Gaslighting, Manipulation & Mislabeled Pain: Reclaiming Nuance in Relationships with Dr. Morgan Anderson Part 2

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Welcome to Dear Dr. Tracy, the podcast that dives deep into the messy, beautiful world of relationships. I'm Dr. Tracy, clinical psychologist, relationship expert and your go to guide for navigating relationships, boundaries in laws, and everything in between. Whether you're striving to rekindle the spark, set healthy limits, or build deeper connections, this is the space where real talk meets expert advice. Together we'll tackle the tough questions, untangle the sticky situations, and uncover the small shifts that lead to big transformations in your relationships. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's rewrite the stories you tell yourself. This is Dear Dr. Tracy, your guide to creating relationships that feel good.

Thank you for coming back to the podcast. I'm sitting with Dr. Morgan Anderson and we are in part two of our conversation around why we want to step out of using words or misusing them, rather gaslighting, manipulation. And so if you haven't listened to part one, go back and listen to part one. We talk all about the problems around using this language. We talk about how we miss context and nuance, really missing the sense of intimacy and vulnerability and why we want to use these terms. Dr. Morgan and I also define gaslighting in that episode. But let's shift into this conversation now where we want to start exploring. So how can we actually show up in our partnerships knowing that these terms are ways that we decrease intimacy and connection? They're harmful in our relationships. So then how can we start shifting this language and instead of hanging out in these big character attacking terms, we come back into deepening our connection and intimacy. So, Morgan, one of the first things I immediately thought about, and which has been a game changer in how I understand even my own relationship, is this idea around curiosity. Curiosity and trying to build understanding, which often means we are also losing a bit of certainty when we do that. So I'm curious how you bring that into the work that you do or the relationship that you're in.

Such a good question. Yes, I think we have to use curiosity. It's our superpower in our. In our relationships. And I, I was thinking about the conversation I had with my partner Robert yesterday, and we were talking about.

Him working in my business with me, which is very new, and it's brought up so many different dynamics for us. And I, you know, had called him out, just as I said in episode one. I had said, you're getting. So this is, this is the thing I want to talk about with curiosity. You have to be curious about yourself. You have to be willing to say, what am I really feeling in this moment? So when I, you know, I took a deep breath, I slowed down, and I was able to say, I'm really scared that this dynamic isn't going to work because I actually love it so much and I love having you in the business and it's so much fun. And I feel scared that maybe it's not going to work. And that was so much more vulnerable than the way that I had approached it earlier, where I was being protective and, you know, labeling him as defensive because curiosity, with ourselves and with our partners, it's very vulnerable. It's. It's connecting to our emotional selves and it's, it's also the thing that brings us closer. It's. It's how we can grow through conflict and actually come out a closer couple on the other side of conflict because we're willing to be curious about our emotional selves. And then when you show that curiosity to a partner, I think it's one of the most romantic, loving things that you can do of say, you know, I genuinely want to see you and I want to understand you and I, I want to connect to your emotional experience.

And I didn't learn how to do this till my 30s. I will say, you know, it's. It's not like we're, we're modeled this growing up. It's not, it's not something that comes easily. It, it really is intentional learning communication frameworks and, and learning how to regulate your emotions and how to show up differently in conflict.

I really appreciate you sharing that, Morgan, because I, I do think that sense of curiosity isn't just about what your partner is experiencing, but also what's deeper down inside. And I too, didn't really learn what that looked like until later. And I remember there, there are two moments I'm thinking of. One was the start of my PhD, so I was in my first year and I was reading through Sue's hold me type book through the manuscript edits, and she had given it to all of us in our supervision. So Dr. Sue Johnson, she's the creator of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, and she said, well, you're in a relationship, Tracy. Here you go. Take this chapter. So I took it home to Craig. We were long distance, still very early in our relationship, and we through it. And it was interesting because in that moment I did start to have this aha moment. And I remember saying to him, I'm scared of needing you. I am afraid of losing you. And that deepened our bond early on. But of course I wasn't quite forming all of the skills and tools within myself. I was helping others, of course. But then I remember, I'm thinking of our early days of marriage, of moving in together. We had been five years long distance. He wasn't in my business then. At that point we were in our separate tracks because Morgan, like you guys and we had talked about this briefly. Greg's in my business with me as well, and, and it's our businesses that we run. And I remember those more explosive moments that I couldn't go deep down inside of what was really happening for me. And it was often this sense of loneliness and needing connection and not being able to, I think is the right way to say it, to slow down and be curious, but instead to keep reacting to all of those triggers and going from that angry, reactive, frustrated place is really what kept us stuck in those days. So. So I. I'm going back to what you're saying. One of the things then we need to embody more of instead of the terms, instead of you're gaslighting, you're manipulating me, then we need to come back into what's really happening inside of me.

Absolutely. And it really makes me think about how important it is to have that time with yourself where you are journaling, you're going for a walk, you are even taking a hot bath. You know, I know that I spent a lot of my life so numbed from my emotions and distracted and focused on working more and being productive that I didn't know what was going on for myself internally. So I think it's really important to anybody listening to realize that the healthy relationship starts with you and curiosity starts with you of even making space to. To tune into yourself and saying, huh, I'm in this relationship and these are the ways it's going really well. But I'm curious. I wonder what I need more of. I wonder how I could be more supported just taking that intentional time to tune in to yourself. And then that is going to immensely impact how. How you show up with your partner.

I wonder if thinking of the work that you do with people, are there a few specific scripts that help people be curious? So there are kind of some go to ones that listeners could try.

Yes. So I. I love using dialogue. You've. You've heard of dialogue, the communication framework. So I teach all my clients how to use dialogue. I believe it's similar to what's in emotionally focused therapy, but also in imago.

But basically you have the sender and the receiver and you take turns. And if I'm the sender, I'm sharing what my experience is. I'm using emotion words. So I would say something like, I felt disconnected from you when you canceled our date night. And the story that I'm telling myself is that I'm not a priority to you. I feel really sad that I. That I feel disconnected from you. So we're using those I statements where we're sharing how we felt when XYZ happened. And then this is a really key piece. The person who is the receiver in this conversation, their only job is to make sure that the sender feels heard right. They are. They are validating back. I hear that you felt disconnected from me. I hear that you felt sad. They're all their only job make sure the sender feels heard. And then we're switching roles. And I know you're, you're probably very familiar with this process where it's only after going through this, where we're curious, we're connecting to the deeper emotions, then we can do a problem solving conversation. But instead of, you know, jumping into problem solving right away, we're connecting to what's, what's really going on here.

You cannot problem solve if neither one of you or, or either one of you rather doesn't feel seen and heard. And I think that's what people miss is they want to jump to the solution before being able to understand what's happening and what's happening for each of you. And that I love that you're bringing up the sender and the receiver. It's been also a game changer. Well, first, that adds structure, right? We add structure into communication through hard moments, especially when emotion can be high. It's been a game changer for us to even start using in our own day to day. The story I'm telling myself right now is because it takes out the. Instead of saying you don't really care about spending time with me tonight, Friday night comes, we haven't planned any date time together. We're kind of solo. And I say, you don't even want to spend time with me. But instead, when you add the story I'm telling myself is, it makes it about me and not a truth that I am perceiving or assuming about the other person in. If I think of eft and how I work through the cycle with people and I've broken this down in, in the relationship program that I te, it's that we look at what's the trigger, the behavior, what are the stories we're telling? So the assumptions and perceptions about ourself or our partner, what are the emotions? But then I'm often saying to people, go underneath that, go a little bit deeper. What is the softer, harder to feel emotion that is not yet being shared with your partner? And can you share that with them? Because as you had mentioned in part one of this episode, you sharing that piece of disconnection brought Robert closer to you, brought in the connection. And that's our goal in that understanding and curiosity. I love that you've broken that down.

And you teach that so good. Yes. And I love that you mentioned structure because I think so many couples are missing that they don't have the go to structure. And when we're having our emotions being disregulated, maybe so much is coming up for us. It's so helpful to have the structure. So I love all the work that you do with couples and the, the tools that, that you teach them because it is, it is an absolute game changer to have a guidebook that both of you can refer to a common language of okay, this is how we can approach conflict, right? And even everyday conversations. It's not just conflict. I love that you're talking about using the story I'm telling myself just an everyday conversation because that's such a more vulnerable way to communicate with your partner.

So honestly, I mean if I think if the listener doesn't take anything else from this episode, take this piece of you can change how you have conversations. And what I love about this, and I know you agree with me, is then we get to prevent those big blow up ruptures. I'm all about prevention as much as I can. Whatever it is in my life, I want to try to make myself feel really supported, really emotionally regulated. And this includes in my relationship. I want to prevent those big ruptures and blow up arguments by being willing to have these vulnerable connection points and these really curious conversations so that we're tuning into what we need and it's not getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Right?

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Tell me more about the prevention pieces that you've put in place for your relationship. I'm super curious what you guys do.

Okay, so I'm curious what you and Greg do too. But we, we always have a Thursday morning meeting with coffee and we share where we're at, what's going well, what we, what we need to be better supported.

That's, that's one thing. And I think that weekly meeting has been such a game changer for us. It's, it's a non negotiable. The other thing we do, I love this, we do solo Saturdays, which I know it may not always be sustainable with having kids in the future, etc. But right now, on Saturday, we both go do our own thing and we're able to tune into what it is that we want. He's off fly fishing. I'm, you know, doing yoga with my girlfriends or you know, going to read a book at a coffee shop. And we get to feed those individual needs that we have.

And then, I mean there's a few other things that we do in, in terms of our nighttime routines and honoring those for each other. We're in bed. I'm kind of embarrassed to say this. I'm like a grandmother. We're in bed at 8pm.

Sleep is so important. This does not make you a grandmother. I had my whole turn down. Greg called it a turn down service on the bed the other night.

You get it? It's like, so we're in bed at 8, but it's really special time because then we can connect, we can read books together. It's not this like, oh, hurry up and go to bed so that we can get enough sleep. It allows us to ease into that time together. And that's. That's some of my most valued time is just when we're in. When we're in bed kind of winding down and having that connection time. So we do our best to really honor that. So those are some of the things off the top of my head.

Yeah, I love those. We have been trying to be more intentional for the weekly. More of a business meeting so that the business meet and really our relationship is part of one of the businesses we're running. But the business meeting is so that we can contain all of the other stuff where it's like when we're in bed at 9pm and one of us is having a thought about the thing we're doing, we can say, hang on, can we park that? Because for a while we were in that position of kind of just like. I don't know, like just flames all the time of, oh, I'm back in business mode. And there weren't any boundaries around that. So that was really needed and that's been helpful. And so we've now taken Mondays and we prioritize a lunch or we go for a longer walk with the dog, or there's something that's happening on Mondays that nurtures our relationship, but then also has our business meeting around the things that are happening, whether it's personal or business, we put in there. And we've always been really solid with our daily ritual. So we have dinner together, we have morning coffee together. So we both wake up before our kids. That's possible in this season. And we chat. We sometimes sit beside each other and we read books or we chat. We also have our greeting and parting. So we're always kissing each other goodbye and coming back and doing that because that was something that it waxed and waned when the kids were younger and they were running to the door and I was with boiling water on the pot on the stove or something. So that was something that we've really made sure to put in. Truthfully, every night there is this moment where we can pause and say, wow, can you believe that thing that happened today? And then we put our phones down and we probably have 10 to 30 minutes of connecting and. And it is that let's shut things down earlier. Let's connect. Let's talk about how things are going. And yeah, it's those. I really. I always come back to those small things frequently. Morgan. Of how then when you feel that foundation of connection, like your relationship doesn't hinge on this once a month date night that is planned and stars have to align instead. It's this foundation. It's not this like ballpoint that. It's like balancing on that. So then you can weather the more minor moments of saying, hey, you know, this week we've been feeling a little disconnected. Can we prioritize playing a game tonight after the kids go to bed? Or can we prioritize doing X, Y or zed within that? So that's how we've been able to do that. I, I'm curious around how you help people find red flags because this is another piece where it's like, okay, well we don't want to say to people, you are likely not experiencing this. Some people listening might be experiencing a partner who is gaslighting or manipulating. Right? Or they're in a relationship where someone has higher tendencies towards narcissism. Maybe there's a flavor of that personality.

How do you support people then to do that work versus maybe identifying when it's a growth edge, when it's something that's changing.

I love this question and it's interesting. What's coming up for me right now is I think in social media and just in our culture, there's a lot of red flags that get labeled or, sorry, there's a lot of yellow flags that get labeled as red flags. So when I teach on this, in the program that I have, I do, I give people a list. I know, I know, we all want a list, right? So there's a long, long list of, hey, these are the green flags, yellow and red. And I, I think what I want to say is when, when you're healing, when you are getting to that securely attached place and you're not, you're no longer outsourcing your self worth, you're no longer saying, oh, I need this relationship in order to be good enough. When you're getting to that place and you're showing up securely attached, the red flags are going to be very obvious and you're going to say, oh, this doesn't match my standards for a relationship. This person lied to me, this person devalued me in a really harmful way. This person did XYZ thing right? And I think it just becomes so much easier because you have high self worth. You're showing up securely attached. You're not saying, oh, I have to self abandon in order to make this relationship work because I need it to. When you're at this place of I'm choosing partnership because I want partnership, you just Notice the red flags. You know, I mean, I, I, I feel like there's more I could say there, but you, you know what I mean?

Yeah. There's a sense of groundedness and trust in ourselves. And it's almost in some ways, do you need to use a label and to look at someone's character, or can you say, this behavior actually doesn't align with what's important to me? And so that tells me what I need to do. And going back to what you said about curiosity, that is this piece around, you have to go ins yourself and to be really honest with yourself. Is something working with for you, not if it would work for five other people, but whether it's about you and how you feel in this dynamic with somebody? Yeah.

Yeah. Can I tell a client story that I think will illustrate this?

Yes, absolutely.

Awesome. So I had a client that was dating, and she had done this, you know, work in my program to become securely attached. And then she's dating and met this person who was really great, but they went on their first date and he talked about himself the majority of the time. And she obviously, you know, felt like, oh, this person's not curious about me. She, she didn't do this. But let's just say someone could have said, well, that person is a narcissist, and they're so full of themselves and they're only thinking about themselves. Right. But here's what she did do. She came to me, we talked about it, and I said, oh, what if you gave this person feedback about how you experienced them and let them know what you would like instead? And she said, I don't know if I should go on a second date. And I said, you absolutely should. So, and here's what I love. If it's a yellow flag, you owe it to yourself to have the growth opportunity to give the feedback. I don't even care what the other person does. What's wonderful for you is to learn how to communicate what you experienced and what you would like instead. And that's exactly what she did. And they went on the second date, and she had a different experience. And he apologized and he acknowledged that he was nervous. And they've been dating now for, I don't know, a couple months. And she's like, this is the best relationship I've ever been in. And she could have done the lazy thing, right? She could have labeled him, not given the feedback, and just not gone on the second date. But she did the vulnerable thing, she did the brave thing, she did the harder thing, which is to give feedback and hope that somebody can grow with you. And I think we have to be really careful when we're looking at yellow flags and red flags to say we're all just humans. We all have our own yellow flags. Right? So, so how can we give feedback.

To people that takes such courage and to really sit into doing the hard thing? Because giving feedback oftentimes when we think of our own histories, many could say, well, anytime I've given feedback, it doesn't go well. Or there are reasons I don't give feedback because, you know, I was taught as a child to please others and to make sure everybody else was happy. And, and this is like one of those moments even in a long term relationship of being able to say, you know what, there's this thing that's happening with my partner doesn't feel good. And now I want to address it because then what you had said to your client is also the what you're going to get out of it. And I think so often we view relationships more about the other person instead of seeing that when we're partnered with someone, we are also continuously growing within ourselves and it's not just about the other person. Right? You, you get to try do new things, you get to do it differently, you get to be vulnerable and maybe they show up with you and that's the risk. Oh, I love that story. How cool to just say you absolutely will, you'll be going on the date again.

And I, I love that you brought this back to self trust and, and realizing when we're in our relationships, if we are taking up space, if we're communicating how we feel, we're setting the boundaries that we have, asking for our needs to be met, we're strengthening our self trust and in turn that is increasing our self worth. Right? Your brain goes, oh, she really does value herself because she's willing to take up space and express her needs. So you don't want to short yourself on the opportunity to grow and to love yourself more by being willing to take up space in the relationship.

I love that. Okay, Morgan, as we're wrapping up, what would you say to someone who feels hurt? Just one last piece of wisdom from you. What would you feel to someone who, what would you say to someone who feels hurt and is reaching for that label? What advice would you give to them?

I would say take a breath. Breathe. Breathe deeply and connect to if you can in the moment, ask yourself, what is this part of me really feeling and what is this part of me really needing? I don't know about you, but I have a relationship with my inner child and I can think about my, you know, inner five year old, Morgan, and I do my best to connect with her and I try to reassure her and say, hey, it's going to be okay. So pause. See if you can connect with that part of you that's wanting to be protective. See if you can give yourself some reassurance. And then if you really, truly can't show up differently in the moment, just kindly say to your partner, hey, I need to take a break for a minute and I would love to revisit this conversation.

I love that. I think that's so important, this idea of going inward, looking after our own pain, and seeing what's really showing up in our relationship. Dr. Morgan, thank you so much for being here with me.

Thank you so much for having me. I loved our conversation. Thank you so much.

I have to remind you at the end of every podcast episode that this information is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for the care from a licensed mental health care provider. See you next time.