Episode 259: You Didn’t Marry the Wrong Person with Judy Herman

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the first Winey Palooza Parenting and Marriage Summit, and I am so excited to introduce our next guest, Judy Herman. Judy, thank you so much for being here with me today.

It is my pleasure. I have learned so much. I tell you what, this has been golden.

It's been a great day, and I want to tell everyone that you are a counselor, speaker, and author of Beyond Messy Relationships: Divine Invitations to Your Authentic Self. In addition, her credentials include National Certified Counselor, Licensed Professional Counselor, Mental Health Service Provider Approved Supervisor in Tennessee, Licensed Professional Counselor in Georgia, Imago Relationship Therapist— did I say that right?

You did.

And you're Gottman-trained Level 1, is that accurate?

That is accurate. I use Gottman all the time.

Well, we're going to talk about Gottman at a later date, you and me. That's amazing. So, um, awesome credentials, awesome lady. Enjoy, Judy. Thank you, Judy.

Thank you so much. I am, uh, very— if I knew it just maybe a fraction of what you have been presenting on this webinar the last couple days, my goodness, if I knew just a fraction of that when I was raising my kids when they were kindergartners and little ones, oh my goodness, things would be so much different. But anyway, there, there's this Oh, it's, it's a wealth of information, and I just want to tell you thank you so much. Um, let me move some stuff out of the way because I'm going to get really good with all this, uh, being able to see the chat and everything. You didn't marry the wrong person because this moment in time is what I call a divine invitation. In fact, I have a candle lit here that reminds me that this moment in time is a divine invitation. And even though we're meeting across the screen, I recognize that you are a person of dignity, worthiness, and respect. So you didn't marry the wrong person, okay? So even though we don't know each other, I likely have heard parts of your story in the privacy of my counseling office. But for me, it took 40 years of marital experiences to two separate husbands, not at the same time, okay? But I did not marry the wrong person. And with the hundreds of clients that I have counseled over the years, I've come to realize that what we believe about our past, what we believe about other people, it makes a huge difference in our here and now and in our future. So the story about yourself Matters. And here's what I found. Number one, that our greatest teachers are messy relationships. And number two, that people are divine invitations. Now, it doesn't matter if you were married before or whether or not you got a divorce, or if you've been divorced more than once. If we hang on to the guilt and the regret and the rumination about the past, it affects our future. And not only that, it affects the energy in our homes. Now, when I talk about energy, it's kind of an invisible thing, but you can walk into a room and notice if there is tension. And if you feel uncomfortable, that's like the energy that we have with other people and with a group. So here's the best way that I can think about it, because here's some undercurrent things that I have heard in my counseling, because people won't say it out loud. They won't say it out loud. They may tell a counselor like me, and I'm very honored Uh, when I do meet with a person, to me it's like sacred ground, it's, it's sacred space, because they'll say, Judy, I've never told anybody this, but they might say something like, I feel guilty all the time, or I need to over-function, I need to keep doing because I made these foolish mistakes in the past and I have to overcompensate, I have to do this, or— and they think that they can undo that past or weigh it out. Or they say that, ah, got so many years of wasted time with this person. And, and when you think that way, it's kind of like being a horse with blinders on when you have so much energy. I love what Alana said, or Elena said, um, a minute ago, like that energy, that capacity for energy makes a difference. But when you're thinking that way, you're thinking very narrow about your life. And like, you might have, uh, A, B, C, D choices out there, but you're only going to see B and C. So how can we increase the, the emotional energy? I think— oh my gosh, that was so perfect that she talked about what she did. It was— goes right into what I want to talk about, because it's invisible. But think of being in a pool of water. All your family members And someone makes a splash and it, it's that ripple effect. And we can change the atmospheres in our home. We can change complaints into cooperation and turn the chaos into calm. And I'm— I want to first of all show you, let me share my screen. It's going to be shared really easy here because I practiced. So this is a picture of me I'm the little girl in the yellow dress. And dating back a few generations, first of all, just kind of identify— my sister's next to me, there's 3 cousins, and then after this picture was taken, there were 2 brothers added to our family of origin. So dating back a few generations, there's been some significant individuals, and we've come in multiples of 4. So for example, I'm, I'm one of 4 children. My mom is one of 4 children. My grandmother's one of 4. My great-grandmother is one of 4. Now I'd like you to write in the chat because I want you to pay attention. How many children do you think I have? Just write that number. And I can't even see the chat, so I'm assuming you're gonna say I have 4. How many grandchildren do you think I have? If you guessed 4, nope. It's 5. So, so anyway, I am a woman who has been saturated by relationships for many years, even in the primal state of my being. So I would like to think, notice if you look at the picture and you see those binoculars around me as a little girl, my, my neck, I'm the only one that has that. I would like to think the story in my mind is that I was curious about relationships. Throughout my life, I've been trying to figure out relationships, but I was destined to be a psychotherapist specializing in relationships. And I'd like to tell you too that, um, being a therapist is not my first career. It's actually my second. And my first career was raising 4 kids in a troubled marriage on so many levels. It wasn't that way the whole time, but I'm very thankful that they're awesome adults and awesome parents. And, um, so here's what I'd like for you to, um, to realize is that our families are the generations past. We might go back generations. You also have some patterns in your generations and family of origin. So it's kind of like, you know, we all have our family tree, right? And things that we want to change. And most of us, if you're like me, we want to change a branch of our, our family tree. So think about that for a moment. And, um, wasn't it, um, it was Jeff Foxworthy that said his family tree doesn't fork? The reality is that we've all been influenced, and it affects our neurochemistry and the neural pathways in the brain. So the way that we think, the way that we believe, the way that we have related has all been a lot of times just so automatic to who we are drawn to. And, um, and I— some of you might know this, but the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. Okay, I didn't know if you knew that or not. What percentage of those thoughts do you think are repetitive thoughts of our 60,000? Write that in the chat. And goodness, I don't know. Seth, can you give me what, what some of those answers are?

Absolutely. Selena says 90%.

Ah, Selena, you know what? I'm gonna say you are probably pretty close to it.

Shannon says 30,000. Sandy says 60,000. Jessica says about 50,000.

Okay. Okay. Well, I tell you what. Yeah, that's how many thoughts we have. And really it's 95% of these thoughts are repetitive thoughts. And that's like amazing, isn't it? Because we think things and we think them that they are gospel truth. Were you— when you were a kid, were you ever told that drinking coffee will stunt your growth? Anybody? Or, or have you ever been told that it takes 7 years to digest a piece of gum, or that you can't swim after you eat? Or you'll drown. If anybody else has any ideas about what they used to believe, some of these wives' tales, you can go ahead and write those in the chat if you'd like. But here's the problem. Most of us don't know the truth, or we're not really in tune with the truth that we are people who are worthy of dignity, love, and respect. And we get off of that truth because of the messiness in our relationships. But here's the reality. Our human journey, it involves struggle. And, and I've heard a lot of the speakers talk about the struggles they've been through. Like, this is so cool that we have such authentic speakers and experts as well. But it's, it's a struggle, and we go through our life, and it's an invitation to align with that truth. So how to believe that even what you might consider a wrong person is a divine invitation, and how to believe that this moment in time— because this is the only moment we have right now, we are living in this present moment— how can we believe that this moment is a divine invitation? So we are, we are, for all of us as humans, we are invited to grow. And to grow up. But here's the thing: we were all born into imperfect family systems. For example, I'm going to stop share for a moment because I grew up— some of you might identify— oh, I can see the, um, chat now that I've unshared. I grew up in a very conservative, uh, faith denomination, and when there were a whole bunch of don'ts, there was You know, you don't play cards, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't hang around with kids that do that, and you definitely don't engage in premarital dancing. Put a yes if you identify, put a yes in the chat if you identify with any of these kind of things here, because, uh, yeah, you could say, well, maybe my family was, um, made Leave It to Beaver look like Hell's Angels, but the reality is I I did learn to dance. I did learn to play cards. And I've learned that our lives and our relationships are like dances. They're in constant motion. Think of the word emotion, motion. Hang on to that because our emotions come from our thoughts and our beliefs about our past. And but they're designed to move and to flow. So a majority of us haven't really learned how to let those temporary emotions be like, like guests. Okay, I gotta share my screen one more time here because this is where a lot of the things that we think about and the rumination, which it's very, very common for the brain— hold on, I'm going to share this. This comes from, uh, Dr. Rick Hanson. He's got a podcast and several books too about the brain. So a thought on the neuron of a brain will, um, like a negative thought will stick like Teflon. A positive thought on that very same neuron, and we've got gazillions of them, will slide off like Teflon unless we ponder it for 15 seconds. So that's why it's so important not to even, like, to really have a whole lot more positives than negatives in your thought process and in your interactions with your family members. So here's what we do, like, you know, when we, when we get ready to host our fam— like, I will, we'll talk about special guests or extended family members that might come for a holiday. We bring out our good china. How many of y'all use good china for special holidays? I don't know if anybody does that anymore, or if we just get our good china that's passed down from great-grandmother and don't use it. I don't know. But our guests come— think about this— our guests come, sit at the table, we put out those cloth napkins, and then, you know, we, we visit with them, and then they leave. Now, can you imagine the guests coming? We got our napkins all set out and our good china, and they, they're bringing all their suitcases. And they end up, rather than being temporary, they stay. That's exactly what our emotions are designed to do. Any kind of like happiness, joy— we could say the good, bad, ugly, or the positive, negative emotions, or the comfortable, uncomfortable emotions— they're all designed to move and to flow. And here's the thing, so many people haven't learned to pay attention or verbalize our emotions. I love it that there's so many here, so many experts here. Wow, are you doing your children such an awesome favor by really showing them and teaching them how to pay attention to their emotions. But some people grow into adulthood and they think that their emotions are too big and that they just, uh, numb out. And then some people are just, um, they don't think they have emotions. Uh, that's enough about my first husband. Um, all right, I am going to stop share again, and I just want to remind you again, this is a divine moment and our stories matter. Put in the chat how many of you are curious about this. Just put yes in the chat if you are. But just keeping in mind We need to keep a curious— did you know about curiosity? The brain cannot be both curious and judgmental at the same time. So if you're judgmental and watching this, let's see if we can switch to curiosity. So let's have— learn to have grace for ourselves. And we all need to know that we were basically pre-programmed to choose the person that we married. Okay, here's what I'd like you to do next. This is going to be an activity. Pay attention to the directions here. Don't send it yet, but write your number in the chat how old you were when you either met or got married to the person you married. And if you've been married more than once, it's— we're talking about the first time. Okay, so write that number. Don't— oh, don't put it down yet. Just write it in, but don't send it yet. We're going to send it all at once. Okay, so when on the count of 3 We're gonna get it all at the same time. Ready? So 1, 2, 3, put the numbers down. All right, some are 35, 25, 20, 30, somewhere. I think even earlier if I move up the chat, uh, really young, 21, 20, 13. Wow, um, that's amazing. So 35, 20, so Yeah, that's right. That's good. I'm glad to get a kind of a feel for where everybody is. Well, here's the thing, and some of you might know this already because a lot of this brain science is like not just— I mean, we're learning a lot about it, uh, but your brain is not really even totally online until you're in your mid-20s. How many of you knew that? Write yes if you already knew that. That's interesting. Okay, good, good, good. So that's the thing. I mean, I'm probably not going to tell anybody any— something they don't already know, but we're going to package this in such a way where it's going to make some sense to you and help you so that you can have some calm and peace waters. Um, so here's what we do is we either— and I learned this from my training as an Imago therapist. Now, Imago therapy simply means that you, you pick someone who has that same image or a familiar image. You like put an image on this person, and that's what the, the Latin term for imago means. And that's what connects us, like a magnet. Like we're connected, you know. You can have 100 people in a room, like on your college campus, there might be 100 people that could be, you know, um, you would want to date or something, but only one's going to be like drawn. And it's because of this undercurrent agenda that we have, and it's all subconscious stuff. So we have 3 Ps. If you want to either write this in the chat, you can, or you can just take notes. But there's 3 Ps, and the first P is that we generally, undercurrent— now we're not aware, but we will pick our, our partner, the one that we want to do life with, and they will have both the positives and negative characteristics of our primary caregiver. Now that's whether or not you want to change the branch of your family tree. We are drawn to that because it is familiar. So we either pick someone who has either the positives and negatives. Now, when you, when you do get with somebody, those, um, the first 3 months anyway, you've got, you've got, uh, chemicals. Now, I'm not ever— I'm, even though I grew up in the flower child era and I probably could have tried drugs, but I really didn't. But I've heard a whole lot of stories in my counseling office over the years And, uh, I mean, I didn't even do marijuana, I'll tell you that. Okay, but, but what I've heard is that this is like a street drug high, that that's what happens naturally when we get romantically attracted to someone. Okay, and that lasts about 3, 3 months. And so then we're going to put out of proportion all the positives that we are so familiar with, or we're going to see that this person is like, oh, they, they complete me. They're like your savior, so to speak. So pick is the first, project is the next one. So either pick or we project. Now, you know, going to a movie theater, we see the projection of the, the image. And so as time goes along, and especially if there's unhealed, uh, business in our childhood— and that's what Imago therapy is all about, and, and the premise of it is that we have an unconscious agenda to complete our past. It's like there's something rising up within us that needs to be completed, and that's what we try to, to do when we marry someone. So, so it's kind of like a movie theater. And, and if you have felt unloved, let's say, or abandoned, maybe you've lost a parent or something, you may be doing some things that are, are going to project that onto your partner. Or you might even see your partner, uh, if you had a harsh dad or something, um, you might see their— you might see the head of your dad on the body of your spouse, something like that. I mean, psychologically is what we're talking about. So, um, yeah, this is cool. I'm looking at the chats too. This is wonderful. Okay, so then the next one— so either pick, we project, or we provoke. All right, think of relationships like synchronized dances and how we learned to move toward pleasure and away from pain in our family of origins, in our childhood, is that again, we're going to go back to this neural pathways and going back to the patterns. We're going to naturally do that same dance. And what worked in childhood doesn't work in adulthood as far as defense mechanisms. Uh, maybe when you got stressed out and maybe there was a lot of energy or yelling in your home and your family, and then you would go and hide, and then you might avoid conflict with your spouse, which isn't a good thing, but it might just be too scary because you're showing up, uh, as you did as a child and what worked. All right, so we— I could go into more detail with that, but I hope you kind of get the idea that we either pick, we project, or we provoke, and our brains are not totally online until we're 25. So let's give ourselves plenty of grace, uh, through this process. Okay, but here's the secret. There's 3 things that you can do. Number 1, you can just get out of your own world. First of all, it's like awesome that we've been together for 2 days because you are changing. Like, you're, you're thinking about some things that maybe you hadn't normally been thinking about. It's getting out of your own world. And, and that's what, um, this is part of our Imago therapy. I have couples that I work with, and they're across from each other. They'll each, uh, there's a speaker-listener skill. And so being able as a listener to get out of your own world, and the speaker is the one that holds the ball. There's more to that, but I don't have time to share it all. But there's, there actually, and there's also a bigger story to the messes that we go through. So number 2, and we, some of us have already talked about this, some of the speakers, which has been wonderful, about the fight, flight, freeze part of the brain. And I like to just show this little reptile because it's true. We, we, we're not really relating to each other as humans. We're relating to each other as reptiles. We got to get out of that. You won't be able to do that whether it's with your kid or with your spouse. Okay, so taking those deep breaths is going to calm down and slow down the nervous system. And then just realizing that our emotions are temporary messengers, and if they're stuck, we can move them. You can actually change your emotion just by moving the position of your body, the location and where you're at. All of that makes a difference. But we can change the atmosphere in our homes and change complaints into cooperation and turn chaos into calm. All right, I'm going to— you have so much from the, these two, uh, days, some practical things. I want to get into some nitty-gritty of why I am where I'm at. And what I— why I'm motivated, because it was Mother's Day. It was Mother's Day. I'm just sharing a little bit of my story here that my second husband, who had managed his bipolar disorder for many years, he had a severe form of it. All bipolar disorders, not the same, but he had managed his bipolar disorder for many years. But on that Mother's Day, he said, Judy, I need to go to the hospital. Now, if you were watching a movie scene in our home, the average person would say, well, that sounds like a rational thing to do. But unbeknownst to me at the time, I was unaware that his psychosis was in full force. In other words, he was out of tune with reality. He couldn't be reasoned with, and they were after him, and he feared for his life, and he needed to be at the hospital in order to be safe. Now, I did not find out that until later. Brother-in-law's sudden death. Along with the entire planet's reaction to the pandemic, was the perfect storm awakening this mental illness that had become dormant for a season. But this wasn't the first marital trauma, and, um, it was actually a catalyst for me to write my book. Beyond Messy Relationships: Divine Invitations to Your Authentic Self. And it was his break with reality that was the catalyst for me to write. And, um, by the way, I need to tell you, most therapists who write books will write about the intense and dramatic stories of their clients. And for me, I wrote my own intense and dramatic story So I became a client in my own book, and I show up as a therapist at the beginning of each of the chapters in order for readers to not just be reading my story but to really get some insight into their own. But this was a book that I couldn't not write, and it was a huge risk for me to put it out in the world because honestly, I did not know if my marriage was even viable. At that point, and I didn't know what the consequences would look like and would be for my family. And then I feared, and I thought, you know what, my clients are going to read this and they're going to say, and why are we seeing her as our therapist? But the reality is he recovered to the point of becoming my biggest cheerleader in writing it. In fact, he was well enough to create this trailer that we celebrated when we celebrated the book launch. I want to show it. It's only about— it's only a minute long. I'm going to share my screen really quick. For a minute, I'd like you to just take this in.

The family of our beginning. Show us relationship dances. It's our movement toward pleasure and away from pain. Our relationships are mirrors to our souls. We don't realize that our dances from childhood create messes as adults. Although we are wired for connection, we drift.

Apart.

To grow, we need fresh air. We become aware. We are intentional. We take risks to grow. Divine invitations to your authentic self is worth the journey. Dance anew.

Breathe air.

Awareness, intentionality, and risks.

Here I was on Mother's Day of 2020, and at the time that I believed that there was a resurrection in this second marriage. The loss was overwhelming. I faced the status of being a twice-divorced relationship therapist after 40 years of marriage. I'd been a woman that was saturated with relationships all her life, and the whole world was facing the trauma of the pandemic and mental illness was becoming more commonplace than we've ever known. And I wasn't alone in my struggles, and none of us are. Maybe you have felt alone in your struggles and— or something that you've experienced. Maybe you have experienced a significant loss that shifted everything for you. But when I found out that he wasn't coming back and he hadn't— he didn't come back. He couldn't come back in his right mind. When I realized that, I went outdoors, I took a deep breath, and I said, Lord, here I am. And then, even though there was no music, my body began to sway And I looked around, and then warm tears just falling down my face. I knew that I had a choice to make, and I knew that this wasn't just a one choice one time. It was a multitude of choices every single day. And just like you, we all have multitudes of choices every day. How will we use those 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day? How many of those are going to be repetitive? Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day? Gotta share my screen again here. Anybody remember that, uh, that movie Groundhog Day? See if I can pull it up here. Right here, Bill Murray. And, uh, the essence of it— yeah, put chat yes in the chat if you remember it. Okay, so Bill Murray's character wakes up every morning the same day over and over again. It actually drives him crazy. And our thoughts, repetitive thoughts, are going to drive us crazy if we hang on to the past and ruminate, because it leads to depression, anxiety, and it takes away that calm that you long for. So could it be that we may not be that out of tune with reality, but could it be that we all have these illusions in our minds that takes us out of what's really real. Don't we need to pay attention to what's real? And don't we need to align our stories with the truth that we as human beings are worthy of dignity, love, and respect, and that we didn't marry the wrong person, and that we can create calm energy in our homes and in our own hearts. And, and here's what I think about— let me just share a couple things because I want you all to know how special Seth and Rebecca are. Because probably unbeknownst to either one of them, all right, Seth, Seth has a remarkable team. He knows that, right? But my journey of doing this podcast, Better Relationships, Better Life. By the way, they were actually one of my podcast guests. I can't remember what number. Maybe Rebecca, find out what number that is so that they can go back and listen to it.

I'll go find it.

Yeah, I have been so energized by doing this podcast, and I'm just pleased to say that in 2022 I completed 50 episodes, and I have interviewed relationship experts, people who had been married a long time, people have had some tra— uh, trauma in their marriage. But it has really filled my soul to do this. It's been part of my healing, actually. And what is my new, new belief right now? My new belief here is based upon these temporary emotions that I've tuned into. It's this: both of my marriages came to natural completions. I don't like the D word. Nobody likes that. And I call myself an uncoupled woman rather than twice divorced. And here's another thing, going back to the reality that the things you encounter, they're actually divine invitations. What is the bigger picture? How can we see the transformation that's available for us to tune into reality because I thank God for both of my former husbands. There's just no room in my heart and in my life for all that negativity and rumination. No, I want to use my energy for, for good. But I did do a podcast with Katherine Woodard Thomas, and she wrote the book Conscious Uncoupling, and she said that you can think of your former spouse as a dark guru, awakened you to the truth. But both of them, it took both of them to align me with this truth. So let me just— one other thing here, Seth, and I'm gonna— and Rebecca, I'm gonna— to, uh, I'm, I'm going to wrap up. So this is my second book, so, so proud of it because Seth has such an awesome team. And we are taking, um, the 12 awesome episodes and putting them in a book. And so the way that this is uh, designed is that the first part is Better Relationships That Last, and second part is Better Relationships with Challenges, and Better Life After Ending Relationships, and Help for Better Relationships, Better Life. So I want y'all to keep this in your mind. Look for it when it comes out, which should be maybe within the next couple months. And, uh, but here's what I'd like to do. I would like to give you a gift. And this, if you go to this QR code, you can go directly to my website page that I created for you. And there's a list of questions that you can ask yourself, especially when you're in difficult situations, how to kind of nurture the questions that are actually going to help you to think differently rather than keep that 95% going. And then here's one other thing I want you to know, to fill this out. Here's another QR code. Wait, did everybody have a chance to scan that one? Scan that one now before I go to the next slide. Okay. And if you've had a chance to do that, then— what's that?

The link in the chat.

Okay. And then this code will take you to an evaluation for my speaking. I would absolutely love to have some speaking opportunities. And if you like this message and you know of a group that could use this message, definitely want to know about it. But I want to tell you that we're all designed to grow and to grow up. And since I have done a bunch of traveling, I got to share this with you real quick. But, um, that's me on, uh, on the rapids in Costa Rica. And it— but here's the thing, you can have, you can have fun, you can have your most vibrantly authentic life no matter what you've been through and where you are. Yes, Take vacations with your spouse. Keep that alive. And, uh, but you know what, if you are finding yourself alone, you can still be and be grounded with how awesome you are. And, but take some time to reflect as well. So thank you so much. I don't know if anybody has some questions, but I know I need to, to wrap up.

Thank you, Judy. Give everybody— can we give Judy a vertic— a visual virtual— I can talk, see, now it's rubbing off on me— a virtual round of applause. And we have a prize to give away. The $300 hotel gift card goes to Leslie Stinson. Leslie, congratulations!

Thank you, Judy.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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