Season 2 | Episode 68 | "Core Tension" Between Emotional Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation with Steven Perez & Michael Piciucco

How you doing, Rhett?

Good.

What's up?

Episode 68.

68 is great.

Hey, just people listening, we had some technical difficulties. We're recording somewhere different than we usually do, so You know, if something doesn't sound as good or look as good, then hopefully it's just a glitch this week.

And it's not RO's fault.

It's not RO's fault. That's the big thing.

Just really clear the table.

We got some special guests. You want to introduce them, Lance?

Yes, as I take a good swig. So ladies and gentlemen, today we are gathering a good group of dudes. This is a white dude one. Uh, we're not here to talk about white guy stuff, but Hopefully it doesn't sound too white. For the record, Steven is actually very Mexican, so we got that.

Thank you for clarifying. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, we're excited to have gathered today Steven Perez, my right-hand man at the Restoration Therapy Center of SD. This guy's brilliant. I can't believe I get to work with him. And then we got our brother with the stash, um, who's got— I don't know what it is about story and, um, weaving. We had— this is like storyteller time, man. What is up, Rhett? How do we put this group together? We got Michael Pachuco, um, coming at us from Phoenix, Arizona. I hope it's Phoenix, not— it's like, I feel like Phoenix is Glendale, over in Glendale office.

Lives in Scottsdale.

Okay.

Right. It's a little bit of commute. It's a kind of a commute for you.

I was thinking we should have done this podcast from Applebee's.

Oh yeah, that's right. We all hung out at Applebee's that one time.

Oh my gosh.

That would have been interesting if we had recorded that conversation.

Maybe for the 200th episode, you guys do like live from Applebee's live episode.

Yes.

All right. We're really making it. Michael, tell us how we all ended up on this call together.

All right.

Let me tell you how we all ended up here. Steven ended up here because I had a list of demands, and one of my demands was that he be here. But I'll make it kind of quick because we ended up here because I wanted to know your guys' thoughts about something I've been mulling over in my head for a couple weeks. So, so I teach marital therapy at Fuller with a friend, a good friend who is an EFT therapist, and she's, she's brilliant, and she's like a master EFT therapist. And we have really fun— over the last couple years of teaching it together, we have really fun back and forth and friendly debate about just kind of core differences in RT and EFT. And some of them are differences that you guys have talked a lot about on this show that I think we talk a lot about in our community, that being co-regulation versus self-regulation. So what was more recently interesting is, as her and I were kind of preparing for our class in the spring and just going right back into our typical debates, we landed on the idea of attachment and differences that exist in how we think about attachment versus how they think about attachment in EFT. And we both sort of had an aha moment of going, oh, okay, I think this might be the really core difference. And I wanted to maybe talk about that or explore that with you guys. And so to just kind of, to just give a little bit more context to what exactly I've been thinking about. In, in our field, there's a lot of different models. EFT is just one of them that, that are attachment-informed models.

Yeah.

And typically what they mean by that is, of course, they recognize that by attachment-informed they mean, uh, they're, they're tuned into the impact of attachment in childhood and how that forms sort of a template for relationships in adulthood. But what they also typically mean is that you know, what they're after— attachment-informed models like EFT— what they're after is to promote healthy, secure attachment in adulthood. Meaning, uh, part of a core assumption they have is that attachment is something that happens in adulthood, okay? We attach to our partners in marriage. And this, uh, this was sort of a place where we started to diverge from one another because I, I said to her something like, that's interesting because I, I don't think of myself as having attachment with my wife. I think of myself as having a bond with her, a connection with her. But I, I, I have a tendency to think about attachment as an event or something that takes place in childhood between child and parent, and that that was a point where she flagged as, okay, that is really distinct because we definitely don't think about it that way. Folks from the EFT community and others, the thing they really push back on is that human beings should be emotionally independent. They really push back on that idea because for them, it's really important to say we're made for connection. Of course, attachment occurs in adulthood because look at the the emotional attachment system in the brain. It's the same in childhood as it is in adulthood. And that is the kind of thing that their model sits on top of. It sits on top of the literature that says, hey, look at the brain. It's the same in childhood as it is in adulthood. Of course, they'll grant that these are different types of relationships, but they still want to say fundamentally what's going on is this thing called attachment. And I think there's interesting ways that we, in the RT world, we see that different or frame that differently. And I thought that would just be interesting to comb through together.

It's a lot of stuff, man. Yeah, I love it.

So maybe, maybe the question would be, yeah, in what sense is RT an attachment model? Um, yeah, so what do you guys think?

Well, this is a good question. Um, I love how Terry says we do attachment theory better than, um, others out there, which to me always gets me excited. It's like we, we understand attachment better than the others. And, um, first off, you know, Terry's a very humble man, um, but Bro is smart. Um, so I think the thing for us that makes us do attachment better is that we are working from this idea, um, that the core need of the human being is really founded in, um, from this idea that we need love and trustworthiness. Um, and like love and trustworthiness, you know, love being this thing where we have, um, you know, this sense of deep a sense of belonging, this sense of uniqueness, and trustworthiness being the sense that we have, like, that the world feels fair and that it's just. It also is this sense of predictable or reliable. And then we finally land it all out with this idea that people are open and trustworthy, that there's not much hiding beneath the surface. That's what we need as human beings. So I think that Terry says that that's kind of our attachment lens is looking at the love and trustworthiness, and then that's where we get our pain chart. And that when you look at the other literature, there's this little bit, I don't know, what would you say, Rhett, when you look at the other literature, when you think about the strange experiment or, you know, the, um, uh, when you look at EFT, like, I feel like they're kind of leaning in on the three ways, like anxious avoidant, the anxious attachment, the avoidant attachment, and the disorganized attachment lens. Like, that's kind of like their, their three things that they look at. But I don't know. That's kind of like the base of the theory. I think that's one thing that we look at. What you're talking about, Michael, is, which I really appreciate, is how do we heal the violations of love and trustworthiness? I think that's kind of where you guys got to in your conversation. Yeah.

Well, no, yeah, because any EFT therapist would say something like, yeah, Lance, we agree with you. Of course people need that. They don't stop needing it in adulthood. So they still need love and trustworthiness in adulthood, which is why a lot of therapies promote this kind of like corrective experience in marriage. Like, oh, it's supposed to be this kind of like corrective experience. And they say, yeah, we're built for love and trustworthiness. So of course we still need that in adulthood. We just— in RT, we have something like very— it seems like we have something very different to say about that, which feels helpful to clarify and point out. There was something else you said, but I'll let you guys jump in.

It's interesting. I was sitting here thinking, with you, I never think about attachment towards my wife. When you said that out loud, light language, I don't think about that. I think about attachments as, I guess, things that happen earlier in life. And I'm not saying they stop. All of a sudden. But I think about our primary attachments and our patterns being set fairly early. And I still, I guess I'm just kind of thinking this out. But it's not that I don't want love and trustworthiness from my wife. I just don't make my wife responsible for that. She's not responsible to regulate me. She's not the primary caregiver of me. I'm no longer a child, you know. I like the language in The Mindful Marriage where Ron says, you know, we're not in this parenting relationship anymore, we're in this partnering relationship.

Yeah.

Therefore, in a healthy marriage, yeah, my wife and I give towards one another and promote love and trust, but at the end of the day, I am responsible to step into my truth and to, yeah, I don't know, be loving and trustworthy. And even when other people can't. And I feel like where the divergence goes with other theories is there's more responsibility on the other partner to have to do those things. And I feel like RT says no, like, we are the primary people who are responsible to provide those things in our life. I don't know if that makes sense, but just kind of like talking out loud.

Yeah, I think there's something almost romantic about the idea of co-regulation, right? That understanding that there's a deficit in me and out there is someone who has the ability to kind of pick up the slack where I am weak. And I think you hear this a lot in couples therapy around, well, maybe we're just not compatible. Compatible because what I need is someone who can come in and do this. And I think our clients are almost way more informed than they ever have been. And they can go in and tell you, here are my attachment injuries. Here's where I've been wounded. And so when they do this, it takes me right back to that place. And I think one of the clear distinctions with RT, and I'm open to correction on this, is when RT is talking about attachment, they're saying that that's what was kind of done to you, right? That, that was already formed. We need to create an awareness, we need to create a mindfulness that, that because of wounded attachment, you, you show up this way. And what are you going to do about it? Uh, you know, again, and not the most, uh, romantic phrase, but it is personal responsibility that RT is promoting, saying you will become the person responsible for the healing of your own wounding.

Yeah.

And I think so. I so appreciate that. That's so good. And I think what I'm realizing is to the ears of EFT therapists and probably so many others, there's a sensitivity where they hear that what you just said and they go, oh, okay, so you just don't need anybody. Okay, so you just don't need, you know, you know, you're just fully independent. And I think that's missing it. Because, right. So to be self-regulated is to be differentiated. To be self-regulated, it's not really saying, oh, I don't need anybody. It just means that actually now I can show up and have a greater sense of who's responsible for what, and I can give freely. Yeah, I appreciate your point, Stephen.

That self-differentiation piece is pretty critical. And it's like hard to parse out, I think, for people, you know, what that looks like, you know, and I keep going back to that old book Boundaries when in the first opening, you know, they talk about Galatians 6 where Paul says, come alongside and bear one another's burdens. And then like what a verse and a half later he says, but everyone is responsible to carry their own load, their own stone. You know, and I think about in marriage is, yeah, we want to show up for each other.

Right?

But when we take responsibility for ourselves and emotionally self-regulate, we are able to be— we are able to show up in more healthy ways than ever before in a relationship. And we're able to be more free for the other person. And kind of get out of this needy scorekeeping for tat, you have to give to me and then I'll do that. And you know what I'm saying? And then, but it's, it is really challenging. But do you think, Michael, like when you, when you work with your, your, your colleague here, do they look at RT and just like, that just doesn't make sense at all? Like, or, or do you feel like you're converting people one by one?

I don't know. Well, I don't know about converting people. This is definitely, this is the sticking point. Whatever it is that we're sort of getting at here, this is the sticking point. So I think this is where we lose some EFT folks, or in this case, my friend who's a good friend, and she's just kind of like, look, this sounds like, this sounds too— hey, I don't— to her, it sounds too— I don't need anybody. And so I guess that's where the— and I don't know how it I don't know how it sounds to other people. I know for my students and my supervisees, like over time, they really start to get it as they work in the model, they start to see it more.

But yeah. Well, this is where I think attachment actually provides kind of a checks and balances when we're talking about RT, because there's certainly that threat, right, that you can become the Lone Ranger and I don't need anybody and I'm self-sufficient, but a regulated individual should become someone who is open and honest in relationship, should become someone who's reliable and predictable, should become someone who pursues justice and balance, give and take in their relationships. Right. So attachment is still informing what it is you're going to look like. It's just saying, hey, when you've done the work of understanding the story of your own pain and you've developed the practice of doing your 4 steps, acting out of your truth, then what we expect to see is a securely attached individual, uh, who's connecting with other people. It's also— I think about it just through the lens of its systems work, right? That the thing that you put into the system is the greatest indicator of what you get out of the system, right? And I'm not an EFT specialist, so I can't necessarily speak to that, but what I see from clients often is this: I would I would really like to do this with you, but I'm going to need you to do this first.

Right.

And then it becomes kind of the Western standoff of, well, who's going to take that risk? And I think what RT is providing is saying, I know what I would like out of the relationship, and I have ability to work on the parts of me that feel like that is scary or that is difficult or that is unsafe. And I can regulate myself and put myself in a position that increases likelihood that I start producing out of the relationship what it is that I'm looking for, that it's not I have to sit back and wait for my partner to initiate that, but I have an active role in it too.

And, and, and, and one of the things you said just to— that jumped out to me is like this idea that it's not that being self-regulated or differentiated means I don't depend on anyone. It actually gives me the groundedness to depend on people or to lean on people, or in other words, to trust people. So that feels important too. Yeah. Marriages are not these things where we don't ever depend on each other. Yeah, obviously we depend on each other for a ton. But there's a difference between that and saying, I need, I need you to sort of inform my sense of identity and my sense of safety. I need, I need something external to regulate me on the inside.

Yeah, yeah. The— this is interesting. I had to figure out the metaphor. Hopefully maybe someone that's listening might be able to help us come up with this metaphor. But like, it's this idea of like, if my spouse is my regulator, like if that's the thing that helps me to be normal, you know, like this is where we talk about parenting versus partnering. Like that's, that's when we run into trouble. Like it's not— they, they can't be responsible for that. 'cause that puts too much stress on a relationship and it doesn't really create actual bonding. Like versus in the us-ness, I think is what we're trying to get to is this idea in around us-ness with Restoration Therapy. 'Cause that is our frame where we do lean into how we connect with one another. And do we connect from a place that is authentically holding one another in a self-regulated place from the get-go, not from that we find each other and we regulate one another like kids on a playground back in the '80s. You know what I mean? That was your white joke. That was it. I knew I'd get one. But this is that us-ness that we're trying to— this idea of how can we partner or come to consensus with one another versus you know, they talk about competitive and compromise and the like. Um, uh, so I don't know, is there a metaphor there? Is there something we could play with like that would be a better differentiator?

Can I, can I read you part of a poem?

Oh yes, please do.

I don't know if you guys have ever read, um, the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran. And, um, in his book The Prophet, he's got a section on marriage And I don't know, to me, this always speaks of this differentiating piece. I'm not going to read the whole thing, I'll read a part of it, but I feel like it gets that part of it. But he says, yeah, I'm skipping down to some of it. Well, he says, "You were born together and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you." Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. So there's this play of like, yeah, be there for each other, but there's distance and space and don't give each other into each other's keeping and making almost, you know, and I There's other poets I'm thinking of. Rilke, I think, also gets at this quite a bit. But I— it's like there's no space for my wife to approach me and encounter me when I'm not responsible for my own woundedness and take responsibility for that. If she has to come in and do that repair constantly, I think there's a lack of connection, actually. Um, and this is where it gets tricky. I tell couples, I'm not saying that You know, you don't ever reach in and help the other person, you know, and help them with emotions or regulate. I mean, there are times of need, but to make that the go-to constantly as an ongoing self-regulatory piece, I think is not healthy in the relationship. And yeah, I can see as we're talking about this, it gets muddy, doesn't it?

But I think what you're saying is the exact— this is what comes into the room.

Yeah.

Like our clients are expecting, and this is like the big heartbreak for them, that we're expecting them, us, to make their spouse be that person to regulate them.

Yeah.

That's what they want. They're like, if he would just, you know, not get so loud and angry if she would just quit nagging or whatever. It's the, "If they would, if they would," to Steven's Western standoff. That's what we're running into. If you would just, which is just basically an excuse for, "I'm entitled to my bad behavior because you're not doing a good job, so I'm allowed to be bad." This is destructive entitlement. And it does not work. Um, that's why you see so many EFT therapists— like, I mean, I love you EFT therapists, but you gotta— you know your brethren, you know what's happening with your brethren. They're moving on to IFS, they're using the other therapy models because it just doesn't complete. Just being real.

Yeah.

Well, is it fair? Like, I think I've heard Terry say before, like, parenting is the only relationship that's inherently imbalanced and it should be.

Yeah.

Right. And so attachment in my mind is like, it's part of it is a deficit, right? That we're looking at our children and saying, you actually don't have what you need to regulate. So as a parent, I'm going to go ahead and do this for you. Right. And that, that secure attachment, that kind of gold standard of attachment that we would love everyone to have, doesn't come out of the absence of issues in the relationship. Right. It comes out of rupture and repair.

Yeah.

Right. That, that there's some type of distress between child and caregiver, and the caregiver takes that empowered stance and says, I will make this right between us again. And so then that child learns, oh, I can experience distress with the loved one. It can be resolved, it can be restored, and there's restoration between us. And that's what gives me that sense of self. That's what gives me that strength. Right. And so the research around attachment is looking at children. It's not looking at adults. Right. I get that maybe the same parts of the brain are firing in that, but the research is looking at what happens to children. So if we're translating that or transcribing it over into romantic relationships, we're asking for a power dynamic of I need you to be the empowered person and I have the deficit. And we're just hoping kind of over the long haul that the ledger balances out. And it kind of can work at times. I always use the example, maybe you guys have fallen into this trap of we can't make the decision around which side of the family we're going to visit for the holidays. So we do Thanksgiving with one, one and Christmas with another, and then it flops the next year, uh, and you just end up running yourself ragged driving all over the place trying to make everybody happy. And that model worked for my wife and I until my mother-in-law got pancreatic cancer, right? And then this kind of flimsy compromise that we had in place fell apart because I, I can't look at her and say, tough luck, babe. My favorite Christmas. It's my year, right? And so I think this is where that, again, that idea of self-regulation really comes in is how do I get myself into a spot to deal with whatever disappointments or fears I have to be able to then do what is best for the relationship, not just best for me, but what is going to be good for us? What is that collaborative thing that we need to do, um, as opposed to, oh well, I really hope my partner can make this better for me, or here's my wife grieving, fearful of what's going to happen to her mom, and then I'm going, well, you know, what's my family going to think if we don't show up?

You know, like what you're saying is, you know, and part— just part of what I hear you saying is, yeah, with our kids, we're responsible for our kids. Absolutely responsible to our marriage. You know, that's the distinction, like, from the book you're talking about, right? Boundaries. That's like the big distinction, right? We're responsible for some things versus we're responsible to some things. Um, and Stephen, you're right about the research. This is just another interesting thing I've heard Terry talk about, where he's like, you know, it wasn't really until the '80s where we started to expand the definition of attachment to include all these other relationships.

Exactly.

There's a book. I don't know the name of the book, but it's like Philip. It's like Cindy Hazen and Philip Shaver or something. And they're like the first to really write this book about, aha, look at what's going on in the brain. Therefore, these things are equal, which I always think is an interesting argument. When people want to talk about the brain in childhood versus in the brain in adulthood, And it, it's— it doesn't land with me. It's almost like saying, look, these are the same feet that you had in childhood, and they're the same feet that you had in— that you have in adulthood. And it's like, I— so, I mean, of course they are, you know. Of course it's the same.

And toes.

Yeah, I mean, of course it's the same, uh, emotional system in my brain. I don't know why that implies that these things are the same. My brain also really loves it when I do heroin. The same parts of my brain light up if I were to do drugs or something. I mean, I don't know why we get to this point where we're like, these things are equal.

And Michael hasn't used heroin in a long time.

Yeah.

The book looks like Human Bonding: The Science of Affectional Ties. That book by Cindy Hazen. Actually, there's another guy with that, Mark Campa. But if you pull up the thing you talked about, there's a research article on romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. So, but I pulled this book off the shelf. Oh, old one, right?

Throwing it back.

Essential Humility of Marriage, Terry Hargrave. And I just go to this one sentence Page 11. I believe that the purpose of marriage, like any relationship in life, is to help us mature and become fulfilled as individuals. In short, the purpose of marriage is to grow us up. And I, if, I don't know, if most of the re— if attachment and the, you know, it researches on kids and the only, you know, maybe imbalance that we talk about is that parent-child dynamic we give to children what they're not incapable to do themselves, then why in adulthood are we still parenting? You know what I'm saying? Like, common example, I have a couple in here and the wife is responsible for everything, and she looks at me and she's like, you know, I have 3 kids to take care of, and 2 are children and 1 is my husband. Like, this is exhausting, you know? That's not a marriage where the people have grown up. It's a— she just has one more responsibility to take care of her husband and regulate her husband in this instance. And that's not a freeing relationship. And he could look at her and say, well, you got to keep giving me these things. That's your duty. That's your responsibility. And then we're stuck, I think, in a non— Again, this is where RT steps in and says, no, there's a better way.

So can I ask, because maybe you guys would know better, what would EFT do with that situation? Because in my mind, I could tell you kind of where my mind goes is this. We have to teach both parties to be a little gentler and softer, more mindful of what the other person's asking for and kind of moving towards the middle type of strategy? Like, what would be the treatment there?

Um, well, I can tell you there's 9 phases to EFT. So, you know, the— I, I know the early ones a lot better than I know the later ones. Um, but initially what they would want to do is they want to explain the cycle of why they're doing this, and they would always take it back to attachment. Like, when, when did you— when would this happen to you, um, where you felt like you had to take, um, control of things? So they would, they, they diff— they would talk with them. Now, they, they end up using— they would probably work with the husband first in this instance because they want to engage the withdrawer first. Um, so they would say, oh, so tell me what it's like for you to be in this family system when you're dealing with this. Where does this take you back to? And they would like take it back to their family of origin, their attachment. And, um, and then they would create this like very awesome soliloquy in and around how they're acting now is exactly how they acted when they were a kid, and that's why they're doing exactly what they're doing. Mm-hmm. Um, and then, and then, um, after saying that soliloquy to them, then they would tell the, the client to say, now could you say that to your spouse like I said it to you? It's like this very beautiful interaction. Um, and then, then they share it to their spouse and their spouse gets like, oh, okay, I understand. And then they, then they go to the spouse and they go to the spouse's story and where they come from and what happened to them when they were a child and why they felt like they had to take control of everything and do everything. And then, and then they would write, do a whole long soliloquy. Now, could you say that to your spouse? You know, it's like this long interaction piece of, um, where they're basically explaining— it would be like us doing therapy, um, using just the pain cycle.

So it's, is the conceptualization here then, once the client has enough insight into their behavior and the partner understands why the other one is doing this, that there would be kind of a softening towards each other, and then they will kind of naturally go, okay, we can shift in the behaviors, if you will.

Right. And they would, they would, they would say like elements in around what they want in the marriage. They would say, you know, in this marriage, you know, we want to be blah blah blah blah. And they'd have, they'd have like some type of, um, like, um, foundational pieces that they would have, like togetherness or, um, you know, loving or whatever. So they would have like, so in the marriage, this is what I'm wanting.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I mean, I really like, I mean, I really liked her book, um, Sue Johnson's book, like Hold Me Tight, back in the day. Thought there was some like really helpful stuff, you know. And when I was at Fuller, by the way, I was studying under mainly Jim Furrrow, who's, you know, studied under Sue Johnson.

He knows a thing or two.

Yeah, it was all EFT. But here's where like the tension lied for me when I was like reading and working. And I wasn't— I didn't officially go get trained in EFT. But when I was practicing that model is that kind of standoff It's like, this is what I want and need in a relationship. And so it's up to that person then to do those things for me. You know, it's a request, but also kind of unless you do these things, I'm not okay. And it felt very disempowering, where RT is like, yes, I understand our cycles, but I'm looking at myself and how am I going to show up in the relationship in a I'm not waiting for you to show up in a certain way. I am taking responsibility to show up. And that for me was the distinction. One is like, I'm taking responsibility and doing this thing. And the other is like, here's what I need from you. And so I need— and then I'm waiting for this person to then show up.

Yeah, I don't know if that's—

that's how I kind of like where things fell apart for me.

Sorry, no, I was just— no, I was just going to say, in addition to that, it's it's also, as I understand it, it's also kind of like the fault of the— they call it the dance. So like, it's the— it's kind of the dance's fault, something. Yes, we externalize the dance and it's like, aha, that's the problem. The problem is the dance itself. So, and Stephen, you're kind of asking about like, okay, so like, what's the conceptualization there? Instead of two people making changes to how they show up to the relationship. It's like through hearing each other and through this kind of guided empathy exercise and vulnerability, etc., etc., we almost like make accommodations for our, like, our, our hurt or our woundedness. Like, the, the relationship is able to sort of like, um, be a corrective experience. Like, oh, this basically how I was hurt. Now that you understand that, you can sort of like, um, you can kind of be a corrective experience, or this, this dance can be a corrective experience rather than the dance being something that just like perpetuates my, my childhood woundedness. Um, I'm sure there's probably like nuanced ways that we're getting it wrong. If someone were here, they would tell us.

Yeah.

For example, my friend would say, look, no, we think that people need to be self-regulated. We just also think that basically marriage is this thing where we do have needs that are met by each other because we're not created to be alone. That's like the drum that kind of keeps getting beat, as far as I can tell. So I'm sure there's nuanced ways that We're dancing around it. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure, you know, when we're all deep in the theories that we love, you know, I'm sure we're bastardizing other understandings of theories. But I, you know, even from a theological level, as I see it, differentiation takes place in Genesis in the garden. There is otherness in the relationship, or we look at the philosophical work of Martin Buber, the I-Thou relationship, and there is a clear distinction in relationships that I think are really important in understanding our self-responsibility and who we want to be and how we want to show up in relationship. And When that gets boogered, yeah, then you end up in a session with a couple who's like, well, the Bible says it's my wife's responsibility to take care of my needs, and so she's not doing her job. And then I'm like, okay, there's a lot of misunderstanding here, I think, about differentiation, sense of self, personal responsibility. Bad theology, you know. Yeah, I'm rambling now. You're getting me fired up.

Get you going. What do you think of that answer, Stephen? Does that fit with what you were imagining?

Yeah. Yeah. And so then I'm also curious, like, from you guys, from an RT lens. So if the critique is RT's creating these, you know, beef eater British soldiers who just don't react to anything. You know, what does RT do if, you know, with that kind of— I'll refer to it as an overfunction or underfunction type of relationship.

What does RT do?

Yeah.

What do you think, Michael?

What does RT do specifically with the overfunctioner-underfunctioner relationship?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, we've all had a lot of couples in our offices who have overfunctioner-underfunctioner dynamics. I just think it's— what RT does with that is to try to move our clients into, into an empowered place, which, like, you know, if you're working with someone who's that overfunctioner we would just sort of, from an RT place, conceptualize that, you know, from an empowered place, they could kind of come down and trust their partner. That overfunctioner would just sort of come down, not in order to regulate their partner, but when they're grounded in the truth, they're inclined to trust, they're inclined to come down and go, you know what, I don't need to do everything. I'm actually just going to trust you that you'll step up and and move up with me and meet me here. With the underfunctioner person from an empowered place, maybe when they're grounded in their truth, they're going to kind of go, actually, yeah, I want to be more involved and more engaged, right? I don't want to avoid, et cetera, et cetera. So that's just maybe how that sounds different. So it's not two people pointing at each other and it's like, I'll come up if you come down. I mean, it is in a sense, but it's really we're working with them at the level of learning to parent themselves so as to move where they want to move. That's how it makes sense to me.

Yeah, I would agree with that. That kind of— we're giving them instruments to help them understand how they're getting— like giving them a GPS. You know, you're off the trail right now. Let's get back on the trail. And, um, find your way back into how you guys can, um, get towards what you're looking for. Because when you're over-functioning, you're doing damage to the relationship. When you're under-functioning, you're doing damage to a relationship. These are both big violations of love and trust. Um, so we want to have relationships that help us grow with one another, not ones that them continue to violate one another. Yeah.

And maybe what we're up against too, and I just want to say, I have a lot of awesome colleagues who practice different models and they do great work. So I just want to say, I know we're not saying, even though we all love RT and that's kind of the hill we're dying on, people who are listening, if they're outside of the RT world, I'm not trying to minimize people's work, but I kind of think what we're up against is like, we're trying to shift a perspective in marriage, maybe that has been preached for a long time that we see as unhealthy or inaccurate. And that's not easy to do. And it's not easy for me in this session sometimes, or in my own life, I'm like, ah, it's just, let's just, can't you just show up for your spouse and just do what she's asking you to do? You know? I remember this book I read years ago, I think his name is Finkel. He looks at the history of marriage from a sociological perspective in different time periods and how originally it was based on security. You would marry for security for certain reasons, especially a female. In certain periods of time, you marry for security. And there's not really to the mid-1800s this even concept of romantic love that appears in the language and literature. And then he says later on, we start to see this shift in the late 1900s of, I marry someone who can best fulfill my highest needs or personal growth, you know. And I guess I share that to say marriage, even what we expect of it, I think is constantly shifting. And RT is coming in and we're trying to say, this is what we think is most helpful and most right. And I think it's just really difficult to do because everybody comes in with their own ideas of what marriage is. And if you start tinkering with that, people can get upset really easily.

Do you think that's a factor? I mean, there's probably so many variables and I'm not trying to steer us.

No, yeah.

I'm not trying to steer us into the woods. But do you think some of what you just said contributes to why people are getting married Yeah, yeah.

I mean, do you feel like that's what you're seeing? I mean, the statistics seem to prove that out in certain demographics, or waiting later. And, you know, I don't— I don't— yeah. And yeah, I actually like the woods, so you can steer us into the woods. I, I'm also concerned with everybody who comes into my session who's already an expert on attachment theories because of every Instagram post they've read or book they've read or TikTok. I am this, and it's like a personality test, and nothing seems rooted actually in real research or grounding. And so it's, it's a— as a therapist, it's a difficult place even to like navigate and to try to figure out, to get on the same page with the client and get some common language and understand things. So flying by the seat of my pants, I feel like sometimes And this is where I find RT really helpful.

I mean, just in this conversation that we're having, I think it's interesting if I, Lance, when you said they'd start with the withdrawer, because there is kind of like, I sometimes make the bad joke that performance is the only coping that'll get you promoted. It's the most revered coping in the West. We love performers. We love overfunctioners, right? But we don't always tie that back to there's an injury underneath that, right? There is a wound there, right? And so this is where I think we can get stuck sometimes as clinicians is we end up in that weird kind of, well, I do have to get this guy to come up and match this person's intensity, this person's level. Look at what they're putting into the relationship. Look at what they're doing for the relationship. And this person isn't, right? But what RT is saying is we don't have to come in and make sure that we're redefining marriage and that we're operating. We just need to get you to understand what you're doing from a place of pain. Right? And that when we get you into a place where you could start regulating that pain, where you have a practice of how I act out of this truth, the solutions kind of find themselves in some ways. That it's the goal is to get yourself regulated. And then you will do it, which is where whenever I've tried to do things, well, let's try this this week, or let's change the behaviors and get them to look like this, they always fall apart. Yeah, right, because it's white-knuckling and the, the pain underneath is still not being dealt with, and it falls apart. Um, and again, even from that kind of theological standpoint where you have people coming in of head-of-household type theology and what's my responsibility, what's their responsibility, I don't have to battle them theologically. I what happens when your wife doesn't do this, or what happens when your husband doesn't lead the way you think he should be leading. And that's where I think RT just in the room, at least, is so, so helpful in orienting.

It is.

Yeah, that's such a good point, Stephen, because what I was saying earlier, I didn't want to— I didn't want people to think like we have to get into theological battles in the room or historical battles or anything that what RT does well really well is ground you as a therapist in the room with clients and to help them elicit and understand that pain that you're talking about and where that's connected. And not then be confused as a therapist, you know, by trying to figure all this other stuff out, but just focus on what you're saying. Eric, go ahead.

Oh, good. Trying to— 'cause you got like a few minutes left here. I'm trying to think about this dynamic.

You got 12 minutes, Lance, before you have to go practice your RT therapy.

Oh yeah, brother. I was kind of tempted, 'cause we talked about this other thing to talk about today, and I was gonna riff on Michael's like talk on like why we're not, why couples aren't marrying or why people aren't marrying today. I was wondering about if we could play into that or if we should flow with this. What do you think would be—

we— why don't you— we can— let's just—

we could make that another episode too.

Yeah, I think there's so much there, but you might want to— you can just give a little teaser where we'll go next time. But I have a— you know, let's— I think we should wrap up some of this conversation we're having.

The reason I brought that— I brought that up is because Rhett was sort of talking about like the history of like why people get married and this sort of thing. And, and now just in a modern— there's, there's just like obviously everyone's drowning in content about like modern marriage and modern dating. It's just like such a topic. But the reason I brought that up is because, Rhett, you're saying like people basically just have these different expectations, like, like Stephen said earlier, we're looking for someone to complete us, or we're, um, we're looking for the compatibility, etc. I was just wondering if we think that that's really a major element in what's slowing down marriage rates. So we're looking for something that— we're looking for the wrong thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's lots of different contributing factors, right? When you think about people are more displaced than they ever been, uh, you know, it's kind of a rare thing being in San Diego to meet somebody who is born and raised in San Diego. Like, we're all kind of transplants in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, we're, we're looking for a partner to not only be a spouse, we're looking for a partner to be a best friend, we're looking for a partner to be a family unit, we're looking for a partner to replace that, you know, maybe lineage of grandparents and aunts and uncles that might have been around us. Like, what we need out of a partner feels so much greater, uh, and it's just, it's hard to come by, right? It's hard to kind of look and say, who's this person that, you know, will never upset me, will always be there for me, will encourage me when I need encouragement, will hold me accountable when I need accountability but won't do that too much, uh, who will love me despite of my faults. Like, you're asking for somebody again to come in and fulfill that attachment injury. And it's a lot and it's scary. And I think our lot, like therapists, have kind of played into that, that I think the zeitgeist around therapy is it's where I go to learn about my feelings so that I can express them to someone and then make a determination as to whether or not they make me feel better about that thing that I expressed to them. And if they do, whoa, let's bring you closer. If they don't, you don't match my energy. You're harsh on my vibes. We're not on the same level. So now I need distance.

Oh my God.

Now I need to cut you off.

Yeah.

Therapy, to your point, therapy culture can kind of like, yeah, therapy culture can confirm a lot of these. These things. Yeah, it just— it's just like, is it commodifying? When therapy is this, um, a thing we consume, uh, it's like its purpose is to make me feel good or whatever. And marriage is a thing I consume. It's like, yeah, it's a commodity. It's like a thing that like exists for me in some way to make me feel feel good, then therapy ends up sort of reinforcing that. Steven, yeah, I was just—

I said, oh my gosh, because it's just exhausting when you hear that list that you rattle off. It's like, it's like nobody— that's an unsurmountable expectation to have on a person, you know.

To— it feels like, it feels like everything's a response to another thing, right? You know, you get the, the gushy stuff, and then you get, here's Here's— now we need to talk about boundaries. Now, and like, it's like kind of like this, like it's this following the symptom of what's— what we're dealing with outside there, like that we're, we're trying to constantly adjust for. And I feel like this is what happens with people with any type of, um, you know, medical disorder. Like it's like you keep on following symptoms, but like we really want to get to the source. And then once we know the source, like how do we actually heal the And the way in isn't always the way out, right? Um, that, that's what I feel like. That's what happens with EFT. Like, the way in is the way out. Like, you were hurt in childhood, so now you got to heal it, um, um, in this attachment that's right in front of you. That's just not the way. Um, and, um, there's— there, there is a way out.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, that, that's— that way out is really, um, when we slow it down. It's one thing to understand how got to where we got to, but then finding that ability to find yourself in that horrible space where it all went wrong and to say, well, that is not the truth. And to lean into our true identities and how to break out of the safety or find safety in the midst.

With a few minutes left, I'm just gonna— I'll just— we'll just tease it for this conversation. These guys on the podcast don't know, they're going to be back for here shortly. But there is something out there that can meet all my needs and affirm me constantly and tell me what I want to hear.

Very deferential.

And it's constantly available and is getting smarter by the day. And is artificially though is more— what's the word? Anthropized? Morphopized?

I can't say.

Yeah, thank you. Every day. And that is— we had this conversation last night— is AI. And I had sent these guys a message last night saying I was talking to someone who said, um, that they were gonna— they had stopped going to therapy. They were seeing a therapist because their AI was doing all the work for them now and, and stuff. And And I know people like laugh sometimes, like my son thinks I'm crazy sometimes, Mike, when I talk about this. He thinks, he's like, no one's having a relationship with the AI bot. No one's doing this stuff.

Yeah, they are.

And I'm like, people come to my office every day that talk in human terms about their AI learning machine that they talk to all day long and that affirm them. And their spouse will say, yeah, I hear them in another room talking to them all the time, or when they're upset, or, you know, when they're mad at me, they'll go talk to them and ask questions. And so maybe eventually people are thinking, why be in a relationship that's messy if I can be in this type of relationship?

Yeah.

Yeah. So today we tackled EFT. Next we tackle GPT.

Do you guys ever see that movie with, um, Joaquin Phoenix, Her?

Oh yeah, it's about—

it's probably like 6, 7 years ago, maybe a little longer, and people were like, oh, that's not gonna happen. But it's essentially about a guy who has a relationship with, uh, an AI at that time, kind of AI machine. And you go back and watch it now, which I did, you know, probably like a few months ago. And I was like, uh, talk about prophetic, um, where this is all heading. Yeah, in terms of therapy, people not maybe doing traditional therapy and using AI instead, or not being in relationships because machines—

yeah, it's an interesting conver— I mean, you know, we should definitely talk about it. It is very, very interesting to think about. I think most— I think mostly every therapist is going to is going to put their flag down and say, look, there's parts of therapy that just cannot be replaced. And we'll all sort of agree that that's true. For me, the interesting question is whether or not people will recognize that, but just still opt for an AI. They'll opt for an AI in spite of that because there's just, everything's a trade-off, right? So if people will move towards non-human options even though they know there's benefits to human, but just everything is consumption. Everything is about, okay, it's a trade-off. I'm basically shopping for things that are good for me 100% of my life. Therapy is just another thing that falls into that bucket. So yeah, there's benefits to human, but the benefits to non-human outweigh that. So that's what I'm wondering is if we can correct that as a society, or we as therapists can sort of start to better change conversations about what therapy is and what it is supposed to be. So people realize, oh, this isn't something I can actually get from an AI.

Yeah. Which goes back to marriage. If I'm shopping for options and if I can't find somebody human who can meet my needs and affirm me why take the risk to encounter another human being, right?

Look at you, Rhett. You thread that needle like a pastor, like doing that. You like wove that thing perfectly, bro. Takes us back to marriage. Come on, so good.

So Michael Stephen, can we have you on again soon? And we'll take some time to Roundtable it, talk about therapy in the world of AI.

Oh man, yeah, that'd be fun.

Yeah, yes, it'd be fun.

Do you think we solved any problems today?

I think we probably got brains going.

Yeah, this is a dialogue. It's a dialogue indeed, and I'm glad to have friends like you that I can dialogue and think this stuff through. And Michael, thanks for putting this out there, and thanks for putting on your list of demands that Steven Perez was gonna join us because we just had 3 white guys.

Like, we have our Latino representation now.

Yeah, I'm Italian. Italians were, uh, not white until 1922, so I don't know if that like helps our case at all.

Ah, true. So we have a diverse group of guys here.

We do indeed.

We need to embrace our diversity more. Sorry, my bad.

All right, I'm gonna end this podcast where we skid off the rails too much. You guys have a great day. It's good seeing all of you.

Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it.

Episode 68.

Take care.

Later.