#184: Relationship on the Rocks? Why You Need Skills, Not Couples Counseling

Have you ever felt like you and your partner are drifting apart, desperate for help but hesitant to try again because past attempts left you feeling even more disconnected? You might be thinking, gosh, we gotta get some help, but what if this makes things worse? Or I can't bear another session where it feels like we're not making any progress. If you're struggling to bridge the emotional gap and fear of another failed attempt, I want you to know you're not alone. Welcome to Love Shack Live, the podcast for those at a relationship crossroads. I'm your host, Stacey Bartley, joined by my co host and lover, Tom and her daughter Brooke. Together we are here to guide you through these tough times, providing you tools and insights to help you reconnect in a positive way. Today we're addressing a crucial question. How can I trust you? Stacy Bartley, Tom Bartley, Brooke Bartley, with my heart and relationship. And how are you different from traditional counseling and therapies? Beautiful souls like you, Listener, have fears and frustrations around getting the help and support that you need. And we get it. You might worry it will feel like past therapy sessions or blame will be assigned to you or your partner because you're labeled as the bad person in the scenario. After all, you're the one that's made the messes. I promise you right now, this would never happen. In the work that we do, our approach is about mutual growth and understanding. We we focus on teaching principles and skills, all designed to help you create the relationship that you desire as we move on from past grievances. Curious to learn more. Well, stay tuned as we dive into the unique benefits of relationship mentoring and how it can transform your connection and support you in becoming better at this thing called love. Hey, thank you for coming. Welcome to the love Shack. Really what we're doing here today is supporting you and knocking down your fears around getting the help and support that you need. Did you know that the average couple waits more than six years of living in a place, in a space where they know things are not going well, they're in a spiral of breakdown, and yet continue to wait to get the help and support that they need. Could you imagine doing this physically? Could you imagine knowing that you have an infection or a chronic illness? You know, you suspect it, you're dealing with it, it's starting to encumber you every single day. And yet you wait and you put it off for six years. Would you anticipate a good outcome?

Would you anticipate probably die? You'd probably be dead.

I mean, and so, so it is with our emotional sense of well being, which is what the relationship journey is. It is our emotional sense of well being that then we compromise for six years. And very often when our hand gets raised, it's because we're in crisis mode, like our life is burning to the ground. And when we stop to think about it, we've known it has been on fire for years, for many years. So recently we have been asked questions about what it is we do as a team. That differs from traditional counseling and therapies, by the way, I just want to say this as a disclaimer. There is a place for each type and style of emotional support. So today's episode is not about shredding other modalities in the conversation with the goal of highlighting my own. Quite the contrary. I hope, along with you, value and honor all practitioners who contribute to their patients and clients, for there is much to be accomplished here and it will require the support of all of humanity. I simply want you as our listener to have a better understanding of how we serve so you can make better choices for yourself and your families.

I want to add on to that distinction that Mom Too just made and say that many of our clients work with traditional therapists and counselors at the same time as working with us. It's a great relationship between the two, and Mom Too sometimes even talks to those practitioners as well so that we can work together as a team to support our clients. But we provide different things and that's what this episode is all about.

And like Brooke just said, I'll stack on that. We're all about collaboration and have it be very complimentary. We don't profess to walk on water. Again. The sole reason for this specific episode because we've having some questions come up and some of that is our own mistakes on ours. We haven't been clear enough as to how we can truly serve and absolutely facilitate transformation in your relationship.

Let's begin by touching on common complaints. We hear about traditional counseling from our very own clients who work with us. The first thing is a focus on talking about feelings and the past that seems to take us where we don't want to go. And I want you to know that will be the case. Because when we go back to the past, we live there and what I'm interested in and the work that we do. Sometimes that's very necessary, let me just say that. But that's not the work we do. Yes, we address the past when it comes up, but we're more interested in starting where you are and giving you the principles and skills that you need in order to move forward. And then if some of those things start to bubble up from the past that prevent you from doing those things, we'll address them then and there, but we don't start there. This isn't a place where you would come and you would start to unpack all of my past childhood trauma and wounds. That's not what we do here. And it's very important that you understand that. I was just in a session recently where we were trying to stack and practice and implement some skills, and one of the partners in the couple said, well, you're. You're having a tough time with this because you haven't unpacked and dealt with your grief and your childhood trauma. And it was like, no, no, that is a. That is not what's happening here. This is a place where I'm trying to learn something new and it's messy and it creates some inner conflict within me because it's a new skill. That's it. I'm trying to practice and implement the principle. That's it. So we have such a program in our minds that we have to go back and do that before we can make any forward progression. And I just want you to know that's not true. And in fact, if we sometimes do attack the past first, then it prevents us from losing all of our inspiration and momentum. And so we lose our ability because we run out of emotional gas to move forward. It would behoove us. And I find tremendous success in the recognition of if we can make small steps forward that refuelist as we become more safe and as we become more skilled and principled in our understanding, then we can go back and have some of those difficult dialogues that we probably need to uncover, but not right now, because we got no damn skills to do it. So it's not going to go well. As I say to my clients when they start to fight on my couch, look, you don't need to pay me to do this. You can go home and do that for free. Do you want to roll up your sleeves and learn some principles and skills that are going to actually help you with this? That's why you're here. Let's get busy doing that. So that is a huge first distinction that I want to point out. The next complaint that I hear is instead of feeling better after a session, they often feel worse because of all the shit from the past that was brought up in the session, and they walk out feeling worse and sometimes fighting, and they weren't when they walked in. Okay, well, that, in my opinion, yes, there's going to be difficult sessions and things that we are conflicted with, but we want to feel like the time I've just spent is taking me somewhere again, the focus on forward momentum, even if it's a small step forward and that what we're doing makes sense, it's taking me somewhere so that you don't end a session and walk out going, well, God, that was a shit show, you know. Do you think that you're going to continue to work on this if that's the case? Do you think that you're going to want to show up next week if that's the case? Of course you're not. Nobody would. Where's the inspiration and where is the dream and hope that this is taking me where I ultimately want to go? It's not existing in that moment. And that's a huge piece of breakdown when it comes to relationships.

Yeah. I think that, you know, it is a common misconception that we need to go down the list of all the egregious things that our partner has done or that we have done in order for our partner to feel better so that we can, you know, clear that off and make it go away. But what we don't realize is that all that does is make us feel bad. It makes us feel bad for talking about our problems, and it makes our partner feel bad if we're telling them that they're a piece of shit. And what. When you really think about it, what comes from that? Not a lot. Just basically feeling bad. What really moves the needle? I know I'm jumping ahead, but I just want to put a little seed in your brain right now, is learning new skills and then implementing them into your relationship so that you can make changes. But for some reason, we have it in our minds that unless we unpack these things so deeply and, you know, unroll every single corner and make sure we say all the nasty things that was said 10 years ago in a room with another person, then we can't move on from it. And I don't know why we think that. But if you really. If we speak about it in the plain words that we're speaking about it now, you can see maybe that isn't the best way to deal with these.

Things when often it isn't, because it leads to. The next thing that comes up a lot is I don't get help because I feel like it's going to be an experience of being attacked and blamed with A referee, I. E. A counselor, a therapist in the room. And then, you know, everybody is going to take sides. Like the referee is going to take sides and decides who's the fuck up in the situation. Excuse my French, but that's kind of the perception out there. Who screwed the pooch on this one? Who's to blame, who needs to be spanked and punished? And. And that has a very elusive quality to it. Like somehow, if we get to the bottom of what's happened in our challenges and our struggles and our relationships, that if we can just find who was to blame and who has responsibility in this and it's going to set us free and take us to the promised land. And I just need you to understand and know it never does and it never will. It's not principled at all. It's an illusion that we have in our minds. And so we keep digging and you start to see that we spend years of our relationship space in that hole of digging to find out who's the problem now and who's the problem now. And let me just help you cut to the chase. You both are responsible for where you are. No. No if, ands or buts about it. Even if somebody is deemed to be labeled the more egregious one, we all have a role that we play in this relationship experience we call a co creation. Remember, it's a little bit of me and it's a little bit of you. And it's the cause and effect and the interesting dynamics between the two of you that are creating the experiences that are now being thrown off. And unless both of us take a good, hard look at my place and space in this, my own behavior, and learn new skills and behavior to take us on a different direction, we're going to stay right where we are. Especially if we're looking to that place of like, whose fault is it? Who did what? Who did a more egregious thing, you know, as we're like comparing notes and just say, you know what? Everybody's making messes. And guess what? I got a news flash for you. Everybody's going to continue to make messes. Like, there's no point in the human journey where we're going to stop making messes. And so this is something that we've got to get good with instead of striving to be this perfect human being getting it right. And as I judge myself for my own lack of perfection, it turns me into a monster. Because now I'm judging the shit out of my partner, too. I have destroyed A marriage over this. Like I was the perfection queen who literally choked the life not out of my. Not only out of myself, but out of my children and out of my partner and out of my marriage and my desperate pursuit to make it perfect. It does not work. Let's move on to the next one. I think that was probably a good soapbox rant. You can tell we're not passionate about this at all. Another complaint we have is I pay someone to tell me what to do and they make all my life decisions, which creates dependency. And that's another thing that we're not interested over here in. I want to teach you how to fish. I don't want you coming to me for fish. And there's a big difference there. I. I don't want you reliant upon me to make the best choices for you in your life and your situation and circumstances. Because I'm going to tell you right now, there's nobody who knows your life and situation better than you. Not me, not anybody else that thinks they might know. But I will promise you this. We will help you make those decisions for yourself that are rooted in your own knowing, in your own life experiences and circumstances. And guess what? You're going to feel really good about them without all the doubt because you're the one that's making them. And that has to be principled there. My job, our job as a team is to help you find and uncover those answers within you based on principles and skills, not create dependency on us to make those choices and decisions for you. And sometimes, I'm going to be honest, our clients get a little frustrated. Come on, come on, come on. Just tell me what to do. No, I will not. But here's some things, if I were you, that I would focus you on and I would contemplate and I would uncover and I would explore. Come back to me with your answers and then we'll take another step. Then the work is being done where it needs to be done. If we think about this in the physical sense, I don't want to take you to a workout and have you watch me do all of my deadlifts and, you know, ring rows and push ups and sit ups and run five miles and go there. Don't you feel better? You're getting so good at this. Well, that's what we do. If you don't uncover what you need to know emotionally inside of you.

Yeah, I would say that when you use that analogy, what comes to mind for me is our process is very participatory. This is not, and again, not banging on, but the status quo out there for many, many years, you know, and it's effective, but it's not really participatory. There's some sharing and then there's a lot of input from the person that is the expert. But it's not a participatory process. And we would, with great love and respect, argue that love is an incredible participatory process. And it's dynamic and ever changing. It's the most dynamic process we're ever going to step into. So how could it not be that?

When you think, well, and it requires a lot of mentoring, Mom 2's one on one sessions, she'll teach you all of these things. But then you need coaching and mentoring outside of that session to be able to know, you know, what do I do if I messed up, what do I do? We got into this huge fight. What do I do now? In typical therapists, patient relationships, there's none of that. You can't reach out to your therapist because they're too busy or, you know, that's just not how their practice works with those questions between sessions. And that is what we have created our platform to address because we want you to be able to ask those questions because we know how stressful that is. If it's like, oh My God, it's 9 o' clock at night, my session with my counselors, and until two weeks from now, we just had this huge fight. What do I do? In that traditional model, there's no answer in those situations. So we have set up our body of work to be kind of the antidote to that. We don't want you to ever feel like that. If you work with us, we want you to know that you can always ask a question or reach out when you need help or you need a little bit more information about how to implement these skills. So I think that's really important to point out too, you know, I do too.

I mean, and here's the thing. We want you to practice. And when you're learning something new, you're gonna mess it up every time. Just get real. You're. It's gonna get messy before we master something. And so it's just responsible of us to give you a place to practice as well as a lifeline to reach back for when you go, okay, I'm practicing and, and, and I made a mess and now I don't know what to do. I go yucky. Because you're practicing.

Well, that's where real mentoring happens. Meaning it has to be in real time or certainly close to real time, or it's never going to be captured in the implementation we took a sidestep or where we faltered or where we didn't implement like we could have. That's where the learning happens. If it's not in real time or close to that, it's going to be, well, you know.

Or you spend your whole next session wasting your time talking about all the things you messed up in the past week. That's not an effective use of your time and money. You want to be able to have those conversations, like dad said, as they come up, so that you can get the skills and the tools and maybe the. A little bit of advice you need to move the needle. Maybe you're coming in too hot. When you are implementing these new skills in your relationship, it's usually not in a time where your relationship is really happy. You know what I'm saying? You're coming in to get help. And so the stakes are higher because there's obstacles that you and your partner are trying to overcome in doing this work together. So it's important that you can also be reassured that this is normal to stumble, that these are not really abnormal things that are happening between you and your partner. It's human, it's natural, it's normal. That can make the temperature be able to go down so quickly when you can just have a little bit of reassurance that nothing is terribly wrong. Because we all know that when we are struggling in our relationships and then we have something bad happen, and then we lay in bed at night till three in the morning thinking of all the terrible things that this means about me, that's not going to get you anywhere. But that's what we do as humans. So we don't want you to have to feel like that. That's our goal. So that you can come to us instead and say, hey, this happened. And we can say, oh, that's so normal. We're so proud of you for trying. Just maybe tweak it a little bit the next time.

Here's what we would suggest you do better. Or maybe you knocked it out of the park and you're not responsible for the response on the other side. You're good, right? It's good to know those kinds of things. Yeah.

I would just add, you know, I mean, this reminds me, I've been a real estate appraiser for many, many years. My point here is, though, as I mentored with my good friend and appraiser mentor to this day for five Years. And you know how we did that? I literally sat next to him in front of his computer and he would, we would bring up one of the appraisal reports that I had completed and we would literally go through it line by line by line and he would say, Tom, okay, here's what I would suggest. That's good. But here's. And then just a slight tweak. So real time application. And I did this thousands of times with him. So I mean. And yes. Is that hackable?

No.

It takes a lot to pour into people and to mentor people, but there is nothing. That's why I have the degree of skill I have because I spent years and years and thousands of hours with him doing that.

And newsflash on that one. It's not going to take you five.

Years, but we would encourage you to take a long view and you're always getting better.

Yes, yes. But it's not going to take you five years. Not anywhere close, thank goodness. Number two, the point is mentorship is a pouring into and so many practices are not going to do that because it requires a lot of time and effort and we are passionate about that and we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that ourselves or a member of our team is there to mentor you along the way. Because we know that that's the difference maker to making progress versus not making progress. And so it's an important critical component of the things that we offer. When you come in and participate as part of our communities, it's a passionate place. Yes. We have self serve places too that you can jump into. If by chance you want to proceed that way, that's fine. But if you're ready for some mentorship along the way, then we want to make sure that you have that.

Well, and I would say, I mean there's three of us. That's why as a family we're able to pour into, be more. Because quite frankly, we. There's three of us.

Yeah.

Versus a lot of your people in the traditional, more traditional place of this just then just one. My goodness. I mean people say all the time to Stacy, how do you do everything you do? And she says, I don't even know. But it's not me.

I have a lot of help. So. But that's where.

Yeah, I mean, because pouring into people, that, that takes time and that's something. And I will just re. Reiterate that that's something that we as a family are absolutely passionate about.

Well, that's where the rubber meets the road because let's be real if you are struggling in your relationship, you've read the articles, you've read the books, you have all the skills in your head that you probably need to know to fix this relationship. The problem is you're not implementing them. So that is why we mentor. It's just like a personal trainer. You go and you learn. You can see you're not doing a movement right. You actually get out of bed and go to the appointment because you know that person is waiting for you to train you. Just like a lot of our BLC members come to the call on Monday because they know where they're waiting for them. They probably wouldn't watch a video on Mondays if we weren't there. Live ready to teach and mentor them. You know, that is the difference because you can learn all the skills in the world. You can learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Read 20 books, read hundreds of articles, spend hundreds of hours watching videos of people talking about relationships. But are you going to do those skills in your life? Because that is what's going to change it. We often think that by doing all of that learning, we've done something. Nothing has actually been done until you start using and practicing and implementing those skills into your life and relationship. That's the real difference maker that we want to impress upon you. Because you can go to any counselor and get, you know, help for your trauma, that's great. But to actually move the needle in your relationship, you have to change your skills and you have to use them. We can all know skills. We can all think in our head, oh, I need to do an emotional push up. But are you going to? Are you gonna actually do it? Because I have known so many things over my life about losing weight. I could write 20 books about nutrition and weight loss, but most people would say, oh, wow, Brooke probably doesn't know much about those things. No, I, I know probably more than very highly educated people because I've spent so much time learning about it and not enough time implementing it. Just now I'm on my 114th day, everybody. I'm very proud of myself, of walking 10,000 steps a day and I'm down 27 pounds. But it took me till I was 37 to finally implement all that I knew and all that I have learned. And so we know how toxic that cycle can be because you're lying to yourself by saying consuming all of this information is doing anything. It's not. You need a mentor and a guide and a teacher to be able to implement these things and help you see things that you can't see on your own, because that's just how it works.

Two, two thoughts that come up. The first one is when couples are sitting in my office and one you can tell is very knowledgeable because they've read all the books and the article and taking all the quizzes to diagnose and label their partners, that they get into the session and they want to showcase their knowledge. We can turn into these talking heads as a human being and we want everybody to know our knowledge and that I'm so smart and that I've got it all figured out. And so in the session, they'll start talking over their partner, they'll start talking for their partner, they'll start over talking myself because they're wanting to label and tell me what the answer is. And finally it's like, look, if you've got all this figured out, then obviously you don't need me. I mean, do the thing that you're just talking about. Implement this into your relationship, then you should be good to go. And if that's not happening, well, then there's still some things that we need to figure out, isn't there? Number two, our single clients that are out there in the dating pool so often I hear come back to us and say, oh man, I met this really great person and they're talking a really good game. So everybody has the head knowledge that they're chirping back about these principles and skills and how they're going to show up in relationships and what they believe to be true and how they should go. And I would never do this, and I would never do that. And then they get into the relationship and it's a shit show because they're not doing any of the things that they chirp and learned on social media and TikTok. So this is a problem for all of us. There is a difference between understanding what to do and doing it and that discount. Just because I understand all the rules of tennis doesn't make me a great tennis player. I have to go do the thing that I'm trying to become masterful at. And sometimes we forget that little itty bitty teeny tiny detail.

I love the sage statement. I don't know where it comes from. If knowledge is power, application is the.

Wisdom and mom too. I just want to say that you often tell people, and I want our listeners to hear this too, the reason why we can have all that talk and all that game when we're dating, but then when that relationship happens, we go back to our old thing that we do we call it actually that thing that you do because you don't have the skills that you need to have or you need to know to be able to implement the things. Because when your emotional back gets pressed against the wall, you get flustered and an emotion travels faster than thoughts. So you react in the way that you always react. And that's not because something is wrong with you. It's simply because you don't know the principles that govern relationships. And that's exactly what we do in our work, and that's why it works.

Well, you know, I mean, just to be fair, I mean, we're always going to default to whatever is that the behavior is until we've had enough time of implementation to new behavior.

Come on. That's.

It doesn't in any part of our life. But if you think about other places of mastery that we have, whether that's professional or in our job, or if we have an athletic pursuit, that's a beautiful thing. Everything that we're talking about here is the same way that you have new behaviors and new mastery in other places of your life. But some reason we seem to hold relationships in a different category, and we're here to say it's the exact same. I call it the currency of commitment. It's time, money, study, focus, energy, commitment to that. That's. It's. Love is not luck. Well, and not luck.

Just think about it for a second. So say, just an example, say you have one partner that always gets super triggered by maybe their partner spending. Okay. So the partner says, okay, honey, I'm not going to yell anymore if you bring in shopping bags. Well, why aren't you going to yell, though? You've uncovered nothing about why you do have that reaction when your partner brings in the shopping bags. You haven't identified any new skills that can maybe make it better. So you're magically overnight just going to become a relationship sage and be able to turn that reaction off and act perfectly. So you're just gonna maybe like suppress your emotions or become a statue, because that's not sustainable. And that doesn't happen because we're not robots. We're humans. To be able to stop that behavior, you need to learn skills and understand why you're reacting that way in the first place so that you can choose a different reaction. It's exactly like dad just said. We have to do all of those things before we can stop that behavior. But for some reason, we just think, okay, I'm gonna stop it, you know, but then the next time it Happens, you're gonna do it and now you're gonna feel like a failure because you said you were gonna stop it.

It's.

We set ourselves up for that time and time again.

Yeah, you might be successful with it for a minute. You know, day one, day two, day three, we get to day six, we'll. By 10, we're going to lose our shit. And now it's even a bigger. When it does erupt, you know, when we cross that trip wire, it's even more exacerbated because I've tried to hold it and contain it for so long. So couples that have a really difficult time addressing issues until they're boiling over, and that's when they address them, and that's the problem. They're not addressing them soon enough because they don't know how. They don't have the skills. And of course, if I don't want to fight and I don't want it to go poorly, then our option is to sit on it and withhold it and just pretend like it's okay and it'll be fine and just let it go and breathe through it and that all goes well. But at some point in time, it's going to boil over. And then when it boils over, that's when you're stepping in to have the conversation and address it. And I'm going to tell you right now, it's not going to go well. That just means you've waited too long. That means you've held on to what was not working for you for too long. And now we're going to try and deal with it in this escalated state. And it's not going to be pretty. It just gets worse from there. So that's a really great example of what Brooke is pointing to and the importance of knowing when and how to address the things that are on your mind and heart that are not working for you instead of just sitting on them. Because when we sit on them, yes, we can get down the road a little bit, but at some point in time, it's not going to go well. And then we try and address it. And by then it's a big deal that could have been handled as a very little deal. This is all about. One of the other things that we get lots of complaints about is the lack in learning and practice of behavioral skills. We've talked quite a bit about that. I just want to put it in context, though, that talking about our past does not give me those things. It doesn't give me learning. It doesn't give me principles with which to understand the relationship journey. It doesn't give me any practice in regards to changing my behavior and it doesn't help me navigate on my own at some point in time in the future. Those things are so important for success. Also, there's a lack of understanding of where are we going and how do we know when we've arrived there in traditional therapies, like we just do sessions and sessions and sessions. And I'll hear people tell me they've been in therapy for 7 years, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years, I mean, so long. And I think, okay, that's awesome. I love the commitment to yourself and your growth. But where are you going with that? Like, like at what point in time will you feel like you're ready to fly on your own? Wouldn't that be the goal? Not to be dependent on any one person, but to be able to feel like you've got acumen, working acumen of your own life? So in our work we have a beginning point, we have a check in point, and we're not going to throw you out before you're ready, but we're also going to encourage you to stay as long as you need to, but no longer. That there will be a journey for all of you that you come in and we all learn in different styles and shapes and facets and we try and cater all of those visually, auditorily, experientially, tactilely, and we're going to accommodate you to the very best of our ability. It's not that we want to be in a hurry either. We just want to know what the progression is and where we're heading and that we're actually making progress towards where it is we say we want to go without just the hoping in prayer and the wishing and gee, I hope this takes me where I want to go. You're going to know it's where you want to go. Otherwise would invite you to not even take the journey. Those are important things. Another one is the damn clock. I don't know about you, have you ever been in therapy session where you're just getting to the point where you feel like you're completely unpacked and you finally gotten to the crux of the issue. It's kind of taken you maybe 50 minutes to get there, or 45 and you spent five minutes talking about the real thing. Now you're at what I call the heart of the matter and then the damn timer goes off sometimes. Or the therapist says, well, that's it for today, let's go ahead and pick it up next time or next week. And you're like, what? Why? How do I put this back in? I'm all unpacked. How do I. How do I put this all back? I don't know what to do with it. Like, okay, I guess I'll just kind of figure it out. And. And I've had the experience of going out and just sitting in my car going, what? Just. And again, it brings up this feeling of like, well, if it was gonna leave me feeling like this, why did I come in the first place? That sucked. Now I gotta figure out how to put myself back together and in my work. I might get emotional here. I hate that. That just seems so. So not okay. If I'm gonna ask you to unpack for me so that we can explore what's going on for you, the last thing I'm going to do is cut you off and say, okay, go ahead and pack yourself back up. Figure it out. I'll see you next week. There's a cruelness to that for me in my work that I won't tolerate. Does that mean sometimes if you do a private session with me, you might wait 10 or 15 minutes? Yep, it sure the hell does. And just know that if that ever happens for you, the reason why is I'm helping the person before you pack up, before they have to step back out into the world. Like, that will not happen on our watch. To the very best of our ability. That. That is a no fly zone. Okay? That's how seriously we take this. So, yes, I have to be run by the clock. Ish. And please know that we will not leave you unpacked to the very best of our ability. That is something we're exceptionally passionate about. Providers are good at trauma therapies, but don't understand relational dynamics. We see this all the time. Well intended practitioners that are very good at cbt, emdr. My whole point is they're really good at those modalities.

Yeah.

What they don't have an in depth understanding and study of is the relational principles and dynamics in human relationships. We know and we study. This is all we do. The dynamics and nuances of relationships. This is our mastery. And this is where we will consistently take all that we know and thread it through the principles and the skills and the lens of relational dynamics to support and help that journey. That's what we're about. We are a wonderful dovetail into people who are maybe doing some of these other traditional therapies. I'm not saying to not do them. I'm just saying, very often you are going to find that when it comes to the relational dynamics between you, yourself and you and another human being, they're probably not very good at that. No disrespect intended.

It's just that they're more generalized in their knowledge. And we're very specialized in our knowledge. That's really it. It's that we don't really deal with all the other stuff. All we talk about is relationship. So that's a good thing.

It's a good thing. I'm just gonna think about some other things that maybe we wanna add here. I think it's important. If you're questioning as a listener. Okay, that's great, Stace, but I mean, so you profess to be this, like, master, and did you just, like, start scribbling on a pad? Where does it come from? What is it that you're about? And I just want to say this. I mentor individuals and couples through my CHT in hypnotherapy and, yes, trainings from Esther Perel, certifications in sex therapy from Dr. Tammy Nelson, an advanced trauma and art integration from Lisa Forenza. I am a certified divorce mediator and a graduate of energy and intuitive science. And what I do is I smush all of this together with a singular focus of teaching how to apply these principles and skills to our intimate relationships both with ourselves and others. This is where my teaching and mentoring practice lives and, may I say, evolves. Because as I evolve, so do my teachings. And to date, we as a team and me personally, have had the privilege and honor of mentoring more than a thousand beautiful humans through this journey. We know it works. It's been tried, it's been trued, and we consistently learn to add to it as well with that very singular focus. And so, no, I didn't just pull it out of thin air. Yes, I've lived a lot of the journey. You know, I challenge you to bring up something that I probably haven't personally experienced myself. So no judgment here. I've probably done it or been involved with somebody that I love dearly, who has. And I would say that's a good thing. If you're going to embark on a journey, wouldn't you want to know that the person who's taking you there knows the landscape, knows the terrain, knows the pitfalls, knows the places that you're probably going to get tripped up and the struggles that are yet to come so that they can navigate you through that? I know for me, I sure would. I wouldn't want to go with somebody who's going. Well, I've heard, and I've read in a book on YouTube that this is a really great idea.

And.

Okay. It'll be fine. We'll take you through this. No problem. Okay. That. That just never goes well. And it doesn't matter what journey we're embarking on with somebody who doesn't know and hasn't traveled the terrain not just once, but thousands of times.

Well. And I would just add not only to the thousand people that we as a team have had the privilege and honor to mentor, I remind people when I'm talking to them on the phone that Stacy and I have our own living lab because of the massive amount of numbers that we have brought together 13 years ago. And so that is a constant place where we are constantly drinking our own coffee and testing and using our own skills and principles. I can assure you, when you have the amount of numbers between children and grandchildren, what the numbers are, that's 21, ladies and gentlemen. And 19 of that 21 comes from this beautiful lady. I mean, so I literally. That's a math problem. Let's just be honest. I mean, there's constantly need, there's constantly challenges, there's constantly all types of things, which is. This is a place where we're very open. Like, look, it's real. This is the place we come from. I mean, you know, Brooke is Stacy's stepdaughter, so it's live happening all the time. I mean, and so it comes from a very unique place. It really does. And it never stops.

And I would say a beautiful stepdaughter who, on the onset, really wasn't that excited about me being around. And I couldn't love her more as my own. And it just goes to show you the evolution and progression of relationships overall. Right?

Yeah. And that we use our own principles to overcome obstacles in our own lives. Because now I would say I'm the closest to you, you know, so it just shows. We're not telling you guys to do one thing, and then we're doing another. We are living and learning right along with you. And I would also challenge you to think that. So are your therapists, so are your counselors, Even if they're not telling you that, because they're humans, too. You know, we're all humans for the first time on this planet.

Yes, we are. I think I'm going to end this conversation by simply saying this. There is no problem too big to solve. It's the waiting that ultimately costs us the success and the potential in the situation because we simply run out of emotional gas. We it's not that we don't have solutions to our challenges, it's that we run out of emotional effort and energy and gas to pursue them. And then it sounds like this, I just can't do this anymore. That's what we hear. I just can't do this anymore. And you're right, you can't do this anymore because you have run out of emotional gas. Not because there aren't answers, not because there aren't potential and possibilities in both you, your life, your co creation, your relationship. But because we've just waited too long is often the case. So my encouragement to you is if you know you need help and support, for heaven's sakes, do a good job of vetting out what that looks like for you and begin and after you get going, trust and know that you can tweak it as you learn and grow along the way. And we just simply want to be considered as an option for you by helping you understand what it is we do and how our work differs from the many options that we know are available out in the marketplace for you. And if what we've said today really resonates with you, then I encourage you to check us out. Like jump in, make a decision, do something, anything. And the very worst thing that could happen for you is you'll recognize and realize that this isn't a good fit. But the very best thing that could happen for you is that you start making progress towards where it is you've said you've wanted to go probably for a really long time. Please don't wait is my plea to you. Don't wait because it doesn't get better from here.

Okay?

Do something. I. I encourage you to visit staceybartley.com for more resources and ways that you can engage and work with us. It would be wonderful for you to just make a decision, schedule a free call, jump into a session, join Better Love Club for a month. Like there's many places that you can begin your journey, try something on and I promise from there what you need and know will become much more clear.

I just want to say one thing. Sorry. If you are in a place of crisis in your relationship and we encounter many couples that are, and you feel that you're in this moment and it's an emergency, oftentimes I just want to challenge your thinking. What we think we need is intensive therapy where all we do is talk about our problems. I just want to end this episode with One thought for you. You don't need marriage counseling. You need skills.

Let's have a little bit of fun. And what could be more fun than right now? After this episode, sitting your butt down and making a list of the things that you personally would like to know and understand about relationships. What are they? What are the things that you're recognizing and realizing in your own life that you don't know how to do or that you don't understand? And then I'm going to invite you to send it to us because we would love to hear from you.

How do they do that?

They go to our website@staceybartley.com and they send it through the Contact us and us and our team will be happy to read them.

Or you can click the send us a text message link in our podcast notes. If you send us a text message through our podcast show notes, we can't respond. If you would like a response, you can include your email address in the message that you sent to us, but there's no button for us to respond to you. There have been a couple of texts we've received where people have wanted a response, and there's no way for us to do that. So we need a little bit of more contact info. You can also email us@loveaceybartley.com or our contact form. Like Mom2Men mentioned, every episode we have.

A song that kind of, like sends us off. I'm getting. I'm kind of giggly about this week's song. I think it's going to surprise everybody. Any idea? Any guesses? Like, what have we been talking about today? Coming Learning, Mentorship. You know, we need help. It's great to have support. That's important.

Is it abc? Michael Jackson?

No, that was a good guess. It's the Beatles. I need a little help from my friends.

That's good. That's good.

Hope from my friends. You can check out this song along with all of our episode songs on Spotify by checking out the Love Shack Live playlist. It's been a pleasure to be here with you today. I hope that we've created some clarity for you and some understanding about what the heck it is we do over here@stacybartley.com and the things that we talk about and share inside the Love Shack. It is my hope that you feel also supported and that you are hopeful and that wherever this conversation has you today, know that we send you off with tons and tons and tons of love and support for you, whatever you decide to do. We're just glad to be a part of your life, and we're so thankful for you listening to this podcast, and we appreciate you a ton. So without further ado. And I'll get the Kleenex. 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 more resources and tools, visit us atlove shacklive.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.