"The SECRET To A Successful Relationship STARTS HERE..." | Dr. Laura Berman & Lewis Howes

You have a pattern like that where you keep dating the wrong person, then the next time you're with someone on a date and you feel like you've known them all your life.

That's not the right person.

Run.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome, Lewis Howes.

I'm curious, what's the one thing that you would say that someone could do to feel better connected to their partner if they don't feel connected. What's the one thing that gets sex?

No, seriously, you know, it's interesting because when sex is working in a relationship, it's just one part of a whole beautiful working relationship. It's just one cog in the wheel. But when it's not working, that's when I see that there's a real disconnect. And so, you know, to a certain extent, it's about really prioritizing the actual act of sex in a relationship. But it's also, because I've done national research, for instance, on what the most sexually satisfied women have in common, and... What is that? It's not the number of orgasms they have, or how well endowed their partner is, or anything else. It is the emotional intimacy and connection they feel with the person they're having sex with. That is their greatest predictor of sexual satisfaction.

What if the man is emotionally connected to their partner, but the woman in the relationship is disconnected, you know, whatever it may be, looking away or not in the moment and not communicating and they're disconnected.

Yeah.

How does the male partner break through to the female partner?

Well, it depends on why she's disconnected, right? Like, I find that for the most part, When women are disconnected in a sexual situation, it is protective.

What are they protecting from?

It could be anything. It could be vulnerability. It could be that they have a lot of inhibitions, and they have stories about what nice girls do and don't do. It could be that they have a history of trauma, and they're having some PTSD, and they have to really kind of work to keep themselves present. It could be that they're disassociated and they're not even in the building anymore, which is very common.

They're out of their body. They're in another place.

Yeah, and that's what a lot of people, men and women do to, you know, it's a beautiful coping strategy that we do to survive sexual abuse or any kind of abuse, but certainly sexual abuse, because, you know, if you were present in your body while that was going on, like you're off somewhere in la la land to survive it, Then that becomes your sexual script. So you don't even really realize. So to come back into your body for lots of people can be really tough, because then they start remembering things they don't want to remember.

So how do you get back in your body in a safe space?

Well, I think it starts by getting back, learning how, you know, I call it like embodiment. I think most of us walk around out of our bodies most of the time. And don't even realize it. I'm not connected to the body. Not connected to the body. I mean, I'm someone like that. I'm always up here. You know, I'm very philosophical and I'm always thinking and I have to really, you know, work. I call it my yoni breath. You know, you take a really deep breath in. For you, it would be a bony because you don't have a yoni. You can do this through your butt. But you breathe in really, really deep. And then you imagine light flowing from here through your body. But when you breathe out, you open that sucker as wide as you can.

Sucker?

You mean your yoni? Butthole in your case, peony in a woman's case. So you go like this. And you blow out, but you have to push.

You have to push.

You have to push really hard. You have to push like a surgeon.

Really?

Now just try it, do it.

No, I just did it when you were doing it.

Do it a really hard breath. Okay, and then let it rest gently open. You see the difference?

It's just relaxing.

Yeah, but do you see the difference? You're probably walking around like most people tight-assed all the time, right?

I feel pretty relaxed actually.

I know, so do I.

But if you're tied down there.

So, and it's real for-- Allowing it.

To flow, the energy to flow.

Yeah, and also it sort of gets you back into your body. That's just like a-- Mass your system. Yeah, and a little temperature I take. Am I walking around connected and open to guidance and grounding, or am I somewhere else in my mind? Because I can very easily intellectualize. And so a lot of even my work with myself, much less my work with everyone else, is about learning to be present in your body. And if you're someone who is really inhibited or has a lot of anxiety or a lot of trauma, you are not going to learn to be back in your body, nor should you, in a sexual scenario. So you start just noticing during the day, how often am I up here in the clouds daydreaming and thinking about a million things, or am I in my body? Can I do a body scan and even notice what the sensations are there. If I'm upset about something, instead of thinking about it, can I really go into my body and notice where I'm holding that tension? That feeling. Yeah, yeah. And I have to educate people. And it's not just men, but if you are, they don't often even know what they're feeling in their bodies. So if you're scared, you'll often feel tightness in your stomach or in your chest. If you're angry, you'll feel it in your back. If you're sad or you're scared, you'll feel it in your throat or behind your eyes. So sometimes it's about helping people kind of even identify how they're feeling. But I would say that most of the world is walking around to some degree, not home.

So we need to be in a process of healing, it sounds like healing the past, being aware of the past, reflecting on it and then processing and healing in order to be more connected to our body and then connected to another Is that what I'm hearing you say?

If it's a result of trauma, I think as a culture we don't support being in our bodies. We support the outside of how our bodies look, you know, but we don't really, and we talk about what our bodies can perform and do, athletic feats or muscles or whatever, or how to lose weight, you know, we relate to our bodies that way. But are we really in our bodies?

So how do we get inner body if we have resentment, anger, trauma, PTSD, stress, anxiety, or just habit?

You know, you were in a family where my family was all intellectualizing and not really, if you grew up in a family not comfortable with big feelings or where your big feelings were not accepted or held, you learn not to have them. And how do you not have feelings by leaving the building? You know, so it can be a great coping skill because you can go through some major shit and sit and talk about whatever you want.

Your body can be traumatized or you can be emotionally or physically or sexually or mentally abused but then go somewhere else and allow it to happen. Yeah, or-- Still function as a human.

And still function as a human. Yeah, you're certainly not necessarily allowing it to happen but when you're powerless, certainly in those abuse cases, you leave because if you stayed present, you wouldn't survive it. I mean, you couldn't-- it's so terrifying and traumatizing. It's such a beautiful coping mechanism our minds and our bodies do. But there's so much beautiful work happening now with somatic experiencing and John Levine, all these people that are doing amazing work, which to some extent is learning to be back in your body. But they talk about how we as mammals are just like every other mammal. You see a dog, dog freaked out about something, what do they do afterwards? They shake it off. They're moving their body, they're present with their body and how that feeling and that experience affected them and they're letting it pass through them and they're shaking it off. You know, we tend to hold or leave.

And they have, it seems like they have shorter term memories.

Yeah.

We can kind of move on quicker.

Right, that helps.

And we hold on to the memories of the pain of the past. and amplify and oftentimes from my experience, blow it up is a bigger and bigger thing than it probably actually was from that event at 7 or 12 or 15. Sometimes we make it the biggest pain in the world, which sure was painful and it shouldn't have happened or whatever, but it's almost like the holding of the attachment of the pain becomes stronger than the actual pain itself.

Yeah, and I think that's also a coping skill. Like I find that usually when people do that, when they're really committed to their trauma, because they've never had a place or a person that can hold it for them.

Ooh, or to let it go or to share it.

To hold it.

My audience knows about my story of sexual abuse, so I won't go into it. But when I was five, it happened and it took me 25 years to feel like I was safe enough to share it. And it caused a lot of reactions, a lot of negative reactions in me when I felt taken advantage of or abused in other ways. And when I finally had a safe space where I felt open enough to share, it's when the journey of healing started to happen. And I felt so much freer. I felt so much freer, more accepted, more loved, and I could accept myself.

But you don't realize that until you take that leap, right?

It's the scariest thing though.

Oh yeah.

So how do people create a safe space in their mind and their body to be able to share any type of trauma that is maybe making them disconnected in a We're talking about a sexual experience, but also just disconnected in life.

Oh yeah. And I call it, it doesn't have to be, I mean, sexual abuse is like what I would call a big T trauma, right? But there are also those little T traumas.

You're ugly over and over. You're not beautiful.

Yeah, you're not good enough, overcritical, never measuring up, conditional love, abandonment, all of those things we hold onto and they become part of the lens through which we view the world and part of our belief system and then that is what starts a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, you know, I think most of us who are struggling in our lives and I'm sure you were too even if on the surface you seemed great, you know, you weren't.

I wasn't. I was suffering inside.

You were suffering and you were reactive and you were triggered and you know and I... Ego driven. Yeah, and that's someone, you know, I would call that someone who is not friends with their shadows, right? Why are they not friends with their shadows? Because those shadows are freaking scary and they don't want anyone to see them. They don't even want to look at them. It's like, you know, in those old houses like that basement, there are some scary spiders, some snakes, some monsters, some evil serial, like who the hell knows what's down there? I'm not going down there. I know it's something bad and no one should go down there.

What happens to us if we don't go into the basement of our shadows and become friends with our shadows.

You are often physically ill with chronic diseases and inflammatory diseases. You're reactive, you're stuck in ego, not that ego is bad, but when you're stuck there, you're easily triggered and you're not a very safe person to be intimate with.

Wow.

And what most people find, and you're saying, you know, you're describing the same thing, is when you open that basement door, and you turn on the lights, you don't see anything scary. It's just these little parts of yourself that have just been longing. Like, I always say that shame when exposed to the light evaporates. It always evaporates. And the scariest part is opening the bathroom door. Oh my gosh.

It's so scary. And it's something I try to do every year since I opened up about sexual trauma eight years ago now. It's something I try to think of, where else am I ashamed? Where else am I hiding something? Whether it be to myself or to other people that I'm embarrassed by. Because when I address it, whether to myself, to a therapist, to friends, it doesn't have to be publicly, it can be, but it does, I don't think everyone should just share their shame publicly unless you're really ready for that. But when I do it, I just realize, oh, less and less things have control and power over me. and I'm in more control of my feelings, my thoughts, my reactions or actions based on an event that's happening in life.

Yeah, I agree.

And it's a powerful feeling to be friends with your insecurities, shadows, fears, whatever you want.

We all have them. You wouldn't have the light. I mean, if you think about, like, when my father was dying and he, you know, I had a very complicated emotion, you know, he a real narcissist, a wonderful father in a million ways, but a real narcissist. And, you know, there was a lot of darkness in my childhood and a lot of trauma, much of which I didn't even really come to terms with until a few years before he died. And at the end of his life, I was his person, always, you know, taking care of him. And I said to him about two or three days when it was clear he was gonna go soon, I said, I just want you to know that I forgive you.

Wow.

And he said, what for? And I told him.

Everything.

Yeah. And I said, but if those things that happened led me to make the most horrific mistakes in love, led me to feel like I was totally unworthy of love, changed the trajectory of my life and was so painful, but if those things hadn't happened, then I wouldn't have my son from my first horrible ex-husband. I wouldn't be helping the millions of people that I'm able to help and save their relationships and heal them. So not only do I forgive you, but I thank you because I know that on some level we both signed up for this on a soul level.

And.

You had to participate. So I not only forgive you, I thank you. And he just kind of sat there and stared at me. And this was a man who my my entire life. I had never seen him apologize for anything to me or anyone else. And he looked at me and he's like, I am terribly, terribly, terribly sorry. I am so sorry. And it was like this beautiful healing moment. But that's the truth. I wouldn't have that light if I didn't also have the darkness. And that doesn't mean we invite darkness or we say that we deserved it or that we asked for it, That's one of the reasons it doesn't have to be scary because everything that we don't want to be with, we're already with on the light side. You know what I mean? It's already our expression in the world and our gift. But when you can't be with the darkness from whence it comes, then that's what drives you. That which you resist, persists.

That's a beautiful story and full circle moment of your father apologizing As you know, unfortunately, probably 90% of people that say, I forgive you, don't get an apology in return. They say, Screw you, I don't care. You're wrong.

You deserve that, right?

Yeah, they don't get that kind of Disney ending that you almost got in that moment there. I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but what should people think about when they forgive someone and they realize this is not gonna happen for me?

Well, I will tell you that when I went into that conversation, I did it for me. It didn't matter to me.

What he said.

What he said or whether he, like, I thought to myself, what is most important I say to this man before he dies?

So you don't regret it.

Right, it was for me.

Yeah.

And anytime you forgive someone, it should only be for you because the lack of forgiveness hurts us so much more than it hurts the person we're not forgiving. And it doesn't mean you are ignoring what happened. I love what Oprah, I heard her once say, is that forgiveness doesn't mean that everything's rosy between you. It means that you accept that you can't change the past and that you're not gonna be a slave to it anymore. And so I think if that person is not someone, and if my dad had not been on his deathbed, I would not have said that to him. No way.

What would have happened if He lived another 10, 20, 30 years.

He wasn't going to, you know, it was clear that he was going.

But what happened if you held on to this for a longer period of time?

Then I would have gotten sick and I would have struggled and I needed, I knew that for me, you know, I waited until the very last minute, but I knew that I needed to forgive and release that from me because I was holding on to it. I didn't in a million years expect him to say he was sorry. I was shocked. And it wouldn't have mattered if he didn't. But I think it's telling that he did, because he knew the spirit in which I was coming. And I don't think you have to have that. If that person is really unsafe or is still in a really dark place, you don't have to have that forgiveness conversation with the person ever. You just have to have it within your own. You have to write them a letter that you never send. Have that conversation with yourself. Have it with a friend or a loved one that you really trust, or a therapist, or whoever. it's really about deciding to release that weight.

I've done an exercise in my last few relationships that I've ended intimate relationships where I wrote letters to them, but I didn't send them to them. And I wrote a letter forgiving them and forgiving myself for the things that I did that I wasn't proud of and forgiving them for the things that I felt like they did that were hurtful in the relationship as well. Thanking them and then thanking myself for what they brought me, what they gave me, what they contributed to my life during that period of time. Thanking myself for showing up in a powerful way the way that I could, the best way I could, and then letting them go and then letting that go of that version of myself. That version of myself that did not work out. Yeah, whatever was, I was that wasn't the best version of me in those moments that didn't work out if that was the reason. Letting that version of myself go as well with them in that relationship, writing those letters, burning them, and then burying them in the ground. And that's been a powerful ritual. I can't remember who taught me. A therapist told me to write a letter of forgiveness and thanking them, but I was like, next step. You improvised. Yeah, I was like, okay, I'm gonna take it myself also, 'cause I showed up in a powerful way, and I'm gonna let it go. of that version that doesn't work and let them go. And that's been a powerful ritual that has supported my healing journey after a breakup. Because I think we need to heal previous relationships. Oh, we do.

People make such a mistake because they think, oh, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. And I'm just gonna, you know, I always like to say the best thing you can do if you've had a really serious relationship that's now ended, You know, wait for half the time that you were in the relationship, you know, maybe up to 10 years. If you were in a 30-year marriage, you don't have to wait 15 years. But like, wait, heal, integrate the learning, because every single romantic relationship is a soul mate. You know, every person we're having a love relationship with, we're not really having it with that other person. We're having a relationship with ourselves through that other person. So you are learning pooh tons in every relationship. Your soul is learning so much, your heart, your mind. And if you don't give it time to integrate and to heal and to look at those shadows and to do forgiveness, then you end up making the same mistake again and again.

Do you think people can heal in a relationship if they haven't fully healed from a previous relationship? Or do you need to be fully healed and let go of the past? Until you're like, I'm perfect.

None of us are fully healed. I mean, I think life Self is a process of unfolding and healing and shedding those layers of the onion and becoming more and more yourself, who you were meant to be, you know, and your truest self. But, you know, I don't think any of us, we'd be all single.

Forever.

Forever, if we waited until we were all healed. But you should ideally wait to, until you're not mad at that person anymore, until you've forgiven them, to an extent, forgiving yourself.

What happens if you're holding onto the anger and resentment of another partner while you're in a relationship with a new partner?

That's a hot mess. And you see that, I mean, classic example of someone who was cheated on.

In the past, right?

And then they bring that in the new relationship. They bring it into the new relationship. I get calls like that all the time from these sweet guys who are like, you know, I love this girl so much, I would never do anything to hurt her. And she was really mistreated in the past. and she just won't trust me and she accuses me of these horrible things.

It's the worst feeling.

It's the worst, but that she is not healed enough to be in a relationship yet. That doesn't mean you have to break up. If you want to stick around with her and be the one that she works through it with, as long as she is doing the work. Because you, I mean, and I say this to these guys all the time, you could be the best person in the world and hold her hand 24/7, But you can't do this for her.

No, I can't.

She has to be willing to do it and if she's not then stuck there you will be.

You could sit there all day and be a puppy dog and say, I'm here for you, I'll do whatever, you're on call 24/7 and it'll never be enough.

Right?

Because they still have to deal with the past and let it go.

Yeah, and usually, because I also get calls all the time for people reaching out saying, you know, my wife and I divorced or my husband and I divorced 10 years ago or three years ago, and I still can't get over it. I don't even want to be with him, but I still can't get over it.

Can't be with the person they were with.

Yeah, and what it is almost every single time is that it's not even about that person. It's about something that happened to them in childhood that this experience with the person reminds them of. So that person abandoned them. left them suddenly or cheated on them.

Cheated on them. Or was emotionally abusive.

And they, and there's this unconscious wish that if I could just make it right with that person, then I am making my past right.

Or can I heal the past?

Yeah.

And that's what we're doing, you know, when we keep getting into... It's a classic example is like the person who grew up with an alcoholic parents and I am never ever ever gonna date an addict and then they end up dating someone who's an addict and they're like oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that never and they ask the person, you know, do you drink? Do you do drugs? Do you no no no, okay, they fall in love that person's a gambling addict like again and again and again and it's like and this is what I say to people if you have a pattern like that where you keep dating the wrong person and Then the next time you're with someone on a date, and you feel like you've known them all your life.

That's not the right person.

Run. When you feel butterflies in your stomach, that is your body's warning system saying. Really?

Every time or most times?

Most times. I would never say every time about anything, but I would say most times. Most times. And so if you're someone like that, go on two or three more dates with the person that you don't feel that immediately with. You know.

Interesting.

Really date someone who's not your usual type type.

Right.

And do that internal work. Wow.

Is this similar for same sex relationships in terms of intimacy and sex on the same types of challenges that are faced with.

Yeah, I mean, I usually, I tried to convince the public, my Publishers on my last book about sex, and I didn't get very far, but I didn't want to say male or female. I wanted to say masculine or feminine or, you know, because in every relationship, whether it's two women together, two men together, man and whatever, there is like a yin and a yang. There's someone who's more in their masculine energy, and it doesn't have to be that the one in the masculine energy has a penis and the one in the feminine energy has a vulva. It doesn't matter what the physiology is, because I know lots of heterosexual relationships where she's more in her masculine and he's more in his feminine, but you have to have that dichotomy in order to have the chemistry and the connection. And also, so those same dynamics seem to unfold, but more along the masculine and the feminine than male or female.

Yeah, okay. And I'm hearing you say that.

The.

Number one thing we can do to be better connected in a relationship is have better sex, is be more connected during sex.

Or outside of sex. It doesn't even, I mean, yes, if you're more connected during sex, but it's really about, the predictor was more about the general sense of connection in the case of women in general in the relationship, right? So like the most common thing I'll see, let's say, in heterosexual relationships who have been together for a while, is that uneven desire, you know, so... Meaning one person has more desire, the.

Other person's like, ah, I don't want in sexual desire, right?

One person wants sex more, the other.

Person'S tired or doesn't want it or not have the desire.

Right, and more often than not, Not always, that's the woman, right? Or the feminine, right?

The feminine wants it more, it doesn't want it.

Doesn't want it. Why is that? Well, for women, if we're talking about women, not just people in their feminine, for women it's often hormonal and exhaustion, and we know that for men in general, stress does not diminish your libido. Financial or work-related stress is the only kind that will negatively affect.

Really?

So if you're feeling work-related stress or financial stress, you're less turned on.

Yeah, usually. Now other kinds of stress with the mother-in-law or kit, whatever like that won't affect as much. Women are affected by all stress. Then once they have kids and busy lives and exhaustion, because our, it's not that our sexual desire doesn't come from a physical place, but we have less testosterone. We react differently to sex, excuse me, to stress and to sex, but to stress. So like it's only been in the past 20 years that researchers have even figured out that Women, when chronically stressed, actually our testosterone levels go down because of this whole chemical cascade.

Is the testosterone for women, which cultivates the sexual desire, is it estrogen?

Estrogen helps. Estrogen plays a role with response and lubrication and that kind of thing, but for both men and women, it's testosterone is the hormone of desire. And men have a lot more of it than women do. but certainly with stress, with kids, with life. And so this is what's interesting. I kind of call it the sort of like a sex-romance stalemate because she doesn't have that natural drive. She's exhausted, she's juggling work and kids and life and whatever. The way that a man achieves emotional closeness in a relationship, the masculine, not even a man, is through the physical act of sex. That physical connection is a huge part of what makes him feel emotionally connected to her. And women are the opposite.

It's not the physical.

It's the emotional connection that makes us want to be physically.

Physically, you're trying, interesting.

And so she's less interested and less available. And then he's not even conscious of it, but he's less romantic and attuned and sending those sweet texts or, you know, and she feels that and is that much less interested in having sex. And then he's that much less romantic. And then she may eventually say, you never send those sweet texts anymore. And if he's at all aware, he might say, well, we haven't had sex in eight weeks and she says, you pig, all you care about is sex. But she doesn't understand that that's his way of feeling emotionally connected.

So is it the man's responsibility or both?

It's both. It's about him, you know, it's about the masculine. It doesn't have to be him, the masculine understanding that if you want more of that physical connection, you have to find your emotional and romantic connection from a place other than the physical.

So it's almost like you have to be something you're not.

Well, you just have to learn different languages of love. I mean, is it really- yeah, it's.

Not your natural state though, right?

Is it really being something you're not? to, you know, when it doesn't just come automatically to think about being romantic.

You have to be conscious about it.

You have to be conscious of it. And she, the feminine, has to be conscious that if, you know, she needs to love her partner in a way that will really land. And even if she'd rather be watching Bridgerton or doing the laundry or whatever else or reading a book or FaceTiming or whatever, you know, most women who have low desire will say that once they get started, they really enjoy it. It's just they don't have that spontaneous horniness. And that's a myth that we get from the movies that spontaneous horniness is supposed to be the source of sex. And it is maybe for the first three, six months, yeah. But after that, your sexual desire has got to come from a place other than spontaneous horniness.

Really? For people that are married over five, plus years, what's the studies or research saying in terms of how much sex they have? On average, obviously, everyone's different.

Yeah, everyone's different. I think the incidence of what they call sexless marriages is pretty astounding. That's people who have not had sex for 10 months or more.

That happens?

Yes, and it's like 30% of couples.

And we're also-- After five or 10 years?

After any, yes. And it's not just five or 10 years. What happens, what I see happen time and time again, again, especially well, with women. So it could be in a lesbian relationship or in a heterosexual relationship is that as women, we weren't raised or the culture and our families and our lives never allowed us to really create our own relationship with our sexuality. It's like a means to an end.

It wasn't taught, right?

It wasn't even It not only wasn't taught, it wasn't permitted, it wasn't joked about, it wasn't in, you know, silly movies. It just wasn't part of the culture. And so what happens as a result is that-- It's more of a shameful thing, right? Or a means to an end. It's a way to get the guy. It's a way to get a ring on it. It's a way to have a baby. It's a way to-- To get what you want. It's a transaction. She's not thinking it's a transaction, but that's her sexuality is something outside outside herself.

Not within herself.

It's not, yes, not this amazing, beautiful, life-giving, juicy gift. It's this, it's a lovely thing and it's fun and it's exciting, but it's either a sense of power or outcome or some other means to an end. And that is like an epidemic proportion in my mind. And so I think that's the reason is that I work with so many women, young women too, because they're doing the same thing on social media. They're putting their sexuality outside of themselves as a currency. Look at my butt as I pull my bikini between my crack. And that's fine, but inside herself, her sexuality isn't owned by her, it's a currency. And it's okay if it's a currency, if it's also owned by you. Right, right, right.

As long as it's not a surface level only and you're connected to each other.

And those are the people who once they have a relationship or once they've had their kids, what's the internal motivation to have sex anymore? They have to learn that.

What happens to a sexless marriage most of the time? Are there some sexless marriages that are also connected emotionally and communication and support Supportive.

Yeah, but kind of like roommates, like loving, affectionate, you know, hold hands, whatever, but usually not always, but usually couples can sustain that for a while and then eventually one of them meets someone.

And feels something and then... And it's.

Like, oh my God, I forgot. Or I didn't know you could feel this way, you know? And then they can't. In every relationship, the pain of being in the relationship, has to be greater than your fear of leaving it. Or you're not gonna leave.

You'll deal with a certain amount of pain for a long time and say, okay, it's not what I want, but I'm dealing with this and this and this and it's manageable.

And it's something you're thinking, oh, to leave this person, I've invested so much time, or we have kids, or we have built a life, or I'm scared to get back. There's a million reasons people will stay, but they're scared of what's on the, they'd rather stay what they're comfortable with.

You know what's something my friend of mine, Jay Shetty, was talking about this with me a few weeks ago. He was like, you know what? We don't celebrate breakups enough. They're always like this bad thing that everyone's sad about, oh, it's so sad you guys broke up and heartbroken and this. But if it's not working and you've tried therapy or you've done different exercises and modalities of support supporting one another and you've created agreements and boundaries and it's still not working, shouldn't we celebrate people saying, you know what? This was a great experience. Let's move on so we can both find our next experience. Shouldn't we celebrate and say, great job. Holding on to this relationship for five more years in misery, but actually moving beyond it.

I agree.

And not resenting each other because you held on to it for five more years or whatever it is, right?

And so many couples stay together because of the kids and I say to them, you know, what your kids need more than anything else is two happy parents and a model of what a loving relationship looks like.

Separate.

Yeah, and they are not seeing that. They're learning how to love from you. It's important. And I think the reason people are so uncomfortable with breakups and celebrating them is because, you know, there is just such fear of abandonment in almost every one of us.

Of being alone?

Of being alone or being left. And so they're projecting their own fears and sadness onto you, you know? And so I think it's true that celebrating it in a conscious way, like here's everything I learned, here's everything I'm forgiving myself and the other person for, here's everything I'm carrying forward and the learning, and the clarity that I now have about what I really want.

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna send balloons and cakes to my friends who go through breakups. If I'm friends with both of them, I'm gonna say, hey, you both get a balloon and cakes. I want to write you both a letter and celebrate you both for making a conscious decision.

Yeah.

To improve the quality of your life. It didn't work together. It's okay, move on.

Mm-.

And grieve and take your time, but I celebrate you both. That's brave.

It's brave.

As I'm talking, hearing you talk about this, I think of the last 15 years of my relationships, I stayed in all of them too long based on fear of abandonment, or feeling being alone. That was a big fear of mine. Until I started to heal that past, the situations of really accepting myself as a lone individual and being okay if I'm not in an intimate relationship. And when I did that, I started to set myself free from relationships where I was like, okay, no, I'm not standing up for this. And I can, I'm happy to be alone.

Yes.

And you're coming from a place of wholeness.

Yeah.

As opposed to, I need this to work out. I need to hold on.

I agree. The worst line is that frickin' Jerry Maguire movie where he said, oh, makes me so mad. Because you are, nobody completes you. In order to have a really amazing relationship, you have to be your own delicious cake. Ooh, I like that. Give me a piece.

Break me up a piece of my own cake.

And the other person's icing or sprinkles.

Ooh.

But your cake is still delicious.

Yeah, they're the balloons.

Yeah, whatever, right? But the cake, you're your own cake. You don't need them to make it.

Sweet or anything else. Some vanilla ice cream inside. Yeah, the chocolate sauce, it's on, you know?

That's right, just the topping. Not to minimize them, but that's how much you need them.

And you should be the topping to their cake.

Exactly, has to be both.

That's powerful. Yeah, I think it's so hard for, it was hard for me to accept myself and to love myself for so many years. And so unconsciously, I was staying in relationships way too long. Wasn't able to communicate my feelings or my needs. Probably them as well. We're both doing it unconsciously. How do we learn how to be more conscious in our relationships so that we can have scarier conversations?

Yeah, I think it really starts with your own internal work. And, you know, I learned that when I went through a horrible time, like 10 years ago, my mother had died of breast cancer within a year. I had gotten breast cancer at like 40 years old in the same breast that she had. And I had to, for the first time in my adult life, completely stop my life because I was going through chemo and everything else, surgeries, and my whole kids, everyone was breaking down around me. And so everything fell apart. And it was through that, you know, like with the whole metaphor of the butterfly, right? When the catapault is turning to a butterfly, you have to turn to mush. the caterpillar literally turns to green mush, and then it is in the mush's DNA to become the butterfly. And then the butterfly has to come out like a teeny tiny little hole in the cocoon. And if you've ever seen that, they're struggling so much and you just want to open it up. But if you open it up to them, they don't really survive and their wings don't grow because it's the act of like pushing through that hole that squeezes the fluid out of their bodies and sends the energy to their wings so that their wings can grow. And those are the butterflies that really turn the caterpillars that turn to butterflies. And, you know, that is what tragedy does. You know, I call them an AFGE, another freaking growth experience. You know, these big tragedies that happen in our life that break us open into mush. Sometimes that has to happen. It's like the universe taps at your door and you don't listen. This isn't working for you. You gotta slow down. What's happening? You're not facing some things and then it scratches and then it knocks.

And then the breakdown.

And then the full breakdown. And then mush. And I think that doesn't have to happen in order to do the healing, but that is how I learned. and then started teaching other people.

That.

If you heal yourself and you get really, really, you work on yourself and you get really, really clear on your thoughts and beliefs and your energetic frequency and you start to work with that, I can actually do couples therapy with one person now. Because if they start to change themselves and they're doing the healing on themselves, One of two or three things will happen. Either the other person will entrain to them energetically and come along, or they will flip out and eventually do their own healing and come along.

Or they'll exit.

Or they'll exit.

You've got to both be on the journey together, otherwise it's probably not going to work. I heard a stat recently about pornography up big time in the last year, I think like 30% of like on porn.

What is there else to do?

Yeah. And just sitting around at home or whatever. And it's been a, I think the thought process is always that men are the consumers of porn. But isn't it true that women can also be addicted to porn? And what's the percentages of-- Much lower.

For women addicted than men addicted.

And why are men more addicted to porn and women aren't as addicted to it?

I think it's a lot hormonal, but also so any kind of, you know, the way that I look at sexual addiction, whether it's acting out sexually or porn or whatever, is that it's just like any other addiction. You're using that to not be with yourself.

It's a coping mechanism.

It's a coping mechanism to not feel the feelings you don't wanna feel or to distract yourself or to fill that empty hole inside you and it's endless. It's an endless hole, right? Anyone who's an alcoholic or a drug addict will, you know, in recovery will tell you that. It's the same thing for sex addiction. So I see women less when they are, you know, trying to fill themselves up or cope that way with, you know, from an addictive standpoint, it's usually more relational than porn, I have found. What men will do with porn who are in that addiction place, they will just compulsively watch, self-stimulate, have a momentary relief of pain emotionally, and then start again. It's just like an endless, obsessive thing, like drinking or doing drugs or anything else. And it's interesting because Pornhub actually made their entire, you know, that was their good deed for COVID. They made their entire your entire site free. And what I've also noticed is that with the incidence of porn being so readily available online that it is women are watching it, but they are watching it in a, you know, just like I say to guys, don't watch porn and think that that's what women want or what turn them on or what real women look like. or don't use that as your sex education. I now find myself saying that so much more often to women as well, because they are going on these sites and saying, oh, that's what men want. So they go and have sex on a first date and they're like, Choke me, you know, because they think, oh, that's what he must be watching and what he likes. And it's not what she likes, and she doesn't really, you know, but she, so there's this whole skewed perspective.

From.

People who are thinking that that's real sex or what sex is supposed to be like, and it's not.

How do we get comfortable talking about what we like in sexual intimate experiences and not offending the partner, but also expressing how we feel and what we desire without ruining the relationship.

Well, I think you obviously want to be with a partner who if you want no other quality in them, the number one you must have is that they're open to learning and can take feedback. If they can't, you're screwed to have a relationship.

A growth mindset they need to have.

Yeah. I mean, just forget it. You're never gonna be able to resolve anything if they can't hear you and even if they're affected and reactive, they can work with that. They don't have to be perfect, but if they are super reactive or defensive or so easily insulted that you can't have a real conversation with them, that relationship is probably not gonna work. But I think the key is, first and foremost, to know yourself what you want, which I find that a lot of women, believe it or not, don't. They just kind of hope some guy will touch the right spot. So really knowing for yourself what arouses you, learning your own body, knowing what you like and then and you know for all of you to do that whether you're male or female and then you want to have those conversations and that feedback always in the positive like what you want more of, what felt really good, you know what you loved, what would really turn you on and you want to have that conversation outside the sexual scenario because you know feelings are running high and insecurities are running high when you're in this scenario.

Right, so now when you're in the.

Bed right after sex, you know what?

Let's do postmortem.

I didn't like this.

I didn't like this. I didn't like this.

You're like sitting there like, you know, shrinking more and more of a ball, pulling a blanket over you, like hiding yourself. No, you would, you know, like the next day or when you're, you know what I was thinking about last night? And it was so amazing. And I loved when you did this and when you did that. You know what I was I was thinking it would be really, really fun to try this. Or you know when you were doing that thing, if you moved, if you stayed there longer and you did la la la, then that would be great.

So in a new context, share the positive feedback, not in the context of it happening or not.

And you always frame it in the positive what you want more of.

I didn't like when you did this, I didn't like you did this.

And don't do that. I mean unless something is triggering you or hurting.

Yeah, that's hurt me.

Okay.

You mentioned this with addiction, whether it be porn or any type of addiction, it's about filling an empty hole. It's why we have the addiction. Something that we're feeling pain from the past and we're trying to fill this empty hole. How do we fill an empty hole in a positive way?

Go into the basement.

So what does that look like? What's a process?

A step by step process. Oh gosh, alright. So the first thing is recognizing that the hole is there and you don't have to be an addict. Every single one of us, I don't think we get out of our childhood without some holes in there. It doesn't mean we use substances or sex to fill them up. We might just be overly controlling or-- Passive aggressive or any number of things. So it's recognizing it, first of all, that there are some wounds that you don't want to be with, that you haven't wanted to look at, and that you are hiding from the world and sometimes from yourself. And then it is about really doing that work.

What does the work look like?

You know, for everybody, it is different. I think, you know, I'm a therapist, so obviously I don't think that all, you know, I'm a therapist who also believes deeply in therapy that doesn't involve talking. You know, my kids used to call me a talking doctor because I'm a talking therapist. But when it comes to trauma, if you have trauma in your history, I am a huge believer in somatic experiencing. And if you are someone who doesn't, who doesn't like, I'm someone as you can tell who can talk about her stuff all day long. I'm like every therapist's dream client because I will talk for all 45 minutes. But not everyone is like that, right? So if it's hard for you to articulate your feelings or you don't even know how you feel but you know you're in pain. That's another group that somatic experiencing is really good with.

What is somatic experiencing?

It's basically going in more into the body than using words. So it's kind of bypassing the thinking brain and they'll use movement or art or intuitive stuff. And I've had clients who are like so left brain thinkers and, you know, work for the police department and, you know, Vick. and discovered that they are really gifted painters because they started painting out their feelings in somatic experiencing and now they've become professional artists.

Would somatic experiencing also be something like reiki or tapping or body talk or...

To some extent, my problem, I love all of those things. My problem with tapping, and I think it's a big problem, And with some of these other modalities, is that they are great for maintenance and getting through stuff. But you have a huge risk. It doesn't eradicate the monsters in the basement.

How do we eradicate them?

You have to face them. You can't tap them away. You can't dance them away. You can't positive speak them away.

Can you paint them away?

You can't paint them away. You have to go, you can't go around it over it. and so much of the spiritual community freaking does this and it pisses me off. It's spiritual bypassing. You're basically bypassing. You don't want to feel the pain. So, you know, tap it away. I don't want to feel it. Tap it away, tap it away. But it's still there in your body. You're tapping it away for the moment and then 10 minutes later you're tapping again.

So how do we fully let it go?

You have to go into the, you know, Jesus and the desert. You have to go into your dark night of the soul with support, with holding. You don't do it by yourself. You find a really good therapist or somatic experiencer or someone who understands trying to escape that and wanting to face it and who will work with you to not flood you with it all all at once, but to really work through the pain.

Gotcha.

Because every trauma, big T and little t that we've had in our lives is stored in our system. It's stored in our bodies, not just our brains. And if you don't release that, you're just literally, it's like, you know, a fire hose that you just keep putting a cover on, right? But it doesn't slow down the flow of the fire hose.

Is it possible to heal the big T or little T in a moment, in a day, in a weekend experience? Is it an ongoing process to release the energy where it can still come back?

Everybody is different and it depends on the degree of what you're carrying and for how long. But I find that when I take people on a week-long odyssey of sorts, you know, where they really, in a supported environment, are really going deep and facing some real truths and releasing some real pain out of their bodies, emotional pain, that that's like a jump start. You know, it's like having three months of weekly therapy. You know, you go really deep, really hard, really fast with lots of holding and support. And then it's continual work because... Then.

Is it more maintenance mode? Is it more...

It's more maintenance mode, but it's also, you know, healing is not a straight line. It's more like this, right? It's not like, you know, you're like this. But you're sort of more like this, right? And you're gonna dip down. So let's say you go through this, you had horrible trauma and then you were cheated on and abandoned and now you're really facing it and the wounds from your childhood and all of that. And you do this really deep work and you're feeling like just lighter and clearer and more whole and you're doing the tapping and the personal empowerment and the Kumbaya stuff too and you're finding a community and you get into a relationship and you know maybe that person gets sick or maybe the old girlfriend comes back or something happens, right? And that's going to shoot you But what's happening is that what therapists call it is peeling the layers of the onion away. I'm still peeling layers of the onion away. And I'm a pretty together, conscious, happy, healed person, but something will happen or something will come up for me. And I'm like, holy crap, there's a whole other layer of the onion I've got to peel away. And it's not nearly what it was. And once it's peeled away, I'm shining more brightly. I'm stronger. I'm wiser. You know, I always say, like, the heart doesn't break, it just bends. You know, it recovers, and you're stronger and wiser because of it. And every single one of us is gonna have a shit ton of heartbreak in our lives, so we can't be scared of it.

One of the biggest things for me in my past has been the fear of rejection. I feel like that's pretty common for a lot of people is the fear of putting themselves out there, being vulnerable, asking for someone on a date or whatever in a relationship, and then saying no. And that rejection being a very scary place. Why is rejection so hard for so many people? How do we overcome that fear of rejection so it doesn't consume us?

Right.

It's really about what the rejection means to you, right? Like when that person says no, What does that mean to you? Does that mean that that person has issues or likes blondes and you're a brunette? Or does that mean that you're not enough? Because the person who fears rejection believes they're not enough. And every rejection is confirmation of that.

Maybe they're not enough for that, what that person wants. It doesn't mean they're not enough.

Not at all.

Right.

So how do you compartmentalize that? Okay, I wasn't enough for this person, otherwise they'd be with me.

Yeah.

But I'm still enough as a human being.

Right, and I think part of it is talking to yourself, but it's also in really, you know, what I have found as someone who has had taught people my whole adult and professional life, you know, self-worth is a huge part of the work that I do, and what I've learned over that cancer journey and all the healing and the book and everything that came out of that is that self-esteem is not the same as self-worth. Self-esteem is I love myself because I'm kind and I'm smart and I'm good at bowling and I'm a great mother, whatever, right? Fill in the blanks. That self-esteem self-esteem. Self-worth, which is really what we need, is not that self-esteem is bad, but self-worth is I am worthy of the most abundant love that exists simply because I exist. Because I am the unique expression of the universe's light that I am. There's not another human like me on the planet. And I found that that is not something that is found through words. It is something that is found through connecting with that higher essential self. You know that one that when you say hello to yourself in your mind, you know silently, the one saying hello is you that you know. The one hearing hello is your true self, is your essential self. And when you start to really connect with that through meditation, through spiritual work, through personal empowerment work, when you start to really connect to your intuition and how powerful that connection really is, it's always there. It's not like you just tune into it or don't, right? But it's always there. When you do that, it's really hard not to love yourself. I mean, it's really hard because you're like, holy crap. Like, this is, you know, you do you know what I'm talking about? Of course. Right? Of course. So it's really hard. That to me is like where the worth really is. And we put these blocks on it because there are all these parts of ourselves that were abandoned or rejected or over criticized and we've never challenged them, we've never looked at them because they're the monsters in the basement and they're all like cholesterol on the artery that allows the light to come through.

Yeah.

So how do we build self-worth and let go of self-doubt?

I think you have to do both simultaneously. You have to do your trauma work and whether that's big T or little T trauma, you have to do your wound work and you can't tap it away. Not that tapping is bad, I love Nick Ortner, I love tapping, but it is not a solution. It is a strategy. And then at the same time, and this is what I do with all of my clients, you know, I'm doing this deep work with them, but I am also Sending them to workshops. I'm having them learn meditation. I'm having them learn embodiment. I'm having them learn, you know, finding their own spiritual practice, 'cause everybody's different, you know.

So these things are strategies, the workshops, the meditations, the tools.

They're cultivators.

The cultivators.

Because they're not, the strategy would be more, you know, tapping or.

Is breath work and meditation, is that?

Yes, well, breath work actually is really good. that is a great one for embodiment and it's a really good form of somatic experiencing by itself. You need the processing as well, so it's part of it. But boy, will that move some stuff out of you.

Absolutely.

And get those emotions that have been stuck flowing out, which is really good.

So.

The solutions are practice of meditation, breath work, visioning, Community, those are sort of the strategies are things like tapping or positive thinking or, you know, that kind of thing. And then there is the real healing work of confronting, facing, turning on the light in the basement, and facing your shame, and realizing that those are just these sweet little innocent parts of yourself that just want to be seen.

Yeah.

How do we get to see our, how do we, I feel like a lot of us just do things to be seen and acknowledged, right? It's like we all want to be acknowledged and seen and unfortunately, most people and valued and recognized for our gifts to the world. And most of us work so hard to be seen by other people and yet unfortunately, society in general doesn't see people until they die. And then everyone comes out and recognizes you when you can't hear it. Which is such a waste.

Right?

So how do we become seen without people acknowledging us if that never happens?

Right.

Because it doesn't matter.

How do we do that for ourselves?

No, I think that's what the thing is. Here's the two things I have found. One is that there are, you know them, there are millions of people who are seen on national television and-- that don't love themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

Or seen like crazy and given all the validation in the world and still feel like crap about them. They're like drowning in their shadows. Yeah. Right? So it's just like money. You can have a billion, jillion, gazillion dollars and you're still not gonna be happy if you don't face You're shadows. You're just not. And we all know people like that. So that's one thing to recognize, is that we have this story that if I'm seen and acknowledged, then I'll be validated. Then I'll be happy. But that's just a story. And that's easy to disprove, because you look at all these people that are being seen.

Or suicidal, or on drugs, or addicted.

Yeah.

So how do we validate ourselves without the need?

It's about that connection. That's the only validation that's at all real. All the rest is just people's projections onto you. Oh, I'm gonna follow you because you have abs that I wish I had. Or I'm gonna follow you because you seem really successful. Or whatever. It's just not real. And it's just projections that people are putting onto us, which is fine. People make a good living out of other people's projections onto them. But that's not where the true value is found. The true value is found through that connection to your true self, your essential self, the one that is this lovingly detached source connected. Call it whatever you want. God, Jesus, it doesn't matter to me. But that source connected part of you that I, for one, never got until my 30s or 40s. I didn't grow up with any kind of understanding of that. And I don't think most of us do.

What would you say is your true self?

My true self is, I am like, you know, the tip of my fingernail, and my true self is as big as LA, you know, is immense, just like yours, but don't talk about me. Immense. And she's funny and loving and compassionate and and really, really wise and extremely loving. And it's like each of us is this, I always envision like if you think of whatever, insert your word here, spirit, God, universe, whatever. But this immense, more immense than we could ever imagine giant, like bigger than the universe light. And each of us is just a little strand of that light. And when you're connecting to your essential self, you're connecting to the part-- Source. Yes, but your unique connection to Source, your unique expression of Source. And of course, you're connecting to Source as well. But the self-love piece, you know, it's just really hard to deny when you start to feel it.

What's the biggest shadows you're still facing with or you haven't yet to let out of the basement or?

I'm a recovering codependent. I will always, I think, be peeling layers of that onion away.

Is that an attachment style? What's that have to do with it?

Well, an attachment style would be, yes, but they call it something different. So I would say I have an insecure attachment style by nature. So it's more of a tendency than a style. Most of these styles we have. But the codependent is, I'm not okay if you're not okay. Or I will do anything not to be abandoned by someone. Not anymore, but the pure codependent. Or I'll be a little more passive aggressive than aggressive. That will be a shadow of mine that I have to keep an eye on. Setting boundaries, I have to keep an eye on because I'm much more likely to say yes to something so that I don't look bad or disappoint you or whatever, then say no.

What's that attachment style called?

Insecure.

Just insecure. How many attachment styles are there?

There's four. But they're really more like one is avoidant, right? So someone who's got insecure attachment in its purest form doesn't feel the worthiness for themselves. but does for the other person. So they think highly of the other person and not of themselves. Someone who's more avoidant would be that they feel good about themselves but not about other people.

So they avoid them.

They're like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna avoid them.

And someone who's avoidant.

Yeah, and someone who's really fearful will feel bad about themselves and you.

What is that? What style is that?

That is a fearful attachment.

Okay.

So that's someone who's like got serious trauma, you know?

Yep. Is there one more? You said there's four.

And then there's a healthier style, right? Where you're, that's what we're all going for, right?

They called healthy.

No, I'm trying to remember the name of it. Yeah.

There's insecure avoidance.

Insecure avoidance, fearful crap. It's coming to me. My brain is fried.

It's all right. I'll find it later. But the fourth one is the one we're all looking to be.

Yeah.

The attachment style we're looking for, is that right?

Yeah, I mean look, it's not that there is one, to me it's more of an ability to understand your tendency. Because if you understand your tendency, that can be a roadmap to your wounds.

Mmm, yeah.

And, and that.

Why am I reactive? Why am I avoidant? Why am I feeling this way?

Let's go back to the rules. Yeah, and I'll often say to someone, if someone calls into my show or someone I'm not working with directly, they'll say, I don't, they'll talk about something that's happening in their relationship, and I'll say, okay, let's go into this scenario. Here's what's, something happened between the two of you. She didn't come home when she said she would, and this is the third time this week, and you found this other guy's number on her phone. So when you found the other guy's number, let's just go back there in your mind, you know, what did you feel in your body? Once again, embodiment. What did you feel in your body? And then I really walked them through the process of like imagining they're there in first person and what do they feel? And I was like, I feel tightness in my stomach. I feel nauseous and like constriction in my throat. And I'll say, okay, just stay there for a minute. Really put your conscious attention on that. Maybe even make it a little bit bigger because you're in control. It's not going to take you over. And then once they really have a good handle on that, all right, so I'm just going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. When was the first time you ever remember feeling this way? Ever in your life? The earliest time you ever remember feeling these feelings? And it is almost always, well, it was when my mother, you know, when I came home from school, my mother was walking out the door with her suitcase or, you know, it all always goes back to those earlier wounds that we're just re-experiencing time and time again. Wow.

That's why I feel like therapy is so good for people.

It's really good.

Even when you're in a good place.

I feel like- Absolutely.

Do it once every couple months. Just to be able to talk about whatever.

Yes. And most people, you know, I'm seeing less and less of that, but historically, especially With couples, you know, 10 years ago, they would not come in until they were like ready to get divorce, like final straw, ready to file for divorce. One last shot here. And now I notice-- Sooner. Much sooner, which is so much better for me as a clinician.

I want every relationship to start therapy within the first like six months of dating.

I am awesome.

It's like, because then you create boundaries and agreements from the beginning.

Absolutely.

And you don't have to get to the end.

And don't get, like, you should not marry every single couple who is planning on making a marriage commitment or a life commitment. You should have couples therapy. I'm not talking about the pre-cana with the priest or the rabbi. I mean, that's fine too, but I'm talking about like at least five sessions. Yeah, get clear on some basic agreements.

And make sure you're fully aligned, 'cause.

Maybe you haven't had those conversations. And learn how to argue. Successfully.

That's the key.

And learn how to articulate your needs and come up with some agreements about, not just about kids, sex, money, religion, those things, but also just your dynamics. Get clear on them and set the foundation.

That's huge. I want to talk about what happened recently in your life. Very, very sad, your son passed away because of drugs that he bought on Snapchat from a drug dealer on Snapchat, right?

Yeah.

And it's heartbreaking as it's happened and I'm just, I have no idea what this feels like because I'm not a parent, but I can only imagine.

I have never felt, I mean, I'm still feeling it, but I have never felt pain so wide and deep. I've been through a lot of grief. I've been with my mother and my father and both my grandmothers when they passed. and my, really the woman who was more of a mother to me than even my own mother when she passed. And I really understand grief, but I, the grief of losing, and I understood as a mother that there's nothing worse. I mean, I remember when my mother died, I remember saying, okay, it's at least the natural course of things, you know?

Right.

But to have your child go is something that I'm still wrapping my head around. and I will be for a long time. And, you know, I am practicing what I preach. It's that I taking that deep trip into the dark night of the soul in the Redwoods, you know, birthing and howling my pain into the mother tree and being held.

Literally.

Literally.

Yeah.

And being held by, you know, some of my my nearest and dearest friends who are also healers and understand grief who I don't have to, you know, didn't have to take, don't ever have to take care of. Those are the ones that sort of, it's like that intense same thing that I was saying earlier, that intensive week, and now it will be, you know, probably the rest of my life.

Ongoing strategies to support when, and, and waves.

You know, just at the end of the school year, you know, on his birthday, on Thanksgiving, like, you know, there will be endless waves. But, and I'm a, you know, as you can tell, I am, I believe 100% that we are all energy and energy doesn't die. I never really understood, you know, I didn't take it literally. I thought it was more of a metaphor when people said you keep them in your heart. You know? But what I have discovered is that if I put all of my conscious awareness, like if I get really, really quiet and I can loosen the constriction of my chest and I can go all the way into the center of my heart, there's like a little seed. There was this unique brand of sweetness he had that even, you know, when he would come down as a 16-year-old, you know, and would not hug me, but tolerate me hugging him, you know, with his arms next to him. Even then, I could feel it. It's just this beautiful, sweet, silly, loving energy of his underneath all the teenage stuff. And that's right in the center of my heart. He's literally in there. A piece of his energy is literally, you carry them in your heart, literally, not just figuratively. And that has been a revelation to me. And also just, I can't believe that the community that I have around me, not just of so many healers and friends that have reached out and support, but I have had to, as a recovering codependent, it's very hard for me to receive. And because... To give up the control.

Of like helping everyone else.

Or just worrying that I'm going to be a burden or that I'll inconvenience them or that, you know, I just can't be, I was never allowed to be a burden as a child, you know? So it's really hard for me to, so I bend over backwards not to be a burden. And not to say that I'm never a burden, I'm sure I am, but I at least try not to be. And this, there was no frickin' way. I was like, bring it on, I will take whatever you have to give. Like, that's it. I'm sur, like, surrendered. I will receive because I don't have any other choice. So that has been a beautiful lesson and I'm very, very thankful that I have done all of the spiritual work that I have because I would probably be in the ground with him if I hadn't. And, you know, I would have just not been able to cope. And so that, you know, it's going to be an ongoing and also just the, I mean, I was this astounded because what he died from, and we're still waiting for the toxicology reports, but the police have seen enough of this now to feel pretty certain and are, and treating it like a murder, you know, that it was not an overdose fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid made in China. They bring it in through Mexico, and then there are these labs in Mexico that press it or make it into Percocet, Xanax, into Coke, into cannabis, into everything that you're buying on the street. And it's going, it goes into the Midwest, it goes into California, and then it spreads out from there. And it is twice as addictive as heroin. And it just takes, like, a teeny little seed or two of it to kill you. And the drug dealers are doing this. They're putting it in everything because it's twice as addictive as heroin. So they're making you basically into an addict when you take a Percocet or smoke a joint and then you're their best customer or you die and they don't give a crap. And what I learned after his passing from, you know, as I was trying to put the pieces together, his best friend, you know, told me that he had, that our son had screenshot on Snapchat a menu from a dealer. Man. So I talked to my kids incessantly about, you know, nude pictures and saying things on there that could be, you know, like those were the kind, it never occurred to me that there could be drug, I mean, I'm an idiot, but it never occurred to me that there could be drug dealers on Snapchat. And that is where my son and this person connected. And he, you know, delivered the drugs to the house. My kid thought he, To your house? To my house.

Oh my God.

My kid was up I just said to my girlfriend, one of the silver linings of this pandemic is that both my teenage boys are safe and sound in their room, and I don't have to worry about them. And I'd let them do more on gaming and social media, 'cause it's the only way they can connect to their friends. And as long as they did well in school, I wasn't gonna put up a fuss. And what we've been able to piece together is he connected with this guy. He snuck out, we were sleeping, and met him in the alley. Got the drug, you know, it was like 25 cents, you know, selling it for nothing and Got the drugs and thought he was just ex, you know, like we all did thought he was experimenting. He's bored. He's a teenage boy not able to play sports or go out or do anything. It's a Sunday after Super Bowl Sunday. You thought this guy's offering me, you know, they think from what we've been able to piece together Percocet, And so, you know, I'll just pop in and see what happens. And my husband had just brought him up a cheeseburger an hour before, and I went into his room because he had asked me to come talk to him. He wanted to do an internship for the summer to beef up his college resume. He was applying to colleges. And so I walked in to have this internship conversation and found him.

There.

Oh man.

Yeah, so I'm still, I mean it's the worst. It's the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst. But it's only because of everything that's come before that I know that it will get better and better. And what has astounded me is the outpouring. I had to make a Facebook group because thousands of parents were reaching out to me saying that exactly the same thing happened to their kid.

From social media or something.

Great grades, good kid, you know, not like, and met someone on Snapchat or Instagram, or it's usually Snapchat or Twitter seems to be, but I, you know, it's probably all it, and thought they were taking something. I mean, in one occasion, it was a mother who whose kid had, they were having trouble getting into the dentist and he was having a lot of pain. His friend gave him like a Percocet or, you know, he thought it was a Percocet or something and he died from that.

Oh no.

So it's in everything and and the amount of parents who are going, I mean it is worse than the pandemic, how many kids it's killing.

Really.

It is really a big deal.

And this has happened more in the last couple of years or last year?

They've had 30,000 deaths in 2019 from fentanyl. And it has risen significantly. 20,000 deaths just in Los Angeles in 2020, since this year, 2021.

Goodness.

So it's really ramping up.

Not just with kids, but with everyone.

Everyone. Do not take anything that you get on the street or from a dealer. You really don't know. And it's not and nobody knows. And so, and also social media heretofore, although I'm hoping that that's changing because we're kicking their butts as much as we can, but social media will not give the police any identifying information. We had the ad and the handle, the Twitter and Snapchat handle of this dealer, and they said, don't get your hopes up, all that they'll do is take the profile down and then they pop up somewhere else immediately with another profile name.

Right.

So, you know, that really has to change.

Yeah. Well, I want to acknowledge you for showing up in the way you're showing up and sharing in such a vulnerable way because I can only imagine what this would be like. And I want to, if you're open to speaking from a place of relationships, how a partner could help someone who is going through and experience a traumatic event like this, whether it's a death of someone in their family, cancer, something very traumatic, how can a partner be there for them in a way that is supportive in a time of that might be breakdown and mush mode and grief mode for a long period of time? What would you suggest that a partner do?

Yeah.

Or friends.

Yeah, I think it's about showing up. It's about not saying, let me know if I can do something or what can I do, because that person is paralyzed.

They can't say what they don't even.

Know what to do.

So how do you show up?

So you show up with cookies, you send them food, you, you know, I've had friends who just every morning, When they wake up, they send me a little green heart that just lets me know, you know, text me a little green heart and I know that they're waking up thinking about me and my pain. You know, just let them know whatever you can do, proactively do, not to invade, you know, don't invite yourself over and park on their couch, you know, if that's not, if they're not that kind of person, but find some way to proactively show up for them and keep checking on them past Keep checking on them past the first week. You know, at the first week or two, everybody's really focusing because of the funeral, whatever else may be happening. But then it's the hardest part, I think, is after that.

And when everyone forgets, moves on.

Yeah.

And I think for a partner, you know, and my husband has been going through the grief, obviously, with me, but he lets me do it my way. you know, and it's very different than how he's doing it.

Don't force someone to cope in a certain way.

You have to let everybody grieve and heal. It's so different. My 15-year-old, my 23-year-old, and my husband and I are all grieving in completely different ways.

And don't make someone wrong for the way they're grieving, even if it seems.

Like they're moved on quicker or... Or my 15-year-old is like, there's something wrong with me. I'm not crying enough. And I'm like, no, not at all. and you should know that I'm gonna be crying a lot, you know? And that doesn't mean I'm falling apart, but that's just what's happening. There's no right or wrong. Everybody has to deal, you know, has to process it in their own way. I think it's about creating that room and not taking it personally. And if you can, if you're not the one who's also grieving with them to create a container for them as the partner, you know, to make it. for them to decompensate and where they don't have to take care of you. And it's a lot to be with grief. I mean, it's a lot because people's own grief will come up. And that's the other thing that I've learned through this process is that especially with losing a child, I think, it's one thing if you are a parent who's been sick for a long time, people are kind of expecting it. But I have realized that, and this is part of what got me over my difficulty receiving, is that it really helps helps people when they can help me. Like it literally helps them.

Yeah. So, okay. Bring me the cookies all day long. I'll take all the flowers.

I'll help you.

Yeah.

Give me the help. But it does. Like they're so helpless.

Yeah.

They can't do anything.

No.

They can't help you with your pain. They can't understand it. So they're like, what do I do? Let me try something.

Yeah.

So receiving is helping them and helping yourself.

You have to receive and that, you know, if you're not a good receiver, that something like this will make you one.

Well, we have some cake out there. If you want a piece of cake, I'll give it to you. I don't know. Exactly.

I just keep saying, Yes, I will receive. Yes, I will receive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I've got a couple of final questions for you, Dr. Laura, but I appreciate you being here and opening up about this because you have so much wisdom from your years of experience as a therapist. in relationships that people need this information to support them in healing the past. Big T little T traumas on having better communication in their intimate partnerships. I've always said that, you know, the key to success in life is relationships. And the key to successful relationships is vulnerability, intimacy. And it takes going to the past sometimes to be healthy in the present until you're ready to heal that. So Thank you for explaining all this in a clear way so we can hopefully open up the door to our basements and face our demons. If you will.

Not demons, they're cute little babies.

Cute little babies, little bunnies that just went to the lake, where you let them out. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. Little bunnies, as opposed to snakes.

Yeah.

You know?

This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths question. So I'd like you to imagine for a moment a hypothetical situation.

Okay?

It's your last day on earth many, many, many years away. You get to live as old as you want to live. But eventually, you gotta turn the lights off. And you've accomplished every dream you have from this moment moving forward. Everything you've ever want to do, it happens. Family, relationships, business, career, it all happens. But for whatever reason, every written word or video or piece of content you've put out into the world has to go with you.

-Okay.

-So, you can make all the things you want to make but then it's all gonna go with you. So, no one has access to your New York Times bestselling book which I want them to get. No one has access to your content. They don't have access to this anymore. -Yeah. -But you get to leave behind three lessons and this is all you get. You get to leave behind three things. A piece of paper and a pen. You write down three lessons that you would share with the world. I call it three truths.

What would you say are yours? -Oh my gosh. Okay. I would say that the love that you have for yourself is the only predictor of the love that you can receive. I would say that no decision made from fear is ever a good one.

And.

I would say to embrace every broken heart. Because as Leonard Cohen would say, that's how the light gets in. And it's inescapable. It's going to happen. And you can live your life fighting it and protecting yourself from it and still end up with it. Or you can live and learn and realize that with every heartbreak you get stronger and wiser and brighter.

Yeah.

What does Rumi say? Something about the light and the wound is where the light enters or something like that.

I can't remember. I know Leonard Cohen said, Don't be afraid of a broken heart. It's how the light gets in, you know, the cracks in your heart. But I think Rumi said something like that.

Rumi said the wound is where the light enters or something like that.

It is totally true. It is totally true because you have to, in tragedy and broken heart, you have to, your whole personality can't sustain itself, you know? So you turn to mush so that you can become the butterfly.

Exactly. Those are beautiful truths. Thank you for sharing.

I just came up with this.

They're very beautiful. Very beautiful.

But they are truths.

Those are beautiful. You've got a New York Times best-selling book, Quantum Love is yous Latest Book. You've also got a podcast, the Language of Love that just came out. It's a weekly show. You talk about a lot of things around love life, relationships, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Answer questions.

Answer questions, the juicy stuff. So if you like this content, go subscribe to the Language of Love and listen to more. I don't know if it's similar to what we're talking about here or if you're doing a different style.

Yeah, well it's both. I mean I consider myself sex, body, soul. That's sort of my thing. There you go. So it's all intertwined for me. Yeah. Not everybody understands that but it is.

There you go. The Language of Love, if you want more information on that, go subscribe there. You're a you're also over social media. Dr. Laura Berman over on all platforms, I think is... And Dr. Laura Berman official on Facebook, drlauraberman.com with all the information there.

Yep.

Is there anything else that we should be aware of on... Checking out your information?

No, that's a good place to start.

Where do you hang out the most on social media?

Instagram and Facebook.

Okay.

And my website always has all I do a blog every week, and radio shows are up. I mean the podcast is up there.

Awesome.

Books are up there.

They are.

Toys are up there.

I love it, all the stuff. So make sure you guys go check out the Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman. And I have, I want to acknowledge you before I ask you the final question. I acknowledge you for your incredible presence right now and being present amongst a lot of pain and stress that you're going through and uncertainty and overwhelm. And I can't imagine what that would be like, but I acknowledge you for the decades of work you've done to be here. Yeah, thank you. To be able to share in a moment of pain and grief and to be able to serve other people and serve something greater and grieve at the same time. that takes a lot of practice, a lot of skills, a lot of tools that you've developed over the years to be able to be in this position. So I'm really grateful that... And harnessing.

My dysfunction too, because I was a really good compartmentalizer and disassociator. So now I can call on it when I need it.

I need to do this interview, yes.

Talk to disassociate.

And for those that are maybe thinking, why are we doing this interview at this time? You wanted to do this. We reached out and said, hey, we understand.

Let's reschedule. Yeah, you know what? My people worked so, so hard, including my son who passed, you know, was helping me with the artwork. And, you know, it just seemed wrong. And when's the right time? I mean, for God's sake, like when a month from now is the right time?

To launch a show.

Yeah, or to move on. Like there's no right time.

A year, 10 years, What?

So I was just like, Move it forward. And I do think, for me, it has always been the biggest part of my healing. And what helps me the most is why I do it, is helping other people.

Being in service, yeah.

Yeah, that's always it for me.

It's healing and the show must go on. It's both and, right? It can't stop life, so it continues. Well, you're a rock star, Laura, and I appreciate you being here. This has been amazing. I have one final question.

Okay.

What's your definition of greatness?

What's my definition of greatness? Authenticity.

There you go. Yeah.

Dr. Laura, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also check out our free PDF The three secrets to unlock the power of your mind to help you change your life. Download it right here.

I always say feelings are like a compass. They tell us what direction to go in.