Whinypaluza Wednesday: Handling Intensity In our Relationships
In this live family livestream titled "Whinypaluza Wednesday: Handling Intensity in Our Relationships," Rebecca Greene hosts a casual, celebratory session with her husband Seth, daughter Ella, and occasional appearances by their other children. The episode opens with birthday wishes for Seth and light‑hearted banter before shifting to the core topic: how couples (and families) can recognize, manage, and communicate emotional intensity. Rebecca shares personal observations about her own and Seth’s intense emotional reactions, noting that such intensity runs in their family and is common in many marriages. She emphasizes self‑awareness, taking responsibility for one’s own feelings, and using concrete communication tools—disclaimers (e.g., “I’m not upset with you”), sentence stems, and “reset” moments—to lower adrenaline and keep conversations safe. The pair discuss practical regulation techniques such as journaling, walking, showering, treadmill time, and labeling emotions differently (inspired by Tony Robbins) to shift experience. They stress that both partners must work on themselves, view the relationship as a give‑and‑take, and avoid blaming the other for intensity. Throughout, they promote the Winey Palooza blog, podcast, the Winey Blues app, merchandise, and upcoming therapist Judy Herman’s book, encouraging viewers to engage with the community. The tone remains informal, conversational, and supportive, with moments of humor and enthusiasm.
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Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!
No need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday!
Ow!
Have some wine and join us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green Family!
Cha-cha-chicken!
Thank you, honey! Seth, I look better on your phone.
Okay, so get a new phone.
I'm gonna get a new phone so that I look better. I'm not vain or anything.
You know, you're physically the same. No, physically you are the same.
Look at how much different I look on your phone.
You may appear different, but you are physically the same. Your beauty is unchanged by the phone camera. Okay, even though my phone is a couple generations further ahead than yours.
Happy birthday!
Thank you, it's my birthday.
It's my honey's birthday. Say happy birthday to Seth.
Happy birthday to me!
Where are your children? Lily, are you watching? Say happy birthday.
You know, you do have lots of other people watching.
Hello everybody, thanks for joining us. We're going to talk about my topic this week. Um, should we talk about your birthday first, or should we—
it's your show. I didn't know we were talking about my birthday.
Did you have a good birthday? Sure. You worked so hard. Hopefully he's gonna slow down a little bit.
I'm gonna take Friday mostly off.
That's awesome, that makes me happy. Hello everybody, we are live on TikTok over here.
Hi Ben, hi John.
We're live on Facebook over here.
Hi, Thunderwood.
Tayton's here. Tayton, I made him a very healthy apple crisp and I think he liked it.
It's delicious even though it is gluten-free, dairy-free, and everything, mostly sugar-free.
It's everything free. I—
hi, cool people!
Hi, cool people! I did do a traditional apple crisp for the rest of us. Yes, Seth got a super healthy apple crisp. Yes, and we sang to him and we had dinner. Yes, and he opened presents. Did you like your presents?
I did, the presents were very good.
Um, which one was your— it's magic! Which part is magic? The magic healthy crisp? Um, which one was your favorite present? Um, you don't have to answer.
I, I think it was a tie between the book and the sheet music.
Oh, okay. I got him a bunch of stuff.
Yes, you got me a few things.
A bag of goodies.
A bag of goodies. That's a good way to put it.
So I told Seth that I should write a blog that's all about him today, but he read what I wrote and was— before that, but well, no, you, yeah, you read what I wrote and I said I should start over and save this and write about you for your birthday, and he said, no, I love this. And I actually think that my blog is kind of a gift to him. It is, it is totally a gift to me and to all of you watching because, so for those of you who don't know, probably on TikTok, I write a blog, the Winey Palooza blog, top 100 mommy blog, and it is Every Wednesday I publish a new topic. So today's topic is on the intensity in our relationships. And I wanted— sometimes when I'm writing, I hear other relationships are similar. It's not just, it's not just us.
Normalizes.
Similar, similar patterns are going on in a lot of homes. Marriages are fighting over the same thing. Couples are fighting over the same thing and having similar patterns. So I was telling Seth on one of our walks My walks are magical.
They—
it's like this walking meditation, Seth calls it. And I get lots of ideas, or Seth will say, "Blog alert." Yes, we'll be talking about something and I'll say, "Ooh, that would make a good blog." So I said, this is a pattern I see in marriages. And as I write about our marriage, Seth can then see the amount of self-awareness that I have.
Which is very helpful.
So I like to— like, I know what I do wrong and I know what Seth does wrong. And I know what I do right, and I know what Seth does right, if that makes sense. It does. So I was writing about how intense myself and others can get.
Emotionally intense.
Emotionally intense. You know those big feelings? Hi, Brenna!
Brenna's watching. Hi, Brenna.
Um, so—
Hi, Beatrice.
So Lily has big feelings. My father has big feelings. I have big feelings. It's genetic. And, um, you know, you're all copy. Like, I love, I love that we feel things, and I love that we're so sensitive, and I love that we care so much.
Backfires sometimes.
Hey, my intensity was taken out on our shower.
It's very clean.
And we can use our intensity to get things done, like deep cleaning a shower.
Yes, there are good purposes to it.
So I will come at Seth. I call it come at Seth. I may not even be upset with Seth. I may be upset with someone else.
I call it she's upset near me.
Yes, yes, I should have written about that. That is exactly what—
to me it looks exactly the same.
It's not though.
I know, but it looks— your volume is the same. Some of the word choices might be the same.
So I come to Seth with my feelings.
Your loudly intense feelings.
Seth has gotten my anxiety, happiness, excitement, anger, and sadness all within the last 24 hours.
Yep, it's a roller coaster.
Um, we talk about your roller coaster at work and we talk about my roller coaster at home.
Yes.
And, um, so I come to Seth with my feelings. These big feelings, and his brain— this is what his brain is doing: Danger! Danger! Run away!
It's probably pretty accurate.
Too many feelings, too intense. I don't know what she's saying.
Can't process.
So I might be upset about a thing, I might be upset about a topic, I might be upset at someone else. It might have nothing to do with Seth, and he's 70% of the time, I would say, it doesn't have anything to do with it, right? And, and he's still like, oh my God, make her stop, make her calm down.
Yes.
So then I have to be aware enough, you have to be aware enough in your relationship to see if how you're communicating is working. And then you need to say, okay, my partner is shutting down.
Yes.
He's literally looking at the table going, oh my God, make her stop. He's like, he'll be like, you're like really feeling intense about this, aren't you? Have— he'll be like, do you have to relive it with me?
See, this is an excellent point. This is what happens. She— the way she tells a story, like, I will just tell you the facts of what happened. She re-experiences it. Like, she could have been telling you a story for the 7th time and she will still get really upset about it. She might even cry or get really mad. Even though she's repeated this story 7 times and should be detached, I would think, from the emotion of it, but she is so invested. And I've seen other people in her family do this too, where they tell the same story. I'm like, "You just said that 3 times and you're still just as upset as you were the first time." I'm like, "Doesn't it mellow out at all?" So, due to the fact— Where is that?
Due to the fact that he has made me aware of that, not in the moment. That is my pointer.
That does not go well.
If you are the spouse of the intense person, In the moment is not the time to go, "You're too intense!
You're too intense!" That just makes them more intense, then they get mad at you. Yes! If they could have been mad near you, now they're mad at you.
So when I'm calm, yes, if Seth says to me, "You know, when you're telling a story, it's like you're reliving it," and it kind of freaks me out.
No, I didn't like it. I was allowed to say that in the last part.
No, I'm kidding. I think what you said was You know, can you just like tone it down? If they will hear us better.
Yes.
If we— so what I wrote in my blog is if you're the partner to the intense person, you can say, I want to listen to you, I want to hear you, I want to help. This is what would help me.
Yes.
What can I do for you? So marriage is a give and take, right? A relationship is a give and take. So we both need to work on ourselves.
Absolutely.
So you might work on— I don't know, give me an example.
Well, I don't need to— I don't think I need to be more intense.
Being more sensitive.
Yes, be more sensitive, which he does, your intensity, and not run away.
No, no, just being more sensitive.
I see that you're very upset.
You don't— I don't like when you get rough around the edges, right? You do not like it when I am abrasive, and you don't like when I get like too high in my emotions. So we need to see that how we're communicating is not working and we need to say to ourselves, okay, like, my palms are sweaty, my heart's racing, my face is red, I'm feeling too much right now, raising my voice, like, let's take a step back, not using my words, let's do my favorite word of reset. I told Seth I reset so many times in my day. I have to. And we talked about that the other day. Yes, I was telling him to reset at work frequently throughout his workday. Yeah, and don't let one person like affect the whole day. Reset and start over. So, um, okay, so we reset, we calm ourselves down, and then we come back. And what I realized is you know, our spouse is like our best friend. It's the person— it's the person that we want to tell everything to.
Everything. That's a whole separate topic.
It's a person that we want to come to and talk to. And what I realize is that they shouldn't have to deal with everything. And what I mean by that is We can do things for ourselves to tone ourselves down before we talk to them, right?
Yes.
I can talk to my friends who are watching right now. I can get myself in a calmer state before I tell Seth.
You could reset before you express your intensity at me.
I could pound it out in my journal before I talk to Seth or on the pavement outside or in the shower. I could get— some emotions out before I come to him. I don't have to give him everything to deal with.
I, I, I— you could do that.
It's not what you're supposed to say.
No, honey, you give me all of it. I don't want you to release any of it before you talk to me. I want every inch of your emotion.
This is so much better than this.
Okay, so I've been telling you for months—
no, no, your angle over here— oh, is better than your angle over here complaining about your No, you can't really see you very well, honey. I'm trying. That's better.
Okay.
I'm trying to get your beautiful face on the camera.
It's your beautiful face.
Oh my gosh. So did you feel like I was giving you a gift by seeing that I know how I get?
Yes. The fact that you are aware of it and realize it makes me feel better that I'm not crazy for thinking of how you're acting and I'm not off here in la-la land by myself. Being the only one aware of it. It doesn't mean you're instantly going to change it, but the fact that you're aware of it is lots of progress. Tayton says only some of the feeling feels, not all of them, right?
He doesn't, he doesn't want all of it.
I, I don't need all of them.
Oh, see, Tayton says the TikTok feed is better. It's just the angle you have it at. You have to move them both over that way. We're learning. We have two cameras going at the same time. It's quite interesting. So now I lost my thought. Okay, so I hear— Yes, you did.
Yeah.
So I hear this in other homes. I have heard a wife recently tell me this about her husband. I have heard a wife— a husband who feels this way about his wife. So I know it's not just women. I know that the husbands are—
I know some intense husbands.
Some of the husbands are intense. It's not just the wives. But they wonder why their spouse isn't responding, isn't into the conversation, isn't helpful, doesn't want to talk about it, disengages, walks away, doesn't hear what they're saying. Like, instead of us looking at them and saying, this is what they're doing wrong, I want us to turn it around to us. And this goes for you too when stuff doesn't work, that we turn it around onto us. And put it on yourself. What am I doing to cause this, and what can I do differently?
Absolutely. Liz says, or preface it with, with, I just need to verbal vomit, and it's not personal, but I need to get it out. Yes, disclaimers are really helpful, Liz.
So Liz, I wrote about disclaimers because one of the most helpful things with Seth is for me to say, I am not upset with you.
And I don't want you to solve the problem.
I, I'm not upset with you. I'm just upset. I'm upset. I'm upset about this, or I'm upset at this person, and it's not you. But I—
yes, that instantly lowers my adrenaline level and makes me feel better, going, okay, this conversation is safe. I'm not getting attacked. I can listen objectively to whatever she's upset about.
He still doesn't like it.
We were raised in different houses, woman.
He— listen, he still doesn't like it. He was raised such a calm, even home that the ups and downs of work affect him differently than me. So his life was so even that he doesn't understand that life isn't even. Like, learning life is a roller coaster. We all know this. Like, we're not meant to be on a straight line in life. Yes, same here with those sentence stems. So Liz, do you need your husband to give you the sentence stems, or do you need to give the sentence stems to him?
What's a sentence stem?
Like the disclaimer.
The—
I'm really upset at this person, and I need you to sit here and listen, and, and I'll try to calm myself down. And you need to try to—
I can talk you down if you just tell me that I need to, that that's what you need, and that this isn't about me, and you don't want me to you solve it, right?
But you still don't— you still don't like it. You still don't like the intensity.
Look at me, I'm like, am I ever gonna go, woohoo, she's so pissed off, as opposed to—
no, no, no, no, no. But I don't even think it's just like— you're focused on anger. I'm focused on—
disturbs me the most.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Yes, it is.
Okay, so Liz says it goes both ways. For her and her husband. That's interesting. I would say that goes both ways for us too. There's times where you'll say to me, this is why I share the sentence.
I give you the disclaimer. I thought she meant intensity. I'm like, I'm not— I could never match your level of intensity. I just couldn't. I'd hurt myself.
You don't— come on, you have so much more passion than I do. So— well, that is so not true, but that's a whole nother conversation. I need to get it out with high intensity and some sweating to be able to move on. The treadmill outside time helps me. Yes. To process deeper. I 100% agree. I don't think you were on when I said that cleaning, walking, journaling, all of that gets it out for me and helps me be better with whoever I'm about to talk to.
Yes.
And it might not be him. It might be, it might be a friend that I'm about to see, and I don't really want to bring them.
Why not? If it's so wonderful, this intensity, why don't you want to share it with them? Why wouldn't you do it with a stranger? Okay, I think you were crazy and lock you up.
No, no, nobody would lock— stop it, funny farm, stop it. Um, the, the intensity is not You're thinking of anger, and I'm— that is not what I'm thinking of.
Okay, what are you thinking of?
I'm— I intensely feel every emotion.
Yes, but I, I don't mind some of the, some of the positive ones, right?
But you don't like the sadness, the anxiety, the— you don't, you don't like the name, you know? Do you know that life is not all positive emotions?
I'm aware of this.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Are you sure you're aware of that?
Yes.
And you know it's normal for your children and your wife to have negative emotions?
Yes. Okay, you shouldn't have any of them. I just suggested they might turn the volume down.
I think that you're okay with us having the feelings. It's how we express the feelings. Yes.
And for the record, this is— there, there are two people in this house who have— who do that more than some other folks in this house.
There are 3 calm souls in the house.
I don't have this issue with those other 2 people.
And there are 2 feisty souls.
Yes, that's where I run into challenges.
Oh my gosh, I would, I would say that 80% of the time is positive. The 20% that might be negative, you know I could tone it down a little bit.
Just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
Hi, Jeremy.
I'll tone it down for you, honey. I think that, as I have stated so many times live, Seth has come this way, I have come this way. So I have gotten less intense, he has gotten more comfortable with it.
Yes, absolutely. In the beginning, I thought you were gonna have a heart attack and the world was gonna blow up and everything, everybody was gonna be in trouble from anything because I had no experience with that whatsoever.
Did you see the level of excitement and happiness when we got together?
Yes, that, that was, uh, very attractive. I did not necessarily assume the opposite side was going to be true because I had no reference for it.
You're making— first of all, he's making it sound so much worse than it is.
Correct. Uh, there might be a little bit of dramatic exaggeration.
I think that Seth likes to be a little dramatic. I think it's part of the actor in him. I think, I think that, I think that people who feel really happy can sometimes feel really sad. Yes, so I also know that that's normal. I'm telling everyone it is normal. We're not always going to be happy, we're not always going to be sad. Sometimes we're going to feel a little anxious.
Yes.
I love that you and I have talked about our language. Yes. With labeling our feelings.
Yes.
So like, I might be a little anxious, not I'm feeling so anxious.
Yes.
Right?
It's a transformational vocabulary lesson I learned from Tony Robbins of if you change the label of your emotion, you will literally change what you feel.
I think that Tony said he took the word depression out of his vocabulary. Yes.
And was never depressed again.
I think that we have to be really careful what we're saying to ourselves and what we're saying to our kids and what we're saying to our husband. Like, if I say to Seth, I'm a little bit upset and need to talk to you, yeah, that's a lot different than me saying, I am so upset and I need to talk to you right now.
Very different experience on my receiving end. Yes.
Oh my gosh. So my gift to my husband— yes, one of many gifts is I am very self-aware. I am very aware of my strengths. I am very aware of my weaknesses. I'm also very aware of my kids' strengths and weaknesses. That's another thing that we talked about last week is that your kids are not perfect, you are not perfect. So we're works in progress. Yes, right, all the time. So, um, hopefully, honey, I have learned to communicate better with you over the years.
Of course you have. You've done an amazing job and we'll continue to do so, right? Yes.
So, um, I hope you've had a decent birthday.
I have.
And at some point we're gonna, um, go for a fancy dinner.
Yes.
And, um, I just looked it up. I, I think that Judy Herman is this Friday's podcast. Judy is a great therapist. And her book, um, The Messy Relationships.
How long have you guys been together?
Forever. Um, since 2004. Yes, right?
Yes, married in '05, dated, started dating in '04.
Yes, a long time. Yes, it keeps getting better. Yes, I feel like it keeps getting better. I, um If you know me, you know that I, I loved when my kids were babies, and they're getting so old, and it does— it just keeps getting better. So even though we get sad that our kids are getting older, then there's more fun stuff, new phases of life. Yes. Um, so yes, so listen to Judy this Friday. She is such a great therapist.
Check out the Whiny Palooza podcast on Apple. Google, Pandora, Audible, Amazon, iHeartRadio, anywhere you listen to podcasts.
So Tayton said that, um, Judy's book is Beyond Messy Relationships. So I read her book, it is excellent, and I meant to bring it downstairs to show you guys the book, but, um, her book is excellent. And, um, what else do we want to share? Anything else?
Go get the Winey Blues app on either the, uh, Apple or Google app stores for some awesome free content and more value to— for your life and relationships.
And, um, thank you to everyone who bought a book from my daughter Ella.
Ella has also written books, children's books.
Ella, um, just— it worked on her bat mitzvah project, which was selling her books to raise money for the NICU. And, um, some of you have asked me— I, I am not wearing it, But I have— you're not wearing it either, but we both have Winey Pluza sweatshirts.
Yes.
And I got a request. I got to tell Kristen Seth, I got a request for a t-shirt.
Okay.
And I got a request that people want to buy sweatshirts.
Oh, that's awesome. So we'll put some links for swag.
So we got to work on that. Yes.
And then you got to take pictures of yourself wearing the swag and post it and tag her, um, and we'll build something cool.
That, that's fun.
You can be part of the community.
Well, thank you everyone for joining us, and thank you, honey, for working on your birthday. You did so much work on your birthday.
Yes, it fell on a Wednesday, and I didn't want to take a Wednesday off because Wednesdays are my very busy day.
Oh, I guess we don't want birthdays on Wednesdays.
Well, I'm good for like the next 6 or 7 years.
Oh my gosh. Well, um, daughters, are you here to sing us out? Somebody's coming to sing us out. And keep sending me podcast guest requests and topic requests. I can't talk. We love your requests.
Noni, thank you for watching Winey Pooh Wednesday with the Green Family.
Cha-cha-cha!
Oh my goodness, thank you, Ella. Thank you everyone for watching. I hope you have a wonderful week.
