Transcript of Unlocking Love: A Deep Dive into Trauma, Trust, and Transformation

Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

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What is the thing we need to heal first, the brain, the mind, or the heart?

I think that the body plays such a larger role than we give it credit for, especially in my field. We like to praise the power of the mind, of the prefrontal cortex, our very empowered space that can imagine this incredibly different future and create all of this incredible change and even affirmations. I think that they're grounded in this reality, that to think differently, we can create a shift, a shift in how we feel and ultimately a shift in how we do. That's half of the journey, though. The other half of it is really first attuning to what signals my body is sending my mind, my heart, being included in that body, specifically, what is my nervous system? Is my nervous system telling my mind that I'm safe in this moment? That I can be grounded maybe in that internal presence that we were just kind of talking about tuning inward? What is my heart saying? What is my heart wanting? Or what is my heart needing? What do I want to do to act in compassion in that moment? And if I don't feel safe in my body, and I know I spend decades with my body sending my mind, my brain signals of lacking safety, of threat, of endless stress.

Your body was sending your brain this or your mind.

My body was sending my brain this. I think this is why a lot of us, we can't sit in stillness. We feel endlessly distracted by the world around us or endlessly agitated, because all of those are signals that our body is in stress, ultimately.

Now, is it the body, or is it the nervous system and the heart? Like, is it the skin, the blood, the bones? Or is it, like, more the nervous system and the heart in reaction to an environment or memory?

The nervous system and the heart we can think of are the control center for the rest of what the body is doing. We're like a sensor, an energetic sensor. Our nervous system is sending out electromagnetic waves. Our heart is actually sending out electromagnetic waves at a greater distance. And we're sensing the world around us. And then how we register what's happening in our external world is through changes in our skin. We get sweaty, we get clammy. Changes in our musculature, tension, they get tense, or they get relaxed, whatever it might be, changes in our heart rate. So those sensors and that kind of command center of the heart and the nervous system is always outside of our awareness, assessing and scanning. And even more so than taking in information from just the external environment, is taking information from your nervous system, from others, from the stressed or non stressed you are. And then, like dominoes, we kind of ping against each other. The more stressed you are, the more I feel your stress, the more likely my body is to become stressed.

And also opposite that, probably the more relaxed I am. When you're stressed, it can help you calm and regulate as well in certain ways. Right.

Beautiful. I have a whole couple chapters dedicated to, and a big premise of the book is to attune to our body to that second subtitle, create and find peace within ourselves, so that those signals that probably historically were stressed out signals, you know, threatening, quite literally, the world around us and other people in relationship, then when we shift that, when we come into that comp ground at presence, in my opinion, that is the embodiment of being this love, because I think one of the most loving things that we can do is create a safe environment, a relational environment for someone else to be who they are, to express their thoughts, their perspectives, their emotions, and really just to be themselves. So a lot of the science within the book is harnessing the power of the heart, harnessing the power of co regulation, and actually teaching us to quite literally be in that energetic state of love so that we can actually, in my opinion, heal those relationships.

I love this Martha and I, she does a great job. If I'm feeling like, you know, a little overwhelmed or something, she does a great job of bringing calming energy to me. She can notice it and bring calm, and then I can get calm pretty quickly and vice versa. If she's had a long day or something and she's just having an overwhelming moment or she's feeling sensitive, I can notice it and just hug her for ten minutes, and then she feels better, she can relax and calm down. Now, both of us have a pretty good awareness of taking care of ourselves, doing the inner work, you know, so that it's usually not both of us at the same time and break down for a moment, right? But when two people have traumatic nervous systems, or who haven't healed their heart or their nervous system, and they are in a relationship, and neither of them know how to regulate their emotions, what tends to happen in that relationship? If they don't know how to heal their hearts?

We tend to, I think, engage in cycles of endless conflict, of endless disconnection, of endless coping strategies that we've learned. We rely on the things that we do, whether it's using substances or distracting ourselves by scrolling endlessly online. We are then the living byproduct. Sometimes it's in these explosive cycles of conflict I call this patterning that I think is pretty common in most relationships. I know. Lally and I, when we began our relationship now near a decade ago, we were very much in a dysfunctional patterning of what I call trauma bonding.

Really?

Absolutely.

What is trauma bonding?

So trauma bonding again, I like to provide a more expansive definition than I think some could define it online, but it's all of those dysfunctional habits and patterns that, again, once kept us safe in childhood that we continue to recreate. Whether it's these cycles of explosive conflict, maybe that some of us are even defining is love, intensity and passion. And all of the things chemistry we're looking for in chemistry, or the just dysfunctional habits and selves that we're playing, where we're just one of the partners is always the caretaker of the other partner, who's always in need of the care and right, no matter what relationship you're in, you see yourself kind of engaging within that same dynamic. Or for me, the most prominent one is cycles of emotional disconnection. No matter who I was with, and I was always in a relationship, I was somewhat of a serial monogamous since I started dating when I was 16 years old. More or less always in a romantic partnership, definitely had friendships and social engagements and things to do, but I was really the living embodiment, or the feeling embodiment of alone in a crowded room.

And the number one complaint that would usually end to the demise of the relationship because I would be so frustrated or resentful or so passive aggressively acting out that before I knew it, the relationship would end was, I don't feel emotionally connected.

Your partners would say that.

I would say that.

You would say that.

I would complain about not feeling emotionally connected. Though I can share a story. My first boyfriend ever in high school. To this day, it sticks with me. When we broke up, we were nearing graduation, we were going to separate colleges very far away, and so we broke up on logistics of, you know, it's college or undergo. He also lodged a statement, complaint, if you will, and he labeled me as being emotionally unavailable. And I was really struck by that because I was like, me, emotionally unavailable. What do you mean? I feel so loving. I felt in love with him. I was kind of devastated when he broke up with me. So I was like, that's unusual to hear. I think he's obviously wrong. Flash forward a couple years, I discovered I was attracted to women. So now I was like, oh, well, it's because I'm interested in women that I'm emotionally available. Of course I am. Flash forward even a more couple years. I was in a psychoanalytic training program in Philadelphia right before I was licensed. And one of the aspects of the training was to sit in group therapy around a room of other analysts where essentially for an hour and a half, we just analyze, analyzing each other.

We just analyze each other and our experiences with each other and our perceptions and how we feel interacting.

This is part of your training?

This was part of my training to get my license. It was. I selected to go into that style of training because I thought it would be beneficial. And it was, though, very difficult. And one of the things that I heard from a colleague there one time in the group, she decides to share her experience of me and described me as cold and aloof. And I'm like, okay, what? That is so interesting. Like, now you're reflecting back, right. This idea of me being distance, but I didn't have any language to understand. I still thought that she was a little bit inaccurate.

Right, right.

Though now, looking at it, you don't really know me.

Yeah.

Looking back, I'm like, oh, this is making complete sense. The reason why I was so emotionally disconnected, that was real for me in my relationships. It was because I was emotionally disconnected from myself. So I wasn't attuned to how I was thinking or feeling. I wasn't sharing that. So of course, I was creating a cycle of disconnection in my relationships. So as much as I wanted to not agree with those two assessments, I mean, a lot of ways they were quite accurate.

When did you get to a point where you said, okay, this.

Even though, even though I don't think.

I'm emotionally disconnected, the pattern is showing up that I am.

Others are letting me know I'm in breakdown.

The relations don't work.

You know, whatever disconnection I have from.

People, the pattern is following me. So, okay, I'm going to take a look at this seriously. What did you do to break that cycle? In your book, how to be the love you seek, you talk about breaking cycles. How did you break that cycle? How did you know you had something to break and that you needed to find solutions or tools to improve that emotional connection as opposed to disconnection?

I started to look for myself because, yes, other people's feedback can be absolutely helpful, but I never would suggest that you just defer to what someone else assesses you to be or says of you. So I finally started to take it in. I started to say, okay, if I continue to hear this and feel this way from that conscious perspective, I will always kind of acknowledge consciousness or learning how to observe ourself in the context of this conversation within our relationships, to be that first point of action. So I started to look, I started to pay attention and to assess really simplistically, Nicole, how connected are you? How present are you in any given moment? And as I began to check in with myself throughout the day, whether or not you want to set an alarm on your phone to do it, or put some post it notes on wherever you walk by regularly, or maybe even set a designated time during the day over morning coffee or when I'm reading the newspaper, this is going to be my moment to check in. The more regularly I checked in with where my attention is, the more I noticed that it was a million miles away, really.

I could be in conversation with someone, and while I'm here and I'm being talked at, I'm thinking about maybe what I'm going to respond to next, or I'm just somewhere else entirely. And the more I checked in and noticed that disconnection, the more then I built on that consciousness step and began to. Because there's always two steps to change me. Becoming aware that I'm a disconnect. It was only half the journey then. I had to begin to make that choice, to reconnect with myself.

Wow.

To shift that focus of attention time and time again from the thoughts that they were consumed in, or even just worrying about someone else. Am I more attuned to the person across from me than to how I feel being across from the person? And the more I kind of flex that muscle, the more than I was able to reconnect with what my body was doing in any given moment.

How long do you think it took for you then to practice that? You know, because it was probably most of your life where you had this type of emotional disconnection. What it sounds like as a safety mechanism to create safety from childhood, whatever may have been that you were being safe from.

So how long did it take for.

You to feel like, okay, I'm not having to think about this. It's more automatic. I am emotionally connected, you know, did it take months, years, or is it still something you have to focus on?

It's still a daily intention, commitment, conversation. What has become automatic is the awareness of the importance of checking in with my self. Consciously, though, there are still moments as my stress level goes up, as I become busy with endless obligations. That overachiever conditioned self in me likes to prioritize all of the things that I have to do to show up in service of someone else. And that begins first thing in the morning when I know I have emails, answer, I know I have a whole membership that I can tend to. I know I have a book to edit or whatever it is that I'm working on. So it's a daily commitment to, instead of prioritizing all the things we do or all the things I could do to really create time, beginning in the morning to attune to my physical body, to how it feels at any given moment, to giving it what it needs, whether it's movement or stretching or rest or, you know, just a conscious moment to be with me. And there are moments when I'm not doing that. When I don't prioritize what I know, I consciously and benefit it to prioritize that.

I do find myself being much more detached, much more dissociated. It becomes still easy for me to travel down that older pathway.

Wow.

So how to be the love you seek? It sounds like we first need to figure out and pay attention to what cycle we need to break is what I'm hearing is like, we need to figure out, okay, why am I in struggle, suffer, fight or flight mode? Why am I, you know, reactive? Why is there a breakdown? So we gotta figure out what the cycle is. Are there a number of different cycles to be aware of? Or is it kind of one cycle that we all follow?

I think we can become aware of our habitual pattern of relating these conditioned cells. I overview several of them. Conditioned selves, conditioned selves, these kind of typical ways, roles I play to really simplify it in our relationships, it can look like me, right? The overachiever. On the other side of that, it can look like the underachiever. I have something called a caretaker, a yes person who kind of just defers and pleases the environment around them. A hero worshiper. So what am I doing habitually in my relationships? Who am I? What is my identity? Even you can begin to.

How many conditioned selves are there? How many of these kind of archetypes?

I mean, there's many more than I list. I think I give about seven or eight. Just common examples. But so any, if listeners don't relate to any of them that I just said or that are in the book is what is just who are you in your relationships? What is that? Very stable.

What's your main role? What's your main role you're playing? What primary role did you play? I'm an overachiever. I'm an over giver. I feel helpless, whatever the role is.

Yes.

And you could be on that side, right? I'm the person who's always receiving someone in care of me. I'm the person who's in that kind of helpless cycle. I think another really important thing to observe outside of the conditioned way that we typically are or the role that we play is begin to really create a relationship with our nervous system and beginning to learn when we're in those moments of a stress reaction. Because there are interpersonal things that happen for many of us when, say, we're in that sympathetic fight mode. You know, we can feel very agitated with our muscles being tense all the time, our jaw being clenched, our heart always pounding out of our chest. Interpersonally, that can look like being in active conflict, screaming, yelling, really shameful, I think behaviors I know that I've often said and did things that I don't mean, that are very mean in relationships. When I'm in that cycle of stress reaction, it's not that I don't care about the person aside of me. And this even brings back in this concept of the heart. When my nervous system is telling me that I'm in a threat state, it actually doesn't matter who the person is across from me because they become just the threat between me and safety.

Which is why we can become very combative and mean. Other moments look like outside of the fight response is the flight response. If we're always distracting ourself, we're never available for the difficult conversation because, oh, I have that email to answer, or I'm endlessly scrolling on my phone, or I'm distracting myself with tv again. These are coping mechanisms of my nervous system trying to find safety.

What is usually beneath that? If someone is in a relationship watching or listening this and they have a partner that is more reactive, maybe they scream sometimes or they react in an unconscious way or just disrespectful sometimes because they're in a fight or flight state or they're trying to feel safe, but it may seem irrational to the other person. Right. This is irrational. Nothing's wrong, but they're reacting. What is usually underneath that reactiveness?

Some feeling of being threatened. And again, it might not be logically present what the fear is. I mean, you could be sitting in your living room, seemingly in a very calm circumstance in that moment. But something even, perhaps interpersonally, is similar enough to a time and a space before, usually in childhood, where that was the only option. I mean, think about children screaming, yelling. Kind of all of those are that moment of reactivity. Usually because something is feeling unsafe, the person is feeling some fear around being threatened.

Wow.

I heard this. I don't know who originally coined this, but I heard someone say that if there's hysteria, if there's history, if someone's being, you know, overreacting about something when they don't need to, there's a history behind that. There's a wound, there's something that's triggering the fear. Like you just said, what can someone do who've been conditioned for years or decades in that state to actually address it? How do they start addressing that, to find peace, to heal that hysteria that's causing them pain?

Yeah, I really want to focus, too, on the history aspect of it, because I want to affirm that those feelings, even if they are out of proportion, disproportionate, over the top, whatever we want to label or maybe have had them labeled or believe them to be, if it's in our partner, they're real, even if it's from our past. That physiology is real, is active in that moment. It's present, it's present, it's alive. It's as if we're back in time as that younger child, right, when kicking and screaming was the only thing that we could do in that environment. And I just want to say that to not only normalize the experience, but to try to avoid the tendency to shame it in ourselves and in other people or the idea of kind of just bypassing it. Oh, we'll just get over it, because it's not actually what's happening in the moment, because according to our body and our physiology, it's actually very much happening in that moment, which then opens the door for many of us to begin to make new choices in that moment, to deal with that elevated physiology, to actually be with those uncomfortable emotions, because what has happened is kicking and screaming or yelling and, you know, fighting whatever it is.

Fleeing has been the only way that we've been able to cope. And it's still very much what we need to do in that moment because we don't yet have other tools. So what's really difficult is when we try to shame it away and then we don't leave ourselves with something else to do with how we're feeling. So it really is the kind of shifting and expanding of energy and of attention in that moment to create the opportunity to begin to practice new habits, to learn new things to do when we're feeling overwhelmed. Because until we embody a consistent practice, we will be overwhelmed by our emotions and our nervous system will kind of travel down that well worn rut because it will need to do something to create safety for ourself in that moment.

Yeah.

And I guess people respond and react in different ways based on the history they have or the trauma they have, where some, you know, some partners may scream and kick and yell, whereas others may shut down and be distant. Right. There's different types of responses that we might have from the history of our pain.

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If someone watching or listening is in a relationship with someone for a long time that they really love, they care about, and they have this pattern of distancing themselves emotionally, shutting down or kicking and screaming, what can they do to support them in discovering tools, creating awareness around it, finding a therapist or a coach to support them in growing? And what if their partner doesn't want to address it, ever, isn't willing to be vulnerable about the past, and doesn't want any help from anyone else? How do they manage that?

I think one of the most complicated things is you have two individuals trying to navigate a relationship where we both have our stuff from the past. Because what often happens in those moments when someone's kicking and screaming or detaching, chances are it could be activating my old lived experience. Right? So if someone removes themselves distanced, just like my mom once did, to navigate whatever it is that they're feeling, a difficult conversation, that we're having, something not to do with me at all. Difficult experience they're having at work or with their family inherently in their distance. It's going to activate me, right? It's going to bring me right back to in childhood when my mom was emotionally distant, or when she was giving me the silent treatment to express her disappointment at whatever I was doing in that moment. And it's going to then activate the way I deal with it. So what happens is we have two people cycling through these threat based responses and neither of them are able to kind of return to that grounded state of presence. So the best thing I think that we can do is, and I have a lot of tools not only to begin to self identify which state of nervous system activation you're in so that you can begin to regulate yourself.

Really helpful. And this is outside of even romantic partnerships for your friends, for your family members, can be really helpful to have the awareness of signs and signals that they're in a state of emotional system or nervous system activation. Because sometimes when we understand that, oh, this person is fleeing the room and can't have this conversation right now, not because it's not important to them, but because they're having their own threat based reaction, that can give us a moment of compassion, it can maybe give us access to do something differently, not to allow it to activate our own threat response, which is going to perceive it probably differently. Oh, well, they're leaving because this isn't important for me. And then, of course, going back to this idea of co regulation, the more grounded we're able to remain in those moments and the more open our partners or our loved ones are to co regulating with us, we can actually help them calm down from those stressful, reactive moments so that then they can shift their focus, they can actually shift the point of the brain that they're operating from and hear us and speak to us and negotiate what's happening in a much more common, rational way.

But I like to add that point in, because sometimes we want to shake our partners and just get them to hear us in this moment where they're a million miles away or they're screaming and yelling. And unfortunately, those aren't the moments where they're going to be able to hear us until they're in a calmer brain state. Quite literally, they're not going to be focused on what we're saying. They're going to be locked and loaded in their perspective, and their nervous system is going to be locked and loaded in their habitual way that they need to do right then to find the.

Safety this is fascinating because people watching or listening typically are the type of people that want to improve their life. They want to grow. They want to find tools to have more awareness, more personal power, more, you know, progress, all these different things. So I'm assuming people watching and listening might resonate with this. Why is it so challenging for an individual who has been in a trauma bonded relationship and now they're aware of it? Or they're in a family that has maybe had some stagnant behaviors and patterns that doesn't want to grow? Why is it so hard for one individual in a family or a relationship to try to improve and grow and develop new habits and transform themselves, and think differently, and talk differently and act differently? Why is it so challenging in a family dynamic or an intimate relationship to grow when others aren't willing to grow.

While we all are evolving creatures? I mean, I think it's kind of intrinsically what the experience of being human is. It's a process of evolving, becoming, process of movement. Yet at the same time, our nervous system is wired to prefer the familiar. Simply, we don't like change. While we can change and we can create incredible change and transformation, our nervous system actually prefers to stay the same. It finds change and movement very stressful. So when faced with change, often ourselves, even how to do the work was really around that concept of the resistance and the reason why we're so stuck in these habitual patterns. Because anytime we set the intention to do different, and then more so when we follow through with making new choices, we do meet that pullback to that familiar through the thoughts in our mind, the discomfort in our body. Before we know it, we're right back in those habitual patterns. So we struggle to change. Even though we can change, our nervous system prefers us not to. And our relationships equally struggle when we begin to experience someone anew, or when we're the person making new choices. Especially in a family where dynamics and roles have been repeated and practiced and validated for so long, then really like dominoes, right?

Here's someone new. That's maybe putting a new perspective on the family experience might be really difficult to hear, right? A different truth about how it was when we have our own rehearsed story of how the family is or isn't or whatever it is. More so when someone begins to act in a new way, then chances are there's going to be some impact on that dynamic.

Interesting.

There's going to be a challenge to the individual identity. Sometimes there's the challenge to the family identity. What we thought we were. Now maybe we're not as much, and then there's going to be a reorganization of the different roles within the family. So again, it comes down to change. How equipped is each individual, in whatever relationship, dyad or family unit to deal with the stress of change? And as far as I see it, a lot of us who were raised with past generations were not yet equipped. We didn't have the tools, we didn't have the resources, we didn't have the attuned caretaking in our childhood to learn how to navigate the stress of change.

I know you've talked about this before in here, but how did you, for those that didn't hear this in a previous interview, how did you navigate this as you were evolving, changing, growing, developing in your twenties, thirties with your family dynamic, not in your intimate relationship, although that has evolved and changed as well. But let's start with the family dynamic before we talk about intimate dynamic.

Yeah, it was really challenging in my family, coming from a family that was very boundaryless, codependent, we had a very unified family identity. I was kind of taught growing up that family is everything, with this idea of putting family, family needs first, even going back to this concept of selfishness. So all of that was kind of ingrained in my belief system and very dynamically, like I was sharing when we began, showed up in how I showed up or how little I showed up in my relationship. So as I started to become aware and see all of the moments where I wasn't giving myself space, and it was glaringly present in my relationship with my family that I was living actually in quite close physical proximity by this point, I had moved home to the Philadelphia area. They were living right outside of Philadelphia. So I had endless opportunity to be at family dinner on Sunday or my mom's, you know, standard doctor's appointment with a lot of health issues that continued with my mom until her old age. So saying that to say there was a lot of the same dynamic happening at home, and I was awakening to the possibility of, and necessity for me of creating some more distance, of not being endlessly available, of beginning to set new boundaries.

And for the better part of several months, I would try. I would try to decline invitations. I would try to decline phone calls and not be immediately available. And I say try because it was always met with a running theme in my family, was when there was distance in especially contact immediately, because there was so much health trauma that happened, health, you know, concerns and worry and anxiety. The immediate belief or worry would be when someone was out of contact for an unpredictable amount of time. It must be because something terrible happened to them.

Interesting.

Are they in the hospital? Are they sick? Is something wrong?

So there was a history of fear.

History of fear which would create this.

Hyper vigilant monitoring of contact. When I didn't call, for instance, on the regular, you know, weekly phone call, it was, you know, is everything okay? Just tell me everything is okay. And I would call at a very particular timeframe up until this period of time where I was like, well, wait a minute, you're only doing that to placate this kind of anxiety cycle. You don't actually want to be calling in those moments. Yes, I wanted contact with my family, but I didn't need to have regular contact every three days and tell them that I was alive. Right?

Right.

So saying that to say, I tried to put up boundaries, to create separation, to create distance and space for me to begin to honor the. What I wanted and needed. By this point, I was building a practice. I was in a committed relationship. I had other things that I wanted to be putting my time and attention to. It was always met with this fear, this worry that would escalate into. I mean, I would get texts like, jesus Christ, Nicole, just tell us you're okay. You know, we're getting worried we're going to call hospitals, like, endless. So I came to the really difficult decision to make a break and to take. I always kind of start to say, ask for space, but I didn't really ask for space. I more or less told my family that I was going to take space away from the family unit, that I would be unavailable for any sort of obligation or, you know, anything that for the foreseeable future. And because I wasn't, I didn't trust myself to communicate to them in person. I was so afraid that when my mom started to cry or my dad became upset because my mom was upset, or my sister was devastated because her and I were to very trauma bonded in a codependent relationship, trying to navigate my mom's health.

I didn't trust myself to stand in my boundary. So I took the opportunity to write a very long email expressing things that I hadn't fully been able to share with them in terms of what I was coming to realize and how things in the past had impacted me and end it with that statement that I was taking time away and I didn't know how much time I would want to take or need to take, nor did I know how they would react to my request. I mean, I was very much aware of the possibility that they would be so devastated and hurt that the door wouldn't be open on the other side of it. But at that point, I knew I'm probably from that deeper, intuitive place. My heart was telling me that I did need more space than I was able to create. So it ended up being the better part of, I think, 18 months before I started to really get curious about where they were at. I had built a lot of self trust in that 18 months, meaning I was getting more confident that I could engage with them again. And if the dynamic was exactly as I left it, I was gaining more confident that I could continue to maintain my boundaries and to live into the relationship dynamic that I wanted, regardless of what they were unable or able to do.

And very gratefully, not only did they email me back near immediately, they let me know that they had been in family therapy and individual therapy and all the different types of therapy since I had ended contact with them. While it was very devastating, they on some level were appreciative of the opportunity that it gave them and us to kind of look at things newly. We reengaged contact over several family therapy sessions, which felt very safe to me because I wanted to have a contained conversation, not knowing essentially what I was walking into. And I signed online for that first Zoom session, and I saw my mom, my dad, and my sister for the first time in eight months. And, wow, we had some difficult conversations and had some future based conversations and where I was able to kind of acknowledge what I wanted and needed and the relationships moving forward and intended to create for us. And since then, it's just been really a gift in a lot of ways. We've been able to not only reorganize as a family, we've been able to separate. That has actually allowed us to deepen and build, like, deeper, actual, real, now authentic connections, which has been really beautiful.

You know, I started a healing journey of 30 for those that aren't aware of their emotional traumas, and also those don't have tools in a healthy way to navigate those. What would be the process, would you say? Let's say give it a framework.

Yeah.

For healing trauma. Is it like a. If you could simplify. Not that you can simplify it, but it's like there's four steps to healing trauma. Three steps. One, be aware. Two, like, because it's really hard to do it on your own.

So I'm going to read you the chapter titles. Okay. Because this is the journey. Yes, it's my. This is. This is my journey from recovering from trauma. In that process, I share many, many methods and tools that one can use immediately and also introduce the therapeutic practices that changed and saved my life. And in introducing those practices, I actually give ways that you can do them in real time so that you can say, oh, this was really soothing for me, or, I just listened to Gabby do some ifs with Louis. I want to look further into ifs, but the journey looks to me like this. And then I think we all have our own individual journeys. But my hope in this book, and the intention here, is to help the reader, one, know that they're not alone, and two, know that there is a guided path from trauma, too. Profound freedom and inner peace. There's no way I would put my face on that cover if I couldn't stand behind that. Okay, so here we go. So, the first chapter one is become willing to become free. Willing to become free means you can't even open this book if you don't have a desire to want to be free, to want to be free, to look more closely, to even just have a mustard seed of hope that there could be a better way.

How does someone start the willingness process?

Well, if they're still listening, they're willing.

Okay, good.

Yeah. If you have a curiosity, you're willing.

If you're here, you're willing. And even if you tuned into this episode, you're willing. Cause I'm sure there'll be trauma somewhere in the title or whatever you decide, but it'll be something that's gonna be an acknowledgement. Yeah, there's something in that for me. Many, many, many more people are willing these days than ever before. I think that if I'd written this book five years ago, I'd have a half the audience that I have now.

Right.

I mean, that. Okay. For this specific content, chapter two has become brave enough to wonder. So, in my case, I literally didn't remember and had to be brave enough to wonder what was there. And in other people's cases, they just have to maybe wonder, not that they don't necessarily remember what happened to them, but to wonder what could be behind these triggers, what could be some feelings behind these triggers, what could be. I did a podcast with somebody the other day, and she was like, I have. She's like, my co host has so much trauma, and she's so open about it, and she's like, I have no trauma. Within five minutes, we were like, the neglectful father and the this and that, you know? Like, it was just, like, instant, and everybody's got it everybody's got it. So you just have to become brave enough to wonder.

And it might be a little t, but becomes big t over time.

Well, it was interesting. She's like, I guess I just have little t. Little t. And then she started to describe her story. We were both like, that's big tea trouble. So chapter three is why we run. So what is it? What is the reason that we're running? Why are we running and recognizing, okay, we have this trigger. We have a feeling behind it, we have a reaction to it, and then what could it be?

Is it just so. It's so painful for us to face it. That's why we run most of the time.

That's right.

It's so hard for us to what?

Mentally, emotionally, underneath all of the unresolved traumas, big t, small t from our past, is the belief system that we are unlovable and inadequate. How? And we did not. You said beautifully that now little Louis has big Lewis helping him process this stuff that he wished he'd had when he was little. But when we're young, we don't. And if we don't have a caretaker or a primary caretaker that has a secure attachment to us, helping us in those. In those young moments to feel safe and seen and soothed and secure, as I talk about later, and I'll get into that, then we literally have to rely on the protectors, all those storylines that we build up, the parts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The challenge is, I mean, how many parents have tools, are healthy in their own emotional suck? How do you raise a kid who's healthy when so many people are struggling with their own challenges?

Read the book. I'm so serious. Because then we get into, well, if you fast forward to chapter nine, it's about reparenting yourself. But so much of this book is, if you go through this book, you will be a better parent without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, I've got a whole. I've got a chapter in here about hiding behind the body that we have impermissible rage locked up in our back pain, in our headaches, in our gastrointestinal issues, in our insomnia, eczema. And I talk about the psychosomatic effects of the mental disturbances that have not been resolved in how they affect the body. And then speaking about shame and then going even further and ifs and all the somatic work that we can do, and then it carries on. So I take you through, this is the playbook. Yes, this is the playbook. And now one thing I'm really cautious of with the reader is not every chapter is going to be right for where someone is right now for you. You could pick this up and be like, yeah, I could do all of that, or, I've done half that and I'm going to do more.

And for Marta at the same. Could be somebody on the street could be like, okay, I just have to read this right now and just take it in.

Yeah, I can't even get started.

I gotta come back in a year to do the exercises now.

Okay. So once we're aware and once we have the willingness and we're starting to wonder and look at some of these things and we say, okay, here's two things from my past that I haven't been willing to tell. Friends, partners, husbands, wives, spouses, parents. Like, I've neglected to talk about these things. They're so shameful. I'm so afraid to talk about them. Let's say it's one thing, two things, whatever. What is the next step once you become aware of your trauma and you know there's something you want to heal?

Mmm.

Is it. Well, there's a number of different therapeutic experiences you could go through. Here's a few to try. Is it. Everyone does it differently. Some people more introspective, and they do journaling prompts. Others need to speak to someone is what are the best ways to heal and really integrate the healing? Because I think it's. Again, I don't think it's like I'm aware and I'm healed. It's like, you got to integrate the practice, and every time you're triggered, can you breathe and respond?

Integration is the word. Actually, it's the word. And, well, like I said, everyone's going to resonate with different methods in this book that are appropriate for them at this time. You can trust your own internal system, intuitive force, to know what's safe enough for you today. You'll feel it in your body. So, for me, I wasn't going to be able to do the somatic experiencing, the body based work until x period, like, you know, two years ago, because that was when I could feel safe enough in my own body and almost back in my body, like, I would just departed my body, and I was like, back in my human body.

Somatic experiences? You mean like just bodywork or physical?

So, Essie, which is somatic experiencing, I write about in this book, it's invented by Peter Levine, is built on the premise that trauma is the inability to be present. And when we have deep rooted trauma, yes, it's activated in our thoughts at times, but primarily it's body based. So we have these triggers that then.

Store to the body. The body keeps a score.

Yeah, correct. So they send these messages. These triggers send a message to the brain that says, like, fight, flight, freeze. And so what happens as a child is whatever you were unable to do. Like, in my case, let's say I needed to push someone off of me that became, I mean, I was not able to complete that, that full blown, you know, so fight, flight, and then it froze. Right. So if you freeze in time, you're stuck. That energy gets truncated in your system, and you become stuck in the neural loop of fight flight. And then you get stuck. And then fight flight, it's stuck. And that repetition, repetition. And so the beautiful process of somatic experiencing is about no storyline. It's not about what happened. Where were you? It's all about the body and going right into the body, going right into the presence of the body and allowing the body to show you what it needs to do to fully reprocess the experience.

That's powerful.

And so in some cases, it's very slow. Right. So it could be like, if you wanted to punch somebody, it's like a really, really slow movement. And I give. And this is body based work. So the practices that I give in that chapter are also things that you can do right now to start to ground your body. So a heart hold, like putting your right hand on your heart and your left hand on your belly.

Actually, interestingly, hugging yourself.

Try this out. Put your right hand on your heart and your left hand and your belly. How does that feel?

It feels good.

Okay, switch hands. Left hand. Does that feel better or worse?

Different. Cause I'm used to putting my right.

Hand over my heart, so not as soon as.

Not as natural.

There you go. Okay, so it's important. I just learned this. I interviewed Dan Siegel, and I was doing this, and he's like, well, you put the right hand on your heart, but I did the left. And he's like, 70% of people put their right hand on their heart, and they feel that safety and the rest kind of do the left. So you have to check on which side's right for you.

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But the heart hold or a head hold. These practices are really profound for settling your nervous system. Breathing in for two strokes out, one long stroke if you're feeling overly anxious and activated. So, tapping eft, which you've talked about tapping on the gamut point. So there's a point between your ring finger and your pinky finger. And if you're in that stressed out place and you're getting in the loop, tap. I am safe. And tap and just repeat, I am safe. I am safe. A power pose, like standing, like Superman, superwoman. That can change your nervous system. So these practices are really body based practices for letting your system settle in the moment. And then, of course, I say in the book, if you want to go further, find a somatic experiencing therapist. And here's how. And all of the methods that I was guided to for my recovery were all spiritual therapeutic practices. I can say this because I'm not in the clinical space, but I believe that they're all extraordinarily spiritual, the specifics. So, EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, that's designed, again, to help you reprocess that loop.

So, once we figure out which therapeutic experiences are best for us, right. It's gonna be different for each one of us. What would you say? You know, can we fully heal something?

Is it.

How long does it take? You know, is it based on the trauma and how long we've set it stored? Is there hope for people to say, I don't have this trigger for the rest of my life? I feel, like, peaceful.

Well, let me ask you, when things.

Happen, I don't want to be reactive.

Let me ask you this. In general. How do you feel?

Incredible.

Yeah?

Yeah, I feel good.

Me, too.

Yeah. But I. For 25 years, I felt a lot of inner stress, you know, inner. Inner conflict.

And so thank you to the 25 years for all that it offered you to get you to where you are now.

Right.

But you feel awesome. Yeah, so do I. So, while it's been a good, committed, devotional practice, we are living proof that there is a guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace.

Absolutely.

We're living that. And it doesn't mean that we don't still have triggers. Doesn't mean that there isn't more of the crystal to shine. Does it mean that I still don't go to therapy every single week and sometimes twice a week, but because I want to continue to care for and honor and respect all of the parts of who I am.

Yeah. I mean, I come from the sports background, which, you know, and I'm a big fan of doing, having accountability for your goals. Right. If I'm talking with sports background, it's like. And I know I can't do it alone in athletics.

Mm hmm.

So why try to do it alone in my emotional, you know, growth, my mental growth, my spiritual growth, I can do. I can go pretty far on my own, but I think it's just good to have the accountability for whatever that looks like for people. I'm not saying they need therapy every week or they need to invest in something, but it's good to have accountability however you find it.

I agree.

Yeah.

I think it's really powerful.

It's one of the reasons that the twelve step program works so well. It's because of the fellowship. It's because you have a sponsor, it's because you have meetings. People are looking for you. Where is that person today? You know, just got a text message from one of my friends who have been sober. We've been sober for 16 years. He's been sober 17 years. And I was the first 1st person I met in AA, and he texted me today and he's like, check it in.

You still good?

Yeah, check it in.

How long were you in AA for?

I'm still an AA.

Really? Yes. So once you started, you never stop?

Some people stop.

So is that once a month? Is that once a week? What is that?

Well, really depends on who you are and what you need. Right. So I go to meetings now. You can go to Zoom meetings. I go to meetings in person sometimes, but mostly zoom since the pandemic, unfortunately.

Right, right. Is it hard for people who start AA to not need it anymore or you kind of like.

Well, I think that.

Can you transcend that? I guess.

You can move into a different type of program. You can move into a different type of therapy. There's plenty of people, when they get long term sobriety, that they start to feel less resonant with some of the meetings and things. But it's suggested and I think recommended to stay close to it because you don't want to forget where you came from.

Right.

I think everyone's path is different.

Sure.

I actually share a story in the book about sharing about, I believe, and Gabra mate would say this, and other folks in this trauma.

I've been watching his stuff. I love him.

He's incredible. Yeah.

I gotta interview him.

Yes, you do.

He looks amazing.

Yeah. What he would say is that, and I agree with this completely, is that trauma is the root cause of addiction.

That's what he says a lot.

100%. Couldn't agree more.

Because if you're not. Yeah. If you're not, you don't need addiction if you're not traumatized by something.

Right.

If you feel peace inside, why would you need to reach for some copy?

Correct. And we all have trauma, and so we all have reactive ways of acting. But the bigger the trauma, oftentimes, the bigger the coping mechanism, aka the firefighter part.

Yes.

And that's an addiction. Right. So addiction is a way of. A huge way of putting out the fire.

So the root cause or the root of addiction is trauma or unresolved trauma. It sounds like.

That's correct. I.

So if you want to eliminate your addiction, your negative addictions, the key is to figure out where's the trauma and start healing that trauma.

Yeah, that would be the goal. But I noticed in my own, with a lot of sober people in my life, that they all have had similar experiences to myself and to you and big t traumas. And even being clean and sober, it's still terrible. I mean, I was sober eleven years before I was ready to face into my trauma.

Interesting. Do you feel like if you would have faced it year one or two, do you think you would have?

I wouldn't have been able to. And I'll explain to you why. So I said to my therapist when I remembered that trauma, why now? Why am I remembering this now? And she said, because you're safe enough to remember. You've been enough therapy, you have enough spiritual foundation, you're safe.

You gotta get support group. You've got a good partnership.

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

That's right.

But if he is saying that the root of addiction is trauma, wouldn't we want to start going to the trauma first? But if you're saying if you don't feel safe enough to face it, it may take you.

So that's the point. So I think going to the trauma is so delicate and gentle, and it's like peeling back those layers of the onion. And anyone that's listening right now, still listening, because many people might have just been like, I'm so activated. This is a lot for me. They'll come back and a half a year or whatever a year from now and listen again. But the bottom line is that we all have these traumas and we're running from them and to go headfirst into them would be like ripping off the band aid or just being in the dark and all of a sudden walking into the brightest light you've ever seen and it would blast you out. And that can happen. It does happen. People do remember when they're not ready to. And even when you are ready, it's terrifying to remember these things or accept things. But yeah, you have to go slow.

What about when someone says, you know, I'm with this person, they make me happy. What does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship?

Well, the day they don't, you will say, they make me unhappy or they don't make me happy. But it's theydeze they do to me. I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power they can give, they can withhold. I depend, I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them.

And what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach that?

We give each other a good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds.

Oh, that's cool.

A home is a foundation with wings. Or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings. So you feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability, as much as you can, as much as our life allows us. And at the same time, you have the wings to go and explore, discover, be curious, be in the world. Sometimes together and sometimes apart.

What do you think happens when people are in a relationship and let's say they're together for a year or a couple years and they decide, okay, we want to get married, but maybe one or two each of the individuals don't accept something fully about the other person. Maybe there's like three things that they really don't like or don't accept.

Like what?

Or wish they changed?

What?

Yeah. I don't know. I'm just trying to think of something where you're like, I love so much, we have this great connection, we have so much fun, and we're growing and building a relationship, but behind their back, you're telling your girlfriend or your guy friends, I wish they changed this, this or this. I don't like this thing. I don't like this thing.

That's ambivalence.

What does that mean?

Meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like, what makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here.

What happens when we don't accept that, though? And we. And we like, you know, hopefully they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing that I don't like about them? What happens when we're in that space?

It means that when you get married, you're not just making a deal with your partner, you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change. And then when it doesn't, you get very upset or pissed. Because your deal with yourself, which you never said out loud, it's a private bargain you do with yourself and all of us, when we pick someone, make private bargains with ourselves. And it's often that bargain that is broken more than the one. Because the partner never promised you that you change.

Exactly. And so it just creates more resentment. When we want something to change, we don't accept it.

Expectations are resentment in the make. The more expectations you have, the more things you can be disappointed of afterwards, especially when they're not articulated. I think what you need to know is what are some of the things. If you are with someone who. If you go back to the erotic connection. If you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection, and you know that this is something that really is important to you. Being seen, being touched, being held, being kissed, being stroked, being made love to is really a language that is very important to you. And you don't want to live without it, then listen to yourself. If it's not an important part for you, because that is not the way you express yourself most, then you know that this is not the centerpiece of your relationship. You have other things that you share. If you know that you don't want children, or reverse that the other person doesn't want children. Don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind, their mind, because that is not fair to you, nor to them. If you are with someone who says, I do not want to marry, and you do, or if you are with someone who says, I see love, plural, I do not see myself just with one partner.

And this is very clear to you that that's not okay, or that you want a different. Listen to yourself. Those are values that involve life decisions. That you don't sit there waiting till they're going to catch up with you.

And what happens when our. When two people's values are not in alignment? Can they still have a beautiful life story? Or do you feel like there's always going to be some type of unnecessary story?

I think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a sense of differentiation. Meaning if I am okay wanting to go to church and that's not part of what you do, we come from the same faith or we come from different religions. And one of us wants to adhere to their tradition and wants to participate in the practices of their religion and is okay doing it without the other. Doesn't feel that that needs to be shared, doesn't experience. Every time they sit in church, I wish you were sitting next to me. Why do I have to come here alone all the time? You know that.

So it's accepting someone's choices.

It's accepting that your choice, if you practice it, you can accept to do it without your partner.

So it's you accepting it.

It's you accepting, of course, the other person. But the other person can often tell you, you go if you like to be there. I don't want to go there on Sunday morning. I have other things to do with your time.

Sure.

Okay. Religion is a major one on that. Travel is another one on that. Children, work, family, in laws. It's difficult to say to someone, I'll have a child alone. You don't have to participate, but it is easier to say, I will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me. You don't have to be a part of that. We have other things that we will share, but you need to know to do that and feel okay about it. If all the time. Now that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish you partner. There's a great sermon. I so wish you had been there to hear it. Great. But if it's chronic and you just feel this whole all the time and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you and your partner is. And your partner doesn't show curiosity because you can come from something else and say, I'm interested in this. Let me see what this is. If you want to go back to live in your home country and your partner has zero intention of living where they are, listen to them. Don't hope.

If they tell you, yes, I would like that at some point, then listen carefully. If they're saying this to pacify you, if they're saying this to make sure that you don't leave them, or if they truly intend to do this at some time.

And don't hope something's gonna change. Don't hope they're gonna do something later. After you get married or in a relationship.

No. Start from the place that it's not gonna happen. See how it is.

Can you accept that?

Can you accept that? Then if things change, all the better. But don't start with the hope that it will be different.

Right. And how does jealousy play in relationships? I used to be extremely jealous and insecure.

I remember that.

Then something switched in me. I don't know, five years ago, six years ago, maybe somewhere around that time where I was like, you know what? This does not support me or my relationship at all.

This.

This jealous nature or this that you.

Knew even when you were jealous.

Oh, yeah, I knew, but I couldn't, I couldn't let it go.

Right. So it's not what you said to yourself that changed. What?

Something changed? Yeah. I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember just being like, I'm tired of. I'm tired of feeling this way.

So what did you change? Not what did you say to yourself?

I think I changed fully accepting the person's decisions and lifestyle and what they were doing and trusting that everything was going to be okay and not needing to be jealous. I think I was just afraid, like, are they talking to some guy or something? You know? Is there something behind my back that they're doing? I don't know. It was a worry of like an anxiousness. Right.

So.

And then I was just like, wait, wait, wait. Yes.

Part of what accompanies jealousy, you know, jealousy starts at one and a half year old. It's not an early emotion.

Interesting.

It needs a sense of self first. It needs the beginning of self awareness as a baby to be able to experience jealousy. It's not like fear and joy and disgust and sadness.

So where does it come from?

Where it comes from and how evolutionary psychology has all kinds of explanations for jealousy. But where it comes from interpersonally, is that it requires having a sense of who you are before you begin to experience how you respond to what other people are doing. I want that too. I don't, you know, I don't want to lose something. What changed for you is that you became more confident.

Yeah.

You felt less. That your sense of self worth is in the hands of the other person. And that, and they turned away from you. That means that you are not enough or that you're going to lose them or that they're going to leave you. That's what changed.

And then I'd be like, hurt or empty or sad or in pain because of their actions. And I think that's 100%. I think I didn't feel like I was good enough or something, where I was just like, you know what? It's all gonna be okay. You know, if they do something or.

But this, it's all gonna be okay. Followed in different sense of yourself.

Absolutely.

Where you were less in a panic, less in the grip of, they're gonna abandon me, and I'm not good enough. And from that place, you began to say, it's okay. Nothing bad is gonna happen.

Yeah.

That's how we diminish jealousy. It's not how we react to what the other person does. It's how we feel about ourselves that changes how we react about what the other person does.

Absolutely. And it's been an incredible freedom and gift that I. That I received or gave myself, but it took me, you know, 30 something years to learn it. And it feels incredible. It feels incredible. But for years, I struggled with it. And I think a lot of people in general, at least guy friends that I knew growing up, struggled with it as well. Where they didn't feel comfortable or maybe their female partner didn't feel comfortable with them doing certain things without them there or whatever. And now I'm just, like, at peace. And whatever my partner wants to do, I'm like, live your life.

Have you ever had a conversation about jealousy with your girlfriend?

I've talked about it where I'm, like, highly cultural. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I've talked about with her, I'm like, I'm so glad I'm not jealous.

Right. But Americans, yes. Think that being jealous diminishes them. They pride themselves when they say, I'm not jealous.

Really?

Yes. It's a kind of a thing. Like, it's not a nice thing to feel. Other cultures, well, latin cultures, it's intrinsic to love.

It's how you love.

If you're not jealous, you don't love the person enough. Yes, that's a distortion in the other direction, but it's very cultural jealousy. Jealousy, if you track the magazines in America, is a subject that disappears for decades sometimes and then suddenly reemerges. But it is often seen as a negative emotion. It isn't seen as an emotion that is so simply part and parcel of the experience of love.

Is jealousy then a healthy emotion in a life story?

It sometimes can be a perfectly healthy emotion, and sometimes it can be very, very challenging, and sometimes it can become pathological. It covers a whole range.

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Where does jealousy. Where is jealousy a good thing when someone has jealousy?

When is jealousy a good thing? When have you experienced jealousy and you didn't feel like it was debilitating and crippling you?

I mean, debilitating? I mean, yeah. I don't know. I think there might be.

I don't.

I mean, it was always debilitating for me, I think, before I learned to process it and let it go because I realized it wasn't supporting my thoughts and my emotions and I was saying or doing things that wasn't the highest level of love, I would say, or like, the most conscious way to communicate, you know, when those scenarios would happen. So I just realized it wasn't supporting me and I didn't feel good when I had that emotion or those jealous thoughts in a relationship with you.

But if you were part of a culture that told you that jealousy is not something you want to get rid of, but it actually signals certain things to you and it communicates certain aspects of love, you would have had a different experience, you know. Now when is it positive? Probably the easiest example for me is if I ask people all over the world, by the way, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Not sexually attractive, just drawn to when.

Other people are interested in that more.

That's one of them. That is one of the main four.

When other people are flirting or giving them attention.

Yes. When I see them with other people, when I see other people captivated by them, when I see the magnetism that they have over other people, when I see how others are drawn to them, when they don't belong to me. Now, if you are jealous in a feeling that is really crippling and painful, then you do not enjoy that. You feel uncertain, you feel insecure, you feel scared. You feel like they could leave you. You realize that maybe, you know, they're not attached to you. But if you are more grounded and if you feel more secure in your connection to your partner and to yourself, then when you see that experience, you have a tingling of jealousy, but it is a jealousy that actually increases your appreciation for your person.

Interesting. Yeah.

So that's an example of when do people experience jealousy in a way that actually is fueling healthy jealousy.

Right.

Okay. But I don't, because I don't think this is a puritanical definitions of health. It's just, this is the issue. Is that, is it problematic or is it additive?

That makes sense.

It's more than, is it healthy or unhealthy? I think healthy and unhealthy doesn't help us in this moment.

Is it hurting you or the relationship? Or is it supporting the relationship?

Yes.

So you thought it's four ways.

Yes.

What's the other three there?

So let me ask you, when do you find yourself most drawn?

What would you say to Martha? I find myself drawn to her. I mean, from, for me, I feel drawn when she loves and accepts me for who I am, when she's affectionate, when she is a pre, you know, sharing appreciation with me and gratitude with me, when she's joyful and her most expressed self, like, just pure energy and love and fun and play. I have a lot of appreciation and admiration for her when she is living her dreams also. Like, she's doing what she wants to do fully. And I'm like, that's inspiring. You know, it draws me to her. What else? I think the fact that she is so in integrity with her word draws me to her because then I feel more and more connected and grateful and appreciative and safe in the environment.

So.

I mean, sexually, so many different ways that I'm drawn to.

But, you know, when I say the first four, it's just simply because I've gone around the world asking this question and I just began to see themes. Right. The first one is when I see my partner in their element.

Yeah. Doing their thing.

Their partner doing their thing. Competent, radiant, in their element. It could be on stage, at work, on a horse, on a slope, you know? But it is basically when they are self sufficient and when they are radiant and they're in their element and they're passionate about something and they are alive. And all of those things also mean that I am not needing to be burdened by a certain form of emotional caretaking.

She doesn't need you.

They don't need me. That's it. And when they don't need you, you can want them?

Yes. If they're always needing you, how does that affect the relationship?

So let's wait a second. So they don't need you in that moment, and that not needing you clears the pathway for desire. It allows you to want, because if you were needed and you need to take care of them, then you are loving, but you're not necessarily desiring.

Got it.

And what happens over time when people say this? And the admiration is extremely important here because I think it's much bigger than respect. Admiration involves a certain idealization, and it means that there is a sense of otherness. She's different. She's other. She's her own thing. And in this space between her and you, between me and the other, lies the erotic elan. And when people ask about sustaining desire in the long haul, this is the.

Place in their element, in their own way.

Yes.

Not reliant on each other to be.

That's love. Love and desiree. They relate, and they also conflict. And herein lies the mystery of eroticism. So that's number one in her element. When she's joyful, when she makes me laugh, those two, it's like there's a sense of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, of energy. That is erotic. That is erotic. That's the number two. And usually it means when there is an element of surprise.

Mmm. Yeah.

She's very adventurous because it's unsolicited. But, you know, sometimes people say, when my partner is vulnerable, and I say, that is because it's not usually the case.

Right. So, surprise.

It's surprise. If they were always vulnerable, it would not be on the list of when am I most drawn to my partner? It's because it's different. It's the side of them I don't get to see so often. It's the side of me that they don't get to see that often. So when they accept me fully and I can always in a different way, because it's different, it's unusual. It's out of the ordinary. That's number two. Number three is when I see my partner through the eyes of the others. That's the jealousy piece that you describe.

So when you see others admiring or respecting or attracted to sexually or any.

Of those things, what does it mean? It means my partner doesn't belong to me. It means that other people can look at them, too, can fantasize about them too. You know, I always say, your partner doesn't belong to you. They're just on loan with an option to renew.

Right. Every day. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Interesting.

And the fourth one is when we are apart or when we reunite. So that desire is also rooted in absence and in longing and not just in being there.

How important is creating space in a relationship, whether you're dating or in a marriage, and creating day apart, days apart, weeks apart? And has it ever become too long apart for a relationship to stay growing? If it's months apart or something.

So the first question is, how important is distance in a relationship? I will also add something that I learned from the poet David White this week when we had a conversation together and he talked about the importance of silence in a relationship.

Not always having to speak or.

Yes. Or the importance of being able to be with yourself while being in the presence of the other.

What would that look like? Like reading a book and the person's in the room.

Could be that. Could be that you go away for a few weeks because you want to go do a meditation retreat or a project that you're interested in. Or, you know, it's the notion that. Or the fact that you keep certain things to yourself, but that you stay in dialog with yourself and a dialog that isn't always shared with your partner.

When you mean silent with yourself, do you mean, like, not speaking at all for part of this time? Or you just mean.

But you're taking it literally?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's literally, but it's also the metaphor of it. So I'll explain the context our conversation was called because that's your question about how important is distance? I would say distance is very important in a relationship. But the way I define it is this. Every relationship straddles freedom and commitment. Togetherness and separateness, connection and independence. Every relationship. In every relationship, there is often one person who is more inclined to the connection and one person who is more inclined for the separateness. One person more afraid of losing the other, and one person more afraid of losing themselves. One person more in touch with the fear of abandonment. One person more in touch with the fear of suffocation. We all have both, but we organize our relationship in which one of us will take on the role of this duality.

And it might evolve seasonally too completely.

So we need connection and we need distance. We need the things that are joined and together. And we need the things that are separate. The separateness doesn't mean that there is deadness in the relationship. So when you ask, how long can we be apart? It depends what you do with the space in between. If you keep the space in between alive, we are away. We have been together five, six years. And you have to go do a project, and you're gone for three months. But during those three months, you have a whole letter writing experience where you are communicating in a very different way than the usual everyday communication. Every two days or so at night, you sit down and you write a letter. Not just what you've done, the catch up of the day, but then you create an aliveness to that space in between that can be even richer. That when we are living together and we're standing in the kitchen every morning.

Right.

That's interesting.

That's powerful. Yeah. What would you say was the biggest challenge that you faced internally throughout relationships that you had to face yourself?

Oh, I think, you know, I met my husband Jack when I was 22.

You're what, 35 now?

Yes. I like it. And actually, 35 years together.

Really? 35 years together.

Married. Married. Now we're together even more than that.

Wow.

It's powerful, you know? But I probably swallowed the romantic ideal quite a bit as a young girl, too. Are you gonna meet the right man with this man? If you meet the right person, you will never feel alone again. You will never feel, you will never be sad. You will seriously, you know, whatever you feel, you will feel again until some of it, you may feel until you drop dead. But if it changes, it's not because the magical potion of the other person is going to suddenly sprinkle its dust over you. So that was getting rid of some of the myths.

How long did it take for you internally to. To let that go or evolve or heal those myths?

Ah, yeah. I would say the first decade, you know, it's slowly over time, you begin to, you know, you begin to realize that, I think, you know, he was. I looked up to him. I still look up to him. He's a very smart guy, and I really wouldn't let any idea leave the house before it was vetted and approved by him.

Interesting.

Is this smart? Is this good? Can I publish this?

Getting approval.

Getting approval, you know, from the mentor.

Interesting. That was the first ten years.

Yeah, no, maybe a little bit less than ten, but certainly five years. Okay. I really needed him to.

Validate or check everything.

I would write and to validate and say it's good because he had the PhD. I don't, you know, the whole. And then finally I was told one day, you know, I have my own things to write. And I was just like, oh, who's gonna help me? Who's gonna help me? You know? And beginning to write without depending on him that much was a major transition. Mating in captivity was written completely on.

My own, without his approval of every chapter.

I had an editor that I hired who was phenomenal, but it was no longer. It was not an emotional dependency. It was a professional relationship. So that was a major transition, I think, also understanding the difference between equality and equity.

What is the difference?

It's not 50 50.

The relationship is not. No no relationship.

No, it's a hundred, hundred, you know? And complementarity, there are certain things that I will never do that I rely on him and certain things that he will never do, and he relies on me, and they balance each other out. And there's a fundamental sense of fairness, complementarity, you know, if I want to go do something, it's just go, do, enjoy, be the best, you know, this complete generosity and that generosity towards distance or freedom or individuality, this is a very important thing. So here's a question for you and for your listeners as well. Ask yourself, you can do it in relation to work. You can do it in relation to love. To me, that was a very important question. I understood early on that I needed freedom.

Mm hmm.

No, I wouldn't put it differently. I could tolerate the lack of security better than I could tolerate the lack of freedom.

Mm hmm.

You needed freedom more than insecurity. Yeah.

So I understood early on that I'm gonna be self employed.

Uh huh.

Meaning I can tolerate not knowing when the next check is gonna come from. But I prefer that than somebody telling me when I can take a vacation.

This was back in the eighties, right?

Yes.

Yes. This is my twenties, early twenties. But then I applied it to relationships.

Interesting.

I knew that I need to be with someone to whom I can say, go do your thing. And someone who says to me, go do your thing.

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