Communication Tools to Improve Intimacy and Create Connection —Special Guest MaryAnn Michaelis (Episode #4)

On behalf of me and Marianne Michaelis, I'd like to thank you for being a listener of our Human Intimacy Podcast this year. It's always a privilege to spend time with you and I want to express my deep gratitude. If you are ready to take your healing and recovery to the next level, you're ready to deepen your healing and strengthen your connection and gain real tools for meaningful change. I invite you to join us and other Experts at the 2nd Annual Human Intimacy Conference where myself, Marianne and many other leading experts will come together for powerful teaching, live question and answer sessions and provide insightful pre conference conversations to help you get the most out of your conference experience. And right now, you can save 50% when you register before December 31st. Please don't miss this opportunity. Visit human intimacy.com and reserve your spot today.

Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh, Something's around you.

Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Marianne Michaelis. She is a native of Utah. She's lived in Guatemala, Colorado, Florida and Washington State. She's licensed as a clinical social worker in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Hawaii. In 2015, Marianne began working with betrayed partners of sex and porn addicts, which led to her own personal recovery journey, igniting her passion for educating and helping others to heal. As a certified sex addiction therapist, certified partner trauma therapist, and Accelerated Resolution Therapist, Marianne specializes in working with individuals struggling with ptsd, betrayal, trauma, abuse and porn or sex addictions. Interesting thing about Marianne, she is fluent in Spanish and in a previous life worked as a professional cellist. She loves family life, learning and teaching, traveling and exploring nature. She also loves the Colorado Rockies baseball team, beekeeping, plant based cooking, Spanish rock, classical music, and really good books. All right, Marianne, I am so glad to have you with me today. Something interesting about Marianne. She and I met many years ago in Salt Lake City. I was doing a training for certified sex addiction therapists and she was in that course. And I've just been so impressed with the work that you've done. Really? You're a person who really likes to learn information. So Marianne, welcome to the show today.

Thank you. I am so honored to be here. And a little nervous, but honored to be here.

Well, of course, a little bit nervous. So tell us a little bit how you did get here. Tell us a little bit about your story, your background.

Oh, wow. So my long story quickly is that years and years ago I went to college and I was planning on becoming a social worker, they had somebody come in who gave, like, a little talk about this is what social workers do. And they said, social workers burn out within two years. And I was just like, well, that's not a job that I want then. That doesn't make a lot of sense. So then I struggled to kind of really find out what I really wanted to do. Fast forward many, many years later, I ended up getting my master's degree in clinical social work. So it eventually came around. In between that, though, I ended up. I was in college on a music scholarship. I played the cello, and I ended up majoring in Spanish. And I always said, well, you know, I can't make money with music, so I'll study Spanish. And then I ended up in Colorado owning a string quartet business. So, you know, I think it's all one big circle as it's kind of come around. Not ever how I had ever really exactly planned.

All right, so, Marianne, I'm curious. Something interesting or unique about you.

All right, so I play the cello, and I have had an experience that probably. I don't know how many people on the planet have had this experience, but I lived in Colorado in a ski resort town, and there was a person who was commissioned to create instruments out of ice. And I was able to ride up the ski lift carrying my cello bow, and I played a cello made out of ice. And I don't know who else in the world can. They played an ice cello, completely ice, except for the strings and the bridge and the tuning pegs. It was amazing.

And. And do you have a recording of that?

You know, I did record it. Boy, it's. It's been some years. I'd really have to look for that.

If you could find that recording, I would love to share just a little bit of that. You played an ice cello?

Yes. Top of Beaver Creek Mountain.

The top of Beaver Creek Mountain. That is absolutely fascinating. That is fun.

Yeah. Experience most people probably haven't had and probably won't have in their life, but it was. It was really cool. No pun intended.

That sounds like a lot of fun. So let's talk about Spanish. Where did the Spanish come in? And tell us a little bit about what your experience has been with Spanish.

Yeah, so I took a little bit of a break during my college years, and I lived in Guatemala for about a year and a half where I did some volunteer work. And what I loved, besides the culture was. Well, I loved the culture, but I loved. I do love learning. And so being able to immerse yourself Someplace where I didn't have the option to speak English maybe for a couple of hours once a week. And so I thought I learned. I thought I knew Spanish when I got there, and I very quickly learned that I definitely didn't. But that has flavored my life in so many ways. The people that I spend time with, the foods that we eat, the music that we listen to. I can't think of one part of my life that really hasn't been influenced by that experience.

And so Spanish has been a part of your life. You still use Spanish?

I do. Right now I'm teaching a community class on beginning Spanish. But I've lived different places for a while. I worked with Health and Human Services and did some interpreting for some social service things back in Colorado. I also did some court reporting. I was working on some court reporting certifications to do some interpreting there and sort of spent about six years translating for some church services. So seems to crop up all the time.

What have you learned about the Hispanic population here in the United States?

Oh, it is so varied. It is so, so varied. When I lived in Colorado, I. So I lived in Guatemala, and that's where really my foundational Spanish came from. When I studied in college, one of my professors said, you sound like you kind of learned Spanish from the streets. Which I. Which I did because of the populations that I worked with there. And then living in Colorado, I worked with a lot of people from Mexico, so. And then I lived in Florida, and we had a lot of Dominican and a lot of other places. And so what I've learned is we went to Puerto Rico several years ago, and there was a word they used that I was like, why have I never heard this word before? It's amazing. It works for everything. And I went back to Colorado and I was using it, and people were so offended. It was a really naughty word. And so what I learned is every. Every place has context and meaning to language. And a lot of times it's about how we interpret what's being said and the meaning that we give it that's so, so important.

And so language is really important. Can you just kind of give us an introduction to why it's so important to you?

What I've learned about language is that we have many different languages that we all speak, and we have. As a musician, there's a language that comes from music. There are. There's meaning and there's things that touch our souls, that touch us really deep down inside, even without words. And there are lots of different ways that we Communicate. So language is one, speaking is one. But we also have body language. We also have our micro expressions. We have so many layers and types of ways that we communicate. And we may be speaking different languages even though we're speaking the same language. And that's where I think it gets really tricky.

Okay, so now let's talk about your work. Right, You're. You're a social worker. You've been helping individuals and families for how long?

So I started working in 2015, part of my story of getting to where I'm at. In 2015, I started working with betrayed partners whose partners were acting out sexual misbehaviors. And I started screening calls as they were coming into a support group. So in that period of time, I spoke with and heard the stories of over 500 women who had experienced betrayal trauma and were seeking for support and trying to figure out how to heal and recover from betrayal trauma. And through that, I had some really great mentors who just kind of paved the path and really pushed me and said, you need to become a counselor. You need to. This is your calling. You need to go. And I wasn't as confident as they were, but, boy, it's been a beautiful path that I've been able to be on.

That's part of how you got here at this point. Tell us a little bit more about just that journey recently of, okay, I want to help people. I want to help people in their communications. I want to help them in their relationships. I want to help them overcome, whether it's sexual betrayal or just having a better marriage. Tell us a little bit about that.

Oh, yeah, that's a fantastic question. So one of the things. One of the challenges that I have as a therapist, I have limited hours and limited availability, and there's so many people. We're living in a time where there's a mental health crisis already. And so sometimes I'll have people call and say, oh, my goodness, you answered your phone or you responded. I've called 40 people so far. And so there. There's really a. A need for support. But a lot of times the people that are coming to me are calling me, and they're looking for couples counseling because their relationships are at a pivot point and they're really in crisis. And so they're calling saying, hey, we need counseling. Are you available for couples counseling? What I've learned, though, and because I specialize with betrayal, trauma, and sex addiction, what I've learned is if there's addiction, if there's abuse, if there are affairs, those usually need to be worked out in individual therapy before we can start the couple's work, because those are really deep attachment wounds, and we need to have safety and be able to rebuild trust and honesty before we can start that repair process. And so I've really felt frustrated and stuck where I live, there are very few couple counselors who work with sex addiction and betrayal trauma who have the certifications to do that. And so I often get stuck saying, I don't know where to send you, and you need some individual work before we can get to this part. So last year in April, I was at a training which was focused on helping couples reintegrate sexually after betrayal. And as I sat there, I just realized, holy cow, there's. There's all these skills that couples are missing. Even when they're in this crisis, they still get stuck not knowing how to communicate, which I think further exacerbates the situation. At that point, I realized we. We've got to figure out a way to maybe help these couples learn to communicate in healthy ways, even if they're doing their individual counseling. My clients will come to me and we will learn and talk about healthy communication patterns or look at what's maybe not working. But when I'm just working with one partner, it's really tricky for them to go home and say, here's what my therapist taught me, and to translate everything that they learned in the session. And so I'm really hoping that these courses I'm creating online, an opportunity for my cup. My clients to sit down with their partners and say, hey, let's learn some tools and skills together, because this is really hard. This is really painful, but we've got to figure out how to communicate and meet our relational needs in the middle of this crisis.

So I want to go back for a second. You brought up something that's really important. So when couples. You're saying this, and this has been my experience as a professional as well. When couples come to therapy, maybe after sexual betrayal, they want to do couples therapy. But what you're saying is, is they may not be ready for it. Let's talk a little bit about that, because I'm going to assume that you have had couples come to your office asking for couples counseling, and you're like, I'm not sure they're ready for couples counseling. Do you want to expound on that?

You know, I think experience is the best teacher. And one of the. Every now and then, you have a client or clients that teach you what doesn't work. And. And I've had some, some of those experiences. Couples counseling is hard. There's a lot of emotions in the room. There's a lot going on, and especially if there's been wounding, boy, that's hard to, to handle. But one of the things that I've learned, or the way that I've learned that works best for me as a therapist is when there's been betrayal, we usually go through a formal, therapeutic disclosure process which involves sharing, getting everything out onto the table so that the betrayed partner can then have informed consent to say, okay, now I know the secrecy, the hiding, the patterns that have been there. Now I can choose to move forward in this relationship and we can start to have conversations that we could never have because of the dishonesty or the omitted information. And so it's a space to begin moving forward, speaking the same language, because up until that point, the same language wasn't being spoken.

So let's keep going down this pathway. Now maybe we've done this disclosure and you're saying even then they don't necessarily have the communication skills that they need to work through difficult things. Give us a couple of examples of what you mean by that and maybe some specific example of how it would apply for a couple.

So just make it really simple and just talk about perspective. So I'm, I'll share a personal story here. A couple of, I don't know, maybe a month ago, it was early in the morning, it was dark and it was really foggy out and my husband and I were going somewhere and we, I was the driver. We pulled up to the intersection and I was going to turn onto the main road. It was a two lane road. And I looked to my left and I saw, oh, there's a car coming down the road, but it's over in the other lane and that's fine. And so I pulled out my husband, who was sitting in the passenger seat. He grabbed the handle and made an auditory gasp. And I thought he was done. You know, I didn't know what was going on with him, but he was terrified. He thought that I had just pulled into the lane in front of this car. We were sitting in the car having the exact same experience, which was an exact, completely different experience. So what he saw and experienced and heard was night and day different. I looked and said, oh, that's totally safe. Here we go. He did not see that or experience that. And so we often have a very different interpretation or perspective, often based on what we've maybe experienced in our own lives growing up or really what our body is interpreting and what's going through our autonomic nervous system. It interprets something based on something it may have seen or felt before, and it draws conclusions. I think all of us, we all create stories, we all create our interpretation and learning how to come together and find a safe place to be able to say, here's what I experienced. Let me check that with you. Is that what you intended? Is that what you meant? And also a space where we can just sit back and listen and see the world through somebody else's eyes. My husband's experience was. It was absolutely his and so valid for him. Who was right? We were both right in our experience, but they were so different.

So when couples have different perceptions of an experience, what do you recommend they do?

One of the tools that I learned from emotionally focused therapy, which is couples therapy, which is all about attachment, or we see it through an attachment lens. I love to sit down with couples and have them share. Here's what I saw, here's what I felt, here's what I heard, here's what I interpreted. But really looking at. They call it the infinity loop. As we get really what's going on underneath. Oftentimes, couples may fight about, you know, who left the socks on the floor or who left the toothpaste lid off or whatever it is. That's not really what we're fighting about, though. That has nothing to do with it. That's. That's so surface level. And so if we can take the elevator down a couple of levels and say, what's the unmet need that's really going on here? And the unmet need may be, I feel disrespected, I feel unseen, I feel unheard. I feel helpless or powerless or I feel afraid. So if I can help clients get to understanding, it's not about the socks on the floor. It's really about this unmet need. And then help them to communicate that. One of the. I don't know if you see this in your office or not, but one of the things that I often scratch my head about is I see myself with couples as a. As a bridge. So I can have a couple sitting in front of me, and one person can tell me something, and they know their partner's sitting right next to me. They know their partner can hear everything that's being said. But then when I say to them, wow, that was really powerful, would you mind turning to your partner and looking them in the eyes and telling them what you just told me? I often have clients say, I can't do that. And I. And that's where I scratch my head, because I know they heard it. They know they heard it. But that vulnerability of being able to say, here's what I need, here's what I felt, that's where true attachment comes from. It's through that vulnerability. But, oh, getting to that place where it feels safe and being able to do that, that's tricky. That's hard.

And I love what we're talking about here because we're talking about the specific details of communication that is often left out. So often when couples come to our office, they will say something to the effect of, we don't communicate very well.

Yeah.

And you're giving some very specific examples of how we miscommunicate. And then really, this process of how to break it down, this is my perception. This is how I saw this. This is how I felt it. But that vulnerability, even just turning and falling, facing your partner, is such a vulnerable place. And I often wonder why couples don't do that, because I do that often in my office. In fact, I really say, this may be very uncomfortable. I want you to look at your partner right now and say what you just said to me.

Yeah.

And there's this discomfort, this facial expression, almost this, like, can I say this? Do I dare look at you? And when couples learn to do that, we. We all almost always get a more meaningful connection. I just wonder why we're not good at it.

You know, I don't know exactly, but I have some. I have a guess. And one of the ways that I've. That I've learned, for me, that makes sense as a musician. Let me back up. When I started playing the cello when I was about 10 years old and I went to summer orchestra, and we sat there and the music teacher said, you know, he was leading the music, and the guy next to me was, like, sitting there, and he wasn't playing. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, well, we're resting. Like, okay, we're just taking a break. I didn't know what rest meant. And I said, okay, well, how do you know when to come in? He says, well, it's four. It's four measure rest, and it's four four times. So I was like, I don't really know what that means. So I thought, okay, four times four is 16. I'll count to 16. So I would then see a rest, and I would do a little bit of math, figure out how long I needed to count to, and I would do that counting. That actually Carried me all the way through, I'm really embarrassed to say. College, high school, college. I never learned how to count properly. What I did learn is that I wasn't good at counting. I didn't know how to do it, and I would. I really learned how to hone some other skills, though. I learned how to watch. I learned how to listen and figure out where does it fit in. And I learned how to really pay attention to the conductor and everybody around me and jump in where it needed to be later on. Fast forward. I'm 36 years old, and I owned a string quartet business in Colorado. One of my musicians, she. Her name was Sally, she was a violist. And she sat down with me one day and said, marianne, you don't know how to count. Now, I had had private music lessons. I had had all of this instruction, and Sally said, you don't know how to count, Marianne. She came over to my house and she said, here's the problem. You're not counting the ants. It's one and two, and if you get that and on the end of it, you can break it all up. Previously, somebody would say, okay, that's a 16th note. Or I'd see it and I'd kind of panic, go. I'm not quite sure where it fits in, but I'll figure it out because I'll listen really well. And so I know that's a long story, but I think we often, from the environments that we grew up in, we don't know. We don't really know what we don't know. And so if it isn't modeled, if it's not something that's taught, we don't know how to do it. So Sally's sitting down saying, you don't know how to count. Let me show you how. I'm pretty good at counting now because I. I know how to. I have the tools to figure out how to do it. And it's changed me.

And what's so lovely about what you just described is it's a simple. It's a simple example from music. But who sat you down? Who sat me down and said, this is how you should communicate in relationships. These are the effective ways to communicate. This is how not to do it. I would guess that if we really broke it down, most people have not had that experience with how to communicate effectively in any interaction.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I absolutely agree. I do go back. I know you mentioned this on your interview with Dr. Manning, but I've been in a training with you where you've had everybody stand up and say, okay, let's talk about how effective communication was modeled. And I pull back to that all of the time. Even with my clients, guess what? You probably didn't learn this or where did you learn how to do this? And most of my clients don't have those skills. They haven't learned them.

And if I could just add one part to our listeners here, there's no shame in saying, I don't know how to do this because again, you, you were how you, you own your own business, right? Somebody said, you don't know how to do this. Now, I don't want to say that to our listeners, but the reality is when you have the right skills, when you know how to do something, communication does not have to be hard in relationships. You just need the right tools, you need the right skills.

And I would add to that, you also need to speak the same language so that you're both on the same page, so that you're, you know, if one person's saying, hey, I'm doing this and the other one's like, what are you doing? That doesn't make sense. It makes it a little bit tricky.

So, yeah, and I, I want to add one other part here because you mentioned earlier, I want to come back to it. It's this concept of vulnerability and risk and what it takes to be able to say, I don't know how to do this or I have an unmet need. Can I talk about this unmet need?

Oh, yeah.

Could you expand on that a little bit? Your thoughts?

Yeah. With this conversation, to me, it shifts a lot into emotions and emotional availability and emotional ownership. I think a lot of times we run into situations where we hit up against things and we feel really uncomfortable. We, most of the time we don't even know why. We just know, oh, something feels off. And oftentimes that I think that goes back to either we are not honoring something or we're self betraying, we're not speaking, or we're not honoring what's going on for us. One of the things that I often run into with clients, probably one of my number one things that I hear clients say is like, I can't, I couldn't say that. There's no way I could say that because if I said that, they, their feelings would be hurt. They can't handle it. And so we do, we take a lot of ownership, we do a lot of caretaking for other people and their emotions, they can't handle it, which means that I'm not showing up Authentically, because I'm protecting them from feeling hurt. Which means that the way that I am showing up with them isn't a reality for them either. So we're both in this non realistic place because we're not honoring, I'm not giving them the chance to really have a full experience of what I'm experiencing. I'm holding back, which leaves a deficit in that, in that relationship.

And why do we hold back? Why. Why are we so afraid to be vulnerable and say, I, I need this, right, my. This emotional need or this physical need or this just a desire for a deeper connection? I've talked with many individuals and you know, they want something but they're afraid to ask for it. Why do you think that's the case?

You know, I recently just talked with a client about this and I go back to when we're a baby. What I love about babies, when they're born, they come out demanding to have their needs met. They are born squalling, saying, hey, I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm tired, I have a messy diaper, take care of me. As babies, we are demanding to have our needs met. But somewhere along the way, and I don't know, for everybody, I think it's a little bit different. But somewhere along the way we learn somebody doesn't take care of our needs or we learn that our needs aren't important enough to be taken care of and we develop, I believe, some core beliefs about that. So even being able to say I have the right to have my needs met, sometimes my clients can't say that they don't feel like that's true. And so somewhere along the way we lose our sense of worthiness, our worthiness to be loved and connected and our ability to feel like we can have our needs met. What do you think about that?

Well, I think even asking about it, right, Can I, can I. How vulnerable is it for me to say I need a hug? Oh yeah, could we go for a walk? I just need to talk through this. I've had a really hard day. Do you have a few minutes? We could just sit down and I just need to unload this. I wonder. There's a concept that I find that we stop that trust, we stop allowing ourselves to be that kind of vulnerable. And as a consequence, I think we live in more loneliness rather than in connection because we think we should do it on our own rather than really opening up and saying, I have a need. And maybe we think there's something wrong with having a need.

I think we paralyzed with fear.

Or maybe I'm afraid that my need won't be met, so I won't ask. And maybe there has been a history between us that, okay, I don't believe you're going to be there. But when couples really start to elevate the relationship and have true human intimacy, that's when I see people say, I really need. I need some TLC tonight. Can we go for a walk? Can we. Can we have a hug? Can we. Can we do something? Because I need. I can. I dare do. I dare say I need some attention.

Yeah. And that's that vulnerability right when we're there saying, here's my need, and I don't know if you'll meet it or not, but I'm putting it out there. One of the things I've learned that usually as human. Well, one of the other things that I hear my clients often say is, I don't want to be a burden. Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that. I don't want to burden them. I don't want to burden somebody with my needs. But as human beings, we see an accident, we see somebody in pain, we see a baby crying. And just because we're human beings, we have something, I believe, innately inside of us that says, oh, let me. Oh, I want to go help that. Let me help that. Yet we forget that when our partner says or when we need have a need to say, here's my need. Most human beings, their natural inclination reaction is, oh, I'm honored that you asked me that. One, you let me know that need. And two, of course I want to help you try and figure that out if I can. Yet we do get stuck with that fear.

Yeah. When couples are having problems, it's. That's where I see it. They. They can't open up to that. That experience of I have this need because maybe I'm frustrated. And so they both are. Like, I'm. No, I. My needs aren't being met. I can't meet your needs. And so we get in a stubborn fight of, if you're not going to meet my needs, I'm not going to meet your needs. And so we play this vicious game that if we'd put it down and say, I'm just going to try being here because our relationship matters.

Yeah. What I'm hearing you talk about is craziness of when we fight and we anger shows up and it's a protest saying, my needs not being met. And so let me shout a little bit louder because My deep down need to connect with you isn't being met. But when I shout at you, you step away or you shout back. And so we're both defending this deep down need. Most of the times with my couples, when we go back down to those unmet needs that we were talking about earlier, they want the same thing we all want. Love and connection. There's a little child usually inside of us saying, can you see me? I'm here. I just need some comfort, but you're not giving it to me. And so I feel so frustrated. So I'm going to. I'm going to yell, I'm going to lash out. And it pushes our partner away and creates this toxic dance where we're missing that deep down unmet need. That's where the vulnerability lies.

So what I want the most, I'm not getting because my tone of voice or my anger is manifesting, not the deeper need of. I need a hug.

Yeah.

Awesome. This has been really fun dialogue. I love. I love this. You've got a couple other things that I'd like to have you just share with us. You talk about emotions. You started that conversation a little bit earlier. When we don't know what to do with elevated emotions. Because a lot of couples, they're coming and saying we can't communicate. It's not that they're not communicating, but it's the way they're communicating their emotional intensity.

Oh, yeah.

What are your thoughts about that? When. When the intensity's high and couples are really struggling because the tone of voice or the body language is like, so maybe aggressive or assertive. I don't know what to do with your intensity. What are your thoughts on helping couples through that situation?

You know, one of the things I've learned as a counselor, if I'm working with a couple and I'm seeing that intensity, one of the tools that can be really helpful is for me to rise up emotionally and match where they're at and. And then to bring them down. Now, a couple in the relationship, that's a little bit harder because they're usually both in, you know, enmeshed in that. In that argument. But being able to connect where we're at and then bring that down, that's. That's a really helpful tool. Yeah.

The challenge. The challenge of this one is, is what do we do with it? Right. Because most couples, this is where they get. They don't know what to do with that emotional intensity. So just imagine this couple. They're in your office. What do you do with this? Couple where it's emotionally intense.

So they're in my office. It's emotionally intense. I go back to a couple tools that I learned from Chris Voss's book, Never split the difference. And one of the tools he talks about is labeling. If I can label what I'm seeing, I can see that you are really frustrated. I can see that you're really upset about this. I can see. So instead of me engaging, if I can recognize this is something that got triggered in my partner or that is coming up for that other person, this is their emotions, the more that I can own my own emotions and realize, oh, this is really about you and your experience, and can I observe it and go, this is yours. Your job is to manage your own emotions, and my job is to manage mine. And, wow, what I'm seeing right now, this is really important to you, and this is really hard. You feel really frustrated. As I start to label what I'm seeing makes it really tricky to fight. If somebody's just saying, yeah, I see that you feel really strongly about this. Well, yeah, I do. Yeah.

You help me understand more.

Yeah. And so there you go. You've got it. Help me understand more. Tell me more about it. So.

And the general. The general concept here of what we're describing is how do we get someone to open up? Because my. My actions, my words can shut you down. My tone of voice, my body language can shut you down. Healthy communication. I'm. We're opening each other up. And that's really what you're describing here, the labeling of it. This really matters to you. Help me understand. Right. Obviously, this is critical, what you're saying here, because you're. You. You're passionate. You care about this a lot.

Yeah. And what. What I found when I label, the beauty of labeling, I believe, is it's just a gift. It's almost like you can't get it wrong because I can label it, and I can say, it looks like you're feeling xyz, but in the label. And the person will either say, yes, yes, I do, or they'll say, no, that's not it at all. And then I say, oh, well, where did I miss it? What. What is it then? And so either way, I. If I label it, I'm trying. I'm making that intent. And I'm not engaging or feeding the fire, but I am. Let me jump off of that for just a second. One of the things that I believe is, as children, most of the times, we don't have it modeled for us. How to have healthy conflict. We don't learn. Most of us don't have more than three to five words to really describe what emotions we're having. We don't know what we're really feeling. And oftentimes my clients will feel like, oh, if I have any emotion, they're negative or positive. I. I see emotions actually as more like a radar system. Like if I were a submarine going through the water and my radar system pings and says, oh, look out. There's something ahead. Pay attention. I see emotions as that radar system giving me information. Hey, there's something here. They're there trying to help me. It's not a negative or positive thing. It might feel uncomfortable, but it's really. They're just trying to help me navigate and make it through this based on what other. Whatever algorithms I've already got running based on my experiences. And so the more I can step into. I'm having some emotions right now, and you're having emotions right now. This is about what your body's picking up. This is about what my body's picking up. Then I. So I think it comes into that emotional ownership. I can own what's mine and let you own what's yours, but I'm not responsible for what you're feeling.

You've given us a lot of practical tools in our conversation. You have a course on human intimacy, on communication. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about it, what your goal is, what your purpose is, and who would benefit the most from it?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So going back to our earlier conversation about wanting to help my clients and their partners or, you know, anybody they communicate with, have some tools to be able to take, take away, put into their. Let me back up. What I'd actually like to say is, you know, I love to read, and my clients usually will laugh at me because I'm always like, oh, I've got a book for that. Oh, there's a quote from that. Here's something from that. And also with podcasts, I'll often remember, oh, this pod. I. I learned this from this one person. I often have, like, one thing that I'll remember, maybe not a whole lot book. I might remember three or four things. I'm hoping that this podcast, even the courses that are on human intimacy, on communication, even if you're taking away one or two helpful new tools, that's going to be an improvement. One of my saddest experiences, one of my earliest experiences, I remember being in a class. I was probably three years old, and we were going around and they were saying, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I was like, I want to be Wonder Woman. I thought she was awesome. I want to be Wonder Woman. And the teacher said, you can't be Wonder Woman. I was so sad. And I said, no, that's my choice. No, no, you can't be Wonder Woman. I was just crestfallen. I couldn't be Wonder Woman. But what I've learned is I'm a helper. I want to help people. And I am somebody who wants to share as much as I can with as many people. And so if I can help anybody, if they can walk away from anything that we've talked about here today or from these courses, that it can help their lives be better. Oh, what a gift. I have been so blessed in my life to have really great role models and mentors and people who've taught me, and it's just changed my life. And if that's something that I can turn around and give back. What a gift.

So you have a free course. Tell us a little bit about the free course, and then tell us a little bit about the more advanced course where people can really practice with you, some of these skills.

Sure. So the free course is a mini course. It's focusing on reflective listening. And so that's really looking at. Reflecting back. Here's what I heard you say. It's also looking at tone. Here's what I heard. Because we can say the same. We can say, I have a question in 12 different ways with different tones and inflections. And it can mean so many different things. And so learning to listen to tone, but also really learning to listen with our eyes. What am I seeing? What are the micro expressions? So when my clients will often say something and what I. What I notice, if I'm paying attention to them, I'll notice their chin quiver, or I'll notice something in their cheek or just a really quick micro expression. Something passes, and they'll keep going. And I'll probably say, hold on a second. Let's go back. I saw this on your face. Like, oh, man, oh, man. But boy, there's usually a pocket of pain or there's a pocket of something really deep right there. And so if we can learn to listen not just to the words, but to also the. The context of what's being said. One of the things that I think is so important is I've had my life experiences, and it's kind of like just what I. What you say to me goes through the sieve and I'm trying to make sense of it based on my experiences. And so I go, oh, okay, that fits in. Let me see where that I can make that fit in, what comes out of my mouth. And I know that I, I've got my context. So I'll tell half a story, assuming that you know the other half of it and it'll make sense to you. I think we all do that. And so learning to reflect back, here's what I heard you say, here's what I saw in your body. Here's what I heard in your tone. And then also really looking at, here's the story that I made up about it going back to like that experience that I had with my husband driving the car. Here's the experience that I had based on how I saw and heard it. Is that right? If we can reflect back. So when I put myself in my back pocket and say, I really want to see the world through your eyes. And when you shared it with me, here's what I saw and heard. Did I get that right? Boy, that opens up the door for communication. That part about this, the fact checking of the story so many times, what we hear because it goes through our context, we like, oh man, we really create a story about that. And if we can say, I want to just check in with you on that, this is what I thought, or this is what I interpreted, is that right? A lot of the time I'm not right. And, and that's once again that vulnerability. Can I check with you? Because I just heard you say that you don't like me and you don't want anything to do with me or that's the story that I'm telling myself. Is that true? Oh, that's scary. But the other person say, yeah, I'm kind of mad at you right now. We need to have a conversation or say, no, that's not it at all. I was, you know, I was, I don't know, thinking about my homework for tomorrow or whatever it might be. So the reflective listening course really is focusing on that. I've got short videos and then several exercises, some looking at micro expressions, some just going and observing people and seeing if what you can tell by their body language, some journaling exercises, looking at how I, how I'm doing with, you know, just some self introspection. The, the other communication course really is looking at boundaries. It's looking at creating a bill of rights, understanding what our underlying, those unmet needs are creating that foundation of here's what my need is, therefore here's How I can create a boundary. So many of my clients say, I need help with boundaries. I don't know how to do boundaries. I don't know what to do with them. That's a really big one. Also dealing with the emotions. And so we talked a little bit about the emotions before, but how they get stuck in the communication. I haven't started it yet, but I. My next course, as I'm working, working on creating content, will be a course on emotional regulation. A lot of my clients who come in, they are really struggling with emotional regulation. So understanding. Here's communication tools, and here's the tools to help myself regulate or help me regulate my myself emotionally. I think those are two basic building blocks of connection.

Awesome. So real quick, the title of your courses.

Building Bridges, the Art of Communication. The other one is seven Essential Skills for Enhancing Communication and Connections. And that's the free course that's focusing primarily on the reflective listening tools.

All right, so, Marianne, before we close up shop, I ask every guest this question. If you could give the world any advice on healthy relationships, what advice would you want them to have?

I think the healthiest advice that I would give would be to take ownership of your own emotions. And that really looks like. Instead of you make me. It really looks like I feel just really stepping into owning your emotions and also honoring your emotions. So what I mean by honoring your emotions is if I'm feeling frustrated or sad or upset, whatever I might be feeling, really to connect with my body and recognize, where do I feel this in my body? And to say it out loud, write it down. And oftentimes, when the emotions come up, as we talked about that radar system, they're letting us know oftentimes that there's something that maybe I need to attend to that hasn't been attended to. So if somebody says something and I feel really uncomfortable, my job is to say who I'm feeling uncomfortable about that. Hmm. That must mean something. Let me go figure out what's going on. Is there a boundary or is there a need of mine or a right that's being violated? Or do I have something from my past that that's bumping up against that gives me an opportunity to say who? Sometimes I don't know. Oftentimes we don't know in that moment, but I can say, oh, I feel yucky in my stomach. Ooh, here's where it shows up in my body. The more I can connect my body to my emotions, the more in the future I can say, oh, here's the name for that. Emotion. And the more that I name it, the more I can move through it. I think part of this is also giving ourselves the gift of grace and of self compassion. We all have emotions. We, most of us have never done what we're doing before and we're trying to figure it out and everybody else is also trying to figure it out. And so sometimes we're clumsy and awkward and the more that we can step into that with vulnerability with ourselves and treat ourselves and others with kindness, I think it's just a gift that I hope we can take with us.

Marianne, thank you so much for being with us today. Any final words you'd like to share with our listening audience?

Go take the courses. Check out the courses. Dr. Skinner's got some amazing courses on.

There as well, so. So yes, thank you for mentioning that to our listeners. We want to express our gratitude. Thank you for taking time to listen to this podcast today. Marianne, absolute joy being with you and thank you very much. Now to our listening audience, we will have some additional resources available for you. I'll give Marianne's free courses a link in the below where you can find access to those. I encourage you to go through those if you really want to improve your communication, your relationship, learn the right skills so it's not as hard as it feels. Marianne, thank you so much that I.

Can'T help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh something surround you it's like you're shining, you're sick.