#169: From Arguments to Understanding: Transforming Our Communication In Relationships (Part One)

Have you ever felt that there's an invisible force between you and your partner, blocking not just your words, but the connection you deeply crave? Or that despite speaking the same language, you're somehow worlds apart and understanding each other? Welcome to Love Shack. Live the sanctuary for those at a crossroads of their relationship, seeking a path to a deeper, more genuine bond. I'm Stacey Bartley. Alongside of me is my co host and lover, Tom and our daughter Brooke. We're here to guide you through the complexities of love and connection. In today's episode, we're embarking on a series about communication, but with an unexpected twist. We're peeling back the layers to reveal not just why we struggle to communicate, but what lies beneath these challenges. It's not about the words left unsaid or the arguments that seem to be on repeat. It's about uncovering the hidden barriers that keep us from truly connecting. Imagine discovering a secret passage that leads straight to the heart of your relationship, where each word can be understood, leading to deeper intimacy. This series is about exploring those uncharted territories where the real conversations happen. We're not just aiming to change how you talk, but to transform the very essence of your interactions, thereby helping you create a space where understanding and intimacy flourish. Stay with us as we journey into the depths of what really separates us and more importantly, what can be done to bring us closer than ever before. With each step, we'll equip you with the tools and the insights to navigate this terrain, helping you pave the way for a level of communication and connection that you have thought was probably out of reach. We're also excited to share with you that this journey is accompanied by our upcoming book, the Communication Cure for A Guided Workbook. This companion to our series promises to deepen the insights and strategies we discuss and offer practical exercises to help you enhance your relationship. Join us inside the Love Shack today as we redefine the path to true understanding and connection with those we love.

Hey, thank you for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Today we're embarking on a new series, a three part series actually focused on communication, but with a little bit of a twist. We're addressing the common myth that poor communication is the primary problem in our relationships. And so I'm going to begin this conversation by helping you truly peel back the veil and the myth around communication being our biggest issue. The reason why we think communication is the biggest issue is because we can all see in our own reasoning that what got us into the relationship realm and into a relationship that we're co creating is that we used to talk and share everything about ourselves with another. And so when that feeling starts to wane, we go, we need to talk. I gotta go back to those moments that I remember where you and me, we were sharing it all. I was telling you about all the deepest, darkest secrets in my past and all the things that I loved and the music I loved and the food I loved and the people I loved and. And what I wanted to be when I grew up and when I evolved and my next steps and in my next chapter of my life. And we see at the highlight of it all communication was present. And I wasn't just sharing my part. You were sharing your part too, typically. Where did that go? How did that happen?

And it felt so good.

Feels so amazing. You know, it takes me back to when you and I were coming together and it didn't even matter if we didn't sleep, we were up all night. Cause we started. Tom and I started long distance. I was in Utah and he was in Sacramento. And we would stay up all night talking.

And you wouldn't even be tired even if you only had a few hours of sleep.

Yeah.

Because you were so energized of that, you know, exchange.

And you were so excited to hear what was happening in the day, and you were so excited to hear, you know, what they were thinking about you, about the relationship, about what was possible in the future. So we spent hours and hours and hours sharing this. And so it's easy to see why it is we cite communication as our biggest issue when it comes to problems in our relationship. Because we see very obviously that that's the piece a chronic peace that's missing. We don't spend any time doing that at all.

And yet you're saying that that's not the biggest problem.

It's really interesting that we're starting off a series of communication, and the whole first episode is basically not talking about communication. I'm spilling the secret, so to speak. So for everyone coming into this series being like, yes, I'm gonna know exactly what to say, we're flipping the script a little bit because this episode is not about what to say or what to do. It's telling you the reason why you and your partner have stopped connecting.

But before you tune off, please don't. Ultimately, you will. At the end of this series, we're absolutely going to give you very, very strategic and skills to help you better understand what to say.

But this is Padres.

They love to just jump ahead, don't they?

Well, I'm just saying I think it's even better than getting communication frameworks because you're sort of getting the diagnosis of what is causing the communication problem in your relationship. It's because you don't understand two things. And that's what we're going to teach you today.

Well, actually, communication is not our biggest problem. Yes, communication is waning for sure. We can see it. We note it as we had just said.

So you're not trying. You're not trying to discount that. I mean, you're not trying to dismiss that. That's not happening. Yes, that is happening.

Right.

Okay.

And it will continue to happen unless you understand these two things.

Okay.

What ails our communication is not the words that we say. Those words just start to fire us off and we become very sensitive to them. But the chronic problem is that we don't have the skills to manage the emotional components of where it is we go. We become ultra sensitive to the lack of engagement or connection that we're feeling and. Or we become hypersensitive to the words that are spoken. And in those two places, what lies at the heart of it that we often don't talk about when talking about communication is look behind the veil and saying emotionally, why is it I feel uncomfortable sharing with you like I once did?

And would you say people have been together for a period of time or they even take us. I mean, thankfully we still talk as much as we ever did. But it's fair to say that what brought you together and all that you were sharing about in those very early times, which are so incredible, things have changed. Life has changed.

Right.

Because everything changes. So there's going to be new complexities, new things that have been brought into the fold, so to speak, that, quite frankly, are much different for us emotionally than when we first came together. Is that a fair enough assessment? That was actually very nicely said if I don't say so.

Yeah, things change. But also, we don't approach our partners with the same level of acceptance and curiosity that we do at the beginning.

Which brings us to the first point that we want to teach you.

You can tell Brooke and I are connected because we think the same way. We're always jumping ahead in the. Because we want.

I'm not trying to jump ahead. I'm just trying to reassure people that we got you. It's very normal to have communication problems. And I just feel very excited because the myth that trust and communication are your biggest problems, it's not doing you any good in your relationship because it's holding you Back from fixing the things that you really need to fix, which I'm excited we're teaching today. But I don't want you to lose hope either, because these are very normal things to happen in relationships, because we're not taught how to do these things, how to at a young age or in school or at the times when it really matters. So it's no wonder that we find ourselves in these spots where we're like, what the heck? Why don't we talk anymore? That set the stage for great communication and make it possible to connect with.

Your partner, you know, Very much so, as I'm going to say again, communication is not our problems. It's not so much the words we say. It's about so many other little nuances that, yes, are emotional. Think about the thing that Tom and I were just talking about when we would talk and we would stay up all night. The emotional driver of that was the excitement and the hope of what was possible and the desires that we all had and that we were expressing and sharing in our hearts, which most of us do when we're coming into a new relationship. And then where does that emotion go? What happens to it? Where does that motivation go? Typically for us, especially when we build lives together, that same emotion turns into a very fearful place. It turns into a very insecure place. Because when I get all in with you, it's normal for my human brain to start going, what if they don't really love me? What if I just said the wrong thing? What if I just screwed this up? What if they don't accept me anymore? Oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do? And so we start living life from that emotional lens. Which brings me to the first thing that I need to introduce you to, which is the concept of we as a human being are always working things out about what works for me, what doesn't. And when our fears and insecurities play a role, which they always do, into our experience, we start to make up what I call movies or internal narratives about what all of this means. And here's the kicker. Even if I'm not talking or my partner's not talking, no problem. Because the person that I'm in a relationship with is just gonna go ahead and insert whatever they believe to be true anyway. And the real kicker about our internal movies is that I will live congruent to them. We as human beings, making up these narratives and what's true and what's really going on as we piece together the guesswork of what is intentionally met by this word or this body language or this scenario that just played out. I make up some terrible things about me, about you, about us. And I can find evidence to support anything that I might think is going down. So if I truly am afraid of you egregiously doing things in secret, whatever that might be, I just can't put my finger on it. I'm going to find all kinds of things that all of a sudden spiral up my anxiety. It's from scrolling on your phone or putting it quickly in your pocket or not being present at the table or needing to rush back to work. You know, there's all kinds of little things that I could start to kind of, like, piece together that help me weave a narrative and a story that, oh, my gosh, my fear is true. Oh, my gosh, the way I'm making this up, or oh my gosh, I really am a this and a this and a this and a this based on these things. And that's a movie narrative. So there's a couple of things that I need you to understand about the movie because it is running our lives. The first is that you are the only one in the movie theater of your own mind. And that all of us can be in a very similar experience having a very similar conversation with the same food, the same beverage, the same people present, the same music playing. And out of that scenario, we're all going to extract something that meant something to me or not. I can dismiss the whole thing, or I can pull parts and pieces of the conversation or somebody's behavior or the view, or the feud or the music, or all the many nuances that are going on. I want you to think of it like we all take a little part or perspective from the scenario that either means something to us or something that rubbed us wrong or something that we didn't agree with or something we highly agreed with. And that's going to be the takeaway from the experience. So if we're in a room of hundred people, a hundred people are going to walk out of there with very different perspectives. Sure, there might be some crossover, but there's always going to be very unique takeaways for each and every person that was there and present. And that's a movie. So the second thing I need you to understand about the movie is that we all have scenes on our movie that we don't want to have brought up, that we don't want to see, that we don't want to feel, that we don't want to deal with. And when that gets brought to the forefront of my awareness, it's typically going to be somebody who is playing a role in my life that has this uncanny ability to trigger it off or fire it off. And then it goes from being unconscious to very conscious playing and streaming. And then to manage it, what we often want to do is control the person who spiked it off, triggered it off, fired it off. And the thought process is a logical one. Of course, if I can just get them to know that when they say or do these things or they use that tone of voice or this behavior that presents that causes me to go there, can be controlled, and I'm gonna feel better that I'm not gonna have this experience. And I might even go so far in my movie to make it up that it is them intentionally doing this to me. Because it only happens when you come around. And here I am dealing with this. So I can even start to weave a narrative that now, you're malicious, you're unkind, you're intentional, you're a beast. Or it can go the other way. When I find myself firing off narratives and my partner that I can't figure out how to manage or keep from happening, I'm doing my best. You told me that when I do it like this and I say it like this and I show up like that and I use this tone of voice, it doesn't work for you. But my gosh, I keep firing off the same place inside of you. And so now I'm making some terrible things up about myself, like, oh, my gosh, you're a tolerable person. You're unkind, you're mean, you're malicious, you're intentional. What they're telling me about me must be true. And what we need to understand about our narratives is they don't make any sense to us, and we're never going to be successful in remedying them for our partners, because that's something only I can manage. Number one, remember what I said. They're not in your movie. The movie you are playing is yours. And it is designed by your past, your present, and your future hopes and dreams. It's designed by your personal experiences. They have a totally different movie going on, number one. Number two, what spikes you off or fires you off? It's not probably going to fire off your partner. They might even minimize what you're feeling and thinking by going, oh, don't worry about that. Why do they say that? Because they're not feeling it. They don't relate. It's not a problem they have. So shoot. Don't worry about that. That's no big deal. Why are you going there? That's ridiculous. Without realizing, we all have different experiences here. We all have a different set of experiences that we are living from. Therefore, we have a lens that we're living from. And so we cannot be successful in managing somebody else's narrative. What we need to become very attuned to and self aware around is managing my own.

I feel like a lot of times, because we're not taught these things and these principles in school, like we are taught about math and stuff. Because of that, we all have these very different ideas on what healthy communication or healthy boundaries or any sort of relationship principle looks like. And they're all very different. And they're all like, no, this is how you should do it. No, that's how you should do it. So when you talk about how your partner doesn't understand your personal movie because they have their own movie, but we all expect our partners to not only understand them, but to act according to them. I just want to show people how silly that sounds put into a different way. That would be like me deciding to do the keto diet and going into any grocery store and being offended that there were non keto items in there. It's like expecting everyone in your world to automatically click into your movie just because you've changed a thought or have a trigger or have this idea about how something is supposed to go. But if you put it into the grocery store analogy, you know that that's not how the world works. Everybody has their own things that they can eat, and we just work around it in the grocery store and you find the things that work for you and you don't get offended that other things are there, you know, but when we are in these relationships with our person and we're like, how the hell can you not see the thing that I'm seeing in the way that I'm seeing it? And every time you do it in the way that you do it, it really fricking makes me, you know, feel this way, in this way. So stop. It's like, well, you're. You're kind of totally negating that your partner is having their experience too. You know, like, maybe there are things that you're doing that they feel the same way about, and we don't think about that. And by the way, I always want to have a disclaimer. I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. I'm just saying when I learned the movie framework, it gave me some aha. Moments because it made me really see where I was doing this to my partner. You know, it was like, oh wow, this makes so much sense why I'm feeling so frustrated.

But he's not feeling the same way.

Yep, yep.

And those are empowering moments. And can you see, and I'm going to give you some examples here in just a moment about some of the different narratives and movies that we can make up and why it is we attract the partners that we do and then why it is we have the experiences that we do that at the heart of it, we fool around and fall in love with people who have the ability to, yes, bring these things up in us. Not, not because they're being intentionally a malicious, but because there are things I need to understand about myself, there are things I need to heal about myself, there are things that maybe I need to stop tolerating and putting up regarding myself because there's a lot of self rejection that goes on out there regarding the relationships. Because then the misnomer is if I could just get you to show up in a way that helps me feel better and if I can just get you to love me, then everything is going to be fine. And so we twist ourselves into pretzels and or we point fingers and blame that you are the problem and you just need to fix and pull your act together and then this is going to be fine. And now think about this as it relates to communication. Does that have anything to do with the words that we say? I could give you the the most glamorous, wonderful, polished communication frameworks in the whole wide world, but if we don't understand these things, the communication will constantly be a thorn in your side. It's not so much about the communication frameworks, it's more about why I stopped sharing that's at the heart of it, which is why we chose to start this series. And quite frankly, I ch I in my private clientele and in my Better Love Club communication frameworks and the words we use is the very last thing we talk about. Because of this reason, if we don't understand this part and piece, we're never going to be successful with the communication part. This is more of the driver of the show.

We've had the Better Love Club since January of 2023 and now it's March of 2024 and we're now talking about communication. So think about how many weekly Monday classes we've had in that time and now we're talking about it because people have the foundational knowledge that they need for them to truly be able to take on these communication frameworks.

Well, here's the thing. You could practice them and I could give you some worksheets and you could rehearse them and have them just top of mind. You could practice in the mirror. You could do all those wonderful things. But I promise you this, the minute your movie flashes and the minute that you get emotionally fired up, you're not going to use them, you're going to react. Because this part we don't understand. And so those beautiful frameworks are going to get put in the garbage can and then you're going to see they didn't work. See, I didn't even get a chance to say those things. This is why. Because we don't give credence to the invisible, which is really running our lives, which is the emotional aspects within ourselves that are dictating what I talk about and what I don't from the get go.

So.

So to sum it up then, let's say you and your partner, you've been together for a while and you really resonated with what Stacy and I would share for hours in the beginning and think we still do. But anyway, let's say that's not happening. So is it fair to say if what I just heard you say up to this point, then it's because there's been some very significant changes internally for each of us and we're not understanding how to navigate that new terrain versus how it used to be when we first came together.

Well, what's happened here? Here's what's happened. As you come together, you're very excited. You've shared hours and hours and hours about the beautiful life that you're going to build together. And then inevitably in every relationship, the next thing that happens when I get all in is all my fear and insecurity comes up. When my fear and insecurity comes up, I start trying to mitigate it. This is where I might start to try and manage you. Because my fear and insecurity gets spiked up when you do this or you say this or it causes me to doubt me, you know, please don't do that anymore. But we don't say, please don't do that in me anymore. That, by the way, is a skill. We just go quiet or we react and rip your face off. Those are usually our two primary drivers that we're going to talk about in a minute. When that happens and all of a sudden it becomes a fight. Then I start making things up about that in my personal narrative. And then There are things I decide we can't talk about because I don't want to bring him up. Because every time we do, we get into a fight. And I know because of the fight that there's an emotional price that's being paid here. It's called connection. It's called intimacy. And I know that every time we fight, it's costing me somewhere. I just feel it. I don't know how. I can't point to it. It's not like I can all of a sudden see the bread, you know, bag getting smaller and smaller and smaller, but I feel that it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And so I might even choose to not say anything, just try and manage it on my own. And about this point in time, I start bleeding out the back, trying to feel a little better so that I can continue to show up and be the person I promised you I was in the beginning. And there are these things I get really nervous and insecure about. So I shall I say talking about with you. So the topic comes up, I clam up. I say the very minimum or the topic comes up, I explode yet again, the. Because you haven't done what I said or it didn't play out the way I wanted it to. And little by little, we find ourselves in a place where we're talking less and less and sharing less and less and bleeding out the back more and more and more to cope in overeating, over exercising, getting lost in the kids, getting lost in work. Those.

Those would be bleeding out the back.

That's bleeding out the back. I'm trying to cope, to feel a little bit better. I'm trying to pull success or feel good emotions about myself where I can, so that I can continue to show up in this relationship with you. But I know the connection between us, the intimacy between us is starting to atrophy. And it kind of feels like for us, it's running through our fingers like water. It's like we can't catch it. We can't understand why. And sometimes the more that this happens, the more I start to try and manage you, I start to make up some narratives about managing you or beating up myself, judging myself very harshly. And we don't understand that. Now we're engaged in what I call the race to the bottom because there are no winners there. The more I beat myself up, the more I beat you up, the more my narrative, my personal, moving narrative, starts to make up some terrible narratives and fears about me, about you, about us, about where this is going and I'm trying to manage, at the very best I know how, by either not bringing anything up, erring on the side of just shutting down and collapsing, or I'm consistently bringing it up. I am pushing. I am probably the person on the Internet taking all the quizzes and doing all the books and listening to the podcast and trying to figure out what the heck is going on here. I'm panicking. What is going on? I remember us being in love. And that's why, as a couple, we always say, I want to get back to the good times when I think about repairing a relationship. As humans, we always think about going back in time to the moments that it was wonderful and it was good and it was easy and it was safe. And so that's the first thing after the movie narrative. Okay, the movie narrative is huge. We need to understand, like Brooke said, we all have a movie narrative and they are not the same. But when it gets negated, I feel like you don't understand me. And if I negate yours by trying to reassure you, you would think that that would be a really kind thing to do. But what we sometimes don't realize is the person feels extremely dismissed. So all of you beautiful souls out there who are trying to reassure and problem solve for your partners, the reason why that doesn't work is because they don't feel like you understand their movie, where they're living from, where. Where they're coming from. And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry about that. That's not a problem. I'm going to fix that for you. I'm going to take care of that for you. And here's the thing we don't realize. If you don't understand my movie, then you don't understand me. And I become exhausted from trying to describe it to you. Then I can take that experience and make up a whole bunch of things about myself and a whole bunch of things about you. One of my favorite examples of a movie narrative from experience is this. When Tom and I came together, I grew up in a family where time, it was optional. Like, if you were on time, on time could mean anywhere from 15 minutes after the hour to a half hour. I'll admit that when you get into 45 minutes late, it starts to become a little egregious. But, hey, what's the big deal? We even had a name for it when I was growing up. In my household, it was called Welch Standard Time, which was my maiden name. So when we arrived, the party started and. And then it ended. Whenever there was no end time either, we would just go until we felt complete and that was that. So time really wasn't anything that was, shall we say, well regarded. When Tom and I came together, he comes from a military background and so his family being on time is 15 minutes early. And you have an end time. You, you know, we got lives to live, lives to plan, things to do. So we don't just kind of hang out until it's done. Like, how long is this going to take? How long are we going to be there? Let's put some. Let's put some frameworks around this. And so as you can appreciate with just this tiny example of a movie narrative in regards to just a simple thing, time could create such a complex problem in our relationship. I would say, gosh, relax, stop stressing, we'll get there when we get there. It's going to be fine. It's going to be okay. Why would I say that? Because it was always okay in my family. There's no bad things that happen from being late. We still had of all our teeth and our hair and our fingers. I mean, it wasn't that big of a deal. So why are you getting so spun up? I couldn't wrap my head around it. And he's looking at me and I don't know. You speak for yourself. What was your movie narrative around this?

Like, get it together. Yeah, I still am. I think punctuality is a quality that's still very much appreciated and it's a respect for people's time. So wherever you are on the spectrum between somewhere, say between where I am and where Stacy is, at the end of the day, we only have so much of it. We all have very limited.

So, well, well, also mom too. I think you kind of got a different version of my dad because he had about 24 years of my childhood where me, my mom and brother were the latest people around. So for 24 years he was exhausted of having that. So he was just very triggered by you then being late because he was tired of that bullshit. I don't think he can be all blamed on you. A lot of his personal movie was framed by that experience.

Serious ptsd. Here's.

Here's the beautiful thing I want you to see, Brock. You're exactly y. And now that's another great example of how it is. We come by our movies from the experiences in the past that we come from and then we meet somebody in this space and time that doesn't have any reference to those pace, places, parts and pieces and experiences. What you're seeing is a person who's integrated those into their narrative, into their storyline and. But here's the beautiful piece that I really want you to see. As a couple, we fool around and fall in love with people for many reasons that we are not conscious of. And typically the person that I fall in love with is a person who has a lot of intel that would really benefit me in my life that I am unaware of. And regardless of whether like me, you are a little more lax when it comes to time or like Tom, that wants it to be a lot more precise, please tell me, give me a parameter of what I'm star. You know, stepping into here. Both conserve the whole. Are there times where it would serve me personally to pick up the pace, be on time, be respectful, be professional? Absolutely. And are there times where it would really serve Tom never to relax, to let it go, to not take it so to heart that it means anything about him?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And that's what you often find in relationships, that we think about it as a contribution to the whole. That not one person is right or wrong or their experiences is not valuable. Nobody has to be wrong per se. What needs to be respected is that each of us have a contribution of experience and perspective and understanding and talent and skill that we can pour into our co creation.

What can be valued Makes me think of the. Of our wonderful episode with Topaz a number back. Remember, it's not either or. It's. And in fact this whole documentary and all of his research and everything, that's.

The name of it.

Is it the A N D? The A N D? Yes. I mean if you haven't listened to the episode, please do. It's such a pleasure to have him on our show.

So. So if we are needing to heal or understand my experience of my past, say from abandonment and I find myself being concerned about chronically feeling left out, being left behind. I hate being alone. I threaten people to leave in hopes of getting their partners to value them, say no, no, no, I'd never leave you. I attract unavailable partners. Ironically, if I struggle with feelings of guilt, I feel sorry, I feel bad. I avoid asking for things. I use guilt to manipulate others, I'm afraid to set boundaries. I attract partners who bring up my guilt. If I was feeling neglected as a person growing up and I struggle to let things go, I have low self worth, I have difficulty saying no. I repress my emotions and I'm afraid to be vulnerable. So I really fall in love with people who neglect me.

I can See some listeners now or send some listeners like come on next. Stacy, that's you're kind of being woo woo here. So we attract this into our life.

I mean we select it and it doesn't present like that always on the front side. But we find once we get in or past, shall we say, the honeymoon phase. I'm starting to feel like this now. What's an interesting thought and I just, I'm going to throw this out there for you to ponder what begets what? Do I change in the relationship because of the fears and insecurities that I have on my movie? Or does my partner actually change and respond to the way I treat them? Or do they really treat me according to what their fears and insecurities are on their movies? Remember, my movie is coming from a place where I become afraid, especially after we co create a life. So if I have a fear of being guilty, if I have a fear of being left or unliked or left out, if I have a trust issue, I don't trust myself, let alone others. And so I always feel insecure and everything that seemed odd or weird or unsettled causes me to go to that same place. Is it the way I'm showing up and what I'm playing out of my movie? Or is it what they're showing up and doing? Or are they responding to me in the way that I'm showing up? It can become very interesting. So what. Because what.

And after all these years and years of working, say with our individual clients, what, what would you say shows up most frequently? Or is it a blend of all of those?

I would say how I show up very much dictates what my reaction of my partner I'm co creating with is and vice versa. So you can start to see where I call it pinging. We're pinging off of each other. I respond because of what you do and you do because of what I do. It's a co creation. So the way I show up and the way I respond and what's playing out of my movie is going to greatly impact you.

Well, to me. So that's just a great confirmation of why we're so passionate about the only job and the best job for all of us to do is to show up as the best version of ourself in our relationship.

Well, and I think it also shows that when we are not intentional about how we're showing up or we're not intentional about how we're acting or what our behavior is like, that's how we get to These places where we're just pinging off each other because we don't know what the heck we're doing, and we're just kind of spinning around like a top with no direction. And that's why we get into these places where we're like, how did we end up here?

Again, ultimately, it is me reacting instead of responding. Which takes me to now that we have an idea of what the movie is and how it can play havoc in our relationships. Like, it is my movie narrative that creates the chaos and the conflict in my life. And the more you don't want to hear it, the more I feel negated or the more impassioned I become about shramming it down your throat. It is the holy grail of all truth to me, and it is to you, too. And we all, as human beings, feel like my narrative, my movie. The experiences that I've had, the truth that I have, well, it's the truth. You just need to figure out how to come to my side without realizing, like, we shared about time. Actually, we both have a contribution into the relationship, and no one perspective is more valuable or inferior to another. That's a tricky one that we don't spend enough time talking about. What compromises that ability to share it? In the beginning, it was really easy, because when I share my movie with you and you share your movie with me, it creates threads of connection the likes of which cause us to feel like we can do anything. And then what gets compromised is the emotional safety to share it. All of a sudden, I feel like it's dismissed, it's negated, it's criticized, it's judged. There's no space for it. And so I carry it on my own. And what has happened there is my emotional safety to share it with you. Share me with you. What I'm making up is true with you has been breached. Most of us have a human basic fear of rejection or being viewed as incompetent or feeling humiliated with regard to my vulnerabilities. And when those fears flash and I have an experience of it in my narrative, I no longer feel emotionally safe. And so I will stop sharing. Which then, basically, what am I trying to say? What happens is it starts to diminish the connection that we once had. It starts to atrophy.

So what? Give us a very simple definition of emotional safety or what? What does that feel like? What does that sound like?

Emotional safety just feels like I'm free to express to you who I am and what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling.

So would that be synonymous with how we use permission?

Well, permission is what creates safety. Like the permission in the beginning that we felt to be me, to speak up, to say what I needed to say, to share with you all of the things, past, present, and future, that I have experienced, good or bad, my messes, my hopes, my dreams, the things I love, the things I'm fearful of. Those were all permiss. I gave myself permission to share them, and you gave me permission to share them. And then somewhere along the way, it didn't become permissible at all either because I'm making it up, I'm not safe to do so, or you're criticizing and judging it, or you don't know how to translate some of the difficulty that you're feeling into words that you can share. And what ends up happening is this emotional safety becomes compromised. And once that happens, we as human beings will not share. Absolutely not. I'll find excuses not to. I'll find excuses and I'll tell lies to not share with you because I don't want to risk being rejected, humiliated, judged, not included. So I will avoid all that. I also can be very afraid of your reaction, which is probably because you're feeling judged, humiliated, not included, and feeling incompetent. And so once the safety is going and it happens super fast. If my favorite analogy I've used in the podcast before, which is us making the effort and putting in the energy of, like blowing up a latex balloon, doing it takes a lot of effort and time and energy, just like laying the foundation of our initial relationship in the first place. But the minute that you criticize me, judge me, dismiss me, not include me, cause me to feel dismissed, that is just like letting go of that latex balloon. And in a nanosecond, the safety that we've poured into this, you know, effort by effort by effort, has now just been let out in a second, just.

As all the air goes out of.

The balloon, like, instantly, instantly. And we're back to not realizing we don't feel emotionally safe anymore. And that's truly becomes the driver of why I won't share with you what I'm really thinking or feeling or what it is I truly want or what it is that really hurts.

So would you say rather than starting at. Basically at beginning to with a balloon with no air in it, you're actually. You even regress past that, you're not starting at zero, you're starting even behind the. The line, so to speak, because it. It puts us further back.

It's why you're not talking.

It just builds on that breach, if you will.

Yes. So I can make it up that in my movie I can't tell the truth because I'm afraid of your reaction, or I can't tell the truth because I don't want to be judged and criticized from my perspective, or I lie and pretend I'm good to protect myself or you, or both. These are reasons and examples that highlight the emotional safety is gone. We don't realize how to build emotional safety. We don't know how to assess for the emotional safety to share. And very often when couples come to see me, of course we have to understand our movie because what we're making up is true, is impacting us. And until I understand the movie framework, there's no way I can even begin to wrap my head around emotional safety. What do you mean it's not safe? I'm still here, aren't I? I mean, I tell you I love you all the time, don't I? Right? I'm still here. And that is a beautiful demonstration that I love and that I care about you. Even though I'm in a tremendous amount of emotional pain, that's really what they're saying. I'm still here in spite of being in a tremendous amount of emotional pain myself. That's love. That's the only reason why I'm here.

Or said another way, I'm still here, but I really don't want to be here.

I'm struggling to be here. I don't know long I can hang out here, right, and not get my emotional cup filled. And it all has to do with the foundation of feeling emotionally safe. Our reactions to this place, especially when we start to panic, are going to be something I've touched on earlier in the podcast episode. I'm either going to handle this same emotion. Just want to point that out. Same experience, same emotion. I'm panicking. We're not talking. I'm feeling disconnected. I've attempted and it's been fraught with either a recycling of conflict and fighting, or nobody's talking and we're just going about pretending like everything is fine. That highlights how we handle this very challenging emotion. I'm either going to shut down and try and figure out more ways to avoid the conversation overall, because truth is, I don't even know how to have them or I'm going to rip your face off. I'm coming for you. I'm going to ram this down your throat. Both are coming from the same place, but in this Experience. Think about what happens and how. Start to gather our evidence in our movies. If I'm trying to have a conversation with you, and let's say I'm the person who's coming for you, I've done the research. I know what to label you as. I know and diagnose the problem. It's just you that needs to start showing up and having these conversations with me. I'm going to think it's you and you are the problem and you just need to get it together. There's some truth to that. But what I may not see as how I might be reacting in such a way that prevents my partner from feeling safe from even stepping into the conversation in the first place, because all I'm experiencing on the other side of the equation is you judging me, criticizing me, belittling me for not doing it your way. Now, let me mind you, shutting down and collapsing is not wrong or right or inferior or superior. Superior to somebody who might be willing and ready to address the problem. It's a different way of coping with the same emotional experience. In my family, if you showed up like that, you were slayed. You know what? I got really good at going along with being quiet, flying under the radar. Like, it served me really well until this moment. And my movie says I'm not coming out of this place until I feel safe. The person who's trying to, like, get their attention, make them talk, tell them to talk. Just tell me how you feel. They don't understand that what they're doing in that moment is sacrificing the emotional safety that is desperately needed for the other person to even begin to step into that space. Let's talk about the opposite side of that. The person who's running away. They know it's not working. They know that they need to shock or share, have no idea how, and have no skill or experience there. They can see some value and they really respect and honor the fact that you can just go there. Their partner who's saying, I feel like this, I do it like this. I've figured it out. Come on, tell me how you feel. This is how I feel, truly. They admire that in you and they don't see that the reason why you are doing that is because you are panicking and feel unsafe. You're coming in hot, which is why you're showing up and not finding the safe place for us to have a conversation, which causes them to collapse. They admire that about you. They just have no idea how to get you to, like, take a chill Pill, Take a breath and recognize that the best thing you could give me is I believe in your ability to share. Let me know when you're ready and then I can find a safe place to meet you at the table where both of us feel safe at the same moment. So you're modeling how to do it in your ability to share your feelings, your thoughts, your emotions. Pull it out, dig it out, nowhere to go, but I don't feel safe in your approach. Both of us are going to continue to. Can you see where that becomes a race to the bottom? Both of us are going to continuing these narratives, thinking we've got it all figured out without realizing the key ingredient is that none of us feel safe. And both of us are coping or reacting to the emotional way in which we cope with having our emotional backs pressed against the wall. Not one is right or wrong, superior or inferior to the other, but what is being sacrificed is the emotional safety. We need to come back to that sweet spot in the beginning where we both felt safe enough to show up. That's the beauty of emotional safety and that's where we need to begin. And babe, you said it best when you said it's permission. It is permission for me to feel the way I feel and think the way I think and have the narrative that I do and permission for you to do the same.

You've always said that that's unconditional love.

Permission truly at the heart of it all. That is the epitome of unconditional love, where I realize, oh, it's not about my narrative or your narrative. It's about the pursuit and the single goal we have of communication, which is understand, perfect.

Oh, I'm glad I got that one right. Brooke, we would have been in a lot of trouble.

I think we should have said this at the beginning of the episode. But what is the main point of communication?

Understand the pursuit of understanding. What are we. What are we striving to understand? My narrative and what I'm making up as true. And me myself, that that encompasses self awareness. When I have to do that exploration piece, which is work that only I can do, I develop confidence and self esteem inside of myself. This is what is meant when I say you just gotta love yourself to be in relationship. What I'm really saying is you gotta know yourself, the way you think, the way you feel and to the degree that you can ask for and understand the things that you need to experience to remedy and navigate and heal from the many triggers and experiences that you have from your past. I have to have an understanding and a working acumen of my movie, of whatever I think, where I go, what I make up is true. That is the thing I'm going to bring to the table of a relationship to share with you. It is me as I know it and see it in this moment. And it's constantly rolling over and changing.

Well, and then again, and then that interplay, that. That exchange between you and your special someone. Because we don't know. Like Stacy says, we don't have the intel. So the true gift of communication is to be invited into that understanding of what our partner is navigating and all that's going on inside of him or her, that we have no freaking ide. What's going on. We're just guessing at best. So how about if we just asked in a way that worked? We didn't condemn and blame and shame and leverage. We asked to be invited in. Hey, what's going on for you? Remember, genuine curiosity slows emotion down. So if we can genuinely ask to be invited in to our special someone's movie, now we got something.

So when I share a little piece of my movie with you, I understand myself better. It creates a. A pop of validation, self respect, self understanding. If we're paying attention, there's a. Literally a biological pop that goes, good job. You know yourself. That is your favorite food. That is what you want. That is what's hurting. That is what you need. Finally, I said it. I gave myself permission to say it and share it.

Well, I mean, I've gotten a glimpse into someone. The true intimacy is into the all of you. I see.

And then I have to suspend what I think the other person should be doing or saying or showing up or believing or knowing is true. And I have to truly let them share that with me. They have the intel. I don't. And that's often where communication and the safety that we need to share gets thwarted in a nanosecond. I'm speaking for you. I think I know better than you. I think I've got you all figured out. So says my movie. And then I talk over you. I interrupt you. I correct you, I negate you. We don't realize that. Yes, I'm minimizing you. I'm belittling you. I don't want to hear you because I've got it all figured out. So says me, based on what? The experiences that your partner are experiencing you have no idea about unless they share it with you. And so when I share me with you, that's. I can understand myself better when I allow me to set my agenda aside and listen to you. That is the one and only sweet spot I am given to understand you from a place that I may not have been given access to before and how quickly and reticent we are to shut that down because of my own narrative or my own lack of emotional safety. And so we miss it and it continues to elude us. We suck all the emotional safety out of the air and now we're back to fighting and deciding who's right and wrong in the mix instead of realizing what just happened. I negated you because I thought I knew you better than you did. Well, let me ask you, do you know yourself? Do you have that one figured out? Are you just making up a bunch of things in your narrative about your partner, which is probably the case. And so you start to understand how emotional safety gets sacrificed because of the movies that we are making up that are true. Now as we wrap up this, I'm going to give you some places to begin. You start to see why communication is such a challenge now, I hope, and why it is. We can't just start with some glamorous, sexy, well polished, made of gold.

Text these 10 things and you'll be good for the rest of your life.

So much going on behind the scenes that are way more important than the words that you are using. So this is why we start this series talking about the important stuff. The building of a foundation of emotional safety and understanding the movie. There are essential prerequisites for effective communication. This will require us to embark on an emotional weightlifting journey. I call it emotional weightlifting because in order to regulate our emotions during the words that we say and the movies and narratives and experiences that we are all coming from, it will require you to drop and do a push up, to suspend your reaction so that you can respond. This is what is necessary that often thwarts our communication and why it is we spend so much time in cycles of conflict and fighting, getting absolutely nowhere over time. Many of us believe that once a difficult topic gets put on the table because we don't feel emotionally safe, that we have to have the conversation. Now there's a one and done concept that happens here. And what I want you to remember and think about as we move through this series is to think instead as conversations, as rounds of a workout. Every round of communication is going to help us understand a little bit about more, a little more about myself, a little bit more about you, and a little bit more about the problem that we face.

I can think I know not think. We've had rounds and rounds and rounds around various oh hot topics. If you would like to say, and.

If it takes 50 rounds, take 50.

More than 50.

If it takes a thousand rounds, take the thousand. But please do your best to not compromise the emotional safety. Again, how do I compromise the emotional safety? Belittling, criticizing, minimizing, attacking, dismissing, thinking I know better than my partner, not allowing the words to be spoken, not being able to regulate myself so that I can say, help me understand where you're coming from. Here's where I'm coming from. This is what's playing out in my movie. What's playing out in your movie.

So those would be the what the suggested responses and shares versus what typically happens.

We need to slow down. And the more difficult it is, the slower we need to go, the more intentional we need to become. So I leave you with this skill because it is a great place to begin when you find yourself spinning up. Let's say you are the person who gets into a place of control when you spin up and your emotional back gets pressed against the wall and you're coming at somebody with answers and knowing and quizzes and information that you have searched up on the Internet. I want you to think about them. It would behoove you to, yes, share what you've learned, but also to understand, help me understand what is happening for you, that even though you may have the answers that make sense to you, you may not have the answers that make sense to everybody. And so when you find yourself in the conversation spinning up, I simply want you to say, I'm spinning up. I want you to understand that if you spin up so far or so much that you lose your shit, you're sacrificing the emotional safety in the relationship. There is no benefit there. So as I spin up sooner rather than later, I invite you to say, I'm spinning up. And what I need to do is pause this conversation for now and we'll come back to it again tomorrow and you declare a time. Even in 30 minutes, I need to sit up, sit and think about this for 30 minutes, about where I'm coming from, what I want to communicate, what's important that you understand from my perspective. And I'll see you in 30 minutes or tomorrow morning over coffee or tomorrow after work, or if I'm a person who shuts down at the sight or smell of conflict, I might start shutting down and then I stop listening and then I stop engaging and then I dismiss myself physically altogether. I'm out. Don't even I no, I'm not doing this with you right now. When you start to feel yourself shut down and and just recognize when you leave the conversation and you dismiss it again. You've just emotionally sacrificed the safety that's in the relationship. So I don't want to do that. I want to help you see that you need to avoid doing that so you too can say, I'm shutting down. I'm not listening anymore. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm going to go and spend some time and take a pause here and I'll come back and see you in 30 minutes tomorrow morning off of coffee or tomorrow night after work. Then we'll pick it up again and do another round. We have as much time as we need. We need to approach it intentionally and with so much thought and care because everybody is hurting. Everybody is feeling compromised and belittled and criticized and misunderstood and misheard. Regardless of how I'm showing up on the front side, we're never going to make any progress with the communication if we don't understand this. So self awareness is the first step. Your ability to notice when you're spinning up or you're shutting down. No problem if you are. It's human of us. All you need to do is declare it and push the brake pedal and say we'll come back to this long before we lose our shit or try and attempt to get the hell out of Dodge. Now we can start building emotional safety to improve our communication and our sharing. And until those things happen, we really can't go anywhere. But when we get good at this, the really good news is you're going to be able to go anywhere because you know what to do when it starts to slide sideways. That's the good as we wrap up this conversation today, my conclusion that I want to leave with you is we must address the underlying issues of emotional safety and understanding our movies before we can progress with communication techniques. We need to practice, practice, practice what I have shared with you today and I promise that next week we'll be back to take the next step into our communication journey. It will be a sexy framework that we here in the Love Shack lovingly refer to as the let's Talk no Fail formula. It helps us say what we need to say in a format that we can be heard that takes into account everything that we've talked about here today. It truly is your next step on the journey and we look forward to sharing it with you. And again, I want to mention we are excited to share with you that this series is leading up to the release of our new book, the Communication Cure for Couples A Guided Workbook. We have spent literally a decade putting these frameworks together for you in a format that will help you improve your communication without therapy, one on one sessions or having to do anything special except follow along in the workbook and practice. The workbook has been designed to complement the insights and strategies that we're discussing in our series here so you can use them in conjunction with each other which will provide you and your partner with some practical exercises to enhance your communication and relationship. To get your copy, you can be the first to get them hot off the press. If you go to staceybartley.com communication, give us your name and email address and we will notify you as soon as it's ready to ship. I also want to say we invite you to share your stories of the questions that you may have coming up around your experiences around communication and emotional safety in your relationship. You can connect with us on our social media channels or via email. Your insights could help shape our discussion and provide real world examples for our community and stay connected with us. Don't miss out on the rest of the series as we launch our book. You can subscribe to Love Shack Live and you can follow us on all of our social platforms for updates, bonus content yes, there will be some of that and more ways to improve the communication in your relationship today. Let's take a moment and do a little bit of Follow the fun. Of course we have to continue the conversation that we started with today. It's such an important one. I call this stepping into self awareness. That's the fun part. And I want you to think about and get in touch with the movie narrative that we talked about in our podcast episode today. Because without this we will react instead of respond when it comes to communication and navigating our way through the inevitable ups and downs of life. So I want to ask you to explore this. What are you making up about yourself right now? What are you making up about your partner? And what are you making up about about your relationship? And to give you a few examples, I'm going to put Tom on the spot here. However, let's talk about what we're making up in our relationship right now on our movies.

I would say it's getting better with age, just like good wine. How about that? For real? I'm always amazed at how we can continue to just dive deeper and deeper now. Yes, we do share a business and a body of work which I'm blessed and Grateful for my sense and experience is we have tremendous permission and emotional safety. It allows us to just continue to.

Go deeper and deeper. I noticed that what plays out in my movie right now is our podcast listeners probably don't know this, but we have a beautiful baby boy, a grandson, living with us. We call him our baby boy. And we thought we were done raising kids. And yet. Yet there's one more saying. Hey, what about me and my movie? I'm playing a narrative because I've always been kind of a primary caregiver when it comes to taking care of the children and taking care of the household and those traditional roles that often women play. And, babe, you've done such a great job because I'm the face of her business, and I pretty much wrapped up in the work. I've been amazed at how well you've stepped in and played the role of keeping the household going and supporting Marian and me. And I just want you to know how much it means to me. And I sometimes wonder in my movie, is this okay? Is this. Do I need to feel guilty about this?

And what do I always remind you?

Yes, we're a team, babe. We got this. We're a team. And yes, we are. And I love that you get to remind me of that. And so those are a couple of narratives happening in our lives that we can share with you. And we would love to hear what your narratives are as you do this exercise during Follow the fun. Our song today is a song that I've loved for a really long time, and it's not even the one that I was gonna talk about. It's one that I listened to when I had canned the episode. And we felt really good to go in the outline, but Mr. Probes has a song called I'm Slowly Drifting. I think the name of the song is Waves. Yeah, it's probably, I don't know, a decade old maybe. But it so highlights what happens to us as communication starts to wane in our relationships. I feel like I've got my head above the water and my feet can't touch the ground, and I'm just kind of bobbing out there in the world. And with each interaction, I feel like I'm drifting further and further and further away. And I can't see you in the distance. I don't know where you are. I don't know what's going to happen here. I just know I'm kind of bobbing out in the ocean with no repose in sight. And so you can check out this song along with all of our others on the Spotify playlist Love Shack Live. Or you can go to our website@stacybartly.com and we have all the songs listed there for you.

That's Love Shack Live Playlist.

All right, thank you so much for spending some of your time here. I hope that you got lots of takeaways from our conversation today and you can start to see and understand why as we don't start communication out with the words to say that there's so much more we need to be talking about that lays the foundation to good communication and so much of it has little to do with the words that we say. I hope you have a wonderful week and please let us know how your Follow the fun goes. I couldn't encourage you more to practice, practice, practice what we've talked about today with pushing the brake pedal and not allowing the emotional sacrifice of safety to continue in your relationship. That's going to start to set the stage for places that we can go and create incredible understanding and new experiences in your relationship today. All right, Bye bye for now.

All right, it's time to leave the Love Shack, but before we part ways, we want you to know our door is always open and we'll leave the porch light on. Ready to welcome you back whenever you need a dose of relationship wisdom. For more resources and tools, visit us atlove shack live.com to dive deeper into the topics we've explored and find additional support for your relationship journey. Stay connected by subscribing to our podcast. Thank you for being part of our Love Shack Live community.

Sam.