The Power of Being Seen: Cultivating Connection and Attunement in Relationships (Episode #32)

There's something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile.

Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with you with my friend and colleague, Marianne Michaelis. Marianne, how are you today?

I'm really excited to be here today. Thank you.

You know, we're talking about a topic that I think is really fits perfectly with the Human Intimacy concept, and it's allowing ourselves to be seen and being seen. And so, Marianne, I wanted to start off with just some of your thoughts on this. Allowing ourselves to be seen, this idea of connection and being attuned to other people. What are your initial thoughts?

Well, I think that we live in a world where we increasingly are close to closing down. We're on our phones, we're in our devices, we're in our media. And I think so many of us are just screaming out, we want to be seen. We want to be noticed. We want to be understood. And thinking about this topic, I'd love to just jump in and start out with a. With a quick story, if that's okay.

Yeah, let's go.

So about a year ago, I was at a family reunion, seeing family members that we hadn't seen for quite a while. And I have a nephew who sometimes we. We call him Bubba. That's what he's grown up with. But he's. He's a teenager now. And so when I saw him last year, he's now taller than I am. And I see him, it'd been a while, so I went up and I went to give him a hug, and I said, what should I call you? Should I call you Bridger or should I call you Bubba? What do you want me to call you? And he pulled back from the hug, and he looked at me in the eyes, and he says, I don't care what you call me as long as you see me. And that experience has just stuck with me so much. This teenage kid, he didn't care what name we called him. He just wanted to be seen and.

Noticed, you know, and I think that that is fundamental to our human connections. We. We long for that to be seen for others understand our thoughts, our emotions, and our capacity to share those allows us to be seen. But sometimes we hold back in relationships. And so I want to focus today and would love your thoughts. I mean, you've got to a lot of great ideas that we've talked about. But let's start off with Dan Siegel's concept. Dan Siegel used a phrase that he used in his book. In his book Mind, he actually talks about this Concept of being seeing, seeing his client who. From his client who said, you know, I've got to be, I'm going to be moving. And I just really appreciate the service you've given me. And he said, well, what's really stood out to you? And she gave a phenomenal response. She said, you make me feel felt. You want to expand on that, what that might mean, Marianne?

Absolutely. I mean, it's an interesting phrase. Right. When you say feel felt, that it takes a minute to make sense of that. But to really feel like someone gets you, to really feel like someone understands you and that they're with you. And I know as we're talking about this subject, I know for our listeners it might feel a little bit triggering even or uncomfortable if you're sitting here listening to this and thinking, when was the last time I felt felt. Oftentimes we talk about how we, how sometimes the loneliest place can be in a group of people. And I, and I know oftentimes we, I work with a lot of betrayed partners who have a shield up or they have a facade and they're not sharing their truth or their story and no one in the room knows really what's going on with them. And boy, that does not feel felt. And so I recognize. I'd love to invite our listeners to just take a moment and think about when was the last time I felt felt and maybe when was the last time I really felt like I felt other people.

Yeah. And I think if we add to that, then we say, am I comfortable feeling others being aware of their emotions, being aware of what they're experiencing or do. Does what they're experiencing shut me down?

Sure. Or if we have trauma, am I so shut down that I can't see outside of myself, that I'm just stuck in hyper vigilance and I'm having a hard time even, even connecting anywhere.

And this idea of wanting to be seen and then not only that, but being able to see. And when we're maybe at our healthiest, it's actually both. We're comfortable seeing into others world, their lens and not being overwhelmed by it and then allowing ourselves to be seen so others can actually get to really know who we are.

And that's what we desperately want.

Yeah.

Even babies from our earliest ages or from our earliest days. I don't know, I don't know how to say that. But from our infancy, we just want that connection. I remember being in a, a couple of years ago, I was on a phone call where Bessel, Vander, Kolk, Was doing a presentation and answering questions. And he's a trauma expert. But one of the things I remember him saying, and I don't have the research right in front of me, but he talked about some research they had done with mothers in. In one of the European countries. And they found that if they just taught mothers how to hold their babies in a way that their babies had eye contact or that their babies felt connected, it changed, it lowered like, exponentially the people that ended up in jail, like, over this really long period of time, it completely changed their social system based on just teaching mothers how to connect with their babies and how. How to hold their babies as simply as holding a baby so it can see your eyes.

And again, there's the reciprocation there, right? What it does for the infant, what it does for the parent, what it does for that bonding experience. And when we bond again, there is a concept. It's not just the words that we say. It's the physical touch, it's the eye contact, it's the facial expression. All of those core components help us feel felt. When I do intensives, one of the core things that I do is actually work with couples to get back to what we refer to as the most basic needs. Eye contact, healthy touch, tone of voice, and that smiling face. I'm telling you, there's something about those most basic needs. When we have them, we feel felt, and when we don't, we feel misunderstood or people don't care. And at the end of the day, the difference is really, are we meeting those most basic needs?

Yeah. And as you're saying that, I'm just thinking about. I was thinking about our listeners, and I'd love to invite our listeners just to think about what does that feel like for you? When it feels like somebody really gets you? You feel really connected to somebody. What's happening in your body, what's happening with your heart rate, what's happening with your breathing? And just the flow. Usually when we're in that space, there's just this flow that it just feels so comfortable and we're so relaxed. And usually it's this very expansive place. And it's a place that we so often we all want and need to get to, but it's so. It can shut off so quickly that we're not there. Can I. Can I share a quick story?

Yeah.

I have a friend who's. She just moved into an assisted living because she's having some memory problems. I went over to her house to help. To help out with some things, and When I got there, one of her other friends was there who I didn't know very well. I'd met her once, and. And I showed up and said, my friend asked me to come over. She said she needs some help. She's really overwhelmed. I'm. I'm here to help, just get an idea of what needs to be done. And this lady was so defensive, and she. She didn't want to let me in the door, and she. I felt so frustrated. I. I stood there and I looked at her, and she was just trying to kind of push me out the door. And I. I just looked at her face and I just went, I don't know what's going on. This is so hard. And I could tell there was this misalignment. She was there helping our friend, and I was there to help the friend, but, boy, she just was. We were not on the same page, and we were not connecting. I didn't know what was going on with her, and I was trying so hard to. To figure out, like, what do I do here? I. I don't know how to. I don't know how to communicate with this lady. We both want to help our friend, but this isn't.

We're.

We're not. We're not enemies. We're not fighting what's going on. And it's so frustrating because in those spaces, we can get so frustrated because we just want to get our needs met or do whatever. You know, I was there to help, but this woman wouldn't let me help.

Interesting thing here, because what you're saying is I didn't know how to read this person because I didn't know the issue. I didn't know their concern. I didn't. Because there's not that. That communication that's not happening there. And it's almost like she's saying, hey, just. Just, you know, leave us alone. We've got this.

Absolutely. And.

And yet this is your friend that you want to help.

Yeah. And it doesn't make sense.

Right. And so here's a perfect example of how. What happens to us in our relationships when we're trying to communicate, we're trying to interact in a way that would be perceived as help, and yet the environment. There's something happening there that we don't understand and we don't know. And so that misalignment, as you. Right. As you said, misattunement, because whatever it was in her mind, you were probably some kind of a threat.

Exactly. And doesn't this happen to so many of us? So often when we show up and someone misreads us or we misread someone else, what we hear. I know Sue Johnson talks about depending on where we're at with our internal state, somebody can say something, and one day it can just come through like a gentle breeze. Another day when we're activated, maybe when we're already distrustful or when we maybe are looking through a lens of trauma or we've had some experiences, it might make us really distrustful or we might feel activated. And so somebody may say something, and it may come through like a hurricane. And so was that me that day? I don't know, but.

So what did you end up doing?

You know, I took a step back and I. She was trying to shove me out the door, like she wasn't letting me in. And. And I was really confused, and I paused and I just said, I'm not sure what's going on here. I'm really confused. I'm trying to understand this. And right now I feel like. I feel like there's some conflict going on that I. I don't understand. So she softened just a little bit. Then somebody showed up and. And things shifted just a little bit more. But she didn't necessarily change.

She was right. But. But the fact that you brought it up, the fact that you tried. Right.

I'm.

I'm not sure what's happening here. And there was a little bit of a softening again, when we get into these kind of, I don't know, we don't know what to do situations where we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and truthfully, we're there to help a friend. But more often than not, our intention is not necessarily received by other people. And. And so often in our communication, when we send messages, it may not be being received the way that we intended it. And that's why I think we get so much frustration in. In our relationships, because we want to be seen, but really we want somebody to say, is this what, you know? Is this what you're experiencing? I want to make sure that I'm. I've got this right. And far too often when in those misunderstandings, we don't ask those questions. And so what we do is we continually have this perception. This is obviously what you meant, even though I may be wrong. And so in our interactions, it's helpful for us to clarify and make sure that we are understanding the people with whom we're communicating.

And I think this brings up. This is a great example in that I don't know that I necessarily did it right this time. And, you know, we talked previously about using acknowledge, validate, and reassure and about as you're talking about stepping in and kind of validating where they're at. I think if I had probably stepped into that a little bit more deeply to say, I can see that you don't really know. Feel like you know me, you don't really trust me, and you're here really just trying to help her and you're in a hurry and you're not sure what to do with me. Clear. Like, if I had stepped into that a little bit better, perhaps there would have been a little. It would have had a different outcome. But oftentimes we freeze when we get into those spaces as well. We don't know what to do when we feel frustrated. And then we might try to push or we might shut down.

And typically we'll go back to the way that we used to do things, effective or ineffective, because that's what we know to do. And so we might say or do things that are, like, sometimes hurtful or offensive because, you know, that's maybe what we observed or experienced growing up. So the, the idea of saying, you know, I'm here to help, or is there anything specifically I want to help. I. I really. This friend of ours, I really want to make sure that she's okay.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Right.

Yeah. Let. Let me shift this just a little bit. If I can use a. An analogy that comes to my mind as, as I've shared previously, I'm a cellist, and when I perform, one of the things that's really interesting, I can have my cello be a hundred percent perfectly in tune. And I have a little tuner. It's an app on my phone that I can play and it listens and it'll say, hey, you're just a little teeny bit off. You're a little too high. You're a little too low. And so I can have my cello be a hundred percent perfectly in tune to play. However, what I've learned is any place that I go into where I'm playing, I actually have to go to the piano. If there's going to be somebody playing the piano and I have to play the notes on the piano and figure out whether or not they're in tune.

Isn't that fascinating?

And, yeah, because I have to actually tune. I have to see the piano is off this much. So I have to tune my cello down so it matches where the piano is. So it doesn't matter.

What a great example here because how many times in our relationships, maybe we've been attuned to each other in the morning, then we are apart for whatever reason, and we get back together in the afternoon, and all of a sudden it feels like we're misattuned or misread because we're dealing with our own stress, we're dealing with something that's happening. And now we get back together almost with the expectation that it will be like maybe the way it was earlier in the day. And now something's transpired, something's occurred, and now I. I'm not reading accurately. And so I walk into this different environment, not. Not the same environment as the morning, and something feels off. And if I'm not aware of that, I could just go on acting as if it was this morning. Well, what's changed? Well, are you doing okay? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I'm just a little. Something's changed from this morning. Whatever that attunement is, it's one way that we make sure that we are consistently in the same place or at least aware of where each other is.

Yeah. And we have to stop and say, where are they? And we have to adjust to that. And I love how you said when we walk into a room, oftentimes if. If we're being present, if we're on our phone or our device or if we're preoccupied, we'll probably miss it. But when we walk in, we have millions of mirror neurons on the front of our body. And, you know, oftentimes we can walk into a room and say, oh, something feels off. I don't know what's going on, but there's like something in the air that I can't touch. But if we're. If we're centered in ourselves, we can really. That's where I think that's where we attune from is what's going on around me.

But, yeah, and I think that that's an awareness that I think far too often we miss. So we can walk into a situation where we're with our friends or with our partner or children, and. And we can miss it. And if we miss it, that. It. Whatever that it is, then our children or our friends or our family members, our spouse, like, why. How are you missing this? I'm over here crying. And you. You can't even. You can't even recognize or acknowledge you're not seeing it. And I'm not going to ask for it, because if you really loved me, you would know what I'm feeling.

Oh, don't we see that so often with our couples that we work with? Yeah. What you're, what you're mapping out is just here's where I'm at. And the other person didn't get it. And I wanted them to get me, but they're not getting it. And they should.

Right. And you, everyone should. Right. I mean it's, it's this mindset that somehow we think that sometimes we say of something and we assume that people are going to understand us. The much better approach is to say, I really need something right now. And if we're self aware, I could say I think I just need a hug right now. Or I'm really having a hard day, I'm a little bit angry. Maybe I probably need to take a break and just go to bed because I'm not going to handle situations well right now. And that's self attunement. So I can be attuned to how I don't destroy a relationship or hurt this relationship.

And it's so hard sometimes. I'm so glad you brought that up because being able to know what my needs are is so might be really hard. And then as you're talking about this self attunement, think about how do you, how do you self attune? How do we get to that place where we actually know I need a hug or I'm so tired. Oftentimes we ignore what our body's telling us. We're so used to being busy, to getting that done. Okay, I just need to work a little bit longer. It doesn't matter if I'm hungry or I'm tired. I just need to push through. And we get really good at ignoring all of our body's own cues. And then how do I know when I need a hug?

Well, and that's really where again, if we're going to be seen, really today's theme is allowing ourselves to be seen and seeing other people. It really has to begin with self. If I'm misattuned to self, I might be sad, I might be angry, I might be triggered, I might be hurting in some way. And if I push it away and ignore and just go straight in for, I don't know, something in this conversation, I might be communicating a very different message than what I'm really trying to get across.

And how would you say, I have a couple of ideas, but I'd love to hear for you, Dr. Skinner. How do you or how do you help your clients to find that self awareness, that self Attunement. What are some tools for that?

My, my first, my first go to is a self reflective question and it's, it usually is some type of a question. If I, if I'm expressing something and I'm trying to understand or I'm trying to express something and my mood is not in the right place, then I might miscommunicate. So for me it's actually pausing and identifying the mood that I'm in. What, what is it that I'm currently feeling? And there are times, I mean we all go through cycles. I mean nobody's immune from some kind of a cycle. But there are times where I, well I'll give you an example. A few years ago I was training for a marathon many years ago and that really required a lot of preparation. I'd get up early in the morning and I would run. Sometimes I'd run six to eight miles and then I'd get ready and go to work. But what I found is you're getting up at 5:30, 6 o' clock and you're running and by the time it's 8:30 or 9 o' clock at night and you've got children who you've put to bed and they're still getting up. I need to go bathroom, I need to get a drink of water. Can you help with this? I lost my dolly. Whatever version it was, my patience was not, it wasn't there. And finally my wife said, you know, something's got to change here. And, and recognizing my own energy depletion, I realized I've got to either get a little bit of food to get a little bit more energy to take me into these last little times with my children or I need to go to bed. It was one or the other. But the way I was being was it wasn't okay. And it wasn't that I was angry and yelling. It's just my energy was not what my children needed. They needed more warmth and I wasn't able to display it. And so that concept became for me that, that self awareness of okay, what's actually happening. And when my energy, using a phrase from the book Willpower Roy Baumeister, my energy was depleted or ego was depleted. And if that's, if that's happening, you really are not going to be effective in, in interactions. So that was my number one is just it turning into self and asking myself those questions. That self reflective question, what's this emotion that I'm experiencing or the mood that.

I'm feeling right now, oh, can I give you some Feedback on that.

Yeah.

Because what I love that you shared is that your wife saw it and your wife came to you. So you may have. May. Or I don't know if you were attuned to yourself, but your wife saw it and she came to you and she said, there's a problem here. And then we're able to see it and say, oh, I've got to find a solution. This is. Right. And so sometimes we aren't so aware. But. And, and how many times does a partner or spouse come to us and say, this is a problem because they're seeing it and we are def. And we don't find a response that's healthy or helpful, but we might feel attacked or defensive rather than. But in this case, you said, oh, I recognize this. I need to fix this.

Yeah. And what actually happened was a shake that. That was my solution. And in fact, part of that I was actually her thinking, hey, would it be helpful to get some food? Because I, you know. Right. And. And I. Again, you're burning so many calories in the training, but the concept is, yeah, she was aware, and I had to be aware because I could have just as EAS one of those days, like, well, are you. Are you. Are you going to get it on me too? Right. I mean. Right. Can't you just understand I'm tired and I'm just doing my best. And I already put him to bed, for crying out loud.

And all anybody wanted was to connect with you.

Right, Right. Just a little bit of extra attention. Right.

That.

That little comfort. Do you want a story? Right. And. Yeah, let's go. And I'll. I'll tell you a short story while you're laying down and let him go to sleep, which happened often. And those are the, you know, some of my favorite things. Going in memories now, looking back and going in and we'd make up a story. There's a. There was a dragon story that we told over a period of time, and it was just a lot of fun. But I look back now and think I had to be in the right mood and enter. Have the right enough energy to do that.

And you think about how powerful that was for dad to show up and create a story with them. I'm. I'm gonna guess if you ask your kids their memories, like, that would be one that might come up.

Well, that's my hope. Right. You know, it's just these things that you, you know, you hope that you're having that. Right. Influence, you know, and that's another concept that you've brought up and it comes from the polyvagal theory and, and really being able to look in the eyes. And, and because, because when we're connecting, it's not just not those eyes. And I think to me that's the other thing is am I in a place where I can look you in the eye emotionally? And that's a little bit deeper connection. But when we're frustrated or we're upset at each other, we can't do that very well. So that's another one. If I'm not, if I'm frustrated and I don't want to look you in the eye, that's probably another cue to me that, that something's off inside of me.

I want to absolutely jump into looking in the eyes. But before that, I would add just to this concept of how do you self attune in our, in one of our previous podcasts where we talked about the things that you do every day, there are things like exercising. I, I think there are things that we have to do to ground and center ourselves our own self care. And I know if I don't exercise, I'm grumpier.

Right.

Just certain things. And like you talked about food like our energy levels, being able to be aware of what we need to do during our day to, to connect with ourselves, to take care of our own needs. Because we can't connect with other people if we're not taking care of our needs. But if we shift over then to talking about the eye contact. Boy, how many times as an EFT therapist do we ask our clients to turn and look at their partner in the eyes and share something that's vulnerable? And I can't tell you how many times my clients have just said I.

Can'T do that or I won't do that.

Yeah. And they'll have just told it to me. And I'll say, okay, that what you just told me is so important. Will you turn? I'll say, I can't. I can't. That's so, so hard and scary. Oftentimes to feel vulnerable and to allow someone. What I love to do is ask my, my couples. I'll say, look in your partner's eyes. What do you see? Once you take 30 seconds and, and that 30 seconds of eye contact feels like an eternity sometimes.

And so much discomfort because we've stopped seeing each other and really looking into those eyes and, and sometimes it's because of the hurt and the pain and anger and I, again, that makes a ton of sense when we've been hurt it's not like we just want to go naturally, connect because the. As they often say, the eyes are the window into the soul. Well, I don't want you to see me if I've been doing something that's inappropriate or hurtful, anything from abuse to addictive behaviors, secretive behaviors, or if you've hurt me. I mean, if. What's that phrase? If looks could kill. Right. Because the energies of, you know, if there looks, you know, the eye contact, I mean, man, I'd be dead. So again, I think we are attuned to each other. We use our senses to really, really see each other or not see each other. And when we don't allow our senses to, to show up and be present. Eye contact, our facial expression. So we're flat, affected. We're not. Our tone of voice is even flat. Those are all messages that I'm not, I'm not in the mood for connection. And we know it. We just don't communicate it openly. But I can tell, you can tell when somebody is not having eye contact, when their tone of voice is upset, facial expression is flat. You know, there's something off, you just might not know what.

And I think this is where we come back into connecting with ourselves, but also being able to connect with our partner and say, hey, what's going on? I recently had a. A client who, who asked her partner some really hard questions. Some really, really hard questions. She was terrified to do it, but she asked some really hard questions. And it. And it turned into this conversation about the spouse bringing their phone to bed. And, and then it. They talked about why aren't we connecting at night? And there was a lot of miscommunication that was happening. And the partner's like, yeah, I'm not really connecting with you. I'm your phone being there. And so, yeah, I'm. I'm not interested in spending time with you because I'm so angry about your phone. And boy, when they were able to start having some conversations about what do you need? It. It changed. It changed so much for them.

Well, and, and that's part of what you're describing. There is the vulnerability to say, I'm. I'm not ready for connection. I'm upset or I'm angry. Why, but because of the phone. Well, what is it, what is it about the phone? It's, It's a distraction. We're not having conversations. And really what it's saying, we're not meeting each other's needs or I don't feel like you're meeting my Needs because you're so into whatever it may be. And that's why in the work that I often do with couples is I try to create habits or patterns of connection. And there's a whole list of things that I work on. I say, okay, let's just try a simple exercise. One of my favorites for our listeners is to take three minutes at the end of the day and write down something that you've learned, something that you felt, something that you've experienced during the day. You do it independently and then you share with each other what you learned and what you felt and what you experienced. It is a fascinating experience because they get deeper into this conversation. Well, I didn't know you were thinking that. Well, I've been thinking about it for a week or two, but today has really been on my mind. Well, thank you for sharing. Now we're having this insight into this relationship because we've done a simple little exercise of taking three minutes to think about what I thought, what I felt, what I've experienced during the day.

And that's so interesting that that sounds like a check in, but it's a different type of a check in. And it's really an empathy and a connecting, a connecting exercise. And we think so often this is a person or these are the people that I'm choosing to spend my time with. But how often am I showing up and saying, here's where I'm at, here's what's going on with me. Can I shift just for a second over to. I, I don't know what your familiarity is with neuro linguistic programming, but back in the 90s in college, I took a class on it and it was a workshop on a weekend. And one of the things they did is they said, and I, I didn't really even know what it was when I, when I went. But they said, as, as they talked about body language, they had us sit in a chair and we'd begin to talk and they'd say, now I want you to just like move your hand in a certain way or move your leg in a certain way. And they were teaching us about something called mirroring. And when we're connected and in tune with someone. And I noticed this in my therapy sessions, often unconsciously, if my client's leaning forward and they're open, I'll, I'll be open leaning forward. And if we're both in that space, if I lean back, if I cross my legs, if I put my hand up, my clients will do the same thing. And we don't even really recognize that our bodies are matching up with how our head's tilted, with how our legs are crossed or our hands are. And this is something that we involuntarily are doing because our bodies, it's like we're just syncing up with the other person.

And what a great way to put that we're syncing up and, or were unsynced, not sinking. And, and really, in situations like that, you can tell there's conflict. You can feel the tension in, in, in what's actually happening because one partner may be, you know, trying to sink and the other partner won't sink. And then I feel rejected because you're not connecting with me. And, and that whether it's a child. We talked a little bit before we started the podcast today about the still face experiment where, you know, a mother was actually asked to, you know, play with the child and then turn their head for a second and then come back and just do a still emotion, flat affect, no expression, not responding to the child, and the distress that the non response actually put into that child watching that video. If you've never seen the still face experiment, let me strongly encourage you to do so, because what we're talking about here is attunement and misattunement. And when we can't repair that attachment wound or that, that indifference, boy, the interpretation was wrong. Was wrong. What's wrong, and what I love about.

That video is the mom is just sitting there with no response, and the baby is trying to get her attention. I know last week you talked about these bids for connection and that baby was saying, hey, hey. The baby was doing everything. She was laughing and then she was like making sounds and she was pointing to things. Everything she was doing, she. She was doing everything in her bag that she could find to get mom to connect. And when mom didn't, she protested, she screamed, she cried, and then she shut down. And it's in a very short period of time, but she just went through this whole sequential. And when you look at that, and then we look at our relationships, that's what we do. We try to engage, we try to connect. Are you there? Can you see me? Can you hear me? Can you feel me? And then we protest. And that's oftentimes when we're angry or upset or frustrated with other people. Why can't you see me? Why can't you get me? I'm right here. I'm right in front of you. And then we shut down.

Right? And let's talk about that for A second. When we shut down, our best thing that we can do is acknowledge something's off, acknowledge that I'm feeling this disconnection and I want to stay connected to you. Far too often I think we take the defensive posture and now you've pulled away. Okay, fine. And. But internally we're not fine because we know something's off and we long for that connection. So if you feel that misattunement, your desire for connection, if you express it in a positive way, I. I feel something's often I. I really want to stay connected. I really have enjoyed the last few days, the last few weeks. What's happening inside of you? Help me understand what am I missing?

And if I can add to that as well, Dr. Skinner, there's so much sadness, there's so much grief that happens in that space. And when you're saying I can notice this is happening for you, but also really recognizing, I feel so sad right now. I feel lonely and I. Inside, I feel empty and hollow. And I just have this yearning to. To connect with you and. And so really understanding what's going on for us as we're sharing that with our partner as well.

And again, that goes back to that self awareness of what I really need. Again, it's really difficult to connect with others when we're misattuned to self. So as we get ready to close up today, what are some of your key thoughts, key takeaways that you would like our listeners to understand?

I think one of the first, one of the main things that we're talking about is for us to connect or attune with others, to feel for us to feel felt. One, we need to fill our. We need to understand where we're at. One of the tools I would really briefly share is just a scan. A scan from head to toe. When something's happening and we're feeling out, just scanning our body from head to toe, not do I feel tense inside. Where do I feel tense? What's going on inside of my own body? So connecting with ourselves first, so then we. And then saying, is there an emotion that I'm feeling right now? And what might this emotion be? Giving it a name that helps us to center ourselves. And then recognizing I might have to change and shift where I'm at so that I can connect with that other person as well. I need to see where they are, look at their body language, look at their posture, look at their tone, look at their voice. And also put that into words. It looks like I'm seeing this. Is this what's going on?

Yeah. So pause, reflect, identify attune.

Start with me before I start with you.

Yeah. Right. So real quick, pause for a second. Reflect on what I'm feeling. Identify it, meaning, give it a voice, give it a language, and then work to attune.

And I'll say, this is hard work.

Yeah. No, and it's hard work individually and hard work in relationships. Yes.

And it takes practice, and we don't always get it right. And that's okay as long as we keep trying.

And the more we work on it, the better we get. All right, I want to just conclude with a couple thoughts. We as a society really have struggled to connect, to see others to. I mean, we have a lonelier population than maybe we've ever had. And one of the core challenges that we have as an entire culture is, is we got too many people who are not being seen. So if I could give our listeners. If I could give you an assignment today, pause, identify two or three people that you would really like to attune to that you'd like to understand maybe what's going on in their world, in their lives, and ask them a few questions. Ask them the questions of cure out of curiosity, in an effort to connect and see how much you're actually missing in their lives. I. I really believe that far too much or far too often, we really aren't seeing our. The people around us, and they may be suffering. They may be going through things that we don't understand. And if we will just go in with curiosity and a desire to learn, we'll have way better connections. And. And we. And they will benefit from our exchange.

And I would just add to that that they are probably having that same longing as well.

That's a great point. Great point. All right, Marianne, thank you so much for your time today. To our listeners, let me just invite you to focus on the idea of attunement this week. And then if you're willing to share your experience of. Just take notes on what you experienced, send us an email@questionshumanintimacy.com sharing your experience. I'd love to, absolutely love to hear some of your stories. So if I can give you an assignment, try to be attuned, and then share your experience with us. That's your assignment for the week.

Like, I love that idea. That's. That's so fantastic, because what you're doing there, Dr. Skinner, is saying, share with us, connect with us. Let us know what you're learning from this and how this is helping you I'm, I'm grateful for our listeners and I'm just really grateful to have a place to, to talk about this and to invite all of us to slow down a little bit and notice where and how am I showing up and how is it impacting my relationships. And this is these are some simple things that can really improve our connection with other people. So think. Thank you everybody for being here.

All right, well, thanks again for listening. Thank you, Marianne, for your time. To our listeners, may you be blessed. I we're really sure. I'm gonna share one more thing with you guys. As I was taking my children to school or things throughout their growing up years, I would often say and I'm going to close today with this, have a good, fantastic, outsole, marvelous, extraordinarily great week if you choose. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll talk to you later. Bye bye.

Smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh Something surrounds you it's like you're shining, you're staring.