Finding Brave 97: Top Six Relational Handicaps That Break Relationships and Bonds, Yamel Iglesias

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Finding Brave this week. How are you? How's the week going? You know that I ask that every week, but I'm really interested and I want to tell you, first of all, I can't even speak. I'm so excited to introduce my guest today, Shamel Corcol Iglesias. I don't even want to talk. I just want to jump right into our conversation, Shamil. But I am going to say a few words. But thank you for taking time in your crazy, busy schedule for being here. I'm so excited to have you. All right, everyone, What I was saying is I hear from people every week who have tuned in, and everybody shares something different. They say, you know, listening has given me this, or I had an idea from this. But this week I heard people sharing that, and I'm wondering if this resonates with you. Their lives are so crushingly busy. Every minute is consumed with something important to them, whether that's running their business or self care or being the child of an elderly parent, and they want to do it right because they see the time is fading. Or being a parent of children who, as we all know, children, you know, they're perfect in every way, right? But sometimes they deliver us challenges that we don't know how to handle.

So.

So I'm hearing from people who are saying this podcast gives me a chance to not only entertain my mind, but also it gives me coping strategies for some of these challenges, even in the realm of relationships. So I'm so happy to hear that. And that is what we're talking about today. We're talking about the top six relational handicaps that damage bonds and relationships. And that's where Shamel comes in. So I hope this is helpful to you, Shamel. I want to tell everybody, you know, I love to share how I learn of my guests, how I know them, how they're in. In my life. And. And I really want to. I don't know if you know this story, and I really want to tell you and see if you remember it, but I know Shamel from back in 2002 when I started the marriage and family therapy masters at Fairfield U. And this is what I remember. I remember sitting in. And of course, I forget the professor. It might be Dr. Haughty, you'll remind me. And I was three rows ahead of Shamel, and I didn't know her then, but I remember we were talking about some aspect of family therapy that was deep. I remember because, you know, it was my first year and I was like, oh, Dear in the headlights, and there was a woman in the back, Shamel, who raises her hand and asks this question. I don't remember the question per se, but I remember that I was literally floored because it was so deep and so insightful. But more than that, it was so different. The kind of probing that you made that. And I could tell that you were thinking differently about the material than I was, that I literally had to turn around and look at who is this person who is asking this question. And it was you. It was you. And from every class I've ever had and every conversation I've ever had, you. You have such an interesting perspective that is so different and so helpful. So that's what I remember. Do you remember that class?

Oh, my God. Kathy Hines, thank you so much for having me. I am so thrilled.

Thank you. Thank you.

I do. I remember that class. And I remember meeting you later on. I remember that. And I remember that you said that to me.

I did say that.

To questions that are a little bit challenging and most people wouldn't dare.

That is. That was a part of it, too. Fierceness in your questions. And to this day, I hear that in you, which is. Oh, it's so enlivening. I love it. And I want to tell you, everyone, also, Shamel has. We now live in the same town. And you've introduced me back into tennis, which sounds small and little, and I'll have fun, but it was such a part of my identity from age 12 to 18, 19. And I kind of had let it go. And you have brought me back into the fold. And I'm sorry.

So grateful.

All right, everyone, let me tell you a little bit more about Shamel. Shamel Iglesias is a bilingual, licensed marriage and family therapist, addiction specialist, certified couples therapist. And you've traveled over 5,000 miles from Uruguay, her country of birth, some 35 years ago, to follow a dream and a mission to become a therapist. Her first marriage ended quickly and inspired her deeper into wanting to understand the allure of partnering up and the multiple blind spots that lead us into challenging relationships. Moving forward through her current marriage of 24 years and now witnessing her beautiful grown children navigating this world in amazing ways. You have been. She has been drawn to understanding what is relational health, relational integrity, and there's kind of a deepening passion there. And her work and purpose aim at bringing forth and teaching couples, individuals, business leaders, families, the necessary skills to live in relational harmony. The legacies that need to stay behind, which we're going to talk about and how to truly repair our missteps in our relationships in instances when we're not our best. I can't imagine when that is. Shamel. Right, so here we go. Let us jump in here. What can you please just list for us and give us a brief description of what you have seen are the top six relational handicaps. Now, I do want to say this conversation between you and I emerged over dinner, you mentioned that term and we had a long talk about it. So what we do need to say is there are many more than six, aren't there, Shamelle?

Absolutely.

But we both know that we don't want to, you know, we don't want to overwhelm people and make them think they're flawed 500 ways to Sunday. So you have helped me look at the top six here. So can you tell us a little bit about what those six are and just in a sentence, how you would describe them?

Yes, absolutely. And thank you for bringing up the fact that we are not flawed in 5,000 different ways. But we do forget in moments of distress and duress how to act with relational integrity. And in those moments we put forth relational handicaps.

All right, let me even understand. How do you describe relational integrity? What is it?

Relational integrity means that when we are having crucial conversations with whomever, our partners, our children, our bosses, our friends, we are faced with our own sense of challenges. Our self esteem gets challenged every other sentence. And if we don't know that that's happening, then we put forth the defensiveness, the adaptability, what we adapted to do when we had no control of our lives on the table. And then we operate in those conversations from that place. Usually when that happens, we are not bringing forth the skill or the skills that are needed to actually have an effective action, a healthy and respectful conversation, which are the elements of relational integrity. Does that make sense?

All right, but can I, I don't want to say dumb it down, but I'm going to say dumb it down. Can I echo back what I hear, in other words, to make sure we understand? So am I getting you that when we are in challenging conversations, which, let's face it, it's regular, it can be daily, even, even in a non conflictual relationship, negotiating who you are and what your partner wants or your boss or your sister, it can be challenging regularly, right? So when we're having those discussions, if I hear you correctly, if we are not self aware of where we habitually go when we are threatened or challenged, and those habits, those coping strategies, though you call it adaptability I might call it, what, what you learned to adapt in your family of origin as a child before you consciously knew what you were doing.

Exactly.

You bring that to every discussion. And let's start with, in the realm of challenge, I think you bring it in your love discussions, in your ways of loving as well. Right. But right now we're talking about conflict and, and that kind of situation. So you're going to bring your knee jer. Coping reactions to what is coming at you when you don't feel heard or validated or listened to or appreciated. Is that right? Did I get that right?

That is correct. And that would be when we diluted the relational handicaps into the top six. The first one that came up for me was reacting versus responding.

Tell us about that.

So reacting is that knee jerk response that you're talking about is what comes first is what's spontaneous. It's not thoughtful, it's not a choice. It's something that we put forth and we bring to the table to actually shut down the feeling that we're getting from whatever it is that touched our, you know, Susan Johnson calls the raw spots. Wow. So, you know, the way to understand this and the way that I teach it to people in sessions is that think about babies when they're born. They have no ability to discern how to make a choice. It's all about survival. So they have a need, they cry. So the gap between what happens to them and what and what they need is very short, small. Eventually, as parents, we are supposed to teach our children to widen the gap so that the response becomes a response and stops being a reaction only. So by the time they're three years old and they're hungry, you can say to them, you know, after we wash our hands and you know, pick out the vegetables, then we're going to eat. You can't say that to a baby. So we help the child to widen the gap. And eventually when we are cooked all the way and we are launching out of into the world, our gap is large enough so that when something comes our way, we don't have to knee jerk, reactively respond. We can actually stop, breathe and think. But what happens is that if we are in the what, what I call the adaptability mode, meaning that we were raised in a family where that wasn't allowed. You were either, you know, you had a mother that was very controlling, a father that was absent. There was something so challenging in the parenting mode that you weren't really allowed to develop the gap appropriately. Wow. So as adults, we and in, when we are in a relationship, something happens, a stimulus, and that gap automatically goes into very childlike mode. It closes up and we react.

I have a million questions. Can I ask you?

Yes.

So what I love to do is give examples so people can, we can go from the strategic to. And I'm going to give you one of mine. Look, folks, we're going to get raw here. Let's have it. When you were talking, I got a little like, I got choked up. And what came to my mind is, and you know, it's hard to reveal your, your raw spots to, to thousands of people, but here we go. I think that one of my, the wounds that I have is I didn't feel validated as a child or a teen. So if, if I listen to what you're saying, I feel like my reactivity internally often is they, they're not validating me. This person, like, I'll be honest, you know, I post a lot on LinkedIn. I posted research, my research about what it's saying. And I had some guy, he was very respectful. Oh, there's your sweet little dog behind you here, Olivia. He was respectful, but he basically said, I don't think your research is right. And here's why. Well, within two seconds I'm in the kitchen ready to eat something. Because that's what happens when I get pissed. And what went through my mind is I responded very calmly. But what went through my mind is truthfully, where do you get off? Have you been doing this 15 years? Did you do the research? Did you read the research that was in the article? But, but the wound is that I'm not being validated. The guy has the right to his own opinion. Now, thankfully, I've broadened the gap enough that I don't respond in the outside world saying that. But I have to tell you that very regularly I have to work on myself to widen the gap. If I'm using that term, right from the knee jerk reaction I have to. How I present myself in the world. Is this what you're talking about, Reactivity versus responding?

That is exactly what I'm talking about. And you have learned something very important, which is a skill. How to protect the world from that reactivity of yours.

How to protect the world, Right, because.

You'Re using, you're using self containment. You have a feeling, you recognize it, and then you can actually name it and say, wow, this is where I went with it. And then this is what I'm going to do with it. He has the right to his opinion. You Know, he. I don't have to fight it. You still went to the kitchen and ate something.

I did. I did. But thankfully not a bag of chocolate like maybe I would have 20 years ago.

That's exactly. And can I share an example of my life, which, you know, I'm sure I've told you, maybe I told you, but I do tell some of my clients, just to remind everyone that this is not about being perfect. This is just about recognizing where we have to widen the gap. So, like I was sharing earlier, you know, my father, whom apparently as a young child, he. He had an enormous part in my life. And I'm saying apparently because my mother kind of overcompensated for that lack of my father's presence. I mean, he was home. He would come home, but late. We wouldn't really get to see him that much. And he wasn't really involved in the parenting as my mother was. But I had a need to bond with him, and somehow he wasn't available for that. So I develop a longing, right. And my gap is so limited when it comes to someone walking away. And this came to light to me. I was working in an office a few years ago, and the person that I was working closer with, whom was a male, I liked as a co worker, but I really had no bond or attachment to him in any way. But every time he would get ready to go home, I would hear the jingling of the keys, right? He would pick up the keys from the door, and I would hear the jingling of the keys and would, you know that I would have this surge of emotion. I would get hot in my face. I would get this tight knit in my chest, and he would come to my office and say, hey, I'm leaving. You know, goodbye. And I inevitably would say, are you leaving already? Wow. And.

And it had nothing to do with the time he was leaving. It was. It was your father in your.

In that moment. The leaving part was, wow. So I have a really hard time with people leaving. And that translated into many, many things. When I first started doing therapy in private practice, I didn't have good boundaries in ending my sessions on time. Had nothing to do with the clients. Clients always want to stay longer. It had to do with my inability to say goodbye properly because there was something inside of me that, you know, that gap wasn't wide enough. So I still feel the heat. This is not about, you know, getting rid of everything. You won't. But I have now, which is relational handicap number two, in a way, is developed an awareness of what it is that's happening so that I can actually say to myself, oh, I get it. Jalen of the Keys means leaving. And to me, that means it's sort of like a moment.

But it's fascinating to me that you would have that with someone you're not even bonded with.

Right.

It's so deep that it's. Anyone leaving you?

Anyone leaving? Anyone leaving. So if my husband leaves the house today or yesterday or last week, and he, for whatever reason, he's on a phone call and he's rushing out the door and. And he doesn't say goodbye properly, you know, just acknowledging it's hurtful to me.

Wow. So, folks, I just want to draw your awareness to something. Chamele's been working on this and has been a therapy for how long now?

About 20.

20 years. I've been doing this work 15 years. You know, I left corporate life right after 9, 11, so. And I, you know, do I think of us as flawed people? I don't even love that term. Human beings are not perfect. We're not, you know, spirits and angels quite yet, but we've been working on ourselves a long time. And you can't sit. I don't think you can be a good therapist, and I know you are because I sent people to you. You can't sit with other people and be helpful if you have done none of this work. So the whole point is, look, 20 years of work and we still have these things. So, you know, what I want to do is hug you up with your listening and say, oh, brother, I think I have one of these things. So can you just tell us what's the quickest way? Like, it's interesting to me how you learned that just even the key shaking triggered this for you. And how did I learn about the validation? Well, I'll say this, and then I'd love your tip. I think that you can't do any of this. Right. You can't relate to yourself. Right. And you can't, you know, in a productive, loving way. And you can't relate to others if you don't understand what's going on inside.

Exactly.

If you're having reactions, bodily reactions, if you're, you know. Didn't we learn in therapy, training, your body says what your lips cannot? Often when you're so shut down, like I was, I had tracheitis, infection of the trachea for four years, every three months. Lost the voice, Painful. Often it's the body that will tell you. But you get hot in the face when I'M mad my heart starts to beat. If I'm on the phone and my client is disrespecting me, which doesn't happen much anymore, thank goodness. My heart will beat and fast and that'll tell me you're pissed off here. You're gonna have to say something, but breathe first. What's your tip to help people even start with relational handicap number one. How do I stop reacting and how do I respond consciously? What do they do?

So this thank you question is probably at the core of good therapy and change. I learned this through the teachings of Terry Real in relational life therapy. And he calls it the whoosh. The way that you learn how to do this is, is you allow for the feeling to happen. You know, that whoosh feeling, that feeling of this is what's flooding me right now. And then you follow up with a question. What is this feeling? What is this heat in my face or this pain in my throat or this desire to run? What is it saying? Put words into it.

And what would that have said if you recognized in the whoosh moment, God, he just shaken his keys and he's leaving and I'm feeling that. What, what do you think if you'd asked your yourself that question, what do you think would have. What's a typical response that someone who isn't a therapist would have to that question?

Well, the question would be what are, what's, what is it? Is it the noise? Is it the keys? Is it the person? You have to kind of, you know, identify.

Right. Sleuth.

What is happening right now that's giving me bad. And you actually people do have the answers to that if they tolerate to stay in the moment a little bit longer with that feeling. What is this saying to me? If I can put words in the heat in my face, what is it saying?

And what would it have said to you, Shamil, if you asked yourself that the first and then you would then ask a follow up question. Who, right? Who. Who is leaving me that makes me feel like this, Right?

So the. So the script would be don't leave.

Me, don't leave me.

Right? So in that moment, immediately, you know, the question is, why would I care if he left? He's coming back tomorrow morning and I don't care. But you know, I go home to my family, I don't think about it twice. So it's not him, it's the leaving part. What is its to me and what.

Did it say to you? I'm not lovable, I'm not important.

I am not Lovable. I'm not important. I am alone. I am irrelevant.

Oh gosh, that's a deep one.

That's a deep one. And then, and then what happens to that? And what we have to be very careful about is the action that we take because immediately after that we want to shut down the feeling. Because the feeling is usually very uncomfortable. It's never a joyful feeling.

Yeah. Woohoo. I feel irrelevant. What a good day. Oh God, it's rough.

It's rough, it's rough. So we want to run away from that. And what do we usually do to run away from that?

What, drink and smoke sometimes.

But we want to shut it down. We have all sorts of imaginative ways to do that. Sometimes it's getting angry. You know, anger is usually a very much of a response when we don't want to feel what we're feeling. So is, you know, shut up and don't say that. Right. To the guy that, that offer that.

Remark or are you leaving already? It sounds like. What does she think? I'm not putting in enough work in. What the heck.

Yes, yes.

Can I add something to this and see if this is a corollary? I've. I've read and heard or when I first read and heard this, my. I fell off my chair. Gay Hendricks, who I adore and who I've interviewed here several times, has, you know, 30 books, whatever it is, a lot of books, but one of them is the Big Leap. And he talks about your upper limit problem, the barrier that you have that over which you're uncomfortable with love, happiness, success. And what, what he has talked about is, and many others, for some people who, their barrier is here. I don't want, I'm scared of having, and I'm not comfortable having any more love, success, they will actually sabotage. So let's say they're having a great intimate experience with, you know, their spouse or partner or friend or whatever. And maybe it's great sex, maybe it's, who knows, an incredible meaningful discussion. There will be a reaction that I'm not worth this. And they will then start a fight. And I've even seen it. And boy, that gap is so far hard to see. Like you don't realize you're starting a fight because you're too uncomfortable to be loved this much. That is way down the pike of awareness. But you know, if. Because you just think something annoys you and you go there, am I getting it? Is this a corollary, do you think?

Yes, that could be.

That.

That probably goes in the category of having, you know, lack of full awareness.

That's another gap, isn't it Here, can we talk about that one?

Yes.

Before everyone, I just want to read these to you so that your curiosity isn't preventing you from listening. Well, the six gaps we're going to try to touch on are one, reacting versus responding to poor or no self awareness versus being mindfully curious. Number three, accommodating versus being real. Number four, complaining versus requesting. Oh boy. Number five, avoiding versus encountering. Number six, compromising integrity versus leading with truth. Holy cow, I'm dying to talk about avoiding versus encountering later because didn't we learn there are pursuer distancers? Relationships. I'm the pursuer man. I don't avoid much. But hard for people who are trying to distance, you know. Anyway, back to, let's go to number two, poor self awareness, mindfully curious. Tell us.

Yes, so this is crucial because when we don't know, there's nothing that we change. And when we do that, the inevitable response is I'm gonna blame you for whatever bad feelings I have. So having no self awareness equals at blaming someone else inevitably.

And doesn't Brene Brown say. I'm sure other people have said it but she says blame is the way we discharge anxiety.

Yes.

I don't know. I feel angry, I feel nervous. I've got to blame someone. Why, why did we develop like that? Any idea why? Why is it just taking the focus away from me? Because this is so uncomfortable and so awful. I'm just gonna make you the problem. Is that what it is? Yes.

And I think that, you know, our brain is designed, you know, it all comes down to, it's designed to survive. And anything that threatens perceived or real that survival, we have this equipped mechanism to push it off. So when we're talking about relational handicaps, we're really talking about high level skill of relating. This is not knee jerk. This is something that we learn and if we're lucky enough, we learn. We learn it in our families of origin where our parents are healthy enough to provide us, you know, the space and the modeling that we need. But for most of us that's just not a reality. I mean we're all kind of work in progress and we get a little bit here, a little bit there. And then our responsibility as adults is to figure out how we're going to do this operating in this world in a way that is healthy, effective and respectful. And that's not easy because we always kick back to survival. So, so this is what happens, why we Blame. Because when we blame we don't have to feel vulnerable and when we blame, we don't have to be held accountable. And who likes that?

I mean, I even blame situations, not people, you know, like, why do I have to be going through this? It's this and it's some random objective situation. Instead of, huh, being mindfully curious, wow, this situation isn't what I signed up for. I just had one recently, you know, like something, a project that I did was, which was a lot harder and more challenging and in a way I didn't sign up for it. So thank goodness I eventually came around to, wow, let me be curious about this. Why is this so hard? And why didn't I know enough to head it off at the pass? Why, why, why? How, how, how? I don't know for me, and I'm hoping you all feel the same way rather than just throwing our hands up and saying, this is a shit show. Excuse me, now we're have an explicit tag on this post, but because I swore, but rather than, wow, this is just crap, I feel like when you can say, huh, this is really interesting. What am I meant to be learning from this?

I feel like that helps us take.

Control and therefore we don't have to repeat this or over and over. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. So that curiosity, it's very difficult to do because when you're in the middle, let's say that you are in a situation, you looked at the situation and you thought, wow, this is not the situation that I wanted to be in. You know, what am I learning from this? Or what do I need to learn? You have a little bit more of a leeway when you're talking about a situation. When we're in the middle of parenting or partnering or being in the workforce and we are faced with somebody acting in a way that it's reactive, let's say, or in a way that we don't expect. Being curious is a skill that has to come in, kind of forcefully push out the knee jerk reaction of saying, who the hell are you to ask me that? And to say, hey, I'm interested in knowing what made you ask me that, right? Or, you know, you just called me a controlling bitch. That's a hard one, right? To receive that from somebody. And how do you get curious about that? You take a really deep breath. That's please do that, everybody. Always take a really deep, deep breath and then say to the person, wow, that's a huge insult. Where is that coming from? So the curiosity is not sitting down and just taking it is really wanting to understand. And by the way, I just kind of want to put something in there. When we talk about not blaming, we're not talking about not holding people accountable for their bad stuff. There's plenty of bad stuff to go around, and we have to be able to decide, you know, which parts of what's happening to blame it on. Right? If somebody comes and does something bad to you, that person needs to be held accountable. And it is on that person that bad behavior. So of course, you know, we're never gonna sit down and say, well, what did I do wrong?

How did I, you know, what did I do to deserve this? Or, no, we're not going there, people. No, in other words, you don't deserve abuse. However you might co create the situation that brings it about. Nah, you don't deserve it. But boundaries can protect you. You know, Let me ask this, though. I know somebody's going to be listening shamel and they're going to say, if someone calls me a controlling bitch and I say, wow, that. That's a big. That's a big statement. Where is this coming from? I know that many. Let's call it a man and woman. I know women do it the same way too, but a man might say it's coming from the fact that you're a controlling bitch. I mean, where else do you think it's coming from? You're making me crazy and you always make me crazy, and I want a divorce because you're a controlling biatch. So, you know, I know you learn this too. We learned in therapy training the why question. And you didn't say to say why, but when you say, why are you saying this? That puts people on the defensive to justify themselves. What you said that I think works really well is let's say someone's coming at you, you controlling biatch. I think you can legitimately say, I don't think this takes a saint. You can say you can breathe and you can say, I hear how furious you are at me. Can you tell me more? About what? About what I have just done. Feels like a controlling bitch to you. Tell me. So I understand, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I think, however, I read somewhere that we're kind of on the same ladder rung with people that are at our same level of development. That doesn't mean that they had the same relational gap or gaps. It means they're wounded to the degree we're wounded. So if you're with someone, you're Going through this wonderful therapy. And how many times does this happen where someone is going through therapeutic work, they come home to their spouse and the spouse, I've had it. The spouse has said, don't therapize me, go for it. But I don't want to hear this crap. So here's a person going, the man or woman going through this gap widening process, working with Shamel Iglesias and they say, wow, you're calling me a controlling, awful person. Can you tell me where that comes from? I'd love to hear what you have to say. But when we're on the same level of woundedness, I think that other person may not even be able to answer that question. What do you think?

Yes, that is correct. The person may not be able. Because when someone is already in that mode that they're calling you a bitch, it is very rare that they're gonna say, oh, forgive me, you're so right.

That's coming from my relational handicap.

You would have to have somebody that has done the work and then they are able to catch themselves and say, that came out all wrong. That was horrible. Hang on a second, let me start over. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. If you can get there, you've got it. So what happens is, I'm not suggesting that you sit there and you take abuse because that is abusive behavior and language. What you do is you give the person, if you care about the relationship, one or two chances. Some people say three. I think I stop at two to regain their composure. So maybe the question is not the first. Where is that coming from? Maybe the question is, hey, I'm interested in talking to you about this hard thing, or I'm as unhappy as you are right now about this one thing, but if you're going to call me names, I'm not going to do it.

Wow, I'm dying to know this question. Can I Shamel, when you're having the first time couple in your office and we're not going to give away anything anonymous, anything, you know, confidential, you're sitting there and let's say the husband is the one willing to do the work and seems to have widened his gap a little more, the wife doesn't, what is it that you can tell our listeners? If either they are the one that doesn't have the widened gap, meaning they're still reactive, or their spouse or partner or friend or boss is the reactive one, what can you say to them in terms of how to help that reactive partner be less reactive?

The only. And here comes Something that was very hard for me to learn, but I had to learn it because it has to do with the recognition that we really have absolutely no control over what other people do. So all you can do is to say, I am willing to, and then fill in the blanks, talk to you, discuss, negotiate. However, I will not tolerate X, Y and Z.

Then do you leave the room?

Sometimes you have to. Absolutely. And then you say, you know, I'm willing to revisit this, but I won't be willing to listen to you rage, curse, criticize, you know, be contemptuous, etc.

Now you and I have talked about this and you and I have a bit of a different take. And then I need to get to the other gaps with you. But I believe that when you're dealing with a narcissist who, who is high on the spectrum of narcissistic personality disorder, you're not going to get too far this way. You, you as a therapist, I think are a fantastic mediator of emotions and you are able to feel what that narcissist feels and guide that. I think in the absence of a very skilled person like you, I think challenging the narcissist is, it often goes much worse than someone who is not a narcissist. Would you agree with that? Yes.

So, you know, for the, you know, for the purpose of understanding what we're talking about, what I consider to be a narcissist person is a person that has flipped the coin on self esteem. And rather than going to shame, I am no good, I am not valuable, nobody loves me, they go to the other side of the pendulum into I don't care about you, you are nobody to me. Right. So it's sort of the flip side of the coin. It's still a self esteem issue. The only thing is that I'm going the other direction. So a narcissist says, I don't care about what you feel or think and I'm going to do whatever I want and you can't hold me accountable because I will react on you in some kind of way. I'll either be passive aggressive or aggressive. Right. So if somebody's coming to my office and hoping to address that and let's say, did you, did you mention in the example that the wife is dealing with a narcissistic husband?

Let's say that, sure.

Let's say, which is usually the case, by the way, it is more gender specific male than it is female. Not exclusive, but it is. So what it comes down to is to asking that person are you willing to lose? And then you're going to get from the other person what it is that they're looking to do. If you don't change, then this is what's going to happen.

The spouse should ask. The spouse can ask, are you willing to lose me and the children?

So if the spouse is willing to put out some consequences that the narcissistic person doesn't want to lose.

Hang on one sec. So you mean you might say to your husband, you are going to lose me and your kids if you keep this behavior up. Is that what you mean? That, that they have to understand what they're going to lose in order for them to see the value of doing this work?

Yes. And if the person is not interested, Right. In what the other person is going to take away or change, then there is no prayer.

There you go. In other words, if the cost, let's get this right. If the cost of continuing to be narcissistic in this way that's damaging is greater than the pain of changing, if what they're going to lose means something to them, they might have a motivation to change. But if what they're going to lose doesn't mean anything to them, I mean, I think we see this everywhere, that we see narcissism, which is abundant in our world right now. Oh, all right, I get it now. So what are we leaving people with here? Back to being mindfully curious is what we were talking about, weren't we? Yes. What's a tip for people?

Well, the tip is don't just assume that you know yourself. Ask yourself the questions. What is this reaction in my body? Your body's talking to you all the time. What is this reaction in my body saying? You don't even have to, you know, get really detailed about feelings. Just give it words. If these tears, the tears could talk, what would they say? If my legs could be saying something right now because I just kicked the door, what would it be saying?

Oh, that's beautiful. Shamel. It reminds me, I interviewed a woman, doctor, Neha Sangwon, who was an emergency room physician and she has gone on to write a book, Talk Rx. But she started, and she's spiritual and she started to notice, why are these people coming back over and over to the emergency room with near fatal experiences? Stroke, heart attack. Now I know medical personnel are going to say, oh, here we go. But she started to ask, why do you think you are here? And they could answer it. And it was always about a conversation that they couldn't bring Themselves to have. And I believe that. I think there is a total mind, body connection. And I think stifled emotions, stifled needs can kill you. I do. Whether it's from stress, whether it's from the strain on your physical. Physical being. Such a question.

And when you don't know what you're feeling and you're stuck in feeling, you know, I've gotten a raw deal, then you fester. So being curious with somebody else and with yourself will bring. You will bring about a lot of self awareness. I think that it marries to say that, you know, because when we're talking about this and even in therapy, that I think that we can consider ourselves having some skills or relational skills or being insightful when we can sit down and say, hey, at my worst, when all my raw spots are rubbed, here's what I become, or here's what I do, I want to look at that.

I don't want to look at that. But, you know, I think everybody in my life would answer that in one second. Couldn't they?

I'm not sure. Do you think?

Yes, my family knows. In fact, I should ask everybody. Ask your family if you love them and if they're loving. I mean, if I said to my ex husband and my two children, when I am at my most nervous and stressed, who do I become? They're. They're gonna. I'm gonna ask them tonight. They're gonna be like, mom, I don't really want to answer that. Can I skip that and just come to dinner instead?

No.

Oh, no. I love it.

But there are two different ways of doing that, you know, that would be sort of like a more evolved time. You know, when you go to your family and you say, how do you see? Because what they're gonna say is not only what you think they see, but they're also going to tell you what their internalized experience is. So they may be looking at you, but also looking at what they feel about you because of other experiences. So when I get controlling, I'm sure my husband sees me, but he also.

Sees, you know, his experience of being controlled.

Exactly.

So nothing, it's a mirror. Nothing is objective. In other words, don't cry if your husband says, I'll tell you what you're like when you're controlling. Do you have an hour? All right, my dear, time is going by. Let us talk about the third one. Avoiding versus encountering. To talk about most, this one.

You just paused there for a minute.

Oh, okay. You paused too. But here we go. We'll do it again. Avoiding versus Encountering. Is that the one you would like to can talk about that and what we can do about it? What it looks like?

Yes, avoiding versus encountering. So you probably, your audience probably has heard that dynamic of pursuer, distancer that we were talking about before. And what this means is that people will go to lengths to avoid dealing with skills, something that they consider or perceive to be difficult or impossible for them to deal with. And so, you know, in partnering, for example, in a relationship, in a marriage, people want to talk about certain situations or, you know, difficult things for their children or something that has happened to them because of something that the other person has done and they reach out. Pursuers, which I am one, would go to the distance or the avoidant one and say, hey, you know, let's talk about this. And the other person would hear that as, oh, my God, somebody has said that the worst four words that you can say to someone is, honey, can we talk to an avoidant? That's like saying, hey, do you want to come to the pits of hell and be tortured? That's what it feels like. And so people would do extreme things, including hurting someone.

So I don't have to hear, so I don't have to go there.

So I don't have to hear, so I don't have to go there. Now, if you are an avoidant and you have no self awareness, you are a dangerous part partner. Yeah.

And there's no, there's no chance of reconciliation or bridging gaps. I mean, and you know, I, I'm going to venture a guess. I think that men are much more avoidant and that's culturally trained and maybe, who knows, maybe a little neurobiologically shaped. But I think the way our culture trains us, it's what Terry Real, who I adore, that you introduced me to, has talked about. When we live in a patriarchal society, patriarchy is the water we all swim in. And men, their masculine is trained as, don't be vulnerable, don't be emotional, don't be weak, be strong, brave. And women are weak and compassionate and empathic. And you know, I'm saying that in that language because that's the masculine patriarchal view of feminine. So men, unfortunately, and Terry talks about it, and so many other men who are supporting gender equality talk about the box that men are put in. So there's no training for so many men about how to be emotional, how to be vulnerable. And asking me to talk about, you know, the impact of what I've just done is I'm going To be vulnerable if I do that.

Yes.

I think men are not trained to do that.

Well, they're also scared. Most men are scared that if they do meet that conversation with vulnerability, that's going to be used, you know.

Yeah, they're going to get obliterated.

They're going to be beaten up in some way and they're going to lose their ground. And I was having a conversation with my family not long ago, and one of my comments was, you know, it is hard when people don't know how to stand up for themselves, and they confuse that with being aggressive. And being aggressive and standing up for yourself are not the same thing.

They're not the same. And boy, if I had to learn that, I wasn't good at standing up for myself. So when I do it in the corporate world, I'd leave body parts in my wake. I was rough. That was the only way I could do it. My sister, who I'm very close with now, used to call me a bully as a kid. I'm a bully. And that was because I knew I could stand up for myself. But I didn't know how to do it in a way that could bridge gaps.

No, because we are not taught that. And so we, again, we go into this perceived notion that we attract. I mean, I remember when my husband and I divorced and I had my first daughter, and she was about 2 years old, and she longed for him. And he was an avoidant. I mean, he was a major avoidant. And I would get on the phone with him and, you know, two minutes later, I would hear myself screaming on the phone, why don't blah, blah, blah. And, you know, you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing. And how come? And I would lose it because, you know, it touched on everything inside of me. You know, do something right. And I didn't know how to stand up for myself, and I didn't know how to set a boundary without losing it. So I also tended to use, you know, it was verbal, but it was. In a way, it was aggression. It was born out of the helplessness, which is why people stand up with aggression because they feel helpless. The more aggression.

You're a tome of help and insight and it's so amazing to talk to you. Now we're at 45 minutes and I would talk to you for another three hours. But I know like to be respectful of people listening and their drive is over and maybe they need to tune out. But folks, I want to ask Shamel where can we learn all about this you have an amazing blog post about this on your website. So where does everyone find you? Where can they read about you? Where can they come to you for help? Tell us all about it.

So I have a website and I publish a blog every couple months or so and it's ww.chanelcouplestherapist.com I have an office in Stanford, Connecticut and I do intensives for couples and for businesses. And I can do it in Spanish and in English.

Wow.

They are private. They are either one day or two day intensives. And you can read about it on my website. You can also call me on the phone. I'm reachable via email, text via phone, via email.

And you have a relational handicap now intensive program, right? And you also do via Zoom, you do therapy that way as well, right?

Or I do do that. I do that internationally or nationally. I meet people via Zoom. And if you want to find out about your own relational handicap, either you and your partner, I like working with, you know, couples. That is my expertise. But if you like to do it on your own, I would welcome you as well. And it's a three to four hour intensive. We can pick a day and you can leave knowing what are your top three relational handicaps and what you can do about it.

Oh my gosh, everybody, you should race to this. You know, I want to tell you, keeping you too long, but it's one thing to do one on one work like I do coaching or like I did as a therapist and sometimes with family, it's quite another thing to do it with families and to do it with couples, it takes a very gifted therapist. Very gifted. Because you have to hold and emanate energy that works for both parties. If you side with one, you've lost the other. What good is that? So you know, when you find someone like Chemel who's deeply skilled at helping couples bridge a gap where no gap was evident before they walked in the door, you should race her material and her work and I know you'll be better for it. Thank you so much, Mel. I love it. I can't wait to have dinner with you and tapas and talk some more. And I want to hear about every one of these gaps and learn more. And everyone, please, wherever you find this on Facebook, LinkedIn, on the podcast on Apple, I hope you will write a review for us and let us know what you think. But also reach out to Shamel, be respectful of her time. Of course. But if you have a relational handicap question, I know she'd be happy to do her best to help you. All right. Thank you so much, my dear. Have a wonderful, brave week, my friends. I can't wait to hear what you thought about this, and I'll see you next time. Bye.