How To Control Emotional Reactions, with Dr. Kelly Flanagan

All right, Dr. Kelly Flanagan, how are you doing today, my friend?

Good, thank you, Connor. It's great to be here.

Yeah, man. Well, connected through John Vrooman.

Yes.

Mutual friend of ours. And anybody that comes through John is usually a good recommendation. And so I thought it'd be worth sitting down. And I think your book and your work is very appropriate for our audience and much needed. So I think this topic around getting triggered, being reactive, how do we deal with our temper as a parent, as a partner, you know, a husband, a boyfriend, et cetera. I think that's very, very relevant. So, let's dive in. For someone that's maybe newer to your work, what is a trigger really? How do you describe it? And maybe what are most people understanding about it, misunderstanding about it?

Yeah. You know, in putting that word on the COVID of a book, I realized I needed to address it right away in the book. Like, what does this mean? It means such different things for people. And it's, you know, I'm a clinical psychologist by training. So triggered for me in a clinical sense is like something that you use to refer to post-traumatic stress disorder. You know, you've got, say, like a combat veteran who hears a car backfire and they're triggered. They start to have flashbacks. They have a— their nervous system reacts. So there's a clinical sense, and that's reserved for a relatively small group of people. And then these days, you know, you've got like, I don't know, a TikTok influencer who gets the wrong kind of cold foam at Starbucks and they're, you know, broadcasting to like a million followers that they're triggered. And in that sense, it's just so watered down. It doesn't really mean anything. And so in this book, I'm referring to like a very— it's a very specific sort of 3-step process that happens oftentimes in key relational moments and oftentimes repetitively, sort of over and over again in the same moment. The first step is your nervous system kicks on. Something happens and your nervous system kicks on. And I often say, like, your nervous system gets a bad rap. It's like a furnace, actually, and furnaces don't kick on full blast right away. Like, that pilot light sort of whooshes on, you know, sort of subtly and early. You can sort of hear things warming up in there. And that's as subtle as it can be. Our nervous system activates, the pilot light kicks on. And we start to get activated. And then the second step is that our heart closes to what's going on in the moment. We make a— we have sort of an emotional, spiritual, relational sort of reaction to, "I don't like this. I don't want to participate in this. I'm going to start resisting this. I'm going to shift from connection mode into protection mode," basically. That too is relatively automatic. You know, like our hearts are designed to sort of close when we got more than we can handle. Then the third step is that we make usually an unconscious choice to let our heart close and to now sort of be caught in this cycle of being triggered. So our nervous system then tends to activate even more, our heart closes even more, and we make the unconscious decision again to allow this cycle to be happening. We're sort of caught in that, in that triggered moment now. And, and so much of of what I, I want to do for people is not to— I don't want to remove anybody's nervous system. Like, you need that, right? Like, when you, when you're walking through a dark parking garage at midnight and you hear footsteps coming up behind you really quickly, your nervous system better activate. And honestly, the furnace better kicked on full blast pretty quickly. Um, and our hearts are designed to close. Like, that's how we handle a lot— handled a lot of what was difficult for us early in life, was we learned how to sort of armor up against it emotionally. Right? And that's how we got through. And sometimes we still need to do that in certain situations. But I want to really bring people's awareness to that moment of choice where we are making an unconscious, quick decision to allow our heart to close. Because when our heart is closed, we lose access to all of our connective capacities. We're in protection mode instead of connection mode. And the reality is, most situations in life that are not life-threatening We're better off if our heart's open and we're in connection mode and we're having access to all of our deepest wisdom. So I want to help people develop the power to stay open-hearted and show up to those moments with their deepest wisdom.

Would you say when you say your heart closes, would it be fair to say that another, another way to describe that is like you're, you emotionally disconnect, you emotionally shut down, you emotionally unplug from the other person? Are there those fair assessments?

Yes. I often say a heart can close silently or violently. So I think a lot of times people whose hearts tend to close silently, their reaction, their defense mode is more of a silence, more of a distance, more of a retreating inward. They don't— they're less likely to realize their heart is closed. You know, for years in my marriage, I was like, listen, I'm a trained couples therapist, and I'm just being the constructive one distancing from you and all of your, you know, Portuguese energy that she brings, you know. But that heart is just as closed as my wife's when she's, you know, coming at me, right? So, so basically, our heart closing is really— the hallmark of that is that shifting into defensiveness. And whether that defensiveness is loud or quiet, it's still sort of the signature of a heart that is closed.

Okay, let's, let's— here's what I want to ask, because I think I can already hear the questions of the men. I try and keep a pulse on like, okay, the guys that are listening to this, what are they wanting to know? What are they thinking about? And the first thing that comes to my mind is, I know when I'm triggered and I usually know why I'm triggered. And so I intellectually and rationally understand it, but I still can't stop myself from being hijacked.

Hijacked.

Why? Why does that happen? Right? Like, why is it that So many of us get hijacked and get reactive, get triggered during conflict or during some interaction with our spouse or our kids or whoever it is, even when we know intellectually this is what they do to push my buttons and this is how I react. What's going on there? How do we start to bridge that gap?

Well, I think one thing I would say at the beginning of this conversation is We feel very ambivalent about the idea of opening our hearts and keeping them open in those moments. Like, I remember first taking this concept of, like, openheartedness as the solution to our triggered moments. I took it to a group of entrepreneurial women in Costa Rica. I was keynoting at an event. And I get done and I'm like, "Isn't this great?" And like, I could just feel the tension in the room. And I got the same sort of— exact— I got the same sort of question over and over again from that group. It was. Um, but like, I, what, I don't, I don't want to tell my employees everything. Can I really be open-hearted? And I realized when they heard open heart, they heard they can't have any boundaries around what comes out of them. They got to be open books, transparent. It's not that. And then I took the same concept to my online community, who tends to be a little more like sort of being oriented and present rather than productive. Equally concerned about openheartedness, but in the opposite direction. And what I heard from them is like, I just learned how to set boundaries, and now I have to be a doormat? And, and again, not, not true, but a common misconception. So one of the things we have to say out of the gate is that the state of your heart is an inner condition. The state of your boundaries is an outer action. They're two totally different things. Um, but we assume that an open heart means no boundaries, and it's not true. An open heart actually makes your boundaries not weaker but wiser, uh, because you'll have access to all of your natural gifts and talents and capacities if your heart's open. So, um, the poet Kabir said, do what you do with another human being but never put them out of your heart. And that's what we're talking about here, like the capacity to show up authentically and truly and boundaried but without closing the other person out of our heart in the process. So I want to just address that ambivalence from the start, because that's one of the reasons we don't do it. Like, oh, I think the only alternative is for people to walk all over me, and, and that's just not the case. I think the second layer of my reaction to that is, um, that when you think about the first step in the triggered process, your nervous system taking over your nervous system is designed to help you deal decisively and immediately with threats out there, right? And, and your nervous system actually shuts off your higher mind, uh, so that it can't think in the moment, so that it can't make decisions in the moment, right? Like, if you're walking down a path and you suddenly see this sort of stick-like thing appear in the path right? It's not in your body's best interest to go, I wonder if that's a stick or a snake, and that, you know, that doesn't have any spots on it. Like, your nervous system is designed to, to react immediately, probably stomp on the thing, right? And so the reality is, if our nervous systems are triggered, then, um, our higher mind will be neutralized, and our natural reaction will be to deal decisively with the threat out there, right? The wife or the girlfriend in front of us, the kid who's not putting on their shoe on the way out the door when you're late for work, you know, the— your parents when you tell them they're doing that same old thing that they've been doing to you since childhood, and they're like, I know, but we did the best we could, and then they keep doing it and you just want to lose your mind. Like, you— your nervous system will take over. And so the first thing we have to do is we have to retrain the nervous system to relax. We have to teach the nervous system that we are safe here in this moment. Like, that nervous system, uh, is designed to respond to mortal danger, to respond to existential threats. So if your nervous system is activated in any situation that isn't an existential threat to you, then it's not serving you well. Right? So when my wife comes out of the bathroom and she's like, "You left the toilet seat up again," right? And all of a sudden the pilot light kicks on, right? And I want to close my heart and go into defense mode and be like, "Gosh, you notice that, but you don't notice all the other things I did for you today." Like the nervous system is acting like her comment is a threat to my life. And so while that nervous system is activated, you will have a difficult time being able to draw upon your higher mind, your capacity to choose and show up differently. So that's why in the book, the thing we lay out there first and foremost is you got to get calm. You got to get that nervous system regulated. You got to get grounded in the present and go, all she did was say I left the toilet seat up. She's not a tiger on the Serengeti. How do I stay in this moment and start to teach my nervous system that I'm okay right now?

All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world. Men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. Yeah, we're going to come to some of those more tactical, practical things. I'm curious for the people that are listening, how much of your reactivity, of you being triggered by you know, that you left the toilet seat up or whatever it might be. How much of that is shaped in your childhood? How much of that is shaped in the environment that you grew up in and the experiences that you happened in the relational wounds that you had from childhood?

That's a really good question. Listeners, you are in good hands here. That's a really intuitive question because As you get further into the process, like once you get that nervous system calm, right, calm enough to actually ask the question, like, what's really going on here, right? What's really happening? You sort of lift up the hood on that moment, you sort of tune into your own inner experience. You realize that there are some painful emotional experiences happening in there underneath the hood of that triggered moment for you. That they didn't begin with the person in front of you, usually, um, that they do trace backward through your story, um, and they might even trace so far backward through your story that, uh, you began to experience them at an age where things like rejection were an existential threat, right? Like, right now, Dr. Kelly, like, if he gets rejected, he just goes and texts 10 more people and, you know, waits for someone to reply, and then I have a good conversation. Or if my wife's mean to me, you know, I'll go hang out with my son or whatever. But there was a stage in our lives where things like rejection, where things like criticism, where questions of our belonging did feel like an existential threat because you depended upon the tribe for safety, for nurturance, for food, for shelter, and all the things. So a lot of times it's true that when your nervous system reaction isn't matching the present moment, it's because it's matching a past moment. And so, that is a space we go in terms of really learning how to sustainably overcome these triggered moments.

So, the past will inform your nervous system's response, the experiences that you had, the things that you heard, the dad yelling or mom yelling or the things that they said are going to imprint your nervous system to expect a tiger when maybe there isn't one?

As you go deeper into the process, um, you know, you start to surrender to the fact that most of the time when I'm triggered, it's the past pushing its way into the present, right? Like, I'll say this to people, like, um, you know, when I'm coaching someone, a normal sort of resistance to the process is like, really? Like, I put the past behind me. Like, I don't need to think about the past. And my reaction to that is, I agree with you. Like, we don't want to go, like, searching into your past for explanations for anything. That's tedious, and usually we don't end up with very valid answers. What we can trust, though, is that we don't have to go digging into your past because your past is pushing its way into the present in those triggered moments. So that's why they're so valuable. Is they're actually telling you about what from your past is important to tune into, to deal with, to work through, to heal from. And the thing I think I would add to that at this point is, you know, the temptation and maybe the fear too for most people is that I'll start to pay attention to what from my past is informing this present reaction and that they will— they'll stumble us across some sort of big T trauma, right? Like the, um, verbally abusive, you know, household, or physically, or sexually even, or whatever. And, and a lot of people get stuck there because they're like, I don't think I've got anything like that. I mean, I grew up in a pretty— you know, my parents were pretty supportive, and I just don't understand how anything from my past could really be be influencing this. Um, and what I like to tell people is that when you really like settle all the way to the bottom of those triggered moments and some of the emotional pain that's, that's sitting in there, it almost always has something to do with loneliness. Uh, and, and loneliness is another word that gets used in a thousand different ways, so I say that the three pillars of loneliness are feeling unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported. And I don't know a single human being who came out of their childhoods without some pain around feeling either unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported. Um, classic example: my oldest is 22 now. When he was 17, he very much experienced our house as a prison. And my wife and I were the wardens, you know, and he was pushing back on everything. And I'll never forget, he came to us one day and he said, "Hey, I just met somebody online up in Wisconsin, and I'm gonna go visit them this weekend." We're like, "Mm, no, you're not." He says, "No, no, no, no, listen to me." And he sat me down at the kitchen counter and he told me all of the reasons that he deserved to be trusted. All the precautions he was going to take, all the ways he was being thoughtful about it, you know, the plan we could put in place in case anything went wrong. And I sat there and I saw him and I listened to him. I was really present. I was paraphrasing what he was saying. And at the end of it, he said, "So do you understand what I'm saying?" I'm like, "Yes, I totally understand you." He goes, "Can I go?" I said, "No, you cannot go." He goes, "But you understand me." And I'm like, "Yes." but I'm not going to support you going. And so I believe there's a moment, right? There's a little bit of unsupported residue he's now carrying forward into his adult relationships. And those just subtle moments happen in the best of situations, and we just carry them forward later into life.

Yeah, well, I mean, that makes sense. And when the past does push up, in the present moment and you're having a response, right? Your nervous system is, you know, popped off. You maybe, maybe actually speak a little bit about the different ways that you see people get triggered. Like, what are the different modes or modalities or archetypes that people will usually fall into when it comes to how they'll present when they're triggered?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, you know, most mammals on the planet have two modes they go into, um, when their, when their nervous system is triggered, when they feel existentially threatened. You know, we— the fight-or-flight mechanism, uh, response that we talk about. So I say that we human beings as mammals also have those two reactions. There's hiding and then there's fighting. And our capacity to hide usually starts to develop around 3rd or 4th grade. That's when, uh, that's when if— when you fear rejection, you start to do things to sort of like blend into the group rather than standing out. Um, you sort of— your identity retreats into you and you start to wear all the clothes that you're supposed to and say all the things that you're supposed to and watch all the shows. And, and so hiding is one modality. Fighting is another. That tends to start to develop a little bit more aggressively, no pun intended, around middle school, which is why middle school is just such a fun time for everybody. And then later in life, we human beings, because we have this wonderful frontal lobe, we develop like a third mode of being triggered and responding to those triggers. And I just call it controlling, or I say fight, flight, or finagling. We don't run from the threat. We don't fight the threat. We try to manage the threat, right? Try to control it. And there are a couple of real— the obvious ways of controlling or dominating people and telling them what they should and shouldn't do is one of them. But we have some pretty subtle ways of trying to control. One of them, I call it selling mode, is when we have an agenda for somebody in a conversation. And we're not disclosing what the agenda is. We're just trying to sell them on the solution or the outcome that we're looking for, right? This is one of my cardinal, cardinal sins. It's a sign that I'm a little triggered and that my heart's closed and I don't feel safe enough to just say what I want, right? My, my coach called me out on it and he said, well, Kelly, you can either have an agenda or you can connect, but you can't do both. Right. And so selling mode and then mentoring mode, you know, like, oh, you've got a problem and I'm going to teach you. You're a lot like your mom, you know, and you need to like break that pattern in your family. So I'm going to teach you how to not be like your mom. And so mentoring mode is another way of trying to control the threat, so to speak. But those are the three main archetypes: hiding, fighting, and controlling. In my mind.

I feel like people are probably listening to that and being like, yeah, I'm a master finagler.

I don't fight.

I don't run away. Oh, no, I definitely try and coerce and manipulate and convince and sell my case. And it was funny, my son did that this morning. He's home sick from preschool. And You know, we basically don't let him watch TV. I mean, he doesn't get any screen time. He's not allowed to touch phones or iPads. We just don't even have that in the house. Obviously we have phones, but iPads, no dice. And so, you know, on the weekend, once in a while, he's allowed to watch, you know, 30, 60 minutes of TV. But when he's sick, then it's like, okay, you can watch a movie, you know, and hang out like you're sick and do what you're going to do.

Oh, yeah.

And, and, you know, I mean, who didn't have great memories from being a kid and being like, oh my God, I feel like garbage and I'm just going to—

I get anything I want today.

Yeah, I get anything I want. Chicken noodle soup and, and, you know, the classic Sword in the Stone.

Right, exactly.

So anyway, so this morning I was about to come down to have this interview and he's sitting on the couch and he's like watching TV. And, uh, it's okay, Daddy's gonna go down, and my wife's up there, and he's like, Dada, after this movie I can watch another movie, right? I was like, yeah, I see why not. And I was like, but you do have to take a nap. And he's like, okay, I'm gonna watch another movie and then I'm gonna take a nap, but then after my nap I'm gonna come back down and watch another movie.

Yes.

You know, so it's so funny to see how this system just starts so early.

And that's such a great example of— I mean, in a sense, he's leaning more open-hearted than closed-hearted because he's just telling you, like, he's telling you what he wants, right? Yeah. And, and there's nothing wrong with wanting what we want. Now, what in selling mode, in a more closed-hearted, we tend to do is like, how can I get on Dad's good side and say just the right thing? And then I'll turn on the TV and we'll see if he tells me to turn it off. I mean, you know, all these things we start to do later in life. So You know, he's definitely wanting things, but he's expressing them with an open heart, not carrying too much of an agenda. Yeah, I say I'm not a control freak, but I am a control sneak. I am sneakily trying to control so much of my life. I actually had that pointed out to me for the very first time at one of Jon Vroman's Front Row Dads retreats. I went in, one of my asks going into the retreat was like, listen, I've basically rearranged my entire work life to pick my daughter up from school. She was in 6th grade at the time. I said, and then I get there and she gets in the car and I say, how was your day? And she goes, good. And then she won't say anything. And I try a couple other questions. And, uh, and one of the, one of the guys said, well, what's your agenda? Why are you doing that? Like, I don't have an agenda. I'm just trying to be a good dad. Kept pushing me on it, pushing me on it. I go, oh my gosh, I have two agendas. The first agenda is I want my daughter to know I was a wonderful and interested father so that when she goes to see a therapist at age 35 or whatever, she can't blame me for it, right? Like, that's truly like— I'm trying to get that implanted in her head. And the second agenda is I want to find out if anything went wrong with her day. So that it doesn't develop into anxiety, depression, and all the things, and so I can solve it before it gets worse, right? And he's like, she can sense that. She knows you've got some agendas you're working here and that you're trying to control that situation. So I actually flew back home as planned in time to pick her up from school that Friday. And I pulled up and she gets in and I said, is there anything you want to tell me about your day? And she looked at me, she's like, no. I'm like, okay. And we're driving home and you could just almost feel her energy being like, he's gonna start to try to control this anymore.

What are you up to?

Like, what are you—

yeah, this is a new tactic. Dad's playing a new tactic. Here we go, I'm ready for this.

And what's interesting is kids can sense this. So if it's a new— if it's a sneaky way to try to control in a new way, they'll feel that. But I had really gotten myself in a place where I would accept— actually, what I would do is feel all the disappointment of the ride home. That's what— that's, you know, you open your heart, you're like, oh, I got to feel the disappointment of the ride home and the fact that I'm not going to find out what went on with her day and the fact that she's growing apart from me and, you know, all the things. So that's what I'm going to practice feeling on the way home instead of trying to figure out how to crack her open. So I was really in that place and I think she could sense it. And like, we pull in the driveway, and sure enough, it's like a dam breaking, right? She just unloads, unloads everything because she was in control. I wasn't trying to control her. Now, the tricky thing is your, your closed heart will be like, oh, there's a new tactic, right? And so the next time you pick her up at school, you're like, is there anything you want me to tell you? You want to tell me about your day? And when they— when she doesn't say it on the driveway, up to the house, now you're starting to get frustrated. It didn't work. You're like, oh, I started to control again. I was using that as my new control tactic. So just bringing an awareness to all of the subtle, subtle, sneaky ways, we're sort of always trying to control the outcome of an interaction, can itself be a step toward opening your heart.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the things that I've had to contend with. One of the things that I've really had to work on is, as I have, I don't know, for lack of a better way of saying it, like become who I am and become a practitioner and, you know, working with so many people and having all of these tools to help people come back into themselves— not that I'm, you know, performing some surgery on them, but like helping them, you know, to heal, to come back into themselves, to find some sense of truth, to be able to voice something, etc. One of the things that I've had to really learn to do is to let go of injecting myself into somebody's life when it's unwanted. And I remember this moment with my sister, and she's the one that's closest to me in age. I'm the oldest of 5 in 2 separate families, but she's 6 years younger than me. And this is years ago, you know, probably 7, 8 years ago. And she was going through a pretty hard time. And, you know, I just kept giving advice, which I could tell was unsolicited, like she wasn't asking for. But I just kept being like, well, have you thought about this? And you should do this. And why don't you try that?

Right.

And I remember myself talking to my now wife and being frustrated. I was like, I don't understand, why the fuck won't she listen to me? I can see what's happening. I know what she should do. And if she just did what I'm saying, she'd be happier, she'd be healthier, she'd feel so much better, and she wouldn't have this. She wouldn't be in this pain.

That's right.

And I remember telling my wife that, and my wife said, you know, amazing couples therapist. She's just giving me this look with like this little smile on her face, and she just sat there in silence and kind of like looked at me, and I was like, ah, fuck, you know? She's on me. Yeah, she's— yeah, she's on to me, right? And then we had this conversation about, you know, what part of me is wanting to control her and, and what part of me is uncomfortable with, you know, having to watch somebody that I really love and care about in pain. And that's right, I'm, I'm the child of a, of an alcoholic, and so that's, you know, it's kind of ingrained in me in some way of of, of having to fight rescuing other people from their shit, which has been a work in progress and has actually been very good in many ways for, for myself as somebody that works with people, to really relinquish that. But it's funny how sometimes it pops up with my son, you know. I can find myself being like, you need to do it this way. And because he is so much like me in ways that are frightening, you know, I'm like, oh, there's the shit, you know, my little— I call it kid karma. It just ends up creating like any time that he feels like I am trying to control him or exert force on him, it's immediate pushback.

That's right.

And, and so it's been humbling in a lot of ways to have another example. But I was like, oh, I thought, I thought I was like good with this, you know, because with with friends, with family, with my wife. I like— I've relinquished all that shit. And then here comes my son, and all of a sudden it's like, whabam, you know, there's a different version of it that shows up again.

The one person that, you know, everyone tells you, this is the— this is the person you're supposed to mentor, you're supposed to shape, you're supposed to mold, you're supposed to control. But it turns out, and I see this all the time with, you know, highly educated, intelligent, you know, ambitious couples you know, they have kids who are highly intelligent, ambitious, motivated, independent too, right? And so they are really a curriculum in learning how to let go of control over the things that we love and cherish the most, right? And finding that balance is, you know, that's part of the art of it, you know, when to speak in and when to let go. And it's tricky, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Like, I'll give one last example and then we'll keep ripping. But I do Muay Thai, I do kickboxing every single week and I love it. And it's something that has become a staple in my life. And it's, it's something that I wish I had started way earlier because I didn't have a disciplined practice growing up. I didn't have— I did karate for like one year and then, you know, got into a fight at school and kicked somebody's ass and then my parents pulled me out of it. But like, there was no jiu-jitsu. There was no martial arts, there was no disciplined practice. And so I didn't really learn that, like, what discipline is until probably my late 20s, early 30s, probably my early 30s. And so it took a long time. And so I've definitely tried to, like, coax my son into this. I bought him gloves. Yeah, like the bag out in the garage. I go out there, I'm like, I'll model it for you. Do you want to do this with me? And he's like, no, not really. Or, you know, he'll put the gloves on and then he doesn't want me to teach him shit. You know, he's just like, I want to, I want to run as far as I can and run at the bag and then just launch myself. Like, that's the game that I want to play. I like, fuck you teaching me how to punch and kick. I'm zero interest. And at first, you know, frustrated, why won't he, you know, you know, disgruntled and all of the stories. And then really having to, as what you're saying, like, keep my heart open to this. Like, oh, he doesn't have a problem. He just doesn't want to do it. I'm the one that's hurt. I'm the one that's triggered. I'm the one that's activated by this because I have a certain expectation. And then it's in that moment as a parent using discernment of, is this something that is really valuable and important for him that I need to, you know, usher him into? Or is this one of those things where I'm forcing him into something that's going to create a big rift between the two of us.

Yeah, right.

And so, yeah, so I'll wrap up this last piece. I've learned that he is— I've started to let him choose when he wants me to teach him and when he doesn't. Like skiing. Yeah, I hired an instructor for him to ski and he's like, I don't want them to teach me how to ski. I want you to teach me. I was like, great, I would love that. And with this, he's like, not interested. So I enrolled him in some jiu-jitsu classes, you know, takes off. Um, but I think that, to your point, it required me to be in touch with, you know, my own activation, my own trigger, my own response to, you know, him not going along with it.

Boy, you just put your finger on, I think, one of the more common triggers for parents, which is when we are trying to give our kids an experience that was sort of a deficit for us in childhood. And then they refuse it. And we're like, I, you know, you're so lucky that you've got a parent or a dad or a situation where you're getting this thing that I never got and wanted so badly. And you're noticing that, like, when you're triggered by that in that moment, what you'll either go to one of two extremes usually. I mean, you might get— you might go into fighting mode in the moment. You might actually get frustrated. But over time, you'll go to either controlling mode where you try to force it upon them and you dictate rather than sort of dancing with them, which is what you're doing with your son, which is beautiful. Or you distance, right? You go into flight mode and you go, "Fine. Then I'm just not going to be involved at all in shaping your interests." And you're just doing such a nice job of staying in that very interdependent place of sort of a dance of what, what are you inviting? What are you resisting? And I can sort of work around that. But to, to your point, like, sitting in the discomfort of being denied, you know, I think it— I think Michael Singer is the one who said, um, if you want to know why you do something, don't do it and watch what happens inside of you, you know.

Like, that's great.

Yeah, learning how to feel your way through the moment where you're like, I'm just trying to teach you martial arts like no one ever even allowed me to do, right? You are just running at the bag, and that's actually a painful moment to sit through. And, and the reason you're about to exert more control isn't on his behalf, but so you don't have to feel what's coming up inside of you being denied. And so learning to sort of stay in the yuck of that feeling and feel your way through it you found your way through it to wiser ways of sort of interacting with him about it.

Yeah, and it's a pain in the ass.

It's hard work in that moment.

It's hard work in those moments.

Yes.

Where I think we all have a frame or a vision of what we think the marriage should look like, or the sex life, or the communication, or the, you know, the raising the kids, or, you know, there's like, here's how I think it should go. Whether or not we express that openly. I think most men have like a, here's how I think it should be, right? So, you know, I think here's, here's what I want to come back to, because I want to start to shift into, even though we've been sort of indirectly talking about it, how do men start to deal with their triggers? But I want to come back to this notion of keeping the heart open.

Yep.

Because I can imagine myself being, you know, starting at the start of this work and being like, I don't really know what that means. That feels vague, or that feels too, you know, I'm not really too sure what that looks like because I think for us as men, we need tactical and practical. And I, I have come up with this idea of like your— I call it your DFE, your direct felt experience, like what is actually happening inside of you. And connecting to the truth of that.

That's right.

So when you say keeping your heart open, can you break that down in a— and I know this might sound ridiculous, but like in the most rational and analytical way possible?

Yes. Um, open-heartedness is the willingness to fully experience the present moment as it is without doing anything to it, even when it's not going the way we want. I'm going to say that again. It's the willingness to fully experience the present moment as it is without doing anything to it, even when it's not going the way we want. And notice I didn't say the present hour or the present day, right? But just the present moment, the thing that's already happening, and that because it's already happening, uh, is something to be experienced, not resisted. And based upon that full open-hearted experiencing of it, you will then make a wise decision about how you want to respond to it. In the next moment, right? But what most of us do is we close our hearts and we enter into a state of resistance against what's happening, and we miss out on all of the potential data that, that, that moment is providing to us that we can act on then to move forward differently. Um, so that's a very explicit definition of it. Now I'll tell you about the time I first got introduced to the difference between an open heart and a closed heart. It was, um, it goes back years now. Um, actually, John Vroman was in the room again for— it was a Go Couples retreat in Vail, Colorado, and, um, I was co-facilitating with someone who had the, the couples in the room do an exercise where she said, okay, so turn your chairs and face each other. I want your knees touching and your eyes locked. I want eye contact. And then just do what I tell you to do without question. And she said, 1, 2, 3, close your hearts to each other. Keep the other person out. Get into defense mode. Think of all the times they've hurt you. Think of all the times they've disappointed you. Think of all the times they've been unfair. Uh, think about, uh, the, the worst, the worst thing that's ever passed between the two of you. Keep them out. Do not let them in. They do not deserve to get in here, right? You are not safe if they can get in you. And then she let them sit in that. I don't know how long it was. It felt— I mean, even as the facilitator, it felt like an excruciating length of time. And then she said, 1, 2, 3, open your hearts to each other. Shift back into connection mode. Remember why you fell in love with this person in the first place. Think about all of the things that are present in your life that would be impossible— that you love— that would be impossible without them. Think of the small acts of generosity, kindness, and love that they do to you that you sometimes overlook. Think of all the times you're grateful that you forget to express it. Let them in. She let them sit in that for a while, and then she said, 1, 2, 3. Close your hearts to each other. And she, she alternated like those conditions for, it was probably 10 or 15 minutes, and she brought them back together and asked what it was like. And, you know, everyone was able to sort of articulate the phenomenology of an open heart and a closed heart, right? A closed heart, my body's tense, I'm tight, um, I can feel adrenaline coursing through me. I, I, I have stories, like I have 3 stories I tell about them, and all 3 stories started to race through my mind. And they were all stories about how they're wrong and I'm right and all the things, right? And I felt all this anger and so on. And then when I was open, it was like I'd just gone for a long run. I could just feel all that adrenaline go away, sort of endorphins came through me. It felt It felt soft and gentle in here and I felt gratitude and I felt hopeful and I even felt a little emotional. I almost felt like joy and sadness start to come up at the backs of my eyes. I did this recently with this exercise recently, by the way, with a group of a room full of families. And it was very emotional for them in that open-hearted state. You could see the emotions start to come through. And so everyone could sort of agree, like, oh yeah, we do know what it's like in our bodies, in our minds, in our emotions when our hearts are open and closed. And then, you know, that's when she dropped the bomb on them. She's like, well, the thing I really wanted you to notice was that you had a choice, right? You were actually choosing in the moment to open and close your heart. And when we're in the middle of it, right out there in the wild, it doesn't feel like we have a choice. It just feels like, well, if they do A, B, and C, then my heart automatically opens. And if they do X, Y, and Z, my heart automatically closes. And that's exactly how it should be, but we're actually in, in a sort of a microsecond making a choice. And we want to expand that microsecond so we can decide, do we really want to show up to this moment with a closed heart and escalate the cycle of conflict that's going to come from that? Or do we want to be de-escalators who invite our people back into connection? Um, so it's interesting how intuitive it is when you actually start to think about it in that context. Oh yeah, I know what it feels like in here when it's open versus closed. I just don't really know what it feels like to have a sense of choice over it. That's what we want to sort of help restore to people.

Yeah. I mean, in your book, you talk about this notion of like sense the conflict coming, sense the defensiveness, sense the attack, sense the disruption that's about to happen.

That's right.

So, can you just I mean, I think you just spoke to that, but anything else you want to say to that? And then, and then let's move into a tactical approach. Like, how do you start to disrupt and interrupt your own defensiveness, your own reactivity? How do we start this process?

Yep. So yeah, the, the part of the secret sauce of, of this book in the process, I think, is that most books that talk about being triggered tend to help you like once the trigger is happening. But what I discovered, I actually, I came out of that retreat, totally forgot about everything she taught us about open-heartedness and closed-heartedness, and then proceeded to make a mess of my life for 18 months, like really a mess. And to the point where I had an afternoon during the summer of COVID where I got so triggered at my wife. The longer version of the story is that she finally convinced me to get an above-ground pool after years. She leveraged the whole, you know, all the public pools are closing, so we need an above-ground pool. And I had, okay, let's do it. And she went out on a Sunday morning to fill up the pool. And she hung the garden hose over the side and put a rock on it. But the rock wasn't heavy enough. And we didn't go back for hours. And yeah, I went out in the afternoon that Sunday and the pool was bone dry and our yard was like a lake. And like, I got uber triggered. I'm like, if I don't get out of here right now, like, I'm gonna say and do things that set us back months, right? So I hopped on my bike to like burn off some, some steam while I was cycling. It takes about 2 minutes to get to the exit of our subdivision, and I remember distinctly to this day I'm pulling out of the subdivision, sort of more into traffic. And I remember thinking, Kelly, you're not in your right mind. Um, you're depressed. I was depressed at that point in COVID. You're depressed, you're angry. You probably need to be very careful on this bike ride. And then it was exactly 90 seconds later that I wasn't care— I ignored it completely. I heard it and ignored it. And 90 seconds later, I pulled out into an intersection without checking carefully. Had to hit the brakes to avoid getting hit by a car, went over the handlebars, broke my collarbone in two places, um, on the asphalt road. And it didn't heal properly. It called non-union fibrous tissue fractures or something like that. But basically I got two hinges in my collarbone now, where before I didn't have any. So it wasn't like a collarbone where you're like, oh, you're back at it in six weeks. It was like six months of recovery. I got to New Year's Eve going into 2021, and I came across— I was thinking about fitness resolutions for the next year, and I came across that fabulous Michael Singer quote. This one's definitely by him. Do not let anything in your life be important enough that you're willing to close your heart over it. And it like, it hit me harder than the asphalt road in a way. I was like, yeah, it's not the situations in my life that have me here. It's my reactions to my situations. And I need to take responsibility for that. So I made a New Year's resolution going into 2021: moment to moment, I will notice my heart closing and try to open it back up. And it was really hard to do. But what I started to learn in those early weeks of 2021 is that you can— if you are bringing your awareness to bear on the early stages of your triggered moments, You can actually sense it coming. So on that bike ride, I had one, right? I had an awareness that you, dude, you're not in your right mind. You prob— probably should slow down. 90 seconds later, I'm going over the handlebars. I reached my, you know, and literally, I don't know if you've ever done it. I hope you haven't. It's a, it's this gra— you're outta control now. It's this gravity-free. I remember thinking in my head, oh, this is happening, you know? And just like, and that's, that's usually when we tune into our triggered moments is when we're quote unquote, going over the handlebars and we're out of control now. But there's so much time, space, and information usually before we get to that moment that we're ignoring, and our body provides most of it. Um, so if we can tune into our bodily signals, that slight whooshing of the, of the nervous system, of the pilot light kicking on, then we can give ourselves— and there's some data that I present in the book— an 80% earlier warning that we are about to go over the handlebars. And with that 80% earlier warning, we, we get to start to do new things. And then I think that starts to get into, okay, what do we do? But yeah, that's what we wanna do is we wanna give ourself that extra leg up to start to observe what's about to happen.

I was gonna say, I've never gone over the handlebars, but I've flipped over backwards on a motorcycle doing wheelies.

That's probably more dangerous.

So similar, similar type of thing though. I was definitely practicing stunting and was, and was pushing it and knew I was pushing it and like reached that threshold where I was like, because I was trying to wheelie on my motorcycle and, and shift gears from first to second. And you basically just, you don't clutch it, you just, you're in a wheelie in first gear and you just jam the gear into second gear and it shifts it. And every time it was falling down and I just kept giving it more gas and more gas and I was like, this is probably like, this feels like I'm going to have an accident. And then sure enough, next time, just like rip right over, right over backwards. Too much gas, shifted into second gear.

It is, it's so that, that's the beauty of the heart closing and starting to get familiar with what that is. That's that middle space there, right? Where you're like, hmm, I'm not being cautious enough today. Ooh, I'm probably setting myself up. When you feel your heart close in response to that nervous system activation, it's like, okay. Like that is, is a cue that in about an hour I'm going to do the thing right. And so you can start to actually use it as a sort of like a looking glass into the future. Right. And you can start to use that as an opportunity to shift.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think, I think every man can relate to this in the sense that maybe not every single man, but the majority of men have been in a relationship where it's like you, you can feel feel that the conflict is about to happen. You can feel that the other person is upset. There's these patterns that show up, right? And I think what usually happens, though, is we ignore the lead-up, and then we're just bracing for the conflict. You know, it's like, she's going to say this thing, she's going to do this thing. I know it's going to happen. And then I'm going to, you know, I'm going to tell her, I'm going to shut down. I'm not going to engage with this. And instead of That's all closed heart, as you're talking about, instead of, okay, I can feel that something's off. There's probably going to be a rupture or some type of disruption, some type of interaction, some type of conflict, disagreement. Let me stay open to what I'm feeling. I'm feeling into a little worry, a little panic. Yeah, a little like, uh, suddenly I feel like I'm having to walk on eggshells. I can feel her energy has shifted, or my energy has shifted. And I think that is so important for men to tune into? Because I think we as men, almost every single guy that I've ever worked with has a way deeper instinct and intuition relationally than he gives himself credit for.

1000%. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we sort of get this rap that we're sort of not the emotional or the feeling ones, but we're intuiting all the ebbs and flows of emotions in the relationship. We just haven't been encouraged to actually like use that data. Like, we tend to ignore it and act rather than feel our way into it. Dude, you just nailed it. Can I tell you about a situation I'm in with my wife right now?

Sure.

Yeah. So, and I can see the pattern now. Like, years ago, I'd have been caught up in this, and still I'm a little at risk for it. But to speak to what you just described, so just came through a book launch, right, which was all hands on deck for me. Everybody, you know, I got all this stuff going on. She was incredibly supportive. And now here we are exactly 2 weeks after the book launch. And I think there was a narrative that we both should have questioned that, well, once the book launch has passed, things will get less busy. They have not. Go figure. And I can just see it. I can see her sense of loneliness and abandonment, which she sort of like tucked away on my behalf for a long season of book launch. I can see it starting to come through. And her way of doing that at first is to— she goes into hiding mode. She— there's an emotional distance that comes in. Maybe, maybe she goes into a little bit of fighting mode. She'll be a little bit more critical of me. But you know what I do? I go into selling mode. I'm trying to sell her on we're great. So literally an hour ago, I'm down here working instead of upstairs chatting with her as I might normally be, and I can hear the door closed. She's left for work, right, without saying goodbye. And I'm like, oh no, another nail in the coffin of, you know, me neglecting her. And so I run upstairs and I run outdoors in my slippers into the snow, and I'm like, hey, give me a kiss before you— trying to sell her on, we're good, right? Give me a kiss before you— and she goes, oh, you're remembering that now, huh? Right? And, and you can see where this is headed. That if I continue to keep my heart closed and try to sell her on we're all good, and she continues to keep her heart closed and, and act as if she doesn't want connection when what she wants is connection more than anything, right? And so we will both need to open our hearts, or at least I will, because I can't force her. Um, but I'm gonna need to open my heart. This is the best therapy ever, Connor. Thank you. I'm gonna need to open my heart and say, hey, it's been a long season. You gave and you gave and you gave, and you're supposed to be getting again, and you're not. And that's got to be hard. You got to feel lonely. You got to feel abandoned by me. Um, and I need to step up and figure out how to support you a little more right now. Um, can you, can you open to me, right? Are you, are you willing to sort of like start working together on that again? And her, her first response might be no. Right? And if I can just allow myself to feel the disappointment and separation of that, then I know my heart's open. If I get frustrated that she won't immediately join me in it, it's— it's— I was once again trying to sell her on quick reconnection, and when she didn't take me up on it, now I'm— now I'm angry, now I'm frustrated, right? So I've just got to be willing to make the invitation without forcing her to accept it. And keep making that invitation from an open heart rather than selling her on, hey, be happy with me, we're all good.

So we start by sensing that something's afoot, right? We start by sensing there's a disruption in the force, and then we move into— instead of bracing, instead of hiding, instead of shutting down, instead of going on the attack and going on the defense, What is it? Is it that we start to just admit that that's what's happening? Admit that this, like, this is the truth. There's some disconnection. I can feel myself closing off. I can feel myself bracing for impact. And the disruption comes in just taking ownership over. There's distance between us, or I would imagine that you probably feel a little shut down or you feel a little lonely. Is that true?

Right.

Are you open to connecting? Is that the disruption of the defensiveness?

That's right. Yeah. With that little extra window that you're giving yourself, you actually have the awareness awareness to notice your defensive urges rising up within you. Oh, there's my hiding urge. There's my fighting urge. There's my controlling urge. And again, you come back to that Michael Singer quote, you want to know why you do something, don't do it and watch what happens inside of you. So this is actually one of the more difficult steps of the process. But one of the most important is to disrupt your defensive reaction, right? What I say is watch it instead of wielding it. Right? Watch it instead of wielding it. And one of the quickest ways to open your heart is to confess that it closed, right? And so one of the quickest ways to reestablish connection with somebody, or at least to reestablish your own openheartedness, is to say, hey, this is the way my heart just closed. I'm trying to sell you on a good time, trying to sell you that we're all good, but what I really just want is to feel close to you and feel And she would say, "No, you're not. You're just being selfish. You just want me to be happy with you. If you wanted to be close to me, you'd actually be making the time." And I'd be like, "There's some truth to that." That's what an open heart, you know, open heart is like. Yep, there's some truth to that. I just want you to be happy with me so I can go off and deal with my work and not feel like I'm upsetting you. And what I really need to do is to start to prioritize and create the space again for this relationship. So yes, watch that defensiveness without wielding it. Confess your closing as a way to get back to open and then learn to stay in what comes next. And then the next step beyond that is just now that you've not sort of gone off to the races in the defensive escalation in the relationship, take, take real responsibility for getting your nervous system calm before you try to connect, because so many of us will try to force connection before we've established regulation, and it just has never worked once in human history, right?

Yeah, let me negotiate and try and reconnect from this place of violent hostility.

You need to be happy with me so my nervous system will calm down so we can be connected. And it's like, totally never gonna work. So, really take ownership of getting that nervous system calm, disrupting that defensive response, and now you're setting out on a new path.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things that I talk about a lot is this notion of self-leadership and how do you lead yourself through conflict. And it's wild how often ownership over one's state or one's intentions or one's reactions and reactivity is the solution. You know, it's the path, but it's, it's very hard. It's a very hard thing. You know, I grew up in an environment where, um, saying sorry and apologizing and taking ownership over your actions was sometimes made fun of, was punished in a huge way. And so there was no for lack of a better way of saying it, there was no incentive to actually take ownership, you know, which is fucked up. There was no incentive for me to say sorry. There was no incentive for me to apologize or take ownership of my responsibility because the consequences, whether I took ownership over them or not, were the same and sometimes were worse, you know.

This is— you and I are a match made in heaven, so we can illustrate both of the two extremes of this. You were literally taught to not take ownership. In my situation, uh, taking ownership was the— full ownership was the only way to repair the relationship because no one else was going to, and they were going to demand that you take full ownership because they certainly weren't wrong, right? So I have this really, like, embittered relationship to taking full ownership, right? Like, when I'm in it with her and I'm really triggered, I'm like, no, I'm like a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old again going, "No, this wasn't all my fault. And I'm not going to take full ownership this time. And she's got to go first." Right? And so two very different reasons to resist taking full ownership. But you're right. It's the building block, right, of restoring belonging in those moments. But it's so hard to do.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I really had to work for a long time to differentiate that me taking ownership over how I felt and what was happening inside of me and my actions wasn't me taking blame for what was happening.

That's right.

And that differentiation, that distinction is something that I had to keep coming back to. It's like, oh, this doesn't mean that I'm fully responsible for this conflict or this breakdown. It's me taking— or that I'm going to be punished as a result of it, or also like whatever. It's just me making a deeper level of contact with the truth that exists inside of me. And that's, that's leadership. That's empowerment.

That's right.

And, and, you know, the closer we are to truth, the closer we are to reality, the closer we are to vitality. There's a, there's a life force there for me, at least. And so that's been, that's been the process and the journey. But, you know, it's, it's challenging at first because, you know, depending on the environment that you've grown up in, as we're talking about, you may have been disincentivized or forced to take ownership. And then there's a, you know, there's a rejection or a resistance towards doing that. And I think a lot of men feel that, you know, it's like, well, I'm taking responsibility. I already feel blamed for the dysfunction in the relationship. And so if I take responsibility for my part, how I'm feeling, what I'm doing, how I'm shutting down, how I'm being defensive, then that means that I'm admitting guilt to being the problem in the relationship. You know, how do you get— how do you sort of deal with that? Because I see a lot of dynamics, especially now in modern relationships, where it's kind of become this norm for men to feel like I'm the fundamental problem in the relationship, and for women to say, he's the problem, he needs to do the work, and because he's not, the relationship's falling apart. And so I think this weird dynamic has started to emerge.

Such a great question. I'd love to answer it in two ways. I think, first of all, to offer a story, because I think it is relationally somehow it's so counterintuitive to take first ownership. But I like to share a story that illustrates how how obvious it is to do so. I, you know, we're here in the Upper Midwest. Last summer, we had like a, I don't know, 100-something humid heat wave. And I was sitting here actually in this chair one afternoon and I could just feel the humidity and heat in the house going up like something's off here, right? So I go into the furnace room and the cycles, the furnace is sort of rapid cycling going on and off real quick, so never really starting. Something's wrong with the control board. So I joke that what I did— I didn't call the HVAC guy. What I did for the rest of the week is I brainstormed how to make it cooler outside so it would be cooler in the house. This is totally absurd, right? But that's what we do most of the time in our triggered moments in our relationships. You know, our people are the weather. Their thoughts, their feelings, their behaviors are the weather. You have no control over any of that. And yet we sit around trying to figure out how to change the weather when in fact we should just go right to the control board, figure out what's malfunctioning, get it, get it fixed and get the air conditioning back on in here. And then it won't matter quite so much how hot it is outside, right, until you have to go out and talk to those people. But so I think it's, it's really counterintuitive relationally, but in pretty much any other space in life, it's like, yeah, you don't try to change the weather, you deal with the internal temperature and get that, get that regulated. Hmm.

Last thing that I want to cover is the sort of real-time logistics, let's call them. Say we've done everything that we can to, you know, sense that maybe something— conflict is coming— to disrupt our own defensiveness, our own patterns, to take ownership over those pieces, to calm and regulate our nervous system so that we can, you know, we can respond instead of react. Conflict still happens. Disagreement happens. You're in the thick of it.

Yeah.

What do we do? What are the tools that we can deploy when this cycle happens? You know, the argument happens for the 57th fucking time about the lawn or the vacuuming or whatever it is.

Yep, yep, exactly. Um, you, you need to take a pause that is not punitive, um, is, is the answer to that. So I had a, I had an afternoon like 6 months into practicing all this, uh, when And, you know, I just knocked it out of the park as a husband and father. I was so proud of myself. Like, I took off work early. I handled carpool, a big surprise to my wife. I had a glass of wine waiting for her when she got home, all the things, right? And she's at the kitchen counter, like, boiling some beans for dinner or something. And this is before my last book launch. And I said, "Hey, do you have a minute? I have a question about my book launch." And she looks at me, she goes, "Do you ever quit working?" Right? And I mean, I don't know if you can feel like what that was like when I was so proud of how much I'd given to the family to have that. And I just like, my heart just slammed closed. I was like, that was triggering. I'm gonna go to the other room. I'm gonna take a few breaths. Be back in a minute. We can keep talking when I can get my heart open and show up the way you deserve. It took me 48 hours. It took me 48 hours to get myself back into an open-hearted place. During that 48 hours, I recognized that once again I'm treating her like a vending machine. I'll put in my quarters, right? I did carpool, I took off early, and now I'm supposed to get approval from her in response. Complete unconditional approval. And she's not a vending machine, she's a person. Okay. But during that pause, I texted her a number of times, said, hey, this is what I'm working through right now. Like, I'm not trying to punish you. Like, this isn't freezing you out. I'm going to be back as soon as I can get my I get myself regulated. Now, for most of us, it's not going to take 48 hours. Most people aren't as neurotic and broken as Dr. Kelly here, you know, but like to just kind of go, we're establishing a non-punitive pause here to make sure that our nervous systems are regulated when we come back together. Okay. Now, the thing I would add to that is if you're not doing during that pause, a little bit of an inner journey to sort out which parts of your wounds are being triggered in that moment, then what's going to happen is you're going to get yourself regulated and you're going to jump right back into connection and you're going to start the same old tug of war, right? Expecting them to do the thing that will. And so what you're hopefully doing during that pause is you're doing enough self-reflection to go, oh, this wound that's sort of woven throughout my story Connor, this is how it came up again in this moment. And obviously, it predates you. You're not the cause of it. I married you because I hoped you'd be the solution. But of course, you're not. So now you're just getting to sort of bear witness to it with me. And I'm going to tell you about it. And this goes back to that question where, you know, a lot of, a lot of men feel like they're in this pattern where they're just trying to get out of the doghouse. Right? They're just trying to keep their people pleased. I hear this a lot from men, and they're so underselling what they deserve. They say things like, I don't, I don't need affirmation from you, I just want you to not be critical when I'm doing my best, right? And then they feel like they get criticized, and now they're in defensive mode trying to defend themselves, or they jump the tracks and start blaming the other person. And I want to just name something before we wrap up, which is I was— I'm gonna be hosting an event this summer called the Relational Intelligence Summit in Park City with a couple of gentlemen. One of them's name is Joshua Wenner, and we were sort of brainstorming content he could bring to it. And he said, well, Kelly, you know, there are only two wounds: an abandonment wound and an inadequacy wound, and they always marry each other. I was like, that's, that's too simple. And then I thought of my wife and I thought of all like the people I know. And I'm like, I think he's right. Right. But I also know fundamentally that we don't start with two wounds, right? That as human beings, we all originate from the same basic wound, which is the wound of separation, the wound of showing up on this planet knowing we're here to be together and then being confronted by our separateness over and over again. Um, and that separateness gives rise to the universal pain point of loneliness. Loneliness is an exquisite, existentially threatening pain for a young child that we all experience. And then this is where our wounds diverge, okay? It has to do with an old psychological term called locus of control. The idea is that most of us have either an internal locus of control or external locus of control. So internal is like if my son loses a soccer game and he says, "Ah, I didn't prepare enough. I didn't get enough sleep. It's on me. I need to practice harder." That's an internal locus of control. I'm responsible for the loss. If he comes home and he says, "The ref stunk and the field conditions were terrible and That's an external locus of control, right? And what you discover is that children are trying to make sense of their— they're trying to fix their loneliness. And if a child has an internal locus of control, they'll say, I must be lonely because there's something wrong with me. And so now my— now, now my whole personality, my whole life project is going to revolve around proving to people that I'm not inadequate, that I'm good enough. That I deserve to be in relationship with, that will solve my loneliness problem, right? If you have an external locus of control, it's a very different wound. It's an abandonment wound. It's like, I'm lonely because people can just leave you for no good reason and leave you on your own. And that's terrifying, right? And so now that person is in their, their personality in which they're dealing with an abandonment wound and trying to manage abandonment abandonment. And so what you often see, and it's not, it's not gendered all the time, right? But you see a lot of men with inadequacy wounds who pair up with people with abandonment wounds. And what happens is the person with the abandonment wound is always the barometer of closeness and distance in the relationship. Like my wife right now, right? She's going, there's a distance here, and I'm starting to feel lonely, and it's your fault, right? She externalizes the blame. So then she tells me it's my fault that there's distance in the relationship right now. And I immediately feel inadequate and start to get defensive and think of all the things that I've been doing for her and the family and how this is all for her. In fact, one time I even— this is crazy— one time I even like listed out almost minute by minute everything I'd done for her during the week. And I presented it to her like formatted like a business agenda, like Nice. Didn't go real well. Because if what she's really wanting is to feel close, then telling her you're overreacting isn't getting us there, right?

Right.

And so now you're off to the races. The abandonment is blaming the inadequacy wound, who's defending themselves and projecting it back onto them, and you're just spiraling. If we can remember that we share a common wound, which is loneliness, that we're just trying to solve the problem of separateness and we're trying to feel connected and trying to be together. And that when my wife is actually pushing me away right now, what she really wants to do is pull me close, right? That, that's what her pain is saying underneath the surface while her protections are pushing away. Then we actually have an opportunity to start to break the cycle. But if you go away with your non-punitive pause and you just get yourself regulated and then jump right back into the pattern, and you don't recognize all that happening underneath the hood, then you're just going to keep reenacting the same pattern. It's going to start to feel like white-knuckling it, you know, trying to keep yourself calm over and over again. Um, start to embrace together that when we look like we're angry at each other, we're just deeply in pain about being separate from each other and we want to be together. Let's start to talk about that, right? Nice.

Beauty, man. Beauty. Well, I feel like that's probably a good place for us to stop, even though we could probably do another 90 minutes on this. Um, for people that want to go deeper into your work, where can they find The Road Less Triggered?

Well, I'm happy to announce that they can find it on the USA Today bestseller list. We just found that out, which is very, very exciting. Um, and, uh, and I think as of this recording, they're gonna have a hard time finding it anywhere because the first print run sold out, but I think by the time this airs, uh, that should not be an issue. So I would encourage folks to go to roadlesstriggered.com, uh, and there you can find out more about the book. You can find all the different vendors that are carrying it and, uh, and go from there. Um, and, uh, and then also, you know, I host an online community on Substack called the Less Triggered Tribe, and membership is free. You can upgrade to, to paid membership and join our monthly calls and trainings and that kind of thing. But we just encourage people to come to— it's at drkellyflanagan.substack.com. It's just a great place to connect with other people who are on the journey to become less triggered.

Nice. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, for everybody that's out there listening, we'll have the links for all that in the show notes. This is definitely an episode that you should listen to with your significant other, with your partner, and maybe with a friend. If you're triggered by them or a family member. But this is definitely one of those conversations where, you know, listen to it together, man it forward, send it to a friend, send it to a family member, have them listen to it, and then have a conversation about it and try and pick out one or two things that you can do to better connect, better respond to one another, and be less triggered. So as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Till next week. Connor Beaton signing off.