Annie Lalla | From Conflict to Collaboration: Transforming Relationship Dynamics

One of the ways I teach my clients to do this is when they have criticism, so they have feedback or complaints. And every complaint is usually in the form of some kind of WTF stance. So you might not say what the fuck? But you're like, did you forget to get the almond milk? Were you late picking up the kids? It's got WTF infused into it. So if you could take all your complaints, translate them from WTF to what I call mlk, which stands for Martin Luther King. And if anyone ever had a reason to be, what the fuck, it was him. But you? He didn't. He said I have a dream about a future and he inspired an entire nation and invited them to their higher level selves with an invitation to greatness.

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Mahl and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you were always meant to be. Let's get started.

What if transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling differently? Science shows us that true change happens when we align not just our minds, but also the neural networks and in our hearts and guts. This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind All Access, Membership and community. A space designed to help you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live with greater clarity and purpose. With over 1000 hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs, you you'll learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists and experts in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions and unlock your full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course we've ever produced, a treasure trove of Wisdom worth over $10,000 and growing, plus live gatherings and an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready to step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click the link to learn more and start your journey today.

What if the key to extraordinary love isn't finding the right person, but becoming the version of yourself that love is calling forward? In this episode, I'm joined by Annie Lala, a masterful relationship coach known for blending science, soul and emotional Intelligence. Annie shares powerful insights about how our childhood attachment patterns shape our romantic lives and how we can use love as a path of healing and transformation. She shows us how to work with conflict, creatively transmute shame without blame, and reframe jealousy as a sacred signal. One of Annie's core teachings is self regulation is the most important skill in any relationship. When we take responsibility for our emotional state, we become safer partners and more empowered humans. This conversation is a compass for anyone who wants to grow in love, not just survive it.

Let's get started. My name is Dr. Gleibmal, your co host for this session, and I'm really excited to be here today with Annie Lala. Welcome, Annie.

Thank you. Delighted.

Yeah, we're so happy to be able to include you. Ever since I've discovered your work and I've watched a bunch of your presentations on various sites and podcasts and youtubes and it's fascinating work you do around relationships. You often speak about creating extraordinary relationships through deep connection and authenticity. So I wonder if you could share how individuals can begin to cultivate a more conscious approach to their relationship, especially when past experiences have shaped fears and insecurities. You know, there can be quite a leap there from going from a relationship that we're kind of doing our best with, tolerating coping, it's okay most of the time to actually wanting to really, you know, embrace a more extraordinary level. It requires quite a leap and a little bit of work, I imagine.

A lot of work, actually. My husband says it doesn't take a lot to be in love, it takes everything. So I really see the game of relationship as the highest game human beings can play in their lifetime. It's most rigorous. It's performance athletics for your emotions. And I'm really committed that human beings believe in the possibility of true love existing and as possible for them. So I really think of myself as someone who helps skeptics believe in true love. And so whether you're single, don't dating, trying to find your partner, or you're in a relationship and you're feeling cynical or skeptical about what's possible here and wanting to give up that, I really love to intervene and basically show people, you know, every cynic is a failed idealist. You know, there's a part of them that had a vision, had a dream, had a possibility, and it got hurt or damaged or dashed to the curb, and then we give up on that dream. But in order to be cynical or skeptical, you actually still have to have the dream burning inside, like a little ember. Otherwise you'd just be neutral. You wouldn't be cynical or skeptical. So I see that little ember and I go in there and I try to blow on it and reignite that possibility for singles or couples. And you talked about when you've been wounded or had problems in the past. You know, original attachment dynamics, your attachment imprints really govern your patterns in your romantic relationship. Because when you fall in love, the dynamic between your original attachment figures or it's right over to your romantic partner. So even though you think this is your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you're actually treating them as if they're the attachment figure whose job it is to rescue you, soothe you, safe you, make you feel better when things go wrong, which is appropriate from the child version of yourself. That's the appropriate stance. But as an adult, we often relate to our romantic partner as if it's their job to make us feel better. And that's a developmental awakening that I offer people to teach them how to recognize that they're doing that pattern and like using their partner, burdening their partner with being their attachment figure, but teaching them how to become their own attachment figure, their own inner adult for their young, scared, upset, angry self. And that's a whole set of tools and technology. But the main thing I wanted to say here is what I've noticed in working with singles and couples is that you basically, once you have your attachment pattern set, you're basically on the hunt, roving through the world looking for a romantic partner that matches a set of criteria. And we think it's good looking, funny, smart, intelligent, and those are there. But what you're really hunting for is a particular brand of heartbreak, a particular quality of owie that is reminiscent and nostalgic of our original heartbreak in our attachment dynamic with whichever parent we had to work on feeling love from the most. So here we are, we're thinking we're looking for a dream soulmate, but we're looking for someone who replicates that particular heartbreak. So once I'm help able to show someone this is the pattern, you're attracted to all these other people you don't feel the chemistry with because they don't produce that nostalgic heartbreak. So since you're always going to be looking for someone who's like, you know, if your dad was emotionally unavailable, you're always going to be looking for an emotionally unavailable guy. That's just the deal. So here's what you do. You want to look for the smartest, most intelligent, most conscious, most committed to personal growth emotionally unavailable guy that you can find, which is what I did. I found my husband. He was the best looking, smartest, most conscious, emotionally unavailable guy could find. So you just call the shot because you won't be attracted to sensitive ponytail guy if emotional unavailability is what the imprint was. So it's like co opting the attachment pattern. And then the point of being in love is to meet someone who fits the role of replaying that attachment dynamic. But this time, this time at the end of the scene, I will get the dream outcome where my attachment figure loves me the way I most need it, but never got from my parent. And so once people realize the schema that's underpinning their make choice, then they can do it proactively. And I train both partners or singles on how to consciously wield their already existing attachment patterns and those wound driven propensities to their advantage. To let go of this delusion that you're ever gonna find someone who just satisfies instantly all your needs and wants and you know, doesn't trigger your crazy because you literally pick them so that they trigger you that crazy so that it comes up for healing. So that's one thing. And you know, I'm working with singles, I just say let's instead of looking for Mr. And Mrs. Right, we gotta make you into a version of yourself that you are proud to offer to the most inspiring human you ever meet, which is the only person you should marry. You should only ever commit to the most inspiring human you've ever met. Why settle for anything less than that? I mean, picking a partner is the most important decision you ever make in your life. And you're interviewing for that very important job. And so the first thing I do is try to help my singles create a version of themselves that they can sign their name to triumphantly. Who would you have to be to love what you're offering to another person? And then build a life and a tribe filled with activities that you love being in. Because no partner wants to join a life and rescue you from it. They want to join a life that's amazing that they get to add to. So that's a few things to start with and we could dab a little deeper.

Well, there's a lot there, you know, trying to project that perfect parent we didn't have onto our partner, getting them to fulfill that as a recipe for disaster. But it sounds like you're saying that these attachment patterns we have are inescapable and thus we're going to find somebody that meets you know, that creates that owie that meets that attachment pattern. We just have to learn how to work with that creatively. Which does sound like a formula for a lot of great personal growth work and therapeutic work. But isn't it possible to change the pattern and not have to do that?

So it is. So, but here's the deal. You always think of a number line. There's zero in the middle and to the left is like, you know, use standard attachment language, a super avoidant. And to the right is super anxious, right? Oh my God, do you love me? Are they going to text me back? I need space, I need alone time. You always find yourself on one side or the other. And in some relationships I was the super avoidant and I ended up falling in love with someone where I ended up. I was more clingy and attached at the beginning. So the more work you do to come closer to the center from whichever side you're lopsided towards, and it can be both sides depending on the relationship you're in, the more you integrate your shadow dichotomy. Right. So all my relationships up until my husband, I had really, I had to learn how to deal with and love someone in their anxious and nurture and reassure that person in order to make the relationship last and be as flourishing as it was. Little did I know that I was practicing technology to be able to be my own attachment figure to my own anxious self when my husband might be avoidant in a conflict. And so the work I help singles do or individuals do become more integrated, more balanced, nearer the center because you're the mate that you attract is as far away from the center point as you are. So if you're very, very codependent and like, oh my God, I need someone else to prop me up, then you're gonna find a very agentic, individual, self absorbed person. It's why you get the full on narcissist with the super codependent empath. And everyone's on one side of these two. Whenever I meet a couple, I'm always secretly going, which one's the nerner and which one's the more empathic codependent? And I get that they came to find each other to cross train. You're always attracted to the underdeveloped skill that needs to be fleshed out in yourself. That's why you're attracted to it. My husband was attracted to my ability to empathize with others. Except that was also a flaw. I was martyr, always empathizing with everyone else and I was attracted to him because he knew his needs and wants and could empathize with himself. So our relationship has been about him teaching me how to empathize with my own needs, wants, and desires and developing a backbone of selfhood that is trustable. And my relationship with him has been cultivating in him the ability to empathize with other people's needs, wants, and desires attuned to the implicit, unspoken requests from people. You know, I'm training him in the implicit, he's training me in the explicit. And honestly, after 15 years now we've crossed. I'm actually a little more avoidant and alone time and like, kind of need my space. And he's more, let's go for walks, let's hang out. Need more time together. So you can actually cross train your partner where you actually, in midlife, kind of go to the other side.

That's fascinating. So day to day, moment to moment, it seems like the working relationship or this, the energy of relationship has a lot to do with our heart being open, or it's opening or it's closing. And it's not a visual. We can feel that, you know, shutting down, we're avoiding, or our heart is open, even in a positive way, not necessarily a clean way, but it's actually opened. And so. But that, you know, can feel very vulnerable and very unsafe. Most of us have been bruised quite a bit from childhood onward when we had our heart open with expectations and hopefulness. And I'm here and then we get bruised. Right. And so how do we override all that conditioning that, you know, it's like, it's intelligent conditioning. Yeah. Am I really gonna put my finger on the hot stove again? You know?

Yeah, I hear you. And I mean, it's a really beautiful, elegant solution to close our heart, to keep it protected. And so I want to really honor and dignify the propensity of us to guard what's sacred and tender and vulnerable. And the heart, like the mind doesn't really work as well when it's closed. Like, if you were going to go out into the world and become successful, putting on your closed mind is probably least likely to lead to success. And similar to the mind, when you close your heart, it literally doesn't work as well. I think of consciousness as equal parts mind and heart. And I don't even like to look at dualities and dichotomies. But if we have to make them that you need to be have full consciousness online. You need to have an open mind and an open heart. And if either one of these is closed. You only have half of your intelligence online. Your success romantically or in any enterprise is going to be compromised if you're not bringing your full intelligence and your full consciousness. So. So you can't win if you don't play in the game of romance. And the only way to guarantee that you never get hurt is that you never ever explore a relationship. And so you're guaranteed to win that game. But do you really want to win that game? And I don't know anybody even no matter how in love you are, that doesn't become, doesn't befriend heartbreak. And the heart like a muscle, just like when you rip your muscle at the gym and it grows back stronger. And every time the heart rips, it grows back stronger. And so I look at heartbreak as opportunities, especially in the form of conflict, as opportunities to build yourself your own emotional resilience and the resilience of the relationship stronger each time if you know how to fight. And there's a heuristics and technologies around alchemizing conflict and drama into communion, connection, and collaboration. A conflict is a collaboration trying to happen, but getting undermined or stymied by the two enemies of collaboration, which is coercion and collapse. And we can talk more about that. You know, conflict is a collaboration gone wrong, and collaboration is a conflict gone right. And when you close your heart, you can't play the human game, first of all, and you can't trust. And what I love about trust is it's a word that has us in the middle. And in order to trust another human being, you have to feel like they are prioritizing and centralizing the relational dynamic, the us More than their agenda, more than the outcome that they're attached to. Someone's trying to sell you a car and you think that's more important than this relationship. You don't trust them if you're part. You know, someone wants you to come over to their house and help them paint, but they are willing to undermine the relationship, I. E. Guilt or shame you in order to get that you don't trust them. So I would just say vulnerability, first of all, is the word that gets used a lot. But I've noticed that young children never say, when they grow up, I want to grow up and be vulnerable. It's not aspirational. So usually I just see vulnerability as a very special case of honesty. Vulnerability is a form of honesty. So my invitation is, how could you be more honest and transparent about what's really happening when your heart's wanting to close. Because when your heart's wanting to close, there's a framework, a belief that is generating the closing of the heart. And usually that belief or that framework is dead, ossified data from the past, past experience, either yours or somebody else's, and you're literally letting obsolete data infect the present moment. And what if you could breathe into your body, be with the sensations in it, and use the fresh cutting edge, fresh off the press data of what's so in the moment? And if you can do that, which is really the key to opening your heart is becoming present to your body. And when you're fully present, your heart naturally goes into its resting position, which is open. And so there's obviously a lot of tool and technology around this. But I would say if someone's in a situation where your heart's wanting to close, I would just ask yourself, is there any circumstance that you can conceive of under which it's more useful, pragmatic and effective to close your heart? Because I ask myself this question and I never come up with a yes. Even if you have to kill your enemy to defend your family, you will do a better job with your heart open. And as Byron Katie says, you can love someone with all your heart and never want to see them again for the rest of your life.

So I'd like to circle back later and talk about attracting relationship or manifesting relationship for those of us who are single and would aspire to have relationship in our lives. For those of us in relationship, as you've been describing, complex and inevitable. And I like the way you relate it with collaboration and so forth. And yet, you know, conflict can become embedded. There's all kinds of patterns. You kind of alluded to this in terms of how we play out our attachment patterns and also even old conflicts. I don't know if you're familiar with Virginia Satir's work, Ryan Sculpting.

Love her.

But, you know, you'll have a couple in a fight that they constantly get into. And so you work with one of the partners, get them into the posture they're in, and you do this. And then suddenly they get it. Oh, yeah, it's my father yelling at me, I'm four years old. And you, the other partner, and something similar, and you find out it's like the ghost of their parents. Yeah, there's conflict out through them. It has very little to do with actually what's going on with them right now. And also then conflict can be, you know, if we don't know how to work with conflict can be so painful, terrifying, threatening, terrifying. You know, we walk away feeling bad about ourselves. You know, it can just be like, you know, I mean, I know there's been times in my life where I just, like, no drama. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a relationship with zero drama. That's probably a pipe dream, but it is a pipe dream. I know that.

Well, drama is a form of aliveness. And so if you say no drama to any situation, you get no aliveness. You know, I guess.

Why? I mean, there's no.

I know.

Drama.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, as you get older, you learn to navigate preemptively to mitigate drama upstream. That's a lot of what I teach how to mitigate it upstream, which, you know, most of a conflict happens before you even open your mouth to speak to your partner. It's all happening in here before you even interact. So I can do a lot of the work with just one partner in the relationship to mitigate the conflict. But I'm also quite adept in the middle of the drama. Like when a couple calls me and they're in it, it's. I'm like the ER doctor. I, like, come alive in the intensity. Because I believe any two seemingly disparate perspectives that are occurring as antagonistic dichotomies, there always exists an overlap in the Venn diagram. I just believe that on pure faith. And it's because I believe that the way I hunt for that overlap and I look for it is with this, it shall be. So we will find the shared reality that we can use to build scaffolding up to the next level of this conversation that is more productive and just having the audacity to have that faith. Because a lot of times I see couples from their perspective. One's on the white side of the yin yang, one's on the black side of the yin yang. And they're like, we are enemies. But I can see above that they're interpenetrating and that there is a shared reality. I can find some framework where they both go, yes, I agree. And then I can build that out into a bridge back home. Home to what? Home to us. I know that their relationship is stronger, more resilient, and bigger than this one issue. Their love is wider than this fight. And if I can remember that and shuttle that memory back to them during the drama and teach them the technology around collaboration, they will start to believe, even though in the moment they're triggered and angry, they will start to believe there exists a version of this conversation at the end of which we are closer, better understanding of each other, and, and we will not regret that we had the drama because of the upgrade we got and because I believe that's always possible in any conflict, we get access to it. Right. Opportunities only occur to the minds that entertain them.

Absolutely. So I want to talk more about that. And obviously there's a lot of skill sets involved in working creatively with conflict. And conflict can, of course, lead to greater intimacy when work with in skillful and healthy ways. But it seems like to begin with, at least for me, there's a need to kind of, maybe not for everyone, but for some of us, shift our attitude around conflict altogether. Because earlier I'd been very fortunate to have some really amazing partners in my life. And early on, when my partner was upset with me, I just was out of there. I'm out the door, I'm headed to the bar, I'm going somewhere, whatever. I'm out the door. And this one partner, unfortunately, I lost two earlier partners who were both amazing to cancer. I'm now in an amazing marriage with my beloved Sophie. So I'm very fortunate to have had these amazing women in my life. And, but anyway, this one, I'm thinking of Karen. She used to almost literally grab me and just look at me say, you're not going to die. You're not going to die. I'm upset, but you're not going to die. You can survive this. Just stay here. Let's work through this. You won't die. I'm like, no, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm out of here.

Yeah. Yeah. Terrifying.

At some point, I had to become less threatened by conflict. Now, maybe that happened because I had some experience of working through it better, or maybe I just, I don't know. But I somehow I had to get. I had to.

Well, I was just like you. I, I, I literally thought anger coming towards me from anyone meant I was gonna die, that I had the same coding. And then I married Mr. Angry, who's very comfortable with it. Well, there's two parts. First, I think realizing that there's a part of you that cognitively knows I'm not gonna die, which she was speaking to. But there's another part that's precognitive, prelingual, and not in time. And it really does believe it's going to die, because there was a time in your life where some anger was coming at you and your little nervous system could not Cope and totally understandably and would dissociate, which is another form of leaving to cope. Which is a beautiful technology that the human nervous system has. And it works so well that as we get older we keep doing it. Except instead of dissociating into a fantasy world or playing with dolls or trucks, we dissociate into narratives that involve explanations, justifications, reasons, blames and shames. That's the new form of dissociation is the story that we go into rather than being with the sensations in our body. Which is from my experience, feeling a feeling of fear or frustration has never killed a client. They've never spontaneously combusted. At worst they tremble a little and cry. But teaching someone the process of being self regulated enough to be what they're feeling is I think the great mission of being a human being. It's basically what all my coaching comes down to. One, taking radical responsibility for feeling safe in your body. So that might include removing yourself from the conversation, leaving the house, leaving the room to take care of your nervous system. It also includes building more resilience so that you can stay more and more in the fire and stay feeling safe by learning how to regulate your nervous system in the face of an onslaught of upset or anger. So if I've had to build both tools, so I'm sure over time you've built the ability to tolerate someone's upset, but also you've chosen partners or picked people who have maybe more sophisticated ways of expressing their anger as well. So we could go into like how to handle those. Like I don't know where you want to go with it, but like we could dive into collaboration or what to do with anger or how be their feelings.

I think I just wanted to affirm that that is a, you know, it's a pathway to developing that willingness and that comfort level. And it has profoundly shifted for me over the years. But I want to talk more about the. You mentioned the technology of collaboration. Yes, Juxtaposition, conflict and collaboration. And but you just mentioned self regulation and it seems to me like that is so foundational that if we're going to have a healthy relationship and we aspire to do the work of relationship, not be in a tolerate a relationship, but really do the work that both partners learn good self regulation skills. Because otherwise, you know, being a relationship kind of like walking through a minefield blindfolded and not have no way to retain our balance. Right. So it me like learning something about self regulation and even co regulation on a neurophysiological level are really important skills to have to then do the work in relationship.

I would say it's not just an important. I think it's the most important skill to being an effective human. Definitely the most important skill for being successful in relationships, in a relationship at all. And the king of skill for being a successful parent. So learning it. The reason why it's so required to learn in your romantic relationship because if you're going to have kids someday, if you don't know how to create safety in your body when you're scared, angry, overwhelmed, then your child will never feel safe around you and they won't learn how to do it by proxy. They learn by being entrained in your nervous system. And you know, for anyone who's listening, self regulations is like a buzzword right now. It just means regulating your own nervous system. With intentionality, our nervous system gets tense and contracted and scared. Automatically and unconsciously. Something happens, a loud noise, we go dysregulated. In order to regulate that takes conscious intentionality. So we get dysregulated and stressed unconsciously. Every other animal in the world goes after a stressful moment and shutters out their shock. We are the only animals that get contracted and do not have systematized, structured ways to shutter out our distress, our shock, the after waves of a difficult situation. And that accumulates and produces disease. Robert Sapolsky writes a lot about this. His book Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. But let's come back to what self regulation is. So first of all, I think it's the mark of being an adult. My definition of adult is someone who realizes a nobody coming to rescue you, ever. And your emotional state, how you're feeling is your responsibility to be tracking you. Being attuned to your nervous system is the one single job you have on this planet. That's it. If you can just do that job, everything else falls into place. Attuning to your own nervous system in real time. And when you attune to your own nervous system and track, oh, I'm contracting, I'm a little scared, I'm a little nervous and starting to even calibrate. I calibrate. Am I 3 out of 10 anxious? Am I 7 out of 10 upset? In our family, everything's got a number. If my daughter gets hurt, she's like, mom, I got hurts. You know, six out of ten or she's hungry, three out of ten. I really like calibration because it allows you to bring more consciousness and granularity to it. But tracking your nervous system so that you can notice when it starts to get dysregulated. By the time it hits 5 out of 10, dysregulated, triggered, overwhelmed, it goes from 5 to 10, like in microseconds. So you want to be tracking it at 0123 because then you still have some sanity and you're still driving the car and the lizard brain hasn't hijacked and taken over. And you can still do some conscious, intentional self regulation like breathing. This the most simple self regulation is three to five deep breaths in, ideally through the nose. Long, slow exhale through the mouth. That's the easiest, most portable. There's many other tools and technologies. There's as many self regulation techniques as there are human imagination. You know, there's one self soothing tool where you like smooth down the outside of your arms. There's emdr, there's eft, anything that gets you into your soma, literally wiggling your fingers and toes. Exercise, dance. Of course, meditation is basically a practice of self regulation. And I think this is the mark of being a grown adult, is that you take responsibility for your own emotional state. And most people in relationships have not realized, and I understand it, they have not realized that your partner isn't there to regulate your nervous system. This is a little bit controversial. I'm not a big fan about teaching CO regulation because I notice most people make a bypass and they go straight from, oh, I don't feel regulated to, it's your job to regulate me. This is what I mean, that you have to become your own attachment figure. That means you have to become able to regulate. So self regulation is actually internalized CO regulation. So you learn from a friend, a teacher, a parent, a therapist, what it feels like for someone to hold space for your feelings, to dignify and honor your experience. And then you learn how to do that internally for your own younger self. Then when you do that, you no longer put the burden of needing someone else to regulate you. And you're more powerful because you're not contingent on someone's presence to be okay. Which means you're now an adult. And there is nothing more romantic in relationship. No flowers, no Hawaii vacation. Nothing. Nothing is more romantic than your partner being able to regulate themselves and not put the burden of their emotions onto you. Once you are proficient at regulating yourself and you get philosophically that if I'm feeling scared, angry or upset, I need to either take space or go use my tools or call a coach and get support that doesn't come from my partner. Once you're there then as a gift the way like if I'm sick with COVID I've been sick this last week. Not Covid, but just with a flu. And my husband would just like bring me food and take care of me and just love on me and he doesn't owe me making me lunch. I receive it as a complete gift from his heart and he treats it like a gift and I take it like a gift. I don't go, where's my lunch? I'm stuck in bed, I don't have any food yet. And most people relate to the regulation of their partner, supporting and soothing them as an entitlement because the young part of them that didn't get that regulation from their parents when they should have is expecting it. Understandably. Because as a young kid you should have been soothed and loved on by your parents. So the young part of our partners is going, you owe this to me. And I have compassion for that. But your partner doesn't see you as a young four year old anymore. They see you as a grown up adult. And you have to realize that you literally picked someone who doesn't know how to regulate you on purpose so that you could learn how to do it yourself. That's actually what happens.

Yeah, and I love that. And honestly, I love this approach of about what it means to be an adult. I love David Rico's book Being an Adult.

Oh, I love it too.

Read that years and years ago. You know, I think expecting co regulation or being dependent on co regulation from others is obviously not helpful. But I would think that if we're able to do a good job with self regulation, if we develop a baseline of good self regulation than when we are in the presence of others, just by practicing good self regulation and self awareness and embodied self awareness while we're in the presence of others, that has a co regulating impact.

They copy. You're literally energetically demoing what it looks like to be owning and honoring your feelings. And whether you say a word or not, the other person's body can pick up the demo. So if I go into a restaurant and I hear a baby crying and it's someone in the corner, I feel the part of me that gets like the mom in me. But if I regulate my nervous system, I literally send that softness out into the field and I know it'll get its way to the mom and to the baby. There's no faster way to regulate another human being than to attune to your nervous system. Take some breaths and regulate home. Most of us are trying to regulate our nervous system. The scenic route through other people's nervous system. Look, if I can get everyone else to feel calm and happy, then I'll be okay. Instead of going directly to our own nervous system, making that feel okay. So now you're a resource to support everyone else. I mean, that was me for many, many years thinking I'm loving everybody, but really I just can't hang when they're angry or upset. So I became a professional mediator of upset people. But you know, my marriage has fixed that. I definitely married the person who did not know how to regulate me. And thank goodness I hated it at the time. But now I'm so glad that I've learned how to do it because it makes me a way more extraordinary mother to my child.

So let's talk more about what you described as a technology of collaboration and also maybe as part of that understanding, you know, I mean, I think there's so much shame in our culture in the way that we're enculturated as children. I just personally feel one of my life goals is to rid our culture of shame and blame. Very small little project I have, you know, but it's.

I'm on team, I'm on the same page.

It comes up all the time. So it seems like if you're talking about effective collaboration and healthy working through conflict, somehow we're able to transform or transcend shame in some way.

Yeah, I mean, shame is underneath a lot of aggression. Shame, jealousy, envy, guilt. These are all status reducing emotions. When we confess them, we apparently lose status in most culture. And so human beings don't like to give up status. And so what happens when you have shame, envy, jealousy or guilt is it masquerades and dresses up as aggression, criticism, attack. We don't say I feel jealous because you're looking at the waitress who's skinnier than me. We say, why are you disrespecting me? Why don't you go home with her? Like the. You gotta look behind aggression and a lot of times you'll find hidden shame. And the shame is hidden from the person in whom's body it's happening. Like nobody usually knows they're feeling ashamed. The way you know you're feeling ashamed is usually you're either angry or you're hiding something. That's one of the indicators of shame is secrecy. So there's a lot of ways I handle shame, first of all. Well, I have a couple tools. I'll give you a tool around shame for conflict resolution. First of All I am always scanning for where my client or the human in front of me I'm speaking to might be having shame energetically. Like, before they say anything, like, maybe they're fixing their hair or they're, like, uncomfortable. I find the part of their being that is terrified of being marginalized, which is what shame is. Shame is hails from our original tribal ancestry, where if there was 10 pieces of food and 10 people in the tribe and you ate two pieces of food, someone would starve. And so you were shamed and shunned for doing anything that was out of rapport with the tribe because it would compromise the integrity of the tribe. And so you could be, like, cast out into the desert to die alone. So shame is always on pain of death. That's why it feels monolithic and terrifying. So I send a message to the part of that person that might be feeling in terror or having that shame, and I literally. I just send love to it. I just go, I see you. This is not verbal. And I just, like, send love, love to all the places where the person might be having terror. And I notice that some part of their being receives that. But I'm also more explicit. So when I'm working with couples, there's often, like, deceit. Or if you're ashamed of something, you might fudge the story about how the argument went. I try to write, like, a victory letter or see the innocence of the person who's feeling ashamed preemptively. And then I give them an out. Like, I write a narrative that gives them reprieve from the shame so that they don't even have to unconsciously dodge it. Of course, I understand exactly why you wouldn't have told her that on the text. It makes sense. And then give them away. I'm basically saying, without saying explicitly, I know you feel ashamed. It's okay that you have shame. You still have dignity. And here's your innocence letter. And if I can do that, I can often make the shame tolerable enough for them to own up to a new, improved way of doing it or take responsibility, because most people have take responsibility equal to shaming themselves and making themselves bad. And I'm always trying to scrape off the shame blame and make wrong between my clients or when I'm talking to them. Even a should is a could with shame smeared on top. So we want to scrape off all that shame. And one of the ways I teach my clients to do this is to when they have criticism, so they have feedback or complaints. And every complaint is usually in the form of some kind of WTF stance. So you might not say, what the fuck? But you're like, did you forget to get the almond milk? Were you late picking up the kids? It's got WTF infused into it. And so if you could take all your complaints, translate them from WTF to what I call mlk, which stands for Martin Luther King, and if anyone ever had a reason to be, what the fuck, it was him. But he didn't. He said, I have a dream about a future. And he inspired an entire nation and invited them to their higher level selves with an invitation to greatness. And so every complaint has a commitment to greatness behind it. So if you can translate your WTF complaints into MLK speeches instead of like, why did you leave your dishes on the table? I have a dream that you take your dishes and you put them straight into the dishwasher because you want to collaborate and be part of this team, this family, keeping the house clean. Like, there is a way to show your partner how their behavior could be even more aligned with their values and not add to their already existing shame. You actually have to give them a way out of the shame, a way into hero. And that's what the MLK stance is. How can I paint a future where they win, not complain about where they've screwed something up? So it's future focused and possibility driven rather than past focused and shame laden? That's one tool I use to scrape off shame.

I just want to reaffirm that. Just that sort of MLK stance that you're using and that shift, that could be a North Star in relationship, that could take us a long way.

It really does. And we use it in our family system. If I say something, my husband will be like, can you MLK that? And. Which means, can you translate that into an inspiration instead of bitching? And I'll ask him to MLK it too. And it forces development for both. Because who you have to be to inspire your partner into a developmental change is a higher version of yourself. It's someone that you would sign your name to more triumphantly. And your job as romantic partner is to stand fiercely for the greatness of your mate and to emancipate them from their small, wounded, defended self into their, you know, their essence. You're not trying to change your partner. You're trying to scrape away everything that isn't them, like barnacles on a ship. I think of the Michelangelo metaphor where you hire your partner to be Michelangelo and you're the block of marble and they see David inside the marble. That's what they fell in love with. Not some other version of you. The real you. What your partner's trying to scrape away or curb is your unconscious wound driven patterns, your defense strategies, not you. They love you. They're scraping away everything that's not you. To emancipate the magnum opus of who you are from the block of marble. So choosing your partner, choosing your Michelangelo, your sculpture, carefully. That's why it's the most important decision you ever make. Because you don't fall in love with another person. You fall in love with who you get to be because of them, by being with them. Because they're going to stand for the highest vision and carve you into it.

You repeat that, but this. You don't fall in love with them.

You don't fall in love with another person. You fall in love with who you get to be around them, through them, beside them. You fall in love with the vision they have of your greatness, which supersedes the vision you even have for yourself. You help you fall in love with who your partner sees in you at your greatest and they become your Michelangelo. And then they carve you into it. And sometimes they carve you with poor bedside manner and harsh criticism. And I try to teach those partners how to mlk their invitations to greatness. And even if partner does give you feedback that feels critical as the one that's receiving it, your job is to remember that you are already a masterpiece. You're the Mona Lisa. And they're just dusting off the Mona Lisa with their feedbacks. You have to remember your own dignity and greatness and then look for the golden nugget amongst all their grumbles. Is there an iterative upgrade in there that would make me an even more extraordinary version of myself? And the question you've asked yourself is the complaint my partner's making of me, if I fulfilled the thing they requested, would it make me fall more in love with myself? Would I be more proud of myself? And if the answer is yes, then your partner is doing exactly the job you hired them to do, which is be a mirror for your magnificence and poetry, but also a mirror for your madness and wherever you fall short of your greatness. So they're just doing the job.

How about power struggles? Power struggles can get pretty deadly as long as people stay locked in that. I used to have lead a training before the pandemic. We haven't been able to do it really since pandemic. Well, hopefully we'll do it again someday. But very intense in person group work like 30, 40 people with a training team of six people, true primary trainers and taking people deep into their family, awards and stuff and a lot of intensity and role plays and a lot of stuff. And sometimes we would have a couple in the training or sometimes someone with their adult child and they would be just locked into such a power struggle, just the horns locked and neither one of them was going to give an inch. At some point myself or my co trainer might say to one of them, what do you want? You want to be right or you want relationship? Do you want a winner? You want relationship? You don't get to have both. And others this power struggle thing can be and it of course goes way back to our attachment issues in our childhood and so forth. But I wonder if you could I.

Just co op the whole, whole thing. I just literally when my couples have power struggles, I build a culture where the most spiritually developed, sensitive, loving, attuned partner is the winner. So I fetishize that. So if they're in a power struggle, I start talking to them about who's willing to be the hero. And they're, you know, they're like. And I'm like, it's okay. And I can tell which one has more resource than the other. But I often let them self select and I go, which one of you wants to be the hero right now? So I'm already framing the one that leads with the olive branch or softens is the hero. And I'm turning and co opting the competition because in a fight they're trying to fight who's right? They want to win. So I don't want to take that out. I want to let them win. But let's win a new game. Who's going to win the game called Badass Partner. Who remembers the importance of us? Who comes back home to love. Sometimes when I'm angry with my husband, we'll go into a little tiff and then I'll come back into the kitchen once I've like regulated and I'll be like, I remembered. And I remembered is code for I remembered that we're in love and that our relationship is bigger than this grumble. But when I say it, I have a little bit of I remembered what you doing. You still grumbling over there. You still off in your little grumble because you ain't as spiritually developed as me. Like I take it I co op the competition, but now we're competing for who's going to come Back home to us faster. And so I find that really works to just aikido the power struggle from who's right, who's wrong to who's better at loving, which is a much better game to play to win.

That seems to be a through line in your work. What you're calling co opting or working with the dynamics as they are, rather than trying to escape them or deny them or literally change them, really work with the dynamics and through into some sort of channel.

It's a yes and right. It's yes and transcend means include and go beyond. So I gotta include what's so and just dance it into something like love it into submission. Whatever the pattern is that we want to work through in ourselves and someone else. You can't obsolete a pattern, lobotomize a pattern. You can only attend to it, see its dignity, and then love it into submission. Because when you love, when you appreciate a pattern, see it's years of work that it's put in, give it its gold watch for its years of service, it organically and naturally subsides. Patterns only persist when you shame them, make them wrong, or tell them they need to go away, just like a child. If you tell them that, they just dig their heels in and they go, I ain't leaving until you see me and love me. That's what your patterns do. So I just find a way to love the pattern into, you know, softening and then what's more current and useful and born in the moment will surface. Because those patterns are from dead ossified experience from your past, they're usually no longer even applicable to the current moment. I mean, to be triggered and dysregulated is actually a form of time travel. To be triggered is to time travel back into the past to a younger self, usually under 10 years old. Even though you are a 40 year old adult in the kitchen, your nervous system is time traveled back to the past, to the first time you had that difficult emotion. And so once you've time traveled back to the past to a five year old version of yourself, when you're triggered, you only have access to your five year old files. And that's why you look like a tantruming human with not much sophistication. And all those courses and plant medicine and all the meditation courses you've done help you zero because you're a five year old. So that's why self regulation is actually a form of time travel. Self regulation is you doing some actions, breathing that time travels your ass back to the Present moment where you have grown up. Adult files and technologies that you can access and wield creatively in resolving the conflict. So self regulation is actually time travel as far as I'm concerned.

Let's talk for a minute about jealousy. Jealousy in some ways seems almost like the dark side of love or something. But it's a human emotion. It's normal, it's natural. It happens. What drives jealousy and how do you work with jealousy?

I think jealousy gets a bad rap. I think jealousy is a very sophisticated, astute emotion. And evolution does not waste time on anything that isn't adapted. So jealousy is, in many animals, a way of protecting the pair bond. And it's a way of guarding the sacred us, the fort of us. And what I'll say about jealousy, and it's so interesting, as a Love coach for 20 years, I've never had a single client, except one in the last year that has ever confessed to being jealous ever. So again. Remember I said jealousy always masquerades as aggression. People have jealousy as coded as weak, insecure. You're not, you know, confident. Here's what I think about jealousy. It's never for no reason. I'll give it a metaphor. So the way a clam makes it, or an oyster makes a pearl is a little grain of sand has to get in there, and it's an irritant. And then mollusk goes, oh, I don't like this grain of sand. And it excretes all this, like, iridescent stuff that coalesces around this grain of sand and it produces a pearl. So at the root of all jealousy is a grain of sand that has truth. Now, if you think your partner is cheating on you with the secretary because he's coming home late from work, the story that the jealous feeling makes in your mind is almost 99% bullshit and not believable. But the feeling that something's off is trustable. So I trust jealousy to indicate something is off. The story of what is off, I trust zero. When a couple comes to me and one of them's jealous, usually the partner is like, they're being ridiculous. All I did is take a picture with a photographer who was a guy, and now you think I'm dating him. And they paint out the jealous person to be like, psycho. But if I trace it back down, there is always systemically in the relationship behaviors that the partner who's being accused is doing that is lacking in full devotion that they're not aware of. There's some thing that they're doing that is not in Full devotion that if they were doing would preclude the jealousy. The grain of sand wouldn't be there for the pearl. The most of the pearl is all fake. It's not the sand, but there's a grain of sand in it. And so jealousy is a dance with both partners where I help the person not trust the story that the jealousy's spinning. But to just come to their partner and saying, I'm feeling like something's off, my mind is generating a story. Here's the crazy story my mind's generating. I'm hallucinating that you're having an affair. But the fact that your partner is jealous indicates to you that there's low hanging fruit being left on how to upgrade your devotion. And when I help that partner close off unconscious sexual tentacles, they're sending out or unconscious ambiguous signals that they may be indicating or behaviors that are not in full devotion of the primary relationship. Once I bring that into their attention and help them upgrade that, the jealousy goes away. So jealousy indicates an opportunity for more devotion to show up in the other partner. And usually the other partner can't see see where they're missing the next level of devotion. And the jealousy is the invitation for their growth. Think of your partner's needs as custom crafted by the universe to wake you up to your next level self. Whatever persistent need or complaint your partner has is the universe literally trying to carve you into wholeness. And never ignore jealousy. You don't have to trust the story. Neither the jealous person or the person feeling jealous of shouldn't trust the story. But there is something to it. My husband likes to go around saying, oh, I never feel jealous. I never felt jealous once with Annie. And I'm like, yeah, that's because of me. That's because the way I handle myself is such that you will never feel it. And I notice a lot of times couples, you know, one partner will say, oh, I never feel jealous. And I'm like, that's because she's got her shit together and she's in full devotion. Or he's in full devotion. So that's how I think about it is I don't dismiss it. I see it as very intelligent. I think it should be always. I basically don't believe you can have jealousy if there isn't something off. Even if the guy is just staying late at work, having a marijuana toke after with the guys and not telling his wife, it's nothing to do with a woman, but something's off. And to distinguish, jealousy involves three people. Envy involves Two. So I can be jealous that my best friend is hanging out with a new female friend, doesn't even have to be sexual. And I can be envious of, oh, she published her book and I haven't published my book yet. It's different.

We kind of idealize and romanticize long term relationships and forever love and so forth. And obviously it's a beautiful thing. And sometimes we see people that have been together for a long time and they're still romantic with each other. It's a really touching and heartwarming thing. And I'm wondering if sometimes relationships do have an endpoint and.

Oh yeah.

And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how people can discern whether it makes sense to keep make a relationship.

I think relationship is a school and it's an educational dojo. It's a school and you graduate. Every relationship I was in up until my husband, romantically I graduated from. I think of it as graduation rather than a breakup. I think I like the flavor of that because you get to keep your diploma, your education of what works, what doesn't work, your own developmental upgrades. And no relationship is a failure because you learned from it. And that is hard won knowledge. And so knowing when it's time to graduate is a skill. I think most people give up too early because what happens is after the drugs wear off, after nine to 18 months and all the hormones wear off, then you're left with a fallible, imperfect human in front of you who cannot fulfill all your needs. In fact, you picked someone who absolutely by design will not fulfill your needs in exactly the way that you most want them to. And then you get mad. So I think any couple that's together is supposed to be together no matter how crazy their relationship works. They are constellating because each person is trying to get a nutrient or a developmental upgrade or an education that they need to become more integrated and whole. That's why they're in the relationship. And they won't break up or graduate until they get that nutrient, that education, that upgrade. And I never break up a couple, but I can usually sniff out whether this what the longevity of the couple is. And I might ask questions to both partners, the answers to which poise them more should become aware that graduation is nigh. And I think it's very important to graduate in a way that has finesse and grace because the quality of your last breakup governs your success in the next relationship. And so you may think, oh, I'll just, you know, get out of this and Forget about it. Any uncauterized wounds if you don't. I think you know, when you graduate, you want to graduate from the highest level of poetry of that relationship. You want to graduate from what's the best version of us that I remember. And you don't break up in a fight. I don't let anyone break up in a fight. I don't let anyone demonize their partners to get over them. Because you, once you start loving someone, you always love them. So when you demonize an ex, you demonize the part of you that loved them and you actually turned into self loathing so you can honor again. Like Byron, Katie said, you can love someone with all your heart and never want to see them again for the rest of your life. So you can honor the love and the poetry and the beauty that you created. And that's what I want you to put on the COVID of the book of that relationship in your mind. Because all your memories are like art pieces hanging on the walls in your mind. You don't want to have art that you're not proud of. They're not. That's not empowering. So what did you learn from that relationship? What was the poetry? What was the beauty? Break up from that place which is harder to do. And graduate always conserving the dignity and self esteem of your partner and you and the relationship. So act as if your relationship, past, present and future is listening to how you think about it, how you talk about it with your friends. And that relationship, its self esteem is either like this or like this. And you want to speak about your relationship, past or present or future, in a way that the relationship feels proud of itself like you're proud of your degree when you graduate from a university. And so I have a lot of different ideas on how to graduate with class. But knowing really comes down to who's worth the suffering. That's my least glamorous definition of love. Who's worth the suffering? Because there's no relationship where you're not going to have to do work to transcend your patterns. And the reason that it's hard is because they're calling you to a next level of work. And every relationship I was in had some difficulties, but there was no one worth that level of suffering, worth doing the work for until I met my husband. And he's worth the work at the skin of his teeth, but he is. And so. And what is the work? It's all work in service of my own development. I'm using my relationship and my husband as a Gymnasium as a dojo for me to get muscles. So when people talk about, well, it's not fair, how come I have to change and they don't change. You don't yell at the training machines at the gym and go, how come you don't have to lift the weights? You're using the gym to grow your own emotional resilience and developmental muscles. And if my partner wants to sit on the sofa eating potato chips and ice cream while I'm working out at the gym, well, they can. I'm doing it for myself. And I've noticed when couples are in love, if you do your work and let leave them, don't even need them to do theirs. Just you lead by example. They do come trailing behind. My husband's always about three months behind me in a new developmental pattern. And I used to get all frustrated. I'm just like, ah, he found his way. They watch. I don't use my partner's suboptimal behavior as an excuse for me to not go to the gym. I just want to be acting in a way that I can sign my name to, that I can feel proud of. Are you behaving in your relationship in a way that if you were on a reality TV show and everyone you admired was in the audience, that they'd be clapping for you? That's what you want to be running so that you're lining up with your own values. So in terms of knowing when to leave, honestly, I think it's the woman that usually has the clairvoyance, because the woman is the female. In traditional heteronormative relationship. The feminine principle, let's say, is the visionary leader of the relational possibility. It's the steering wheel, and the masculine principle is the engine. And so whether the woman breaks up or she subcontracts it out to the man, she's the one that decides. The way a woman usually does that is she's just not happy. When a man loves a woman, if his woman is continuously complaining and not happy, he will opt out because he wants her to feel happy so he'll leave the space for someone else to do it. And the woman doesn't realize she's the one that created that. By not standing for and being able to inspire and build a relational dynamic that serves her aliveness.

This has been incredibly illuminating and really inspiring. I feel tremendously inspired. Annie, thank you so much. I wanted to work just about out of. We kind of are out of time. But I still wanted to ask you one more thing. And just for those in our audience who are currently single and would like to create relationship in their lives are feeling, you know, the loss or feeling a longing for having a relationship in life. What advice do you have to kind of, I don't know, position yourself?

I've got the best thing for singles. Yeah, I've got the best, very short relationship coaching for singles. Okay, so singles, men or women, first thing, you've got to build your, you've got to start doing your bird call. When you walk down the street on a summer afternoon and you hear the birds saying, what do you think they're doing? They're putting out a mating call. Your bird call, man or woman, your bird call is you doing something that brings you into flow, into your own aliveness. Whether it's online, in person, it doesn't matter what it is. Make sure you are in public forums, physical 3D or digital forums where people get to see you doing your superpower, your flow behavior, your the thing that brings you most alive, that is your bird call. I literally found my husband at Burning man doing a talk on his favorite ideas. He didn't realize he was doing his bird call, but he was and I heard it. That's how your partner finds you. Because when you're doing your bird call, which is mean channeling your art, your soul is on display. That is how your soulmate finds you, is they hear the call of your soul. So it's not about going on match.com and Tinder and getting a matchmaker. It's finding opportunities to be in your most radiant version of yourself and trust that you're sending the bird call out. So get out, you know, get out of the basement and get out in the world. That's the first thing. Second thing is if you're looking for say a female partner treat and just say you're a man. If you're a man looking for a female partner and you're ready to find your, your life mate. Try this on every woman you talk to. Every woman, 80 year old lady in the pharmacy, 6 year old girl in the playground, 24 year old Starbucks barista. Every female you interact with, treat her as if she is an avatar of the goddess. She is in communion with your future soulmate. And after your interaction with her, she's going to send an email energetically to your future soulmate, letting them know where you are in your personal development by how much of, how much reverence and how much dignity you left them with. So it's not just, oh, this chick's pretty, I'm going To talk her up. At the cafe, it's every woman. Treat every woman as if their father was standing right beside them invisibly and he was watching how you're talking to their daughter. How would you behave so you could wink at the father after, even if you didn't want to interact with him romantically, but how would you behave? So the father would be like, thanks, man. Thanks for taking care of my girl. If you run that program, every woman you interact with will feel like a queen, which turns you into a king and brings your highest self forward. And she's either going to be the one or practice for the one. And you are bringing your A game then. So you don't want to just treat chicks that are candidate wife potentials with your A game. You bring your A game every time you interact with a woman. I'd say the same for a woman looking for a man. A lot of my female clients don't realize that when they interact with men, they're running all kinds of lenses and daddy issues and prejudices. And I say to them, treat every man as if he is a king. I don't care if it's a little boy or an old grandpa, treat him as if he's a man, as if his mother is standing right there and looking. How are you going to treat my little boy? How would you treat that man? So you leave his self esteem intact or better, even if you're not romantically interested in them. And imagine that man that you're talking to is going to send an email to your future king and say, your girl is ready. You better come find her. And so that's my favorite coaching for singles is if you take the thon and really treat every man or woman with this higher level of consciousness, your partner is going to find you very quickly. They're already looking for you. We often have patterns that are blocking the docking station for the relationship to port. And so what I do with a lot of my singles will help clear the port so that the dream relationship can dock. And those, those are usually beliefs, prejudices, wounds, or just busyness that's keeping you available.

Wow. I just love the way you, you kind of intertwine and balance very practical advice with this inner wisdom. Really deep inner wisdom. All in this kind of landscape of adult radical responsibility.

Right.

It's just so. It's just so beautiful. And the advice you just gave there, I mean, that is the inner interview of how you attract relationship into your life is by manifesting that kind of energy that honors those deep archetypal energies of the king, the queen, the goddess and so forth. And really, it's the MLK. You're MLKing everybody.

Exactly.

You're mlking everyone. Yeah.

People rise to the level of your listening of them. And so if you walk through the world leaving a wake of people feeling loved by you, I mean, even if it's just a smile, you can leave someone better or worse than you found them. Just leave everyone better than you found them and your partner will find you. I would also say just start visualizing them. Literally start visualizing when you're standing at a kitchen sink, visualize your partner putting their chin in the nook of your neck and their arms around your waist. You don't know what they look like, but the feeling is this grounded, safe of courseness. Just start anchoring the of courseness. Not the someday, one day, maybe yearning, but the grounded of courseness. And I think that's how they find you because there's it shall be. So it's already in the vibe.

Thank you so much, Annie. This has been incredibly inspiring and yeah, just.

What a gift.

What a gift. Thank you.

Delighted. Thanks for having me, people.

Find out more about you at your basic website.

Yes. Anneala.com a n n I E L A L L A 2 N's and Annie, 2 L's and Lala. I've also just started a podcast, it's on Spotify. It's called Matters of the Heart and it's got all my edgy ideas on relationships, family of origin, like we go into parenting, sex, all of it. So check that out. I'm also on Instagram, it's lalabird. L A L L A B I R D and I put, you know, reels out every week, so check me out.

Wonderful. Absolutely. Great. Okay, thank you. Be well.

Thank you for joining me on the radical responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you. Take care.

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