Unlocking Love: A Deep Dive into Trauma, Trust, and Transformation

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. What is the thing we need to heal first? The brain, the mind, or the heart?

I think that the body plays such a larger role than we give it credit for, especially in my field. We like to praise the power of the mind, of the prefrontal cortex, our very empowered space that can imagine this incredibly different future and create all of this incredible change and even affirmations. I think that they're grounded in this reality that to think differently, we can create a shift, a shift in how we feel and ultimately a shift in how we do. And that's half of the journey, though the other half of it is really first attuning to what signals my body is sending my mind, my heart being included in that body. Specifically, what is my nervous system? Is my nervous system telling my mind that I am safe in this moment, that I can be grounded maybe in that internal presence that we were just kind of talking about, right? Tuning inward, what is my heart saying? What is my heart wanting? Or what is my heart needing? What do I want to do to act in compassion in that moment? And if I do not feel safe in my body, and I know I spent decades with my body sending my mind, my brain signals of lacking safety, of threat, of endless stress.

Your body was sending your brain this.

Or your mind was sending your body this. My body was sending my brain this. I think this is why a lot of us, we cannot sit in stillness. We feel endlessly distracted by the world around us, or endlessly agitated, because all of those are signals that our body.

Is in stress ultimately. Now, is it the body or is it the nervous system and the heart? Like, is it the skin, the blood, the bones, or is it like more the nervous system and the heart in reaction to an environment or memory?

The nervous system and the heart we can think of are the control center for the rest of what the body is doing. We're like a sensor, an energetic sensor. Our nervous system is sending out electromagnetic waves. Our heart is actually sending out electromagnetic waves at a greater distance. and we're sensing the world around us. And then how we register what's happening in our external world is through changes in our skin. We get sweaty, we get clammy, changes in our muscular tension. They get tense or they get relaxed, whatever it might be, changes in our heart rate. So those sensors and that kind of command center of the heart and the nervous system is always outside of our awareness, assessing and scanning. And even more so than taking in information from just the external environment, it's taking information from your nervous system.

From others.

From the stressed or non-stressed you are. And then like dominoes, we kind of ping against each other. The more stressed you are, the more I feel your stress, the more likely my body is to become stressed.

And also, and opposite that, probably the more relaxed I am when you're stressed, it can help you calm and regulate as well. in certain ways, right?

Beautiful. I have a whole couple chapters dedicated to, and a big premise of the book is to attune to our body, to that second subtitle, Create and Find Peace Within Ourself, so that those signals that probably historically were stressed out signals, you know, threatening quite literally the world around us and other people in relationship, that when we shift that, when we come into that calm grounded presence, in my opinion, that is the embodiment of being this love, because I think one of the most loving things that we can do is create a safe environment, a relational environment, for someone else to be who they are, to express their thoughts, their perspectives, their emotions, and really just to be themselves. So a lot of the science within the book is harnessing the power of the heart, harnessing the power of co-regulation, and actually teaching us to quite literally be in that energetic state of love so that we can actually, in my opinion, heal those relationships.

I love this. Martha and I, she does a great job if I'm feeling like, you know, a little overwhelmed or something. She does a great job of bringing calming energy to me. She can notice it and bring calm, and then I can get calm pretty quickly. And vice versa, if she's had a long day or something and she's just having a overwhelming moment or she's feeling sensitive, I can notice it and just hug her for 10 minutes and then she feels better. she can relax and calm down. Now, both of us have a pretty good awareness of taking care of ourselves, doing the inner work, so that it's usually not both of us at the same time and break down for a moment. But when two people have traumatic nervous systems or who haven't healed their heart or their nervous system and they are in a relationship, and neither of them know how to regulate their emotions, what tends to happen in that relationship if they don't know how to heal their hearts?

We tend to, I think, engage in cycles of endless conflict, of endless disconnection, of endless coping strategies that we've learned. We rely on the things that we do, whether it's, you know, using substances or distracting ourselves by scrolling endlessly online. We are then the living byproduct. Sometimes it's in these explosive cycles of conflict. I call this patterning that I think is pretty common in most relationships. I know Lolly and I, when we began our relationship now near a decade ago, we were very much in a dysfunctional patterning of what I call trauma bonding. Really?

Absolutely.

What is trauma bonding? So trauma bonding, again, I like to provide a more expansive definition than I think some could define it online, but it's all of those dysfunctional habits and patterns that, again, once kept us safe in childhood that we continue to recreate, whether it's these cycles of explosive conflict, maybe that some of us are even defining is right love and intensity and passion and all of the things that we're looking for in chemistry, or the just dysfunctional habits and selves that we're playing where we're just one of the partners is always the caretaker of the other partner who's always in need of the care. And no matter what relationship you're in, you see yourself kind of engaging within that same dynamic. Or for me, the most prominent one is cycles of emotional disconnection, no matter who I was with. And I was always in a relationship. I was somewhat of a serial monogamous since I started dating when I was 16 years old. more or less always in a romantic partnership, definitely had friendships and social engagements and things to do. But I was really the living embodiment or the feeling embodiment of alone in a crowded room.

Really?

And the number one complaint that would usually end to the demise of the relationship because I would be so frustrated or resentful or so passive-aggressively acting out that before I knew it, the relationship would end was, I don't feel emotionally connected.

Your partners would say that?

I would say that.

You would say that.

I would complain about not feeling emotionally connected, though I can share a story. My first boyfriend ever in high school, to this day it sticks with me, when we broke up, we were nearing graduation, we were going to separate colleges very far away. And so we broke up on logistics of, you know, it's college, we forgot about that. He also lodged a statement complaint, if you will, and he labeled me as being emotionally unavailable. And I was really struck by that, 'cause I was like, me, emotionally unavailable? What do you mean? I feel so loving, I fell in love with him, I was kind of devastated when he broke up with me. so I was like, that's unusual to hear. I think he's obviously wrong. Flash forward a couple years, I discovered I was attracted to women. So now I was like, oh, well, it's because I'm interested in women that I'm emotionally available. Of course I am. Flash forward even a more couple years. I was in a psychoanalytic training program in Philadelphia right before I was licensed. And one of the aspects of the training was to sit in group therapy around a room of other analysts where essentially for an hour and a half, we just Analyzing each other. We just analyze each other and our experiences with each other and our perceptions and how we feel interacting.

This is part of your training.

This was part of my training to get my license. I selected to go into that style of training because I thought it would be beneficial. And it was, though very difficult. And one of the things that I heard from a colleague there one time in the group, she decides to share her experience of me and described me as cold and aloof. And I'm like, okay, that is so interesting. Now you're reflecting back, this idea of me being distance, but I didn't have any language to understand. I felt thought that she was a little bit inaccurate. Though now looking back, you don't really know me.

Yeah.

Looking back, I'm like, oh, this is making complete sense. The reason why I was so emotionally disconnected, that was real for me in my relationships. It was because I was emotionally disconnected. from myself. So I wasn't attuned to how I was thinking or feeling. I wasn't sharing that. So of course I was creating a cycle of disconnection in my relationships. So as much as I wanted to not agree with those two assessments, I mean, a lot of ways they were quite accurate.

When did you get to a point where you said, okay, this, even though I don't think I'm emotionally disconnected, the pattern is showing up that I am. Others are letting me know, I'm in breakdown, the relationships don't work, you know, whatever disconnection I have from people. The pattern is following me. So, okay, I'm gonna take a look at this seriously. What did you do to break that cycle? You know, in your book, How to Be the Love youe Seek, you talk about breaking cycles. How did you break that cycle? How did you know you had something to break and that you needed to find solutions or tools to improve that emotional connection as opposed to disconnection?

I started to look for myself because, yes, other people's feedback can be absolutely helpful, but I never would suggest that you just defer to what someone else assesses you to be or says of you. So I finally started to take it in. I started to say, okay, if I continue to hear this and feel this way from that conscious perspective, I will always kind of acknowledge consciousness or learning how to observe ourself in the context of this conversation within our relationships. to be that first point of action. So I started to look. I started to pay attention and to assess really simplistically, Nicole, how connected are you? How present are you in any given moment? And as I began to check in with myself throughout the day, whether or not you want to set an alarm on your phone to do it, or put some post-it notes on wherever you walk by regularly, or maybe even set a designated time during the day, over morning coffee, or when I'm reading the newspaper, this is going to be my moment to check in. the more regularly I checked in with where my attention is, the more I noticed that it was a million miles away.

Really?

I could be in conversation with someone, and while I'm here and I'm being talked at, I'm thinking about maybe what I'm going to respond to next, or I'm just somewhere else entirely. And the more I checked in and noticed that disconnection, the more then I built on that consciousness step and began to, because there's always two steps to change, me becoming aware that I'm to disconnect, it was only half the journey. Then I had to begin to make that choice to reconnect with myself.

Wow.

To shift that focus of attention time and time again from the thoughts that, you know, they were consumed in or even just worrying about someone else. Am I more attuned to the person across from me than to how I feel being across from the person? And the more I kind of flex that muscle, the more than I was able to reconnect with what my body was doing in any given moment.

How long do you think it took for you then to practice that? Because it was probably most of your life where you had this type of emotional disconnection, what it sounds like as a safety mechanism to create safety from childhood, whatever may have been that you were being safe from. So how long did it take for you to feel like, okay, I'm not having to think about this. It's more automatic. I am emotionally connected. Did it take months, years, or is it still something you have to focus on?

It's still a daily intention, commitment conversation. What has become automatic is the awareness of the importance of checking in with myself consciously, though there are still moments as my stress level goes up, as I become busy with endless obligations, that overachiever conditioned self in me likes to prioritize all of the things that I have to do to show up in service of someone else. And that begins first thing in the morning when I know I have emails that answer. I know I have a whole membership that I can tend to. I know I have a book to edit or whatever it is that I'm working on. So it's a daily commitment to instead of prioritizing all the things we do or all the things I could do, to really create time beginning in the morning to attune to my physical body, to how it feels at any given moment, to giving it what it needs, whether it's movement or stretching or rest or just a conscious moment to be with me. And there are moments when I'm not doing that, when I don't prioritize what I know I consciously, you know, and benefit it to prioritize that. I do find myself being much more detached, much more dissociated. It becomes still easy for me to travel down that older pathway.

-Wow. -So how to be the love you seek? It sounds like we first need to figure out and pay attention to what cycle we need to break, is what I'm hearing. It's like we need to figure out, okay, why am I in struggle-suffer fight or flight mode? Why am I reactive? Why is there a breakdown? So we gotta figure out what the cycle is. Are there a number of different cycles to be aware of? Or is it kind of one cycle that we all follow?

I think we can become aware of our habitual pattern of relating these conditioned cells. I overview several of them.

Conditioned selves.

Conditioned selves. These kind of typical ways, roles I play to really simplify it in our relationships. It can look like me, right? The overachiever. On the other side of that, it can look like the underachiever. I have something called a caretaker, a yes person who kind of just defers and pleases the environment around them, a hero worshipper. So what am I doing habitually in my relationships? Who am I? What is my identity even?

You can begin to How many conditioned selves are there?

How many of these kind of archetypes? I mean, there's many more than I list. I think I give about seven or eight just common examples, but so any, if listeners don't relate to any of them that I just said or that are in the book is what is just who are you in your relationships? What is that very stable role?

What's your main role? What is the primary role that you play? I'm an overachiever. I'm an overgiver.

I feel helpless, whatever the role is, right? Yes, and you could be on that side, right? I'm the person who's always receiving. someone in care of me, I'm the person who's in that kind of helpless cycle. I think another really important thing to observe outside of the conditioned way that we typically are or the role that we play is begin to really create a relationship with our nervous system and beginning to learn when we're in those moments of a stress reaction, because there are interpersonal things that happen for many of us when, say, we're in that sympathetic fight mode. we can feel very agitated with our muscles being tense all the time, our jaw being clenched, our heart always pounding out of our chest, interpersonally that can look like being in active conflict, screaming, yelling, really shameful, I think, behaviors. I know that I've often said and did things that I don't mean, that are very mean in relationships when I'm in that cycle of stress reaction. It's not that I don't care about the person aside of me, and this even brings back in this concept of the heart, When my nervous system is telling me that I am in a threat state, it actually does not matter who the person is across from me because they become, right, just the threat between me and safety, which is why we can become very combative and mean. Other moments look like outside of the fight response is the flight response if we are always distracting ourselves, we are never available for the difficult conversation. Because I have that email to answer or I am endlessly scrolling on my phone or I am distracting myself with TV. Again, these are coping mechanisms of my nervous system trying to find safety.

What is usually beneath that? If someone is in a relationship watching or listening to this and they have a partner that is more reactive, maybe they scream sometimes or they react in an unconscious way or just disrespectful sometimes because they're in a fight or flight state or they're trying to feel safe, but it may seem irrational to the other person, right? This is irrational. Nothing's wrong, but they're reacting. what is usually underneath that reactiveness?

Some feeling of being threatened. And again, it might not be logically present what the fear is. I mean, you could be sitting in your living room, seemingly in a very calm circumstance in that moment, but something even perhaps interpersonally is similar enough to a time and a space before, usually in childhood, where that was the only option. I mean, think about children screaming, yelling, you know, kind of all of those are that moment of, reactivity, usually because something is feeling unsafe. The person is feeling some fear around being threatened.

Wow. I heard this, I don't know who originally coined this, but I heard someone say that if there's hysteria, there's history. If someone's being overreacting about something when they don't need to, there's a history behind that. There's a wound. There's something that's triggering the fear, like you just said. what can someone do who has been conditioned for years or decades in that state to actually address it? How do they start addressing that to find peace, to heal that hysteria that's causing them pain?

Yeah, I really wanna focus too on the history aspect of it because I want to affirm that those feelings, even if they are out of proportion, disproportionate, you know, over the top, whatever we wanna label or maybe have had them labeled, or believe them to be if it's in our partner, they're real. Even if it's from our past that physiology is real, is active in that moment.

-It'S present.

-It'S present. It's alive. It's as if we're back in time as that younger child, right, when kicking and screaming was the only thing that we could do in that environment. And I just want to say that to not only normalize the experience, but to try to avoid the tendency to shame it in ourselves and in other people. Or the idea of kind of just bypassing it, oh, we'll just get over it because it's not actually what's happening in the moment. Because according to our body and our physiology, it's actually very much happening in that moment, which then opens the door for many of us to begin to make new choices in that moment to deal with that elevated physiology, to actually be with those uncomfortable emotions. Because what has happened is kicking and screaming or yelling and, you know, fighting whatever it is or fleeing has been the only way that we've been able to cope. And it's still very much what we need to do in that moment, because we don't yet have other tools. So what's really difficult is when we try to shame in a way, and then we don't leave ourself with something else to do with how we're feeling. So it really is the kind of shifting and expanding of, of energy and of attention in that moment to create the opportunity to begin to practice new habits, to learn new things to do when we're feeling overwhelmed. Because until we embody a consistent practice, we will be overwhelmed by our emotions, and our nervous system will kind of travel down that well worn rut, because it will need to do something to create safety for ourself in that moment.

Yeah, and I guess people respond and react in different ways based on the history they have or the trauma they have, where some Some partners may scream and kick and yell, whereas others may shut down and be distant. There's different types of responses that we might have from the history of our pain. If someone watching or listening is in a relationship with someone for a long time that they really love, they care about, and they have this pattern of distancing themselves emotionally, shutting down, or kicking and screaming. What can they do to support them in discovering tools, creating awareness around it, finding a therapist or a coach to support them in growing, and what if their partner doesn't want to address it ever, isn't willing to be vulnerable about the past, and doesn't want any help from anyone else? How do they manage that?

I think one of the most complicated things is you have two individuals trying to navigate a relationship where we both have our stuff from the past. Because what often happens in those moments when someone's kicking and screaming or detaching, chances are it could be activating my old lived experience, right? So if someone removes themself, distanced, just like my mom once did, to navigate whatever it is that they're feeling, a difficult conversation that we're having, something not to do with me at all, difficult experience they're having at work or with their family, inherently in their distance, it's going to activate me, right? It's going to bring me right back to in childhood when my mom was emotionally distant or when she was giving me the silent treatment to express her, you know, disappointment at whatever I was doing in that moment. And it's going to then activate the way I deal with it. So what happens is we have two people kind of ever kind of cycling through these threat-based responses, and neither of them are able to kind of return to that grounded state of presence. So the best thing I think that we can do is, and I have a lot of tools not only to begin to self-identify which state of nervous system activation you're in so that you can begin to regulate yourself. Really helpful, and this is outside of even romantic partnerships for your friends, for your family members, can be really helpful to have the awareness of signs and signals that they're in a state of emotional system or nervous system activation. Because sometimes when we understand that, oh, this person is fleeing the room and can't have this conversation right now, not because it's not important to them, but because they're having their own threat-based reaction, that can give us a moment of compassion. It can maybe give us access to do something differently, not to allow it to activate our own threat response, which is gonna perceive it probably differently. Oh, well, they're leaving, 'cause this isn't important for me. And then of course, going back to this idea of co-regulation, the more grounded we're able to remain in those moments, and the more open our partners or our loved ones are to co-regulating with us, we can actually help them calm down from those stressful reactive moments so that then they can shift their focus, they can actually shift the point of the brain that they're operating from and hear us and speak to us and negotiate what's happening. in a much more common, rational way. But I like to add that point in because sometimes we want to shake our partners and just get them to hear us in this moment where they're, you know, a million miles away or they're screaming and yelling. And unfortunately, those aren't the moments where they're going to be able to hear us until they're in a calmer brain state, quite literally, they're not going to be focused on what we're saying. They're going to be locked and loaded in their perspective, and their nervous system is going to be locked and loaded in their habitual way that they need to do right then to find the safety.

This is fascinating because people watching or listening typically are the type of people that want to improve their life. They want to grow. They want to find tools to have more awareness, more personal power, more, you know, progress, all these different things. So I'm assuming people watching and listening might resonate with this. Why is it so challenging for an individual who has been in a trauma bonded relationship and now they're aware of it, or they're in a family that has maybe had some stagnant behaviors and patterns that doesn't want to grow? Why is it so hard for one individual in a family or a relationship to try to improve and grow and develop new habits and transform themselves and think differently and talk differently and act differently? Why is it so challenging in a family dynamic or an intimate relationship to grow when others aren't willing to grow.

While we all are evolving creatures, I mean, I think it's kind of intrinsically what the experience of being human is. It's a process of evolving, becoming process of movement. Yet at the same time, our nervous system is wired to prefer the familiar. Simply, we don't like change. While we can change and we can create incredible change and transformation, our nervous system actually prefers to stay the same. It finds change and movement very stressful. So when faced with change, often ourselves even, how to do the work was really around that concept of the resistance and the reason why we're so stuck in these habitual patterns, because any time we set the intention to do different and then more so when we follow through with making new choices, we do meet that pull back to that familiar through the thoughts in our mind, the discomfort in our body, and before we know it, we're right back in those habitual patterns. So we struggle to change, even though we can change. Our nervous system prefers us not to. And our relationships equally struggle when we begin to experience someone anew or when we're the person making new choices, especially in a family where dynamics and roles have been repeated and practiced and validated for so long, then really like dominoes, right? Here's someone new. that's maybe putting a new perspective on the family experience. Might be really difficult to hear, right? A different truth about how it was when we have our own rehearsed story of how the family is or isn't or whatever it is. More so when someone begins to act in a new way, then chances are there's going to be some impact on that dynamic.

Interesting.

There's going to be a challenge to the individual identity. Sometimes there's the challenge to the family identity, what we thought we were, now maybe we're not as much.

Yeah.

And then there's going to be a reorganization of the different roles so again, it comes down to change. How equipped is each individual in whatever relationship, dyad or family unit, to deal with the stress of change? And as far as I see it, a lot of us who are raised with past generations were not yet equipped. We didn't have the tools, we didn't have the resources, we didn't have the attuned caretaking in our childhood to learn how to navigate the stress of change.

I know you've talked about this before in here, but how did you For those that didn't hear this in a previous interview, how did you navigate this as you were evolving, changing, growing, developing in your 20s, 30s with your family dynamic, not in your intimate relationship, although that has evolved and changed as well. But let's start with the family dynamic before we talk about intimate dynamic.

Yeah, it was really challenging in my family coming from a family that was very boundaryless, codependent. We had a very unified family identity. I was kind of taught growing up that family is everything with this idea of right, putting family, family needs first, even going back to this concept of selfishness. So all of that was, you know, kind of ingrained in my belief system and very dynamically, like I was sharing when we began, showed up in how I showed up or how little I showed up in my relationship. So as I started to become aware and see all of the moments where I wasn't giving myself and it was glaringly present in my relationship with my family that I was living actually in quite close physical proximity. By this point, I had moved home to the Philadelphia area. They were living right outside of Philadelphia, so I had endless opportunity to be at family dinner on Sunday or my mom's, you know, standard doctor's appointment with a lot of health issues that continued with my mom until her old age. So saying that to say there was a lot of the same dynamic happening at home, and I was awakening to the possibility of and necessity for me of creating some more distance of not being endlessly available, of beginning to set new boundaries. And for the better part of several months, I would try. I would try to decline invitations. I would try to decline phone calls and not be immediately available. And I say try because it was always met with a running theme in my family was when there was distance in especially contact immediately because there was so much health trauma that happened, health concerns and worry and anxiety, the immediate belief or worry would be when someone was out of contact for an unpredictable amount of time, it must be because something terrible happened to them. Interesting. Are they in the hospital? Are they sick? Is something wrong?

So there was a history of fear.

History of fear, which would create this hypervigilant monitoring of contact. When I didn't call, for instance, on the regular weekly phone call, it was, is everything okay? Just tell me everything is okay. And I would call at a very particular time frame, up until this period of time where I was like, well, wait a minute, you're only doing that, right, to placate this kind of anxiety cycle. You don't actually want to be calling in those moments. Yes, I want to contact with my family, but I didn't need to have regular contact every three days and tell them that I was alive, right?

Right.

So saying that to say, I tried to put up boundaries to create separation, to create distance and space for me to begin to honor what I wanted and needed. By this point, I was building a practice. I was in a committed relationship. I had other things that I wanted to be putting my time and attention to. It was always met with this fear, this worry that would escalate into, I mean, I would get texts like, Jesus Christ, Nicole, just tell us you're okay. You know, we're getting worried. We're gonna call hospitals, like, endless. So I came to the really difficult decision to make a break and to take I always kind of start to say ask for space, but I didn't really ask for space. I more or less told my family that I was going to take space away from the family unit, that I would be unavailable for any sort of obligation or, you know, anything that for the foreseeable future. And because I wasn't, I didn't trust myself to communicate to them in person. I was so afraid that when my mom started to cry or my dad became upset because my mom was upset or my sister was devastated because her and I were very trauma bonded in a codependent relationship, trying to navigate my mom's health. I didn't trust myself to stand in my boundary. So I took the opportunity to write a very long email expressing things that I hadn't fully been able to share with them in terms of what I was coming to realize and how things in the past had impacted me and end it with that statement that I was taking time away. And I didn't know how much time I would want to take or need to take. Nor did I know how they would react to my request. I mean, I was very much aware of the possibility that they would be so devastated and hurt that the door wouldn't be open on the other side of it. But at that point, I knew, I'm probably from that deeper intuitive place, my heart was telling me that I did need more space than I was able to create. So it ended up being the better part of, I think, 18 months before I started to really get curious about where they were at. I had built a lot of self-trust in that 18 months. meaning I was getting more confident that I could engage with them again. And if the dynamic was exactly as I left it, I was gaining more confident that I could continue to maintain my boundaries and to, you know, live into the relationship dynamic that I wanted, regardless of what they were unable or able to do. And very gratefully, not only did they email me back near immediately, they let me know that they had been in family therapy and individual therapy and all the different types of therapy since I had, you know, ended contact with them. While it was very devastating, they on some level were appreciative of the opportunity that it gave them and us to kind of look at things newly. We re-engaged contact over several family therapy sessions, which felt very safe to me because I wanted to have a contained conversation not knowing essentially what I was walking into. And I signed online for that first Zoom session and I saw my mom, my dad, and my sister for the first time in eight months. And-- Wow. We had some difficult conversations and had some future based conversations and where I was able to kind of acknowledge what I wanted and needed in the relationships moving forward and intended to create for us. And since then it's just been really a gift in a lot of ways. We've been able to not only reorganize as a family, we've been able to separate that has actually allowed us to deepen and build like deeper actual real now authentic connections, which has been really beautiful.

You know, I started a healing journey of 30. For those that aren't aware of their emotion traumas and also those don't have tools in a healthy way to, to navigate those. What would be the process? Would you say, let's say, give it a framework.

Yeah.

It's a healing trauma. Is it like a, if you could simplify it, not that I can simplify, but if it's like there's four steps to healing trauma, three step. One, be aware. Two, because it's really hard to do it on your own.

So I'm gonna read you the chapter titles.

Cool.

Okay. Because this is the journey.

Yes.

It's my journey from recovering from trauma. In that process, I share many, many methods and tools that one can use immediately and also introduce the therapeutic practices that changed and saved my life. And in introducing those practices, I actually give ways that you can do them in real time, so that you can say, oh, this was really soothing for me, or I just listened to Gabby do some IFS with Lewis, I wanna look further into IFS. But the journey looks to me like this, and then I think we all have our own individual journeys, but my hope in this book and the intention here is to help the reader, one, know that they're not alone, and two, know that there is a guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace. There's no way I would put my face on that cover if I couldn't stand behind that.

Right.

Okay, so here we go. So the first chapter one is become willing to become free. Willing to become free means you can't even open this book if you don't have a desire- To wanna be free. To want to be free, to look more closely, to even just have a mustard seed of hope that there could be a better way.

How does someone start the willingness process?

Well, if they're still listening, they're willing. Okay, good.

Yeah.

If you have a curiosity, you're willing.

If you're here, you're willing. And if even if you tuned into this episode, you're willing, 'cause I'm sure there'll be trauma somewhere in the title or, you know, or whatever you decide, but it'll be something that's gonna be an acknowledgement. Yeah, there's something in that for me. Many, many, many more people are willing these days than ever before. I think that if I'd written this book five years ago, I'd have a half the audience that I have now.

Right.

I mean that. Okay. For this specific content. Chapter two is Become Brave Enough to Wonder. So in my case, I literally didn't remember and had to be brave enough to wonder what was there. And in other people's cases, they just have to maybe wonder, not that they don't necessarily remember what happened to them, but to wonder what could be behind these triggers. What could be some feelings behind these triggers? What could be, I did a podcast with somebody the other day and she was like, I have, she's like, my co-host has so much trauma and she's so open about it. And she's like, I have no trauma. Within five minutes, we were like, the neglectful father and the this and that, you know, like it was just like instant and everybody's got it. Everybody's got it.

So you just have to become brave enough to wonder.

And it might be a little tea, but it becomes big tea over time. Oh, it was interesting. She's like, I guess I just have little tea, little tea. And then she started to describe her story and we were both like, that's Big T trauma. So chapter three is why we run. So what is it? What is the reason that we're running? Why are we running and recognizing, okay, we have this trigger, we have a feeling behind it, we have a reaction to it. And then what could it be?

Is it just so it's so painful for us to face it. That's why we run most of the time.

That's right.

It's just so hard for us to what mentally, emotionally, all of that.

Underneath all of the unresolved traumas, Big T, small T from our past is the belief that we are unlovable and inadequate. And we did not, you said beautifully, that now little Lewis has Big Lewis helping him process this stuff that he wished he'd had when he was little. But when we're young, we don't, and if we don't have a caretaker or a primary caretaker that has a secure attachment to us, helping us in those young moments, to feel safe and seen and soothed and secure, as I talk about later, and I'll get into that, then we literally have to rely on the protectors. All those storylines that we build up. The parts.

Yeah.

The challenges, I mean, how many parents have tools are healthy in their own emotional- Stop.

Yeah.

How do they, how do you raise a kid who's healthy when so many people are struggling with their own challenges?

Read the book. I'm so serious because Then we get into, well, if you fast forward to chapter nine, it's about reparenting yourself. But so much of this book is, if you go through this book, you will be a better parent.

Yeah.

Without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, I've got a whole, I've got a chapter in here about hiding behind the body, that we have impermissible rage locked up in our back pain, in our headaches, in our gastrointestinal issues, in our insomnia, eczema. And I talk about the psychosomatic effects of the mental, dissertances that have not been resolved in how they affect the body. And then speaking about shame and then going even further and IFS and all the somatic work that we can do and then it carries on. So I take you through, this is the Playbook. Yes. This is the Playbook. And now one thing I'm really cautious of with the reader is not every chapter is going to be right for where someone is right now. For you, you could pick this up and be like, yeah, I could do all of that, or I've done half that, I'm going to do more. And for Marta at the same, it could be somebody on the street could be like, okay, I just have to read this right now and just take it in.

Yeah, I can't even get started.

I gotta come back in a year.

To do the exercises. Now, okay, so once we're aware and once we have the willingness and we're starting to wonder and look at some of these things, and we say, okay, here's two things from my past that I haven't been willing to tell friends, partners, husbands, wives, spouses, parents, like I've neglected to talk about these things. They're so shameful, I'm so afraid to talk about them. let's say it's one thing, two things, whatever. What is the next step? Once you become aware of your trauma and you know there's something you want to heal, is it, well, there's a number of different therapeutic experiences you could go through. Here's a few to try. Is it everyone does it differently? Some people are more introspective and they do journaling prompts. Others need to speak to someone. Is there, what are the best ways to heal? and really integrate the healing. Because I think it's, again, I don't think it's like, I'm aware and I'm healed. It's like you've got to integrate the practice.

And every time you're triggered, can you breathe and respond? Integration is the word, actually. It's the word. And, well, like I said, everyone's going to resonate with different methods in this book that are appropriate for them at this time. You can trust your own internal system. and intuitive force to know what's safe enough for you today. -Dr. -Yeah. -Sue: you:'ll feel it in your body. So for me, I wasn't going to be able to do the somatic experiencing the body-based work until X period, like, you know, two years ago, because that was when I could feel safe enough in my own body and almost back in my body. Like, I would just departed my body and I was like back in my human body.

-Dr. -What somatic experiences you mean like, Just body work or physical.

So, SE, which is somatic experiencing I write about in this book, it's invented by Peter Levine, is built on the premise that trauma is the inability to be present. And when we have deep-rooted trauma, yes, it's activated in our thoughts at times, but primarily it's body based. So we have these triggers that then-.

Store in the body. The body keeps the score. Yeah.

Correct. So they send these messages, these triggers send a message to the brain that says like, fight, flight, freeze. And so what happens as a child is whatever you were unable to do, like in my case, let's say I needed to push someone off of me, that became, when I was not able to complete that full-blown, you know, So fight, flight, and then it froze, right? So if you freeze in time, you're stuck, that energy gets truncated in your system, and you become stuck in the neural loop of fight, flight, and then you get stuck, and then fight, flight, stuck. And that repetition, repetition. And so the beautiful process of somatic experiencing is about no storyline. It's not about what happened, where were you, it's all about the body, and going right into the body, going right into the presence of the body, and allowing the body to show you what it needs to do to fully reprocess the experience.

That's powerful.

And so in some cases it's very slow, right? So it could be like, if you wanted to punch somebody, it's like a really, really slow movement. And I give, and this is body-based work, so the practices that I give in that chapter are also things that you can do right now to start to ground your body. So a heart hold, like putting your right hand on your heart and your left hand on your belly. Actually, interestingly, hugging yourself. Try this out. Put your right hand on your heart and your left hand on your belly.

How does that feel? It feels good.

Okay, switch hands.

Left hand.

Does that feel better or worse?

Different, because I'm used to putting my right hand over my heart.

So not as soothing. Not as natural.

There you go.

Okay, so it's important. I just learned this. I interviewed Dan Siegel and I was doing this and he's like, well, you put the right hand on your heart, but I do the left. And he's like, 70% of people put their right hand on their heart and they feel that safety, and the rest kind of do the left. So you have to check on which side's right for you. But the heart hold or a head hold, these practices are really profound for settling your nervous system. Breathing in for two strokes out, one long stroke if you're feeling overly anxious and activated.

So.

Tapping, EFT, which you've talked about, tapping on the gamut point. So there's a point between your ring finger and your pinky finger. And if you're in that stressed out place and you're getting in the loop, tap, I am safe. And tap and just repeat, I am safe. I am safe. A power pose, like standing like Superman, you know, Superwoman, that can change your nervous system. So these practices are really body-based practices for letting your system settle in the moment. And then of course, I say in the book, if you wanna go further, find a somatic experiencing therapist, and here's how. And all of the methods that I was guided to for my recovery were all spiritual therapeutic practices. I can say this because I'm not in the clinical space, but I believe that they're all extraordinarily spiritual, the specific. So EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, that's designed again to help you reprocess that loop So once we.

Figure out which therapeutic experiences are best for us, right? Because it's gonna be different for each one of us. What would you say, you know, can we fully heal something? Is it, how long does it take? You know, is it based on the trauma and how long we've set it stored? Is there hope for people to say, I don't want to have this trigger for the rest of my life. I want to feel like peaceful.

Well, let me ask you when things.

Happen, I don't want to be reactive.

Let me ask you this in general, how do you feel?

Incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel good.

Me too.

Yeah, but for 25 years, I felt a lot of inner stress, you know, inner conflict.

So thank you to the 25 years for all that it offered you to get you to where you are now.

Right.

But you feel awesome.

Yeah.

So do I. So while it's been a good, committed devotional practice, we are living proof that there is a guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace. -SARAH: Absolutely. -JEN: We're living that. -SARAH: Right. -JEN: and it doesn't mean that we don't still have triggers. It doesn't mean that there isn't more of the crystal to shine. It doesn't mean that I still don't go to therapy every single week, and sometimes twice a week.

But because I want to continue to care for and honor and respect all of the parts of who I am.

Yeah.

I mean, I come from the sports background, which you know, and I'm a big fan of doing, having accountability for your goals, right? If I'm talking about sports background, it's like, and I know I can't do it alone in athletics. So why try to do it alone in my emotional, you know, growth or my mental growth, my spiritual growth? I can do, I can go pretty far on my own, but I think it's just good to have the accountability for whatever that looks like for people. I'm not saying they need therapy. every week or they need to invest in something, but it's good to have accountability however you find it. I agree. I think it's really powerful. It's one of the reasons that the.

12-Step program works so well. It's because of the fellowship. It's because you have a sponsor, it's because you have meetings, people are looking for you. Where is that person today? You know, I just got a text message from one of my friends who have been sober. We've been sober for 16 years. He's been sober 17 years. And I was the first person I met in AA and He texted me today and he's like, Check it in.

You still good? Yeah.

Check it in.

How long were you in AA for?

I'm still in AA. Really?

Yes.

So once you start it, you never stop?

Some people stop. So is that once a month?

Is that once a week? What is that? Well, really depends on who you are and what you need, right? So I go to meetings now. You can go to Zoom meetings. I go to meetings in person sometimes, but mostly Zoom since the pandemic, unfortunately.

Right, right. Is it hard for people who started AA to not need it anymore? Or are you kind of like... Well.

I think that... Can you transcend that?

I guess.

You can move into a different type of program. You can move into a different type of therapy. There's plenty of people when they get long-term sobriety that they start to feel less resonant with some of the meetings and things. But it's suggested and I think recommended to stay close to it because you don't wanna forget where you came from. I think everyone's path is different. Sure. I actually share a story in the book about sharing about, I believe, and Gabramatte would say this, and other folks in this trauma. I've been watching his stuff. I love him.

He's incredible.

I gotta interview him. Yes, you do. He looks amazing. What he would say is that, and I agree with this completely, is that trauma is the root cause of addiction. That's what he says a lot. 100%. couldn't agree more.

Because if you're not, yeah, if you're not, you don't need addiction if you're not traumatized by something, right?

If you feel peace inside, why would you need to reach for some kind of- Correct. And we all have trauma, and so we all have reactive ways of acting, but the bigger the trauma, oftentimes the bigger the coping mechanism, aka the firefighter part. Yes. And that's an addiction, right? So addiction is a way of a.

Huge way of putting out the fire. So the root cause, or so the root of addiction is trauma, or unresolved trauma, it sounds like. That's correct. So, if you want to eliminate your negative addictions, the key is to figure out where is the trauma and start healing that trauma.

-Yeah, that would be the goal. But I noticed in my own, with a lot of sober people in my life, that they all have had similar experiences to myself and to you and Big T traumas. And even being clean and sober, it is still terrible. I mean, I was sober 11 years before I was ready to face into my big T trauma.

Interesting. Do you feel like if you would have faced it year one or two, do you think you would have.

I wouldn't have been able to, and I'll explain to you why. So I said to my therapist when I remembered that trauma, why now? Why am I remembering this now? And she said, because you're safe enough to remember. You've been enough therapy. You have enough spiritual foundation. You're safe enough.

Support group. You've got a good partnership.

Yeah.

Interesting.

That's right.

But if he is saying that the root of addiction is trauma, why don't we want to start going to the trauma first? But if you're saying, if you don't feel safe enough to face it, it may take years.

So that's the point. So I think going to the trauma is so delicate and gentle, and it's like peeling back those layers of the onion. And anyone that's listening right now, still listening, because many people might have just been like, I'm so activated, you know, this is a lot for me. They'll come back in a year and a half, a year, or whatever, a year from now and listen again. But the bottom line is that we all have these traumas and we're running from them. And to go headfirst into them would be like ripping off the Band-Aid or just being in the dark and all of a sudden walking into the brightest light you've ever seen. And it might blast you out. That can happen. It does happen. People do remember when they're not ready to. And even when you are ready, it's terrifying to remember these things or accept things. But yeah, you have to go slow.

What about when someone says, I'm with this person, they make me happy. What does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship?

Well, the day they don't, you will say they make me unhappy. Or they don't make me happy, but it's they They do to me, I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power. They can give, they can withhold. I depend, I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them.

And what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach that?

We give each other A good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds.

Ooh, that's cool.

A home is a foundation with wings. Or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings. So you feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability as much as you can. as much as our life allows us. And at the same time, you have the wings to go and explore, discover, be curious, be in the world, sometimes together and sometimes apart.

What do you think happens when people are in a relationship and let's say they're together for a year or a couple of years and they decide, okay, we want to get married, but maybe one or two or each of the individuals don't accept something fully about the other person. maybe there's like three things that they really don't like or don't accept or wish they change.

Yeah.

I don't know. I'm just trying to think of something where you're like, I love so much. We have this great connection. We have so much fun and we're growing and building a relationship. But behind their back, you're telling your girlfriend or your guy friends, I wish they changed this, this or this. I don't like this thing.

I don't like this thing.

That's ambivalence.

What does that mean? Meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like. what makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here?

What happens when we don't accept that though? And we like, you know, hopefully they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing that I don't like about them. What happens when we're in that space?

It means that when you get married, you're not just making a deal with your partner, you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change. And then when it doesn't, you get very upset or pissed. because your deal with yourself, which you never said out loud, it's the private bargain you do with yourself. And all of us, when we pick someone, make private bargains with ourselves. And it's often that bargain that is broken more than the one, because the partner never promised you that it would change.

Exactly. And so it just creates more resentment. When we want something to change, we don't accept that.

Expectations are resentment in the make. The more expectations you have, the more things you can be disappointed of. afterwards, especially when they're not articulated. I think what you need to know is what are some of the things if you are with someone who if you if you go back to the erotic connection, if you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection and you know that this is something that really is important to you being seen, being touched, being held, being kissed, being stroked, being made love to is really a language that is very important to you. and you don't want to live without it, then listen to yourself. If it's not an important part for you, because that is not the way you express yourself most, then you know that this is not the center part, the centerpiece of your relationship. You have other things that you share. If you know that you don't want children or the reverse, that the other person doesn't want children, don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind, their mind. because that is not fair to you nor to them. If you are with someone who says, I do not want to marry, and you do, or if you are with someone who says, I see love plural, I do not see myself just with one partner, and this is clear to you that that's not okay or that you want it differently, listen to yourself. Those are values that involve life decisions. that you don't sit there waiting till they're gonna catch up with you.

And what happens when two people's values are not in alignment? Can they still have a beautiful life story or do you feel like there's always gonna be some type of unnecessary stress?

No, I think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a sense of differentiation. Meaning, if I am okay wanting to go to church. And that's not part of what you do. We come from the same faith or we come from different religions. And one of us wants to adhere to their tradition and wants to participate in the practices of their religion. And is okay doing it without the other. Doesn't feel that that needs to be shared. Doesn't experience every time they sit in church, I wish you were sitting next to me. Why do I have to come here alone all the time? you know, that.

So it's accepting someone's choices.

It's accepting that your choice, if you practice it, you can accept to do it without your partner.

So it's you accepting it.

It's you accepting it. Of course, the other person, but the other person can often tell you, you go, if you like to be there, I don't want to go there on Sunday morning. I have other things to do with your time.

Sure.

Okay. Religion is a major one on that. Travel is another one on that. Children work together.

I can't wait in Los Angeles.

It's difficult to say to someone, I'll have a child alone. You don't have to participate. But it is easier to say, I will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me. You don't have to be a part of that. We have other things that we will share. But you need to know to do that and feel okay about it. If all the time... Now, that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish you'd been there to hear it. Great. But if it's chronic and you just feel this hole all the time and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you and your partner doesn't show curiosity because you can come from something else and say, I'm interested in this. Let me see what this is. If you want to go back to live in your home country and your partner has zero intention of leaving where they are, listen to them. Don't hope. If they tell you, Yes, I would like that at some point, then listen carefully. If they're saying this to pacify you, if they're saying this to make sure that you don't leave them, or if they truly intend to do this at some time.

And don't hope something's gonna change. Don't hope they're gonna do something later after you get married or in a relationship.

No, start from the place that it's not gonna happen. See how it is.

Can you accept that?

Can you accept that? Then, if things change, all the better. But don't start with the hope that it will be different. Right.

And how does jealousy play in relationships? I used to be extremely jealous and insecure.

I remember that.

And then something switched in me, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago, maybe, somewhere around that time where I was like, you know what? This does not support me or my relationship at all. this jealous nature or this- that you.

Knew even when you were jealous.

Oh yeah, I knew, but I couldn't let it go.

Right, so it's not what you said to yourself that changed what- Something changed, yeah.

I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember just being like, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of feeling this way.

So what did you change? Not what did you say to yourself?

I think I changed fully accepting the person's decisions and lifestyle and what they were doing. and trusting that everything was going to be okay and not needing to be jealous. I think I was just afraid, like, are they talking to some guy or some, you know, is there something behind my back that they're doing? I don't know. It was a worry of, like, an anxiousness. Right.

So.

And then I was just like, wait, wait, wait.

Yes.

Part of what accompanies jealousy, you know, jealousy starts at one and a half year old. It's not an early emotion. It needs a sense of self first. It needs the beginning of self-awareness as a baby to be able to experience jealousy. It's not like fear and joy and disgust and sadness.

So where does it come from?

Anger. Where it comes from and how evolutionary psychology has all kinds of explanations for jealousy. But where it comes from interpersonal personally, is that it requires having a sense of who you are before you begin to experience how you respond to what other people are doing. I want that too. I don't want to lose something. What changed for you is that you became more confident. You felt less that your sense of self-worth is in the hands of the other person, and that they turned away from you. That means that you are not enough.

Exactly.

Or that you're going to lose them or that they're going to leave you. That's what changed.

And then I'd be like hurt or empty or sad or in pain because of their actions. And I think that's 100%. I think I didn't feel like I was good enough or something where I was just like, you know what? It's all going to be okay. You know, if they do something or...

But this, it's all going to be okay followed in different sense of yourself.

Absolutely.

Where you were less in a panic, less in the grip of they're going to abandon me and I'm not good enough. And from that place, you began to say, It's okay. Nothing bad is going to happen to me. That's how we diminish jealousy. It's not how we react to what the other person does. It's how we feel about ourselves that changes how we react about what the other person does.

Absolutely. And it's been an incredible Freedom. Freedom and gift that I received or gave myself, but it took me 30 something years to learn it. And it feels incredible. It feels incredible. But for years I struggled with it. And I think a lot of people in general, at least guy friends that I knew growing up struggled with it as well, where they didn't feel comfortable or maybe their female partner didn't feel comfortable with them doing certain things. without them there or whatever. And now I'm just like at peace and whatever my partner wants to do, I'm like, live your life.

Have you ever had a conversation about jealousy with your girlfriend?

I've talked about it where I'm like, she's highly cultural. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about it.

With her, I'm like, I'm so glad I'm not jealous. Right, but Americans think that being jealous diminishes them. They pride themselves when they say, I'm not jealous.

Really? Yes.

It's a kind of a thing like it's not a nice thing to feel. Other cultures, well, Latin cultures. It's intrinsic to love. It's how you love. If you're not jealous.

You don't love the person enough.

Yes.

Really?

That's a distortion in the other direction. But it's very cultural jealousy. Jealousy, if you track the magazines in America, is a subject that disappears for decades sometimes and then suddenly re-emerges. But it is often seen as a negative emotion. It isn't seen as an emotion that is simply part and parcel of the experience of love.

Is jealousy then a healthy emotion in a life story?

It sometimes can be a perfectly healthy emotion and sometimes it can be very, very challenging and sometimes it can become pathological. It covers a whole range.

Where is jealousy a good thing? when someone has jealousy.

When is jealousy a good thing? When have you experienced jealousy and you didn't feel like it was debilitating and crippling you?

I mean, debilitating. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think there might be, I don't, I mean, it was always debilitating for me, I think, before I learned to process it and let it go, because I realized it wasn't supporting my thoughts and my emotions. and I was saying or doing things that wasn't the highest level of love, I would say, or the most conscious way to communicate when those scenarios would happen. So I just realized it wasn't supporting me and I didn't feel good when I had that emotion or those jealous thoughts in a relationship.

But if you were part of a culture that told you that jealousy is not something you want to get rid of, but it actually signals certain things, to you and it communicates certain aspects of love, you would have had a different experience.

Maybe, yeah.

Now, when is it positive? Probably the easiest example for me is if I ask people all over the world, by the way, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Not sexually attractive, just drawn to.

When other people are interested in them more?

That's one of them. That is one of the main four.

When other people are flirting or giving them attention? Yes.

When I see them with other people, when I see other people captivated by them, when I see the magnetism that they have over other people, when I see how others are drawn to them, when they don't belong to me. Now, if you are jealous in a feeling that is really crippling and painful, then you do not enjoy that. You feel uncertain, you feel insecure, you feel scared, you feel like they could leave you. You realize that maybe, you know, they're not attached to you. but if you are more grounded and if you feel more secure in your connection to your partner and to yourself, then when you see that experience, you have a tingling of jealousy, but it is a jealousy that actually increases your appreciation for your person.

Interesting, yeah.

So that's an example of when do people experience jealousy in a way that actually is fueling...

Healthy jealousy, right?

I don't, but I don't think... Maybe.

It'S a different thing.

Unhealthy, because I don't think this is a puritanical definitions of hell. It's just, this is the issue, is that, is it problematic or is it additive?

That makes sense.

It's more than, is it healthy or unhealthy? I think healthy and unhealthy doesn't help us in this moment.

Is it hurting you or the relationship or is it supporting the relationship? Yes. So you think there's four ways?

Yes.

What's the other three then?

So let me ask you, when do you find yourself most drawn?

To Martha, I find myself drawn to her. I mean, for me, I feel drawn when she loves and accepts me for who I am. When she's affectionate, when she is sharing appreciation with me and gratitude with me, when she's joyful and her most expressed self, like just pure energy and love and fun and play.

Mm-.

Um, I have a lot of appreciation and admiration for her when she is living her dreams also. Like she's doing what she wants to do fully. And I'm like, that's inspiring, you know, it draws me to her.

What else?

I think the fact that she is so in integrity with her word draws me to her because then I feel more and more connected and grateful and appreciative and safe in the environment.

So.

I mean, sexually, so many different ways that I'm drawn to.

But you, you know, when I say the first four, it's just simply because I've gone around the world asking this question, and I just began to see themes. Right. The first one is when I see my partner in their element.

Yeah. Doing their thing, their part.

Doing their thing. Competent, radiant in their element. It could be on stage, at work, on a horse, on a slope, you know. But it is basically when they are self-sufficient and when they are radiant and they're in their element and they're passionate about something and they are alive. And all of those things also mean that I am not needing to be burdened by a certain form of emotional caretaking.

She doesn't need me.

They don't need me. Yeah, that's it. And when they don't need you, you can want them.

Yes, if they're always needing you, how does that affect the relationship?

So let's wait a second. So they don't need you in that moment. And that not needing you clears the pathway for desire. It allows you to want. Because if you were needed and you need to take care of them, then you are loving, but you're not necessarily desiring. Got it. And what happens over time when people say this, and the admiration is extremely important here, because I think it's much bigger than respect. Admiration involves a certain idealization, and it means that there is a sense of otherness. She's different, she's other, she's her own thing. And in this space between her and you, between me and the other, lies the erotic élans. And when people ask about sustaining desire in the long haul, This is the place.

In their element, in their own way.

Yes.

Not reliant on each other to be.

That's love. Love and desire, they relate and they also conflict. And herein lies the mystery of eroticism. So that's number one in her element. When she's joyful, when she makes me laugh, when those two, it's like there's a sense of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality. of energy. That is erotic. That is erotic. That's the number two.

Okay.

You know, and usually it means when, when there is an element of surprise. Yeah. She's very adventurous because it's unsolicited. But, you know, sometimes people say when my partner is vulnerable, and I say that is because it's not usually the case. Right.

So surprise.

It's surprise. If they were always vulnerable, it would not be on the list of when am I most drawn to? my partner. It's because it's different. It's the side of them I don't get to see so often. It's the side of me that they don't get to see that often. So when they accept me fully and I can open up in a different way, because it's different, it's unusual, it's out of the ordinary. That's number two. Number three is when I see my partner through the eyes of the others.

That's the jealousy piece that you described. When you see it, so when you see others admiring or respecting or attracted sexually or any of those things.

But what does it mean? It means my partner doesn't belong to me. It means that other people can look at them too, can fantasize about them too. You know, I always say your partner doesn't belong to you. They're just on loan with an option to renew.

Right, and every day, right?

Exactly.

Interesting.

And the fourth one is when we are apart or when we reunite. So that desire is also rooted in absence and in longing. and not just in being there.

How important is creating space in a relationship, whether you're dating or in a marriage, and creating day apart, days apart, weeks apart, and has it ever become too long apart for a relationship to stay growing, if it's months apart or something?

So the first question is how important is distance in a relationship? I will also add something that I learned from the poet David Whyte this week when we had a conversation together. And he talked about the importance of silence in a relationship.

Not always having to speak or...

Yes, or the importance of being able to be with yourself while being in the presence of the other.

What would that look like? Like reading a book and the person's in the room.

Could be that. Could be that you go away for a few weeks because you want to go do a meditation retreat or a project that you're interested interested in or, you know, it's the notion that it, or the fact that you keep certain things to yourself, but that you stay in dialogue with yourself and a dialogue that isn't always shared with your partner.

When you mean silent with yourself, do you mean like not speaking at all for part of this time? Or do you just mean not?

You're taking it literally.

Yeah, yeah.

It's literally, but it's also the metaphor of it. So, Alex, explain the context. Our conversation was called because that's your question about how important is distance. I would say distance is very important in a relationship. But the way I define it is this: every relationship straddles freedom and commitment, togetherness and separateness, connection and independence. Every relationship. In every relationship there is often one person who is more inclined to the connection and one person who is more inclined for the separateness. One person more afraid of losing the other and one person more afraid of losing themselves. One person more in touch with the fear of abandonment, one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation. We all have both, but we organize our relationships in which one of us will take on the role of this duality.

And it might evolve seasonally too.

Completely. So we need connection and we need distance. We need the things that are joined and together and we need the things that are separate. The separateness doesn't mean that there is deadness in the relationship. So when you ask how long can we be a part, it depends what you do with the space in between. If you keep the space in between alive, we are away, we have been together five, six years and you have to go do a project and you're gone for three months. But during those three months you have a whole letter writing experience where you are communicating in a very different way than the usual everyday communication. Every two days or so at night you sit down and you write a letter, not just what you've done, the catch up of the day. But then you create an aliveness to that space in between that can be even richer than when we are living together and we're standing in the kitchen every morning.

That's interesting. That's powerful, yeah. What would you say was the biggest challenge that you faced internally throughout relationships, that you had to face yourself?

Oh, I think, you know, I met my husband Jack when I was 22.

You're what? You're 35 now.

Yes, I like it. And actually 35 years together.

Really? 35 years together.

Married, married. Wow. We're together even more than that.

Wow, it's powerful.

You know, but I probably swallowed the romantic ideal quite a bit as a young girl too. Are you gonna meet the right man with this man? If you meet the right person, you will never feel alone again. You will never feel lonely. You will never be sad. You will... Seriously, you know, whatever you feel, you will feel again until some of it you may feel until you drop dead. But if it changes, it's not because the magical potion of the other person is going to suddenly sprinkle its dust over you. So that was getting rid of some of the myths.

How long did it take for you internally to let that go or evolve or heal those myths?

Ah, yeah, I would say the first decade. It's slowly over time you begin to realize that I think he was, I looked up to him. I still look up to him. He's a very smart guy. And I really wouldn't let any idea leave the house before it was vetted and approved by him.

Interesting.

Is this smart? Is this good? Can I publish this?

Getting approval.

Getting approval, you know, from the mentor.

Interesting. That was the first 10 years.

Yeah, no, maybe a little bit less than 10, but certainly five years.

Okay.

Certainly five years. I really needed him to validate or check everything I would write and to validate and say it's good. Because he had the PhD, I don't, you know, the whole... And then finally I was told one day, you know, I have my own things to write. I'm not gonna be your professor.

You're gonna work here, yeah, yeah.

And I was just like, oh, who's gonna help me? Who's gonna help me? You know, and beginning to write without depending on him that much was a major transition. Mating in Captivity was written completely on my own.

Without his approval of every chapter?

I had an editor that I hired who was phenomenal, but it was no longer, it was not an emotional dependency. It was a professional relationship. So that was a major transition. I think also understanding the difference between equality and equity.

What is the difference?

It's not 50-50.

The relationship is not 50-50. No, no relationship.

No, it's a hundred to hundred, you know, and complementarity. There are certain things that I will never do, that I rely on him, and certain things that he will never do, and he relies on me, and they balance each other out. And there's a fundamental sense of fairness, complementarity, you know, if I want to go do something, Just go do, enjoy, be the best, you know, this complete generosity. And that generosity towards distance or freedom or individuality, this is a very important thing. So here's a question for you and for your listeners as well. Ask yourself, you can do it in relation to work, you can do it in relation to love. To me, that was a very important question. I understood early on that I needed freedom. No, I remember it differently. I could tolerate the lack of security better than I could tolerate the lack of freedom.

You needed freedom. More than insecurity.

So I understood early on that I'm gonna be self-employed. Meaning I can tolerate not knowing when the next check is gonna come from. But I prefer that than somebody telling me when I can take a vacation.

This was back in the 80s, right?

Yes, yes. This is my 20s, early 20s. But then I applied it to relationships.

Interesting.

I knew that I need to be with someone to whom I can say, Go do your thing. And someone who says to me, Go do your thing.

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