#68: 3 Steps to Let Go of Past Relationship Trauma & Stop Worrying About The Future

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. It's a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations in an attempt to uncover the mysteries that affect our relationships. Nobody talks about them, so welcome. If you are struggling with your special someone and or committed to creating a relationship that has the ability to last the long haul, you are in the right place because this show is dedicated to you. Today is episode for us, number 68 and we're going to be sharing three steps that you can use to let go of your past relationship trauma and stop worrying about the future. Even though you may not be thinking it's possible right now.

Absolutely. I think it goes without saying we all want to be happy in our relationship relationships. But sometimes that's easier said than done. Especially when it feels like you're stuck in a never ending cycle of pain and worry and wondering, how the heck do I get over the past or get through the past I guess would be better and move the heck on.

As human beings, it really is easy for us to get stuck over time in the same old patterns of behavior. And what's interesting when we're stuck is we don't realize how far, inch by inch we're getting from the dreams and that we truly want and away from the practices and experiences in our lives that truly matters to us. And then there's the slow degrading damage that takes place over time too. This is how we have the experience of waking up and looking at each other, you know, months and years later to go, I don't even know you and wait a minute, I don't even know myself. This is how it happens. Inch by inch, inch by inch, inch by inch. Very seldom for us is there big egregious things, things in long term relationships that knock us off our kilter. So today, here in the Love Shack, we're going to share some valuable lessons with you on how you can heal from your past relationship pain and stop worrying about the many what ifs of the future. Because that's the other thing when challenges and mess ups happen is it causes us to then contemplate and worry about the future as well. It's time, we believe, for us to learn how to live peacefully in our lives and in our relationships and stop getting stuck. But yet use those challenges to leverage what it is we want and to heal and learn from the past experiences of our lives. So stay with us. We are going to jump into this conversation and I promise you're going to walk away with some really good mind shifts that are going to help you uncover and clean up some of the messes in your own relationship today. We'll be right back.

I met Stacy and Tom about two years ago. I was at a point in my relationship where I was ready to file for divorce. Not that I wanted to, but I just felt hopeless and helpless. I'd been through other counseling and coaching and didn't find any success with Stacy and Tom's methods. I was able to eliminate insecurities, set boundaries, plant my flag, eliminate rabbit holing. I was separated from my wife for a year and I have since moved back home for the last six months. Now. I still refer back to a lot of the teaching that Stacy and Tom provided and it's helped me. It's well worth it.

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Welcome back inside the love shack. Great to have you here. We are Tom and Stacy Bartlett along with our engineer extraordinaire, Eric Reiter at the helm. Thank you so much for being with us. We're going to jump right into the heart of the matter. We've got a lot to uncover. I'm going to make sure we stay on track because Stacy can get really, really passionate about this and you may.

Want to get a piece of paper and a pencil.

We're going to do everything we can not to share. There's a lot here. So we're going to give you some some actionable things to put right into your life. Hopefully that's our goal.

So here's where we're going. Every single person and couple has been there. And when I say been there, I'm talking about the place of pain, worry and self doubt that comes when we are navigating the inevitable ups and downs of our relationships. Very often this struggle can be the predominant experience in our relationships overall. When it comes to love, and especially long lasting love, it can feel like we can't break free from this cycle of repeat and obsession about the past and this one time when and remember when and oh by the way, hey, we have a problem here and I can't believe it just happened again. And on and on this cycle goes in spite of our best efforts to try and move forward. And this also promotes us feeling like we've got to be concerned about the future. It's almost as though we hang on to the past thinking that it's going to save us from a repeat experience that we're trying to avoid. But guess what? I want you to know that this does not have to be the experience in your relationship. In fact, it's important that it we that we do our best to stop this cycle in our relationships because it adds and leads to eventual breakdown. I call it the inevitable race to the bottom. And yes we can. Yes we can. We have the ability. What's unfortunate about this cycle is we don't talk about it enough in my opinion and we don't learn strategies and skills to prevent us from living in the cycle day after day after day in our lives. So today Tom and I, we're going to provide you with three simple mind shifts or steps that anyone can use to help get over the past pain and stop worrying about the what ifs of the future. It is possible. That's what I want you to know in this moment. Now listen, I personally know what it's like to get stuck in this cycle. I have been stuck in this cycle many, many times over my lifetime. I used to think early on in my journey that the reason why I was stuck in this cycle was because I made such a mess of my life in the beginning. And I made a huge mess. I ended up violating the tenets of my religion and my family and I ended up pregnant at the age of 17 years old. And then I was encouraged strongly to get married. And that's how my adult and family relational journey began. And I Felt like if I could just be the perfect wife and become in a place where I was a good mom, that somehow I could rectify my mistakes and my mess ups of the past and I could eventually step into being that good person that I always felt I knew I could be in my heart. But obviously I just made a huge mess and disappointed a lot of people. This doubt, this self beat up, this shame carried on into relationship after relationship after relationship because I didn't know how to get out of the past. And it became this rumination. And the more intense I became about being perfect, the more that I insisted the partner that I was with be perfect. That ended a 13 year relationship right there. I had to be perfect, therefore they had to be perfect. And I literally choked the life out of my marriage of 13 years. And oh, by the way, we had five more kids. So now I'm a single mom of five and two failed marriages. Talk about some messes and some baggage that I was dragging with me. And again and again this would go. I'd get into relationships, I'd be ready to go before I even got started. Bags packed, the inevitable metaphoric tennis shoes in the top of the closet just in case I had to make a quick getaway. Because at this point in time, I didn't trust myself in a relationship and I certainly didn't trust anybody else that I was in a relationship with. And as you can see with my simple but short summary of my life experience up to that point in time in 1996, I was repeating my past that I was stuck in over and over and over again. When it comes to our past, there really is only two options. The first option is I get stuck in it and that's what happened to me. I keep reliving it and I hold on to it and I cling to it more and more and more, thinking that that is going to help me see my way through. If I don't forget about it, that it can't happen again, if I carry a piece of it around and remember how terrible I was or how some other person that I had been in a relationship was terrible, therefore it's not my fault, then it's going to see me through to the promised land. So whatever you do, don't let go of it. And that is equivalent stuck. That's one option. The second option is I got to leverage it. I got to figure out how to understand it and leverage it so that I can help me move forward. And I want to tell you about the moment that this was A realization for me. I was a new therapist. The year is 1997. I'm green behind the ears. I don't have a lot of experience. And one of my very first clients was a gentleman who was trying to recover from a huge mess in his own life. What had happened for him was he had had a bout of addiction with alcohol. And through this addiction battle, he ended up hitting somebody while driving drunk. And the person in the car was killed. Unfortunately, he was fresh out of prison, spent 15 years for his mess. And he was in my office staring me in the eyes and wondering how in the world it was he was going to recover. And I have to be honest with you, I was like, oh man, bless your heart. I think, I think you need somebody with way more experience than I have. I don't know anything about this. I don't know anything about addiction. I don't know anything about where you've been and what your experience is. I'm not so sure that you're. I'm the best girl for the job. And he looked me dead in the eyes and he says, listen, I don't bond with many people. You better figure this out because I'm not going anywhere. And I had to dig deep. But his story taught me that right there is a lot of gray in the world. Because in that mindset for myself at the time, I felt like there was a really definitive line like, man, dude, you, you really messed up. You deserve everything that's coming at you. That was my opinion. And I don't know how to help you. And here's what happened. Through our work together, both of us grew to a new level of understanding about messes in our lives. He ended up sharing with me his desire and how he wanted to take all that he had been through forward. This wasn't something that I inspired him with. He inspired me with this. He showed me that out of the dastardly experiences that he had been through and the big, huge messes that he had made, he had a desire to do some good out of it. And what he ended up doing five years later of us working together, is he created a non profit organization to help families who had lost somebody through the lens of any type of a DUI or addiction problem. It was a support group that gave them a place, comfort, therapy, anything that they might need as they were making that transition through that very difficult period of time. And I remember asking myself, how is it that something so dastardly, like the biggest sin or mistake that a person could make hurting another or Injuring another, taking another's life. Right. How is it that that could become the greatest thing that ever happened to him? And that was the moment that I started to understand that past experiences have the power to promote good. In fact, some of the most over the years, most traumatic people that have been through the most horrific experiences, whether that's in childhood or in adult life, turn out to be the greatest contributors to society. So just think about that for a minute, like that's the silver lining in any kind of a challenge that we may be facing or faced, have faced in our life. The reason why I'm so good at what I do and I care so much is because of what I have been through. My challenges, my mishaps, my big mistakes in my life, and the passion that I can bring and teaching them to you, our listeners, and to my clients and to anybody that I am privileged to sit across from is because of what I have been through. And it has seen me through many challenges. I'm going to tell you, many, many challenges, both personally and professionally. This drive to help people be good at relationships is in me because of all the messes and trauma that I have been through in my past and that I've seen my families go through and I've seen my kids go through, and quite frankly, I've seen my lovers go through. It's the juice that wakes me up every morning and causes me to feel like I am ready to help anyone wherever they are. And so I want you to contemplate that very thing for a moment because this is step one. I want you to understand, number one is as a human being, we are going to make messes. And that's not a funny joke, that's not cute when I say this to people. We're doing live workshops, babe. You know? You know.

Well, I was gonna say, yeah. What we say is. And again, this is. It's not tongue in cheek. It's really. But it should take. We find. People find it to be. Oh my gosh, you're right, we are. If you're human, raise your hand. We've not yet to this point, had anyone not raised their hand. And then after that, understand, basically say with me, I am a mess making machine. Because we are. The, the fact that any of us get this perfectly right, it. I mean, come on, that's. So that, you know, just take a pause and realize that that's, that's what makes us get better.

And I want to assure you, for any of you who are maybe thinking, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you don't.

Know my story well.

And not only that, that, that I know people who are perfect. No, you don't. Because I can tell you that there is nobody on the planet that doesn't have a challenge. They don't have a mess under their belt. Now. That doesn't prevent them from being really good at covering it up. And I, I used to call this in my religious experience. I come from, you know, being a Mormon. I was raised very lds and I'm not banging on the LDS church at all, but I am simply going to start looking at distinctions. Right? And the distinctions are this. There was a lot going on behind the scenes that was not talked about, that was not shared. And I remember the experience myself of knowing that the wills were coming off in my own personal life and people that I was intimately talking with in this community by the presentation. On the front side was that of we got it all together. I coined it back in the day as, hey, is your package tight? Like, like you got that thing wrapped up with a bow before you go out the door?

Well, I think it's, I mean, I think this may be Tony Robbins, but you know, it's, no matter how thin we slice it, there's always another side to the story. There always is, you know, and so, you know, but again, give your, give yourself some grace and give others grace because again, we are mess making machines. But if we can understand that, that's what is the fuel and the raw material for us to press up against and choose to move through it and become better for it and stronger for it. And again, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the mess making machine doesn't stop making messes.

Yeah, that's really true. And, and in fact, it's almost like the more you drive for perfection and not making a mistake, the more mistakes we make.

Well, remember Gus, we say Gus in our body of work, God, universe, spirit, has a very good sense of humor.

Well, and not only that, it's very effective at teaching us and helping us see and understand what it is we need to know about ourselves and about what's working and about what's not working.

Okay, so Mrs. Bartley, let me ask you for those of you that think. Okay, Stacy. Yeah, that, that's all sounds wonderful, you know, wonderful. Kumbayash. But I cannot, you know, how I can't give myself permission. Like mine was a doozy. So what do you, what do you say to that person? Like, again, no disrespect, with great love and respect, how do you, someone Says, look, I. I get it logically. But again, this is not a logical experience. Right. This is a feeling, emotional. How do I. How were you able to. You just shared a very personal story. That is true. How did you. You know, I guess we don't just flip a switch and say, okay, I'm good with that. Right. So how do you. How do you give yourself permission?

Yeah. Well, so the first step is we've got to understand that everybody's making messes, and we might be able to cover them up and make it look like I'm not making any messes. But I want you to understand, having been there and covering up messes, didn't want to talk about messes. I never thought, for example, I'd be talking about some of my messes on live radio, you know, to thousands and thousands of people. I wanted to cover that stuff up back in the day. And I was really good about presenting a really nice tight front, only to realize that, guys, that's a secret. And there's a wonderful coined phrase in my body of work that comes from psychology. We're only as sick as our secrets. So actually, covering up my messes makes me sicker. It makes me more insecure, essentially. And so it makes me make more messes, and then there's more to cover up, and this becomes the cycle. And when it comes to our past, then we can use these experiences and the cycle more and more and more of beating ourselves up or beating others up in our lives. Right? Because there it is again, and there it is again, and we don't realize how we're driving it. So I want to bring you back to some universal principles that are so principled. It is as important as the air that you breathe. It is important as is as important as day turns into night and night turns into day and spring follows winter. It is that principle and it is this. We absolutely need to know as a human being what works and what doesn't, what is us and what is not. And the only way that we discover those things is by mistakes. Oh. Or what doesn't work for me. Oh, wow, that doesn't work for me. I know that. I see that now. Okay, what does? This is going to start leading us into the next step. I also need to know, right, What I do effectively and what I don't do effectively. And I love to tell the story and the metaphor here of let's look at our physical experiences, because we make sense of that as a human being. We know and can compare physical experiences when it comes to the emotional journey, we don't quite know what to do with that, but trust and know. We have a physical body and we have an emotional body. They are both real and they both have a very much a role that they play in our lives and we can get our head around that. We all know what it's like to feel emotional. Even the best of us at some point in time in our lives and through our life journey are, are going to get emotional, right? And some of us feel shame around feeling emotional and we know it's there and very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable with the emotional part. And that means that I have one very strong developed side of my navigation system which consists of a physical body, the ability to think, and the emotional body. And here's the thing is the juice comes from the emotional body, the motivation, the hope, the desire, the drive, the inspiration, the dreams. It all comes from the emotional side of our experience as a human being. The physical it helps me make decisions, it helps me strategize, it helps me get through the day, it helps me know what I need. Food, meeting all of my physical needs. But it should also be incorporated to help me meet all of my emotional needs. And the reason why I bring it up now in this conversation about past and future is I love to help us see and understand how it is we handle messes of the emotional kind.

Versus the physical side.

Yes. Because here's the reality and the limitations. We need to make messes to see ourselves. And until we have that ability, we will continue to make the same mess over and over and over again. That's on principle. Right. So if that's the case, then we need to understand how this navigation system works.

So give us an example of how we would clean up a physical mess versus an emotional mess.

So suppose Tom, you and I are at dinner and we're with a couple of friends and we're sitting at a dining, dining table. And you know how I like to talk with my hands. There's they're waving around all the time and I have a glass of wine and it's sitting right where my hand is and I take a sweep of my hand as I'm passionately talking and the thing flies off the table, smashes against the wall and makes a huge mess. Okay. What ends up happening then are we can probably all predict my wonderful hosts of the evening are going to jump up and one's going to grab the broom and one's going to grab the dustpan. I'm going to start saying, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just did that. And my mind is going to start reeling on how did that happen?

Like, oh, my gosh, Then probably I'm such a, you know, what person you know?

Well, yes. And it's going to start scrambling for, oh, man, how did. How did that happen? And I'm going to beat my fanny for a minute. Like, oh, my gosh, you're so stupid. You're so silly. I can't believe you weren't paying attention to that. I wonder what they think of you now. Like, my head's gonna take a detour as they're helping me clean up the mess. Okay, so one sweeps it up, somebody grabs some paper towel, and before you know it, I bet my host, my friends are going to have a new glass on the table full of wine once again. And I'm going to say, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry about 10 more times. And they're going to reassure me, it's okay, we got this. And the evening is going to move on as we put the mess in the trash can and move on. So let's just think about that for a minute. In regards to the emotional messes that we make, right? We don't necessarily share them, so there's no support and help to clean them up. We usually isolate and, or as punishment, isolate the people that we love and say, oh, you go to your room, you made a mess. You're a naughty person. You go handle this on your own. Figure out how you're never going to do this again. Okay, again, contrast helps us learn. What if we could say, gosh, this didn't go so well. You made a mess. What do you need? How did this happen? Let's sort through it together. That would be like the metaphoric nature of how we intrinsically and intuitively handle a physical mess. And then let's take it another step, right? When we clean up physical messes, we put them in the trash can and we leave them there. When it comes to emotional messes, not only do we not get any help cleaning them up, we have no idea how to assess why it happened. I just kick my fanny about what just went down. And then we have this ability that even if we do get through it and find a correction or try and move on, we're back in the middle of the night, metaphorically pulling them out of the trash can and spreading them across the table again, making sure that we go through it one more time. And then a Time again, just in case I miss something. And then one more time again, right? And then I might even metaphorically take some shards of the glass and put them in my purse just so I can hang on to something to ensure that it never happens again. And I'm setting myself up now. I'm. It's a total setup because now every time I put my hand in my purse, I'm going to cut my hand and then I'm going to relive that moment and I'm going to go through it again and. And then I'm going to remember that moment and maybe collect and sift through the garbage can and pull out another piece and carry that around in my pocket or my purse. And then every time I put my hand in my purse or I'm back in that same situation, I'm cutting my hand again, metaphorically. And we're never done with it. We're never ever done with it. In fact, there's this illusion that starts to be created in our minds that if I let go of it, truly, if I truly let go of it, then it's inevitable that it's going to happen again. And I want to plug this into some real life relationship conversations that are happening right now as I speak. Maybe in your own life, listeners, if infidelity has come into the picture, and this is a big one, right, and everybody goes, infidelity, that's the worst thing it could ever happen next to murder. Well, maybe. But the first thing is, is we need to understand how it is that the person who's being unfaithful, what is the emotional driver of that? What is the thing? Because they don't want to make a mess. In fact, typically I'll clean something up or I won't clean something up that I want to keep a secret because I don't want to hurt the people that I love. That's why I'm going to keep it a secret. That's why I'm going to do it behind closed doors. And I don't know how to have the conversations that need to be had to actually address what it is I'm feeling emotionally. Because people are going to think less of me. People are not going to understand where I'm coming from. People don't understand how much conflict I'm in with inside of myself. So I'm just going to go cope on the backside. And this is the same driver for addiction, for infidelity, for overworking, for overspending, for over shopping. And I could go on and on and on. The good ones and the bad ones that we use as human beings to cope and feel just a little bit better. When I have a tremendous amount of emotional conflict that's going on inside of me, it's important that we understand that that's the driver. And 99.9% of us are doing the very best we know how and we will do what we know in spite of knowing it doesn't work until we know what to do differently. It's all we got. So we don't know what we don't know.

Well. And I, excuse me, I would think, or I would sense that by the examples you just gave us. Always reminds me at the lengths and intensity and choices that we choose to make rather than addressing in another manner. I mean, literally, people Wolf, you know, risk it all on the line, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Because they don't know how to bring up the parts that don't work for me. They don't know how to talk about the problems and challenges and the experiences that I am not liking or the messes that I've made. So rather than clean them up and be done with it, like the metaphor of being at the dinner party, you know, get help, we get support, we work together, we put it in the trash can and then we're done with it.

And you know, you've metaphorically, you've moved your glass from close to your hand, you've moved it out towards the front. So again, you take a new strategy. Okay, well, that didn't go so well. Instead of having it by where my hands could hit it, I move it to in front of me. Right. So rather than applying to whatever of the situation you're in. Yeah, we just pull that, you know, past mistake, continue to kick our own fannies and then it just perpetuates.

So if we really did step one and realize, okay, we're going to make messes. I get it now, Tom. And stays. I get it that I got to see what doesn't work as much as what does. And that that's normal and natural. It's principled. We're never going to get away from that. In every single relationship, there is going to be things that work for you and things that don't. And those things that work for you and those things that don't are going to change. So the interesting part of it is just about the time you think you have a handle on it and got it all figured out, it's going to transform and what used to work doesn't work anymore. And you're Going to have to retool it.

Okay, so that takes us to step two.

Step two is we've got to be learn. We've got to learn how to review our past for lessons. Remember I said the past has two options. We get stuck in it or we learn from its lessons and we let it point us in the direction of what it is we need to do next. Not forever and always, just our next best step. Where the past really starts to really mess with us is we feel like we have to have life figured out before we get started. And if that's the case, we're going to become paralyzed, standing in a corner, not knowing what to do, because we need the step by step to see what works and what doesn't work. And those micro adjustments day in and day out of our lives are going to tell us what we need to do now. And this becomes the development of your relationship, the development of the two people in it and the families that are involved. We figure it out as we go and it's going to be messy. It must be messy so that we can grow and evolve and essentially become the people that we have the capacity to be. Without it, we are stagnant in time. We are checking boxes, we are going through the motions. We play our roles. And there is no emotional juice in the relationship or with inside of myself. So I need to learn how to leverage the past and extract from it the adjustments that I need to make going forward, step by step by step, by step. Where this breaks down. If we were to go back to the metaphor of the dinner party, looking at the physical. Where this typically breaks down is we are going to rehash the problem or what happened or the event, not once, not twice, but thousands of times. And it becomes an obsession session for us. And we never think to take that moment to say, okay, okay, okay, enough of this. What was the problem? What was the mess? What was my mistake? And let me address that. And that is going to point me to, well, if this doesn't work or if this isn't what we want, what do we want? That's the piece that gets missed. The what do we want out of this? So Tom had already alluded to it. If I wanted to change the event of the evening and make sure that I didn't knock the glass over again, I could move the glass to a more strategic place and I could see. I could watch and see if that's going to correct my problem. Because if it didn't, I'm going to do it again. I don't know if any of you have been at a dinner party where you've knocked over two glasses in a night. I have, and it was me. Okay. So, okay. I had to get even more strategic about where to place that glass. Okay. And eventually what ended up happening is Tom would set it on his side and then I would reach for the glass across him, drink it, and then put it back. Okay. So, so that's strategy number. That's evolution number 22. And here's the thing I want you to see is in this navigation system of physical and emotional. The physical we are so good at because we've practiced it. We can talk about it, we can measure it, we can do tests on it. It's not embarrassing to say, oh my gosh, I just messed that up and move on. Somebody's not going to step on my toe for very long before somebody's going to say, this doesn't work for me. You got to move, please. But people will stand on our emotional toes for years and we'll allow it without saying anything about this doesn't work for me. And if that's the case, if we're not willing to assess the, the problem and the mistake or clean up the mess, it prevents us from ever learning what it is we want, or shall we say, the remedy to what it is that isn't working. We're not going there. We're not talking about that. So it leaves us with no remedies at all. And we stay stuck in the past because we cannot come up with a remedy to correct it or move on.

So let me ask you. So I would be in that camp. It's very hard for me, you know, from our thousands and thousands of conversation, let's say, okay, Stacy, I understand, but I'm having a heart hard time, you know, learning as you just shared. Learn, review the past and take the lessons and, and, and deep desires where I want to go forward. I, I, I get it. How do I do that? So what, I keep going back to what the broken glass. How do I say? I guess what I say. So I don't want the broken glass next time.

You don't want the broken glass. And we can't kick our fannies enough to inspire us to change. Nor can we kick somebody else's fanny enough times to inspire them to change. We have to understand what the emotional driver is. So I want to speak to this. There are six principled steps. Again, I'm going to go back to the physical for us to learn from. If I injure myself or if a mess happens, physically, I'm going to. Let's say I cut my finger. That experience, right? I'm going to stop. Everything stops. I want you to see that when a physical mess, even my. Even our analogy, or a metaphor about being at the dinner table, the conversation stops. Everybody stops. If I'm in a car accident, everything stops for miles around me. If I cut my finger, everything stops. And it's like all hands on deck. What just happened? Oh, my gosh. What do you need? Right? Let's get all the support that we possibly can to get through this. And then we look at it and we assess it, right? In the analogy of my cut finger, we assess, right? How deep is it? Is it going to need stitches, Right? Or is this something we can handle right here and now? In the analogy of my broken glass, right? Where is the glass? Do we need paper towel? Right? Do we have big pieces, little pieces? How are we going to clean this up, Right? So we all of a sudden, everything stops, number one. Number two, everybody pitches in and we start cleaning up the mess, assessing what it is that's needed to clean up the mess. Number three, once I have tried my proven remedies, and that's key here, I have lots of proven remedies for a cut finger. I can put it in peroxide. I can put some Neosporin on it here, I can wrap it in a band aid. And we believe that we're done. We believe that it's going to heal. And then what ends up happening is I watch it, I make sure it doesn't get infected. I make sure that I'm continuing down the healing path. And then at some point in time, I forget all about it. It's done, it's over, right? Same with the glass analogy. There's a point in time where it's cleaned up and we're moved on and we forget all about it. So now think about what we do with our emotional messes. Our emotional messes. Number one, there's no help. There's nothing that stops. We just carry on like it's no big deal. Get over it. Pull up your pants. Be done with this. Number two, we don't ever stop to assess it. Okay? What's the need? We don't even know how to do that. Here's the need. What hurts? Why does it hurt? What's the pain? Identify it. What are the emotions? What am I needing? What's working? What isn't working? And then I want you to take that, the critical step I already alluded to what do I need to do now to remedy my pain? That's the key. When I take my don't want and I turn it into a do want, I'm on the right track. But I'm not done using the analogy of the physical. I must watch it to make sure that we're going in the right direction. That doesn't mean I hang on to any shards from the past or I relive it or obsess about it over and over and over again. Again, we come up with a strategy and then we see if it works. And that's going to take another step forward. And if it's a problem, it will show up again. So I don't have to worry about my future. I don't. I look at it, we assess it, we remedy it, and then we give it a try and we see if it takes us in the direction that we want to go. Trusting that it will heal, trusting that we can make it out of this, trusting that I'm doing the very best that I know how and so is my partner. And if it's a problem for me or them, trust and be rest assured, it is principled. It will show up in the future. You don't need to worry about it showing up. It will show up again. Which tells us that the remedy that we thought would solve the problem didn't. So now what do we need to do? And we go back through the process again. And when I put that mess in the trash can, I let it be, knowing that that is so principled. It will show up in the future if it's a problem and I'm not going to worry about it, not one nanosecond before it actually happens again. That would be the time to go back through the process and go, okay, that didn't work. We tried this and this and this. Now what are we going to try? That's number two. Review the past. And instead of using it as something to kick it your fanny, I want you to use it as something that you need to extract lessons out of and be a guide to. Okay, that didn't work. Now what are we going to do? What are we going to try now? And then we're going to try it and we're going to go through the steps knowing that if it's a problem, it will show up again. Thoughts?

No, that, that. I got you. Okay. And again, it sounds. It's a. It's a constant course correction.

Constant. This is life. This is life. You are never going to arrive. Okay? Because the minute you get it figured out, right? You are going to have it change on you. But listen, that's the really good news. Actually, that's not bad news at all. Because if we didn't have growth ahead of us or new experiences to explore or things to kind of like tweak and remedy, then how in the world would we ever take up time here in the life that we live? So we don't want it to stop. Because then what would we do with ourselves? What would we do with our time? These are the things that conversations and moments that matter are byproducts of. They come out of these things. And so it's important that we realize this is actually the gift. What doesn't work and the messes that we make are actually the keys to taking us in the direction that we need to know by correcting course.

Which takes us to step three.

Step three is we've got to trust the future and that it will take care of itself. That if we worry about the future, then all we're doing is we're really stuck in the past and thinking it's going to recreate itself in the now. And it absolutely does and will. It's important that we understand that. And if it is a problem, it is going to show up in the future. And we need to do a better job of learning a place where we can comfort ourselves and comfort the people that we love. That right here, today is a great place to be. I really don't know if we were to tell the truth, what the future is going to be, or the challenges that are going to be presented to us. All I can do is live today and be here today and learn from today so many times. Because our emotional bodies have the ability to time travel. They're fluid, they're dynamic, they're invisible, but nonetheless real. Just like oxygen. We can forecast ourselves into 2025, or we can all of a sudden be transported back to 1970. It's important for us to understand that in this time travel, if I'm struggling with it, the best place to bring myself back to is this moment today. Then I get an anchor, right? I can assess myself, know that I'm okay. And from that place, I'm going to be able to find a place to sit my butt down and take a breath and know that I'm okay in this moment now. I can look back knowing that I'm not living there. That's not what's happening right now. What do I need to do today to remedy my pain? And when I find that then I can make the adjustments for tomorrow or in this moment. But aside from that, I've got to let the future take care of itself.

So when you were going through the depths of your, you know, tidal wave experience, how about that? And what you shared with us, okay, and just say, okay, you know, you've understood where you, where you, where you got sideways, you're of course corrected, you're trusting the future. So what would say, you know, at the heights of when you were staring, you know, at some of your old patterns, old thinking processes versus what you just shared with us? What, what's a nugget that, you know, you could kind of. What's the life preserver we like to say, you know, what's the lifeline that you threw yourself that we could share with our listeners?

Well, immediately I took myself back to the moment where my second husband needed to come clean. And I'm not gonna blame him for this at all because remember, I was the person that was driving perfection. I was sure that if we could be perfect in our religion and perfect according to the tenants of our family, and we could get it right, then somehow I could pay a penance and, and redeem myself from the mistake that I had made by that 17 year old mishap. And so now imagine we're 13 years into the future and I have literally had a stranglehold on him. Like he is going to do it by the book, I'm going to insist out of myself and of him. And what ended up happening is he started coping in other ways. So he knew that this was so important to me, he couldn't tell me the truth, couldn't come clean. And so he started, you know, doing some things outside of our marriage, like infidelity, like addiction problems. And it had finally come to a place where he himself wanted to come clean and make it right. And I remember him driving me up into the canyons after we'd fixed dinner for the kids and put him to bed for the night. And he confessed everything that had been going on. And I was blown out of the water, people. I was like, what in the heck? And immediately, because of where I was, mentally I started blaming him. See, this is why our relationship isn't going to work. And I remember contemplating this idea of divorce is eminent. I don't know how to handle this. And then for some reason, because of the gift that that client I had worked with, you know, that sometimes what is good for us becomes not good for us. Sometimes what isn't good for us can. Can Become good for us. And the wonderful gift that. That. That client who had gone on to create that wonderful organization out of a huge M gave to me. I remembered thinking, we just need to slow down. I don't know anything right now. And perhaps I've contributed to this because I couldn't articulate what I just shared with you. That has been through learning about myself and learning about life. But I did have the wisdom in that moment to realize that slow is fast and that it was okay for me to sit down and look at my part in this and to understand how I had contributed to it and to ask him and invite him through a process of exposing, exploration, of assessing the problem. What was it that caused you to feel like you had to do that? Was it me? Was it us? Was it. Was it just you? Or was. Did I have a piece in this? And then I could get better about knowing myself, understanding myself. I could get better at understanding him, and I could get better at understanding how relationships do this intricate dance. And so slow is fast. If we. If we think that we've got it all figured out, we probably need to sit our butts down and look at our part in it and be reflective. If I'm judging somebody, right, or. Or beating somebody up, then maybe I need to take a piece of that and I need to look at myself. Which, by the way, I'm not saying is easy. I'm saying that it's worth it. And I'm saying it's the most difficult thing we do as a human being to look at it and observe it.

And I would say, and I'm sure you would agree, babe, that many times these, you know, big blunders in our past, would you say those are significant, what we would call a triggering event? And when we are triggered, ladies and gentlemen, let's just remember the greatest thing, most simple thing, if you can take one takeaway from today, is, yeah, simply slow down. Because why, when we slow down, that's going to slow our brain down. So we're getting into chemistry here, and they're really, you know, we don't need to speed up, you know, and we're.

Never going to get ahead of this.

Right.

The faster you go, the faster time passes and the worse the mess gets. So I need you to understand it's okay that we make messes. I know it's hard, and I know sometimes it's very disappointing and quite down. Right. Devastating. Been there. I know that. So we need to understand that, okay. In spite of the mess, there are things for me to explore and uncover here as I assess them, and when I assess them, then what I want to do is I want to decide what I need to do next. What do I want? What do I don't want? Okay, that's great, but we don't need to live there. It's only as valuable as it is to help us get to what it is we do want. All right, here's what I don't want. Here's what's not working for me. What do I want? And this is all self assessment again, where sometimes we need some support, we need some training, we need some skills, we need some mentorship in order to do this process. Once I have a remedy, I'm going to apply it and I'm going to watch it and I'm going to make sure that it's taking me in the direction that I want to go. Step by step by step by step. In the story of my second husband, we ended up doing this process intuitively as I documented it in my journals. And we ended up realizing that staying together was not the answer that we both needed to go on. And you can too. These are where our answers live. It doesn't mean that it won't work out, but it means we take it step by step by step by step. Instead of feeling like I've got to make a big, bold decision right now. No, no, you need to uncover it, assess it, apply a remedy, get better at those remedies, and then watch it heal step by step by step by step. And trust and know that if I'm doing that process, then the rest is going to take care of itself. I hope that helps you, my friends. I hope that that starts to give you some ideas of how to rethink how it is we deal with the past and we stop worrying about the future. We're going to take a quick break and we will be right back with some fun as you kind of let that all settle in. Hey, babe. Did you know that the average couple spends only two hours a day with each other? And the majority of that time is spent eating, watching TV and surfing social media rather than connecting with each other. And if children are involved, my gosh, it's even less time than that.

I know, babe. That's why you created our conversation cards for connection. Because they're the perfect conversation starter. So the next time you're sitting on a couch, rather than turning on the TV or grabbing your phone, pull out a card and get ready for some good old fashioned laughter and loving connection.

Yeah, you can get your cards@staceybartley.com don't.

Let that herd mentality lead you off a cliff. We support thinking for yourself on Alternative Talk 1150.

Welcome back Inside Love Shack. Good to have you here. We're going to step right in. We threw a lot at you to some follow the fun.

Yeah, we're gonna have a little fun right now. Okay. So that was deep, and that was like, whoo. Okay. I don't know. You might need to listen to that one a few times. And that's okay, right? This is also where we support and help couples. So if you need some help and support with this, don't hesitate to reach out to us. This is what we do. And now you're starting to discover why it is we do it right. I've got an ocean of personal experience that was. I was gonna swear, but I knew I had to stop myself. So let's jump into some follow the fun. What I want to inspire you to entertain. Remember, we have this segment because we tend to think that we need to solve all of our problems in order to have some fun. So we wait and we wait. We wait without realizing we can put it on the shelf. And so every week we insert inspire you to have a little bit of fun. So what I want to encourage you to do this week is think about having an evening of traveling internationally in your imagination. The first time Tom and I did this little follow the fun because we do these in our own life, too, I want you to know that this isn't something that we share with you. We ended up going to the Goodwill store and we dressed up in the international country that we wanted to visit. And in this particular time, we dressed up as French. Do you remember your French one? I have pictures of it. If you want to see it, just let me know on social media and I'll pitch it out there. It's precious. It's absolutely fantastic. We went to the store, we decided on some recipes, and we came home and we tried to make something French with complete champagne. You know, now you know why we love champagne so much. We love champagne. So we created a French experience. So you can take this as far as you want to take it, but I want to inspire you with some ideas while we're here in our time together inside the love shack, you can research where it is you want to go. You can find out what the food is. With the beautiful advent of the Internet, this cool thing, you can search up recipes from around the world. You can find some recipes to cook at home. It can Be an experience where the two of you and you can dress up if you want to, like Tom and I did, go to the grocery store, find your ingredients and whatever it is you need to make the recipe, come home, make it together, and enjoy that incredible meal. And heck, you could even decorate the house in flair of your international place. You know, babe, this reminds me of when we went to the Tuscany Towers, and do you remember we became inspired to visit Italy internationally because we walked in and there was this beautiful music and these beautiful pictures of Italy, and we literally sat down and cracked a bottle of wine and just watched the pictures for hours. We didn't even go out that night. You remember that? Oh, it's incredible. And so we can do this inside the walls of our own home through food, through beverage, through decorations, through dressing up. So decide on an international place that you would love to travel to research it, Go find some food and some beverage and some decorations. And heck, you even dress up in the Florence style of the place as well. And enjoy traveling internationally without having to leave the house. Italian, make some pizza. France, oh, it's got to be cheese and wine. Japan, maybe do some sushi. Greece, make it something Mediterranean. A little fish dish. How about Mexican? That's fun. Have your own, like, Mexican fiesta right at home. And then, gosh, if you want to share some of these pictures from your experience on social media, we would love to see what you're up to. We would love to see that this is inspiring you to actually put your problems on the shelf and go have a little bit of darn fun. It's important. It's what puts gas in our gas tanks. So we need to decide what we're going to do next. Right? Have any ideas?

I can't say them out loud.

Oh, my. Mr. Bartley. So get on our fun list if you're not already. We do giveaways. We have fun ideas that we share with our followers on that email list. And that's also the list that we pull our random winners the first Thursday of every single month right here live on the show. You can join the fun list by going to our website@stacybartley.com we would love to have you come and join us.

And as we land this episode, it takes us to can you feel it? And Stacy just played this for me right before our show, ladies and gentlemen, and I would highly, highly encourage you. In fact, you know, I say this sometimes. You could go listen to this song first and then listen to this episode. This song is absolutely amazing. Yeah.

It will put you in the right mindset and emotional experience to really hear this episode in a totally different way. I couldn't agree more. And I want to give a shout out to our beautiful daughter, Brookie extraordinaire, who's behind the scenes at some point supports our work. She's the one that actually came up with the song this week, and I want to give her credit for that. I had already picked the song out, was ready to send it to her incredible engineer, and she goes, wait, wait, wait, whoa. I think, I think, I think this is the perfect song. And so, without further ado, let me tell you what that song is. It's by finesse and the name of the song is Lifetime. And he says this. How do you know if you've done everything right? Is it the love that you have in your hand or is it the cash you kiss at night? If it was worth it in the end how do you know? Did every second really count? Is this the life you were dreaming of as you're slinging through your days? So don't waste the time you have Waiting for time to pass it's only a lifetime and it's only a short while it's not long enough and you're not gonna like it without love it is a beautiful song if I do say so myself. Anything you want to add about that.

Song and your experience, just really please give gift yourself the time to watch it. You know what? And that, that's going to be a wrap, you know, thank you so much for being with us.

Hold on. I want you to know that you can check out this week's song along with all of our song from our past episodes by going to our website and subscribing to our Spotify playlist that has been created just for you. Okay, now that's a wrap.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you to Eric Ryder, our engineer, kknw, our fabulous support team behind the scenes for making this all possible. If you need some support, please reach out to us. And if you're a listener, thank you so much. We appreciate it very much.

Yeah, we'll look forward to being back here with you next week. Bye bye for now.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast. Love the show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We got to close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.