per usual the wonderful the talented aurora florence with her
song it's wonderful because honestly it can be have a great week everybody we'll
see you next time on the virtual.