67: Why You Can’t Do What You Need To Do - Getting Passed the Gap Between Knowledge and Action...

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm a life and relationship coach and a motivational speaker, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. My passion is helping women find their superpower, embrace it, and share it with the world. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470 or go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Today's topic is getting past the gap between knowledge and action. My guest is Greg Clunis, who is an author and podcast host of Tiny Leaps, Big Changes. So if you're looking to make any big changes this year, listen to this podcast. Greg explains how those tiny steps can definitely get you there. First, my wins and my fails. Ooh, I had a big— I think it was a win and a fail. I recently had somebody who means the world to me, someone I'm in very close relationship with. She accidentally emailed something to me that was meant for her therapist. Among other things, she spoke about me and it took me a minute before I realized, wait, this isn't an email to me. And she spoke some truths. That I needed to hear, and that hurt. My initial reaction, I think, was to say nothing because she didn't know that she had emailed it to me. Long story on how that happened. I'm not going to share that one. But anyway, she didn't realize that it was in my email, and part of me thought, well, I just won't say anything because she doesn't know and she didn't intend it for me. And I'll just kind of keep it to myself. And just that whole experience was kind of a fail for me, just that I failed in that relationship and probably on some level maybe knew I was, but not to that extent. And so it was good for me to hear it, but that's definitely a fail. My win, though, is that instead of doing and saying nothing and trying to kind of fix it in a different way on my own, I picked up the phone and I called her. And we had a great conversation. And that's something I would have told my client to do. And so it's always nice when I follow my own advice or even my own imagined advice. So that was my win, is that I picked up the phone, I called her, we talked about our relationship. And I think that both of us— I know that both of us are the better for it. So that's life. That's real life, and those are my wins and fails for the week. So here we go. Let's listen in on the conversation between me and Greg Cloonis. Greg, thank you so much for coming to the show today. I am so excited to talk about why we can't do what we need to do, 'cause I am definitely sometimes a part of that struggle. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. And I mean, I'm definitely right there with you. I think it's something We all struggle with, and it's really just about trying to be better every day.

Absolutely. So before we get started, if you can share with us your— I'm going to say Superman, but your win and your fail for today.

Let's see. My biggest win would be I've been really, really into my morning routine lately. Historically, it's not something I've been able to stick with, but lately I've kind of needed it and sort of craved it. And so I have this massive like notepad that I keep right by my desk. And every single morning I wake up and I start writing out what I need to do. Today specifically, as I was making that list, I could just feel that it had clicked in as a habit and as a routine. Nice. Like I've been doing it long enough. So that was something that it was just like gratifying to have that recognition of, cool, this is now a thing that like I need to do every morning. And I love that. And as far as fail, so my fail is actually from earlier this week. I'm very much prioritizing my physical fitness and my nutrition. I guess not earlier this week, earlier this month. I was visiting my parents, my mom upstate. I stepped on the scale for the first time in a couple of months because I hadn't been working out. I've just been so heads down with book stuff that I just haven't been prioritizing my health. Right. Much further than it's ever gone in my life.

Yeah, I don't know why it tends to do that. You know, it doesn't ever go the opposite way without intention.

So that was kind of a shock of, oh, this is much worse than I thought it was. I need to make sure this is fixed.

Totally get that. It's funny because I shared my fail a couple of weeks ago is that I gained 12 pounds over Thanksgiving, which is absolutely crazy and embarrassing, but it is the truth.

Yeah, I mean, that's about the amount I gained as well, is like 12 to 15.

Wow. Yeah, it is kind of— it wakes you up. So thank you for sharing that. And I totally get what you're talking about when you recognize that something you've been working hard to put in practice is now— I love the word you said, it's like a need.

Yeah,

that is so gratifying. And I've had that same experience with my workouts, with other things I put into practice, my meditating. So it's great that you shared that because it's encouraging that other people can get there. Things that maybe you even weren't interested in doing, that you dreaded doing, can actually become something that you need.

What I really love about it is that once you get to that place where the basic version of it is something that you're like craving, you can now start to improve it. Because it's tough if you try to improve a process when the process itself isn't ingrained. Like then you're trying to tackle too many things, you're going to get overwhelmed and that's when you end up quitting. Whereas now, now that it's like, okay, I wake up and I need to do this. Now I can start adding things after that to improve it even further or I can modify it to make it better and I won't have to worry about, well, does this mean I'm going to forget about doing it? Because I can't forget at this point. It's something that I need to do every morning.

And that is a perfect kind of segue into the whole concept of your book, which is Tiny Leaps, Big Changes, because it's all about the tiny steps instead of trying to make these monumental. And of course, you know, it's January now, trying to make those monumental changes. It's about the tiny ones, huh?

Yeah. And this is something that I've kind of lived with my entire life. It's really a philosophy that my parents passed down to me, never directly. They never like sat me down and said, hey, Greg, you need to pursue tiny leaps. Like, it was never that. But they did through their actions.

Right.

Show me what was possible. And that sort of crystallized into this concept. But when you really look back on your life, everything good that you have and everything bad, by the way, came from a series of small decisions or small actions or small behaviors.

Isn't that the truth?

It's always just sort of the summation of things. And so if that's the case, then the reverse is also true, that what's going to happen in the next 10, 15, 20 years will be the summation of what you're doing now.

I love that. That really spoke to me because I just had that experience, that aha moment, maybe just a week or so ago. There was something going on in my life, and that was the exact thing that I thought about and came to the conclusion is, you know, it was this, this, this, plus this and this that got me here. It's not that one big thing. It's all the little decisions and the little changes. So, yes. That is so true. So let's talk about why busy women, why people in general have that experience of, we all know what to do, right? But why don't we do it?

It's interesting. As I was researching the book, that was the big question I wanted to answer, was why is it that we know what to do but don't do it? And in the process of trying to find that answer, I did 3 main things. I, of course, looked at my own life and tried to analyze When I took action, what were the factors that caused it? When I didn't take action, what were the factors? I looked at other people's lives and did case studies on people. I interviewed experts in various things like passion and so on and so forth. And I dove headfirst into as many research documents as I could find on things like behavioral psychology and economics and so on and so forth. Mm-hmm. What it all boiled down to If I had to simplify as much as possible, is fear. In some fashion, it's always fear. Yeah. Now, that may not be you shaking in your boots fear. That could also be the ingrained fears of different, of unknown. It could be the fears that come from, from our evolution of not wanting to stand out from the tribe. It could be fears of we're just not good enough or fears of potential boredom. It's always fear.

It is.

Where that led me with the book is trying to deal with fear in the same way that you might deal with it if your kids are afraid of the dark. What do you do? You turn on a nightlight. Why? Because it illuminates. It allows them to see that there's nothing to be scared of. So in the same way, if we can look at the fears we have, whether subconscious, conscious, evolutionary, by choice, so on and so forth. If we can look at those fears and shed a light on them so that we understand that there's nothing actually there, then we can start to get past it and move forward.

I love that because when I think of the illuminating, I think, okay, you know, you shed light. You don't shed so much light that you're getting rid of the thing you're fearing. You just shed enough to be able to look at it and sit in it. As you were even saying that, like, why I thought, just according to my life, thinking about I mean, obviously I'm a therapist, right? And so as a therapist, I can always easily look into other people's lives and go, okay, here's your big forest. These are the trees. This is what's going on. Here's the path. And it's super easy. But, you know, when I'm in it, I sometimes will ask myself, what would I tell myself as a therapist? You know, what would I tell myself if I was sitting on the couch? And I will usually quickly come up with what I would tell myself, but then the following that advice is a whole nother thing. And it does come down to fear. So, you know, it's a good question because I'm thinking, well, what is it? It's not fear of failure. Is it fear of maybe the work?

It's fear of a lot of things.

Yeah.

So one conversation I had very recently, this wasn't even something I was originally thinking of until I had this conversation. It may help me realize that sometimes the fear is of having to face yourself. And so where the conversation ended up was us talking about the fact that when something's still in your head, let's say you want to go to the gym, you want to get in better shape, or let's say you truly believe you're good at this thing and you want to start a company around it. While it's in your head, you can live in the imaginary world of, if I did this, I'm good enough that it would result in this.

Mm-hmm.

But the second you take an action and have to actually look at data, look at real results that you cannot trick yourself, All of a sudden, you either have to face that you were good enough or you weren't. And so the fear of having to face that, of having to decide, am I good enough or not? Like, that often holds people back for many of the more like physical goals of, I want to start a business, I want to go to the gym, I want to eat better, I want to have a better relationship, whatever it is.

It's really about not trusting yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great way to put it.

Yeah, not trusting, because when you look at the gem, not trusting that you will really be able to do it. When you can sit in the fantasy part, yeah, that's easy, and you can fantasize about it, and it sounds great. But when it gets down to the doing it, it's the fear of, will I really? And you know, I hear so many clients, and I always get on a client whenever they say, I hope I will, because when it comes to yourself— You heard it here. Well, exactly. And I always say, listen, You can hope somebody else will do something. You can hope something happens. You can't hope that you will do something because you're the only person that can control that. You either choose or you don't choose. But a lot of people will say, well, I hope I don't do this and I hope I don't do that. It's totally taking the control out of yourself as if you don't have it.

Yeah, that is such a fantastic way to put it. What I loved about the last 3 years of doing my podcast and the year or so that I've been working with the book now has been, how do we get past this?

Right.

So we walk away from this podcast episode, we understand it's fear, we understand that we need to take back control, all of those things. But how do we actually put this into practice? One of the most effective things that I've found Is this question of like really forcing yourself to face the fear and face the things that have sort of been piled on top of you. So limiting beliefs, for example, like that's something that has been embedded in your brain throughout however long you've been alive and all the different experiences you've had that have given you evidence to believe this thing. So maybe your parents told you you weren't good. Maybe your friends also said it. Maybe you failed a million times, like whatever it is, all of a sudden you think you're not good enough to do this.

Right.

The only way to dispel that, the only way to get past it is to give yourself evidence of the opposite and to do that often enough that you start to reprogram that belief because one time isn't going to actually do it. This is a deeply held belief. So you need to be able to face the evidence that you can do something enough times over and over again That you're able to actually start to believe the opposite. And the best way to do that is to not overwhelm yourself. Because if you try to take a massive action, if you decide, hey, I'm going to lose weight, and then you jump on the paleo diet and you restrict yourself from eating all these things you love,

of

course you're going to fail because it's overwhelming.

Right.

And human behavior tracks to doing the normal routines and the normal things that are already programmed into us when we are overwhelmed, when we experience stress. So if that's the case, we need to progress in a way that reduces the input of stress to the point that we're able to keep tackling it, keep moving forward. And then this is why the tiny leaps model works, is because eventually we are there. Eventually we are eating super clean. Eventually we are Working out regularly. Eventually we have the fitness and the health that we wanted, but we didn't get overwhelmed along the way, and that was the secret why we kept doing it.

So let's say we wanna do something like lose weight, or we wanna do something like write a book, or whatever it is, and that's our New Year's resolution. Instead of saying, okay, well, I'm gonna go on paleo, or I'm going to, you know, start going to the gym 6 times a week— I had a client who decided to go to the gym 2 times a day from doing nothing.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, right. And we all know, of course, it didn't last. It started out really well. But anyway, so what should we do instead as we try to tackle these things that we know we should do or want to do in our lives?

Once you know what it is, what you want to do, the first thing you should always do is the tiniest, tiniest step you can take. And I mean micro. I'm a big believer, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this as a therapist. I'm a big believer in The role that identity plays in our ability to take actions. And what I mean by that is how we think of ourselves, who we think we are. I love that one. So if you are not the type of person who goes to the gym regularly, and you all of a sudden decide logically, hey, I want to go to the gym, but emotionally you don't think of yourself as that person. And so trying to go to the gym twice a week, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to jump back in. Because you don't have that identity. Now if you start to gain that identity in any small capacity, it makes it easier to keep doing it because we want to act in accordance with the things that we identify ourselves as. So for something like the gym, I would much rather see somebody just sign up for a membership, not even work out that day, like just go sign up, or just walk past it. Like I would much rather see them do that because now they're starting to gain even 0.5% of the identity of that type person, and that'll make it easier to take the next step and the next step and the next step. And along the way, you're just reinforcing it because you're becoming more and more of that type of person.

I love that. It's those successive approximations. I love it because I put that into practice myself without even thinking about it, because a lot of times when there's something that I want to do, especially when it comes to writing or a project, I will often just say, okay, I'll write it down. And say, okay, I just, I just want to put it in my brain because I trust my brain enough to know that when I write it down and put it in my brain, that my brain will work on it even when I'm not paying attention to it. And then maybe next week when I come back to it or over the week, something will pop up and I'll, you know, write something about it or put something in. If I just start with that little step of, I want to put this in my brain, it does work. Yeah.

Yeah. And that idea that I actually love that you brought that up because it's the same reason that if you guys have ever heard the quote, You're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Absolutely. Yes.

The same reason that works. That has actually nothing to do with the people. It's about what you talk about.

Yes.

Because the types of people you spend time with will control the types of conversations you have. And then those conversations affect the way you think. And then because you are thinking in a certain way, you naturally take different actions that align with those thoughts. You notice things that align with those thoughts and so on and so forth. So ultimately, If you aren't able to change your friend group or that sort of thing, like you can just do exactly that. Start writing things down so that you affect the thoughts and then those thoughts then affect your behaviors.

Yeah. You know, the beautiful thing about the internet is that even if you aren't able to find those people, you know, in the world that you can connect with on a real-time basis, you can find Inspiration, and you can find people who are like the people you want to be, and you can find them on the internet and they can pour into you. You can listen to their stuff.

Yeah.

And that's another way of incorporating that.

That's one of the beautiful things about— as negative as social media has definitely been in the last like 2, 3 years, and this whole idea of like echo chambers sort of controlling what we see and so on and so forth,

right?

We have to remember that we're the ones curating the stuff we see. Based on the things we click, the things we watch, so on and so forth. And so if that's the case, we can just be proactive about it. We can say, hey, I want to be the type of person who starts a business and choose to fill our feeds with content from people who have done that or who are talking about it or who are teaching about it. Like we can choose to fill our feeds with the things that we want to become. And by doing so, we will naturally align better with that type of person.

Excellent advice. Excellent advice. And we don't really realize how influential the things we put in our brains are and the things that we allow other people or we open up ourselves to, especially when it comes to numb, you know, kind of brain-numbing type activities that people think are brain-numbing, like watching TV and watching reality shows, things like that. It does have an effect.

Yeah, it always boggles my mind. I think everyone listening to this show knows that, like, if you talk to them about propaganda, like, let's say in North Korea, like, they know the effect that that has on a person, that it controls the way they think and believe and so on and so forth. But then when you take that same thing and you say, oh, well, let's look at the content you're consuming, like, all of a sudden it's different. All of a sudden in their mind, it doesn't have the same effect, but it does.

Right.

Things you consume control a lot of what you believe about the world.

They do, without a doubt, without a doubt. Excellent. So can you tell me a little bit about the 6 stages of personal change?

Yeah. So the 6 stages of personal change is my attempt to put a repeatable model on changing your life. And it's something that I want to continue developing even after this book. This book is sort of the first attempt to document it. Even after this, I want to keep having conversations with experts in various areas and start to refine it even further because I think that it can be something valuable. The idea is that the way it manifests itself might be different for each person, but in the same way that we all experience roughly the same things when we're going through guilt, we also experience roughly the same things when we're changing something or making a shift from one thing that has been a part of our lives for a little while and means something to something else. The way that I've broken that down is into these 6 stages, the first of which is a moment of frustration and inspiration. So something that triggers a reason to change, basically.

Mm-hmm.

Why is a change supposed to happen? Well, because Our boss finally did something that was the last straw. So now we're looking for new jobs, like that kind of moment.

Mm-hmm.

And then the second is kind of understanding what your options are, getting a broader scope of what's available to you. Because what ends up happening for a lot of people is they get frustrated, they get inspired to do something, and it kind of ends there because they go through this process, they maybe start looking, They don't really see anything that they connect with. They don't really see anything that seems to make sense as a potential step for them. And without that connection, they just fall back into the default behavior because there's nothing pushing them to go further than that state of frustration. So between identifying options and then finally connecting with one, now you are in stage 3. And if you make it here, and this is that connection piece, you have a really good chance of actually moving your actions forward. Because once you get it out of that frustration trap of step 1, where you just get frustrated, you sit down and maybe you start looking for options, but nothing connects. And then you go to sleep. And then the next morning, because you took actions and were looking for options, you feel like you were making progress. So you don't feel that bad anymore and you just go back to your job. And that's the trap that a lot of people fall into. But once you make it past that, Now you're in a stage of, cool, what are the resources that are out there for me? Like, what are the things that can help me make this happen? So let's say you're in that job, you find something that you're attracted to, you decide, hey, you know what, I want to start a business. I want to finally leave this job. I've got enough money saved. Like, I can go and do this. And you connect to this idea. Now you need to learn how to start a business. So you're searching for resources, you're trying to learn, you're trying to Figure out how to structure it and should you hire people who need an accountant, all of these different resources that were always there. They always existed, but you only now notice them because this is an option you've chosen to take.

Such a good point. Yeah.

Before you just ignored it. It's like when you're driving around, maybe you're driving to work and the radio plays an ad for something that you feel like you've heard this thing a million times, but all of a sudden It clicks. Well, it's because now you're looking for that thing.

Exactly.

So the same thing happens here. All these resources are available to us. All these groups are available to us, but they don't click until we need them. So finally, stage 4, we find them. We start going through this process. Stage 5 is about the tiny leaps of it. It's the day-to-day behaviors, the stuff that you kind of just have to grind through and it sucks and you're going to sort of cycle back and forth between stage 4 and 5 where you're heavily leaning on resources and finding new resources to support you and then doing the day-to-day behaviors and just sort of grinding through it. And then stage 6 is kind of a fun one for me. And the way I write it in the book is that stage 6 doesn't actually exist. You just sort of stay in stage 5. But I still put it there because I think it's worth reminding people that Change is an ongoing process. It's a journey. It is something that you don't just go into it and then there's this endpoint and now you stop changing. That doesn't happen. So stage 6 is that you just keep going back through the process. Maybe you hit your goals, but you are going to move those goalposts and set bigger goals. Or maybe you don't hit them, but you're going to keep trying.

Cycle through.

Exactly. And so it's never about Here's my goal. I want to finally build a business and make $100,000 and that's it. It's cool. Now I've made $100,000. How do I make a million? Or how do I make 2? Or whatever it is. Maybe it's not business related, but that's the model as it currently exists. And I'll be the first to say that I included it in the book because I think it's at a state where it's valuable, but it's definitely far from perfect. And it probably never will be perfect, but I do think that it can be developed further and create a model that both people who are going through change without controlling it can at least get some understanding of what's going on. And people who are trying to control a change, they're trying to specifically say, I want to change this part of my life. They can look at this model and say, okay, these are the 6 steps I need to go through. How can I create a scenario where I navigate through this without it killing me basically?

Right, in the best way possible. Kind of like the stages of grief. When you understand them and what they are, it can help you as you walk yourself through them. So excellent. Thank you for that. So how can people get your book? And do you have any one last tip for somebody who is really trying to get past that gap between, I know I need to do it, and how do I get myself into action?

Yeah. So first, if you do want a copy of the book, it is out today. You can find the links to purchase it there. Yay!

Congratulations.

Thank you so much. You can find the links to purchase it online at tinyleapsbook.com, or it is traditionally published. So it's in Target, Walmart, Barnes& Noble, all the places that you might find books.

Awesome.

If you feel like picking up a copy, that's dope. And I appreciate it. And I hope that you're willing to share your feedback with me because I'd like to improve all of these things as I get that feedback. As far as my last tip, I end every single one of my podcast episodes saying the same thing. So roughly all 315 episodes say exactly the same thing, and it's that all big changes come from the tiny leaps you take every day. We kind of touched on this before, that if you really look at your life, wherever you are, both good and bad, It's always the summation of different things that added to this. It's never just this one thing happened overnight and now therefore I'm here. That's never it. So the advice I would give is to sit down and look at your life and try to be as analytical as possible, remove emotion from it as much as you can, and just make a list of everything that you are super happy about, that you're super grateful for. And everything that maybe could be improved. And I would like you to pick one thing from each and just try to trace it back. Just try to plot out what were the decisions I made that led to this. And there's always going to be external stuff that was outside of your control, but focus in on what were the things that you chose, that you did that led to this outcome. And don't, especially as it relates to the negative side, Don't beat yourself up over it. Don't get mad at yourself. Be kind because the minute you start to be your own bully, that's when you're going to start taking further negative behaviors. So don't even bother with that. But if you can sit down and plot out what that path looked like, it'll help you better understand how your behaviors are linking to your current results and will help you change your behaviors going forward so that you can get better results. in the future. So that'd be my challenge to you.

Excellent, excellent challenge, especially for starting out the new year. So yes, I'm looking forward to reading your book. And what about your blog? I'm sorry, not your blog, your podcast. Can you share your podcast info?

Sure. So the podcast is by the same name. It's Tiny Leaps, Big Changes, both for the book and the podcast. And the one thing that I always like to make sure is crystal clear, I really wanted with this book and with the podcast to do Something different from what other podcasters do. The standard practice is, hey, I've got all these episodes, let's turn them into transcripts and see if we can piece them together. I wanted to create something that were supplements to each other, or rather complements to each other.

Mm-hmm.

And so the podcast's job in this whole picture is to handle the topic of what can we do? What are the things that we can do on a day-to-day basis And how do they affect us? The book's job is that question of, well, now we know what to do. Why aren't we doing it? I say that because if you pick up the book and you feel like it was valuable, you want to listen to the show, you can do a search for it on any podcast platform, wherever you get your shows, but you're never going to hear— like, you're not going to feel like the things are repeated. It should feel complementary and as though either can be consumed alone, but together they're more powerful.

Awesome. Great job. Well, thank you so much, Greg, for coming on the show. Congratulations on your book. Best of luck with it. And we'll talk soon.

Thank you so much for having me. This was an absolute honor.

Thanks for listening in to such a great conversation with Greg Cloonas. I hope that you will take some of that advice as you try to make all those awesome big changes for your life. for your life moving forward. So here we go. It's real talk time with Dr. Zoe. All questions are curated from my Ask Dr. Zoe column at thegritandgraceproject.org. The most recent question is, Dr. Zoe, how do you converse with your husband about an invasive mother? I found her one day in our bedroom changing our sheets. She has cleaned our bedroom without being asked in the past and puts things in our house where she feels it needs to be. When brought up to my husband, He gets extremely defensive and says, she does so much for us. She watches our son and saves us money and our son loves her. How can I relay the invasive behavior and lack of privacy without making him feel like I'm ungrateful? This is a constant issue in our marriage since I was pregnant and had our son. Prior to that, there was zero issue. I feel you. Mother-in-law issues are tough and that's why I am talking about this one today. So my first advice is you definitely do need to tread lightly and you do that by not Triangulating. Triangulating means that you're having a relationship with somebody else with a third party involved, sometimes through someone else or that other person is intricate in the relationship with that person and usually there's nothing healthy about a triangle. Relationships should have direct connection between 2 people. So that's something you just absolutely don't want to do. This is your mother's— I'm sorry, this is your husband's mother. Of course, he's got a ton of allegiance to her and it's not actually his job to mediate the relationship between his own mother and his wife, and that's actually just torture for him. So you're asking him to confront his mother about a problem that he doesn't have. I know that might sound hard to hear, but that's the truth. He loves both of you, as he should, but basically you two are kind of playing a tug-of-war with his emotions. And this happens often. That's really why mother-in-law issues exist, and you're definitely not the first mother-daughter-in-law combo to do this. So this is your mother-in-law. If you have an issue with her and you do have some legit issues, by the way, I just want to make that clear. You have some legit issues and I actually had something very similar happen when I was a young wife, but your husband's not really the one to go to. You got to go to her. Your mother-in-law, she's basically testing your boundaries. She's basically kind of trying to trample all over them and your husband is either not strong enough to keep the boundaries or he just doesn't have the same boundaries that you do. And the reality is guys really just don't get the subtle dynamics of women and our drama. It doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but they're totally oblivious to the power play that happens between 2 women. They just don't really get it. And your mother-in-law might be playing kind of that power game, or maybe she really thinks she's helping. Maybe the boundaries in their family are very different than the boundaries in your family of origin, but either way, you do deserve to be heard. And if it makes you uncomfortable, you need to speak up. So get your husband out of the mix, sit down with your mother-in-law and have a conversation. Let her know that you appreciate everything that she's done and that she's doing with your family for your son, but certain things make you feel uncomfortable and ask her not to do those things. Now, when I did this, my mother-in-law got angry, so that might happen, but sometimes that happens in relationships. We have to hear truths just like I talked about. The truth I happened upon earlier in my win and fail, and it actually can make for a better relationship. And your husband might get relieved to be fired from this role of mediator because, you know, if there is a codependent aspect of it, he's definitely struggling too. So your job is to stay firm and loving, approach her directly, focus on healthy boundaries. And in the long run, remember there's health in detriangulating. It is definitely worth it and you probably need to have, you know, a conversation with your husband too and just let him know what you're doing and why. Thanks for tuning in to The Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss a show. If you're interested in coaching or therapy or you just want to get a little more help, go to my website at drzoeshaw.com or any of my social medias at the handle @DrZoeShaw. Join my free newsletter by texting the word JOIN to 38470. send out Sunday motivation. Who doesn't need that, right? I look forward to speaking with you wonderful ladies on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, redefining your Superwoman with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the Superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.