Love, Danger, Deviance, and Conflict — Stan Tatkin

oh you gotta love yourself before you can love another person you got to know yourself before you can be in a relationship I mean it's all [ __ ] because developmentally we don't do anything by ourselves without having it done first to us so we learn everything from the outside in in the beginning and then we learn it you know in tandem I learned to love myself at the same time as I learned to love you they're together they they coexist I learned to know myself by knowing you very well and being open to you what you have to say about me because that's how I know myself is in connection to another person it's all interactive it's all inter subjective so these ideas give people the notion that they should not be in relationship but practice in a cave or read a book or go to therapy which is not a bad idea of course or just do workshops but this is a learning by doing you you can't learn outside of a relationship you have to be in one and fail and learn and fail and get better and learn and so on [Music] when this week's guest and takin's merits melted down he really was at a loss he was a skilled therapist somebody who had built his career helping people understanding dysfunction on all levels and personality disorders and challenges and for some reason when things started to go south in the most meaningful relationship in his life he couldn't figure out how to turn down the heat that marriage eventually ended up ending but it also set in motion a really deep and profound exploration of how people build relationships together what goes right what goes wrong the biology the psychology the neurology behind them and it led him to completely shift directions in his career he has since devoted his working life to understanding all these things and building new tools new models to allow people who are in partnership whether that is business partnership familial partnership romantic partnership to create and to help fix things that are massively dysfunctional and then to build really deeply meaningful connected lives together that actually eventually led him to his own new relationship and to then build not just a life but also a career along with his wife and write a series of books wired for love wire for dating and a number of others and also found the pact Institute which is has developed a really powerful methodology to help people and both unwind and understand current relationships and then do a whole lot of myth-busting and then rebuild or build really powerful sustained involve long-term relationships it's a really rich conversation I learned a ton it's got me thinking about a lot of the ways that I move into my own relationships in my life really excited to share this with you i'm jonathan fields and this is good life project [Music] there are a lot of things that I want to explore with you so as we sit here you have a long-standing every practice focusing very much on partners and couples co-founder with your wife of an institute and I want to get into that and I want to get into a lot of your ideas I wanna take a step back though before we do that because when I look all over to do a little bit of research I see a whole lot about your professional quote bio but not whole lot before that because it didn't exist that was before penitentiary I was in the private island somewhere and I'm always curious when somebody becomes so sort of hyper focused on one particular topic and exploration what is it in your life that led you to that curiosity about this thing well divorce before this well let me go back to my early life which was as a musician that was my life until 26 27 and would you play drums drummer I come from a show business family a musical family so that was my life until it wasn't and I scrambled around trying to find myself for a good four or five years until I decided to go back to school and once I did in the field of psychology I loved it and I never looked back I I kind of looked back a little bit took a while to make the the transition from being what I thought it would be my whole life which was a professional musician to this new idea of being a therapist but I took to it very strongly and I had a series of really fortunate experiences and mentors in my life one of them was wasn't John Bradshaw per se because I only worked for him but the experience of working at the Bradshaw Center really cut my teeth on working with difficult populations tell me more about the Bradshaw Center what that is John Bradshaw was popular during the time of Pia melody and others who were coining terms like codependency Co alcohol getting into early family systems John was I think instrumental for getting people into therapy who otherwise would never have gone he was really great at that so he opened up a center called the John Bradshaw Center which was actually there were three of them in sequence but located in a hospital and I was part of that I came on board fairly early and one of the that became one of the lead group therapists so through that experience I learned how to deal with or had learned how to survive in a very difficult atmosphere with a patient population that had a lot of what is known as disorders of the self or personality disorders and from there because I was so it was so difficult working with that population I came across my next mentor Jim Masterson James Masterson was located here actually his Institute he has since passed away and Jim Masterson was the the expert at the time on personality disorders and that's what I thought after leaving Bradshaw that I would do is I would specialize in that area which I did but I also lucked into a gig Charter Hospital where I became director of the outpatient drug and alcohol program something I really didn't want to do but it was an opportunity to work after Bradshaw and I did that for a couple of years but during this time I was also a teacher also taught college and I became very interested in prevention preventing personalities disorders preventing psychopathology starting with infant mother pairs so I studied this prevention model that came out of the Hinks Institute up in Toronto and I retooled my practice to work with caregiver infant pairs and oddly enough as as much as I love that work it's very hard in this country to get people to do this to come in there are other countries like in Canada and other countries you know where it's mandated with at-risk mothers to do that kind of work so it was very hard to get that population in to therapy I was studying the brain at the time with another mentor of mine Allen Shore and I went through a divorce as I was married before my current wife Tracy to another therapist and we had kind of a hot divorce meaning the whole relationship was so head spinning and what went wrong seemed to go wrong very quickly and we were still hot when we divorced it wasn't cold wasn't like what happens many times people are just done we weren't really so done as we were still in a fight and when that happened it really crushed me the divorce I couldn't make sense of it I mean I couldn't I couldn't and as I was studying the brain and in particular the autonomic nervous system it occurred to me that one of the big problems that I had had or that we had had was in Co regulating distressed states my ex-wife and I that means that two nervous systems hitting each other at the same time in distress creating what I now think of as a threat state not purposely of course not intentionally but something that can happen psychologically and sub psychologically between two individuals who happen to hit each other in the same places at the same time it would be like you and I being on fire at the same time over and over again and nobody is there to put us out right and that's what would happen to us we would hit each other in the same places that were so untenable that we would quickly spiral into this biological threat state where now I see it as fight or flight that neither of us could get out of and it was head scratching and when that happened I was very impressed with John Gottman's papers that he hadn't first come out with on the psycho biology of couples and John Gottman has done a lot of wonderful research up at the University of Washington Washington State and so along with my learning about infant attachment and arousal regulation and infant brain development I started to make the transfer to adult pair-bonding and I'm you know my memory is such that it's hard to know exactly how that happened but I think I was obsessed with what had happened in my marriage and I took that obsession and started to transfer everything I had known and studied to adult pair-bonding issues to therapists in a relationship going through this you know it's from the outside looking in you would wonder and you know what these are two people who are trained in the psychology of situations like this surely they would be the ones who would be able to zoom the lens out and look down and see what's really happening and I think there's probably a lot of Mythology right like when you're entering it it doesn't matter who you are what your training is here's the truth about all that you can be as smart as you wish you can learn as much as you can about relationships even about the brain you can go through analysis as I did and if you get hit in the right way at the right time with another person who represents deep family which you know primary attachment partners do all bets are off when you go live you can become an animal a three-year-old all that knowledge goes out the window and that's because of how the brain operates that these higher cortical areas where we learn and are able to be flexible and plastic these are very plastic areas of the brain they also happen to be energy consuming and because of that when we are under stress they no longer operate very well because glucose and blood begins to be distributed elsewhere and not to these very fancy energy consuming areas of the brain that do air correcting and where time is a is a factor because they're slow you need time to let all parts of the brain operate but if you are in a lot of stress and starting to move into what we think of as a hypothalamic state fight or flight there's a brain change and there's a neurochemical change we're automatic anyway 99% of our day is automatic run by memory but when we get aroused like this we're completely automatic and there is no mediating part of our brain that says wait a second maybe that face meant something else or maybe she said this but you thought that that goes out the window and what happens is that we resort to very basic memory having to do with threat and we do anything and everything we can to protect their own interests protect ourselves this is a human condition this is not about us being self-centered everybody will do this and so that is why I say you know when we get into these threat states it's it's almost sub psychological we're acting and reacting so quickly faster than thought that we don't have time to figure out why we're doing something and when pressured we basically make it up that's what our brain does we make so it's almost like we regressed into a primal state or the prime more primal part of our brain dominates without the way it dominates because sub quartey's subcortical areas are very low energy consuming and so they can operate under low oxygen conditions which is exactly what happens when we get a hyper aroused or hypo arouse same thing happens and so before you know it you are you know because of this rapid back-and-forth that's that's mostly nonverbal you both can create this threat state mostly based on misunderstanding by the way because real time is too fast and that is what would happen with me and my ex-wife it had nothing to do with intelligence has nothing to do with how much therapy you have the combination of our two nervous systems plus our history seem to be combustible and the big problem was that we weren't good at soothing each other we neither of us were good at putting the fire out and I think that is what ultimately made it a no-go and that became part of my study is not so much what we hear about conflict and couples you know money time as sex kids but something that's happening automatically on a very fast level that has nothing to do with psychology per se but has to do with the human condition whereby we tend to filter the environment out for dangers because of our need to survive that we have more parts of our brain that are devoted to danger and threat and possible threat than any other thing that we have this subcortical area that operates at lightning speeds based on memory only and that most of the time were basically slaves to that part to these areas of the brain and that this is the human condition this is how easy it is for us to go to war this is how easy it is for us to misinterpret even those we love our children our parents our partners and for the moment forget that they're good people forget that we love them forget that they're not predators this seems to be a big part of the human condition yeah so I mean this is fascinating for me I've wondered in --- at's when they're likely to get triggered is in our primary attachment relationships and there's a reason for that so this is really cool you've all heard about the microbiome right you know the bacteria that lives in our guts kind of become the hot focus in medicine and science because we're realizing how important a balanced microbiome is to every aspect of our health and how do we balance it out super high quality probiotics are really important but did you know there's also a massive microbiome that exists on another part of your body your skin and that's out of balance it can affect not only how you feel but also how you look so it's really important to keep your skin's microbiome healthy and balanced too just like your gut so when our friends at Trula skincare reached out to me to partner with us I was kind of intrigued actually they're the first skin care brand to create an entire line of skin care products that integrate probiotics they actually are clinically proven to help strengthen your skin's natural defenses and I have to say my wife and daughter have become huge fans and daily users not just because they know it's great for their skin but because of how it makes their skin look and feel and as a good life project listener we have arranged for you to get 20% off and free shipping on your order just go to Tula comm slash good life and enter the promo code at the top of the screen that's tu la comm slash good life and use the promo code on the screen for your 20% off and free shipping to lucam slash good life [Music] deconstruct a little bit primary attachment relationship tell me so you and I are newly friends right and we're not going to trigger each other unless we you know have outrageous behavior that reminds us of something dangerous as something unlikable which of course has not happened you're a very nice man let's say we became interdependent let's say we became so close like cop car partners well we had to depend on each other to save our lives right to protect each other we would start to trigger more because in that situation of interdependency we remind each other of our earliest figures upon whom we depend on and that makes the relationship different we don't have those memories ordinarily until we begin to experience dependency and then we remember what went wrong and what went right in those situations of dependency when that happens we become deep family in a sense we start to become proxies for all these other dependency relationships that are in the past they're stored basically in in procedural memory sometimes people call it body memory and so they can pop up under these circumstances where they wouldn't pop up if we were just friends yeah so it's almost like the deeper you go with somebody the more likely you are or the more likely that relationship is to trigger something that happened that was similar enough in the previous relationship where there was that deep sense of attachment and that same response then gets transferred to the new person to a certain extent exactly and sometimes we don't know it and then we find out other times in therapy we learn about it and we already know that that exists but this will surprise people I used to call it the marriage monster that you know we're doing fine we're doing great we get married and suddenly have fall into a deep depression for a year and why or you become a whole different person somebody who I wouldn't have predicted well there's something about that new situation that triggers memory memory based on a similar situation and that you know you know our earliest dependency relationships are the biggest you know culprits here because that goes to our deepest sense of safety and security and where we're not safe and secure where we're vulnerable where we could get hurt again those memories lay dormant until we get back into that situation and then surprise so this is you know this again is very much about human nature the nature of the mind and there's nothing aberrant about it but people don't know and they don't understand so this is all unfolding in your own life and it starts to really affect your interest in the direction that you want to go with your vocation yes it's kind of like you know the doctor Hill right yeah if it isn't it always with almost any sort of health healing therapeutic profession right yeah there's something personal to it and so when I met Tracy who is my my wife today someone I've known actually most of my life anyway that relationship was an eye-opener to me because I found that as two people two nervous systems we were very good at it we were very it was a lot easier for us the areas where I'm a pain in the ass she can manage the areas where she's a pain in the ass I can manage we are rarely if ever on fire at the same time and so it works out very nicely we're you know very good at distress relief very good at creating excitement something called exciting love we're very good at creating co-creating quiet love and so I learned as much through my relationship with Tracy as I have on anything I've ever read or studied her any research I've done or even from my own patients the corrective experience I had with trace led to ideas about secure functioning on what a secure functioning the relationship is having nothing to do with attachment theory but having to do with social contract theory justice fairness sensitivity and that sort of our relationship has been this live petri dish of examples that help me formulate and help me think about this whole matter not only just about human pair-bonding but how that represents the smallest unit of a society a couple that there is no smaller unit there is no individual that is that is a society right it's all relationships starting with a diet and all diets have to be based on some kind of system of social justice whether it's just or in just Rochester either and so that then led to this whole idea of secure functioning as a goal in therapy as a therapeutic stance a place to point to a place to strive for and then with some research found that people of all backgrounds can achieve this but also already have achieved it straight people people who are who would be considered mentally ill they've created a people like I said cop-car partners for people in the military it seems to be an attitude an idea based in reality that two people have a reason to be interdependent and that is mutual survival to be in the foxhole together to have each other's backs to be experts on each other to take care of each other because they can and because nobody else actually will so how does it square with the popular advice of put on your oxygen mask first you put on your oxygen mask first with children and the reason you put on your oxygen mask with yourself first is because children do not require the same amount of oxygen that the human brain the adult brain does so if you are anoxic and you know and you die or you pass a year of no use to your kid with your partner no you put your mask on together you have to do that this is the idea that the the couple represents the top of the food chain they're a resource engine they create resources that allow them to care for others to be more creative to be more independent and to be more resourceful so if the couple is the top of the food chain where's the individual the individual exists in the third thing that they create which is the relationship so you and I are individuals we don't serve each other we serve the relationship that we created that relationship is an ecosystem or a terrarium it's the air we breathe the water we drink based on our agreements we're stewards of that system that is fundamentally rooted in assurances of safety and security absolute safety and security that is it perfect no but we perfectly agree that is our mission that's what we're loyal to because the alternative is terrible so here's that third thing the third thing being the relationship that we create which in fact turns out to be like a fingerprint it's something that can never be created again it's phenomenological it's something that only two people can make and once they break up it's gone forever because it dynamically involves aspects of ourselves that another person may or may not amplify so it's something to be protected and respected because it provides cover for us and this cover again has to do with our agreements it's all about agreement it can never be because we love each other or because we're attracted to each other because we have this same things in common those are fleeting they're not substantive enough to be interdependent and yet those are the things that most people point to as as the source the thing is that the glue and as a couple therapists I know that is unsustainable it's not enough that people who have a much heavier reality based purpose in terms of what they serve the point of their relationship and where they are actually pointing together that is a mature adult relationship that's based on reality the understanding that there is no perfection or perfectly imperfect that everybody is a pain in the ass and that when we are together we accept each other as burdens and that were two separate minds two separate individuals how are we going to move through life together in a way that is fulfilling and exciting that doesn't make us feel like we're losing anything yeah and I and I think that's the that last part is the part where we kind of think well if we lose those first things that brought us together then everything from that moment becomes flatlined and everything is over and from what I understand you're saying is there's a naturalist or like set of alchemical things that will spark us in the beginning and and necessarily some of those will fade that it's the nature of things but that doesn't mean that you cannot co-create and and sort of like build there was moments of energy and electricity into the relationship on a sustained basis in other ways the best part is after the affair after the infatuation after that part but not many people know it they crash and burn and in the early phases of the relationship or they're unprepared for what comes later and a lot of that has to do with what we saw in her parents marriage what we see around us we it's hard to imagine something that we've never experienced it and so like anything else when you choose one thing and you go into it deeply and you study it you find a whole world a whole world of novelty if you look at it in a distant way in a gross way then it's boring because it's very easy to run out of novelty after we begin to automate each other that's always that's a it's always going to happen with anything new the brain is going to turn it to something old soon and that's for energy conservation so so you know what you were talking about when we first meet each other it's exciting and that excitement is mostly projection mostly fantasy but it's still exciting and as we get to know each other like anything novel our brain begins to take these things that are new and fit them into old ideas old sort of accommodating to old memories and now we think we know each other but we've really just automated each other in in a way that stops us from exploring looking deeply going onto I face to face finding ways to engage each other by using third things right we stop doing that and then we think oh I'm just not into this person anymore her and bored or I need to go out and look for something else and that is a misunderstanding I think of choosing one thing and going into that thing deeply I think the same thing goes for picking a career yeah I mean it seems like we have it you ate anything over time yeah it's a hedonism we habitually to the highest highs not and the lowest lows so it in a way it kind of makes sense that we wouldn't have bitchu eight to relationships which is not something that I think any of us are comfortable owning because we're I think we probably equate habituation with blah blah blah right you know like so you mean I have to live a life where like everything is now gone from it rather than it's an interesting premise if we start with the vet that yes this this is going to happen and you know it now it's our responsibility to figure out how we move forward in a way that reignites something that's where we get to the our mission and life is to is to be a force of nature together is to be experts on each other to study each other to work in tandem with each other as individuals but also as a team and that we can move each other up in our careers we can face dragons together we can handle complex situations together we can there's always something there that in the can enliven our relationship and can prove on a somewhat daily basis not saying I love you not saying I trust you but actually demonstrating it it's the it's the demonstration of loyalty demonstration of commitment that feeds the beast that actually leads to a different kind of love then was initially there in the excitement Perry and there are all sorts of tricks to create that exciting love that dopaminergic addictive kind of love that gets us into the rela --- how much more she likes me and this kind of thinking can go on and try into adulthood and there's some people who even write books about this I think it's a low-complexity way to do things there is a way to go deeper with someone a deeper love that can also be immensely erotic by using attraction and other techniques rather than fear a threat but that's not in popular culture exactly I think people who understand when they are bound together because of survival like people who are living on the street or you know like the other people have mentioned this one that have a common interest in survival they have other ways of maintaining that excitement that interest without putting danger within their own foxhole the danger is outside never in the foxhole and that I think is higher complexity protect the safety and security system at all costs which by the way the universe throws all sorts of pitches to couples to threaten that all the time and that there are other ways of sparking that dopaminergic exciting kind of love or rata sysm without messing with the safety and security system across the board I've never seen a couple mess with that system and come out okay they usually learn the lesson that thou shalt not [ __ ] with that system because when when that happens it's very hard to recalibrate it it's it's extremely disturbing to humans and primates actually to have that primary attachment system be disturbed by either I don't know if this will exist tomorrow or I don't know if it really exists now that kind of fear that makes somebody want to move towards someone is not sustainable and is it also is very hard on the brain and the body in terms of stress stress hormones it seemed I mean it makes sense from the outside looking in not that it's living it and what makes sense are ya not necessarily the same thing it feels like also that navigating together those big things that the universe there is at you from the outside that the things that you move through together that you do move through together probably deep in that sense of safety yes every time you prove it every time you demonstrate the strength of the relationship which by the way has to go two ways it's mostly by declaration you know to people saying to each other if not the same time and alternately this relationship will continue it will not end this relationship can handle who we are we can't break it that easily this is something that people have to tell each other otherwise it's not true right if people act as if the relationship is so breakable which many insecure people do because of their memories and their experiences that actually does weaken the relationship it is what people say it is I mean I may say or she'll say and show usually they go together oh no not I mean I would imagine not always though because you could say less I'm in this like how to present committed and then you know like the next day or actions completely betray that statement well we'd have to find out what those actions are and and who perceives them as such the person who's doing it or the person or the other partner right now we get into a certain complexity in terms of perception but certainly you know people saying that the relationship may not exist is going to be devastating and people behaving it and saying another shows deception which is also devastating so we're talking about a realization between two people that they're going to these are the things that they're going to do and these are the things they're not going to do because they know that the consequences of doing whatever they want right so we agree let's be transparent because we've agreed you know we've had experiences where we haven't or somebody hasn't been transferred out with us and why not why not be transparent what's the point of spending all those resources if you've picked somebody to be your partner your mate why spend all those resources to vet in your head what you're going to say not say so that these again come come down to two people having a mutual interest and not all mutual interests but a mutual interest in terms of making life livable being able to survive and thrive being able to do things for each other that you'd have to pay other people a lot of money to do you know it's a I mean agreement or set of agreement which is I mean it goes back to it's almost like you know I feel like there's this evolution of the social construct around what marriage is or what partnership is where couple of generations ago it was viewed largely as the social contract like this is there's it's almost like an agreement these are the roles that we play and then over the last generation it has emerged into something which is much more about passion and and romantic love and and emotion and choice and it kind of sounds like what you're saying is that the real sustainable nourishing flourishing state that we all aspire to on a deeper level maybe closer to the old you but there were problems with the old two because even though it's a it's supposed to I'm glad you said that by the way I think I want some of this new stuff it's supposed to be a social contract but if you look closely at the fine print it's not fair it's not always just and it certainly isn't sensitive and it's according to someone else's rules when we look at adult partnership and two separate individuals who are individuated differentiated coming together in a union because they can because together they can do more than they would otherwise it's based on their unique agreements not something found on the internet or read by rabbi or priest but something that they co-create as a forward-looking document and these are things like thou shalt not kill right these are things that they both drink the kool-aid on they both believe in that violating this would violate one's own principles and make that person a phony right so thou shalt not kill wouldn't work if it were you know I'm getting much better at this so give me some props I've only killed two people or thou shalt not kill if I'm in the mood right it these are these are absolutes that protect people from each other and we tell each other everything has to be challenged as to why would you do that why is it a good idea for me and why would it be a good idea for you and if I can't argue why it's good idea for me and you it's not going to work and vice versa so you have to do that with me so we're talking about real principles of governance right how we're gonna govern this relationship and how we're going to govern others you know what are the priorities who's the top of the food chain here how are we going to make decisions when other things conflict with our needs personal needs and mutual needs and so mature people have these ideas that are explicit and defendable and don't take it for granted that is just because you know why are you in monogamous why do you want to be monogamous there's nothing in your biology that suggests that you have to be so are you choosing to be why is it a good idea for you and why is a good idea for the other person and if these people cannot adequately defend it they're probably not going to do it so there's so many have you found now in you like years and years and years of practice that well although I guess there there's a little bit of bias because I'm guessing by the time that you sit down with many people like things are not in a great space but in just you know does anyone in real life really examine these things and the level that you're talking about yes they just don't come in to see me huh I've interviewed many older couples some of them we would consider mentor couples and they naturally did do this some of them because they grew up and suffered and they came to this some because their families were that you know this was part of the culture this is how they thought they thought as a two-person psychological system but so many of us come from families where the culture is a one-person oriented system where relationship was not the center of all things the self became the center of all things some self-interest would trump relationships whether performance or appearance or taking care of me don't leave me that kind of thing so a lot of this is people coming to the table with ideas that can never work because they're inherently you know one person oriented it's good for me but it if it's not good for you sorry and then they accrue all this memory of unfairness and insensitivity which then turns into threats by the way so no it's not a natural thing that's just why we worry about it the Institute because there are so many screwy messages about relationship and about how people should be there's so much absolutely harebrained ideas out there that still exist that are misleading and actually contribute to relationships of being unsustainable to the Glitter give me an example or two oh you gotta love yourself before you can love another person you got to know yourself before you can be in a relationship I mean it's all [ __ ] because developmentally we don't do anything by ourselves without having it done first to us so we learn everything from the outside in in the beginning and then we learn it you know in tandem I learn to love myself at the same time as I learned to love you they're together they they coexist I learn to know myself by knowing you very well and being open to you what you have to say about me because that's how I know myself is in connection to another person it's all interactive it's all and subjective so these ideas give people the notion that they should not be in relationship but practice in a cave or read a book or go to therapy which is not a bad idea of course or just do workshops but this is a learning by doing you you can't learn outside of a relationship you have to be in one and fail and learn and fail and get better and learn and so on or know how to do it well from the beginning that's a trick yeah and I guess the certain amount of that is probably modeled by the relationships that you see relationships that you see and also what you're attracted to there in literature and movies in music even there can be very good examples of good partnership that we can strive for good parenting where you can strive for there of course a lot of bad examples of that as well so some people get their examples from watching others or having a mentor or having a best friend or especially a lover we learn by observation and also by our own experience what we've seen and what we've also experienced in you know with another person yeah it's interesting that I've done a lot of thinking over the last few years around community and how we satisfy our need for belonging and because I happen to be of the belief that we are in a bit of a belonging crisis that most of the places that we've sought to find it over the last few generations are either not satisfying that need anymore or doing it in a way that which is not adequate we're grasping because we have to have that in some way and and as I've tried to deconstruct them what has to be there to like what are the what's the baseline to feel that and and similar to what you're sharing about you know one-on-one relationships where safety is the starting point it's the same thing with getting that sense of belonging satisfied within a larger community too there are so many other levels of potential things that make it better and deeper more interesting and more engaged the fundamental thing there's no safe container nothing else happens let's build on that you used two phrases I see if I can remember them properly I think it was excitement loving quiet love yeah three three states I consider important to co-create in a relationship to be able to do that together okay so take take me there a little bit and tell me tell me a little bit more about what they are exciting love is a high sympathetic vitality state that is less of an emotion and more of an addiction like experience and the reason it's more like an addiction like experience is because of the neuro chemicals that are involved in exciting love they're very similar to those that are created and follow a certain neural pathway as do drugs and drugs a bit of a particular kind excitatory drugs so exciting love is that love that you feel when you're infatuated or you're in a really great conversation with somebody and and you're in a flow you're you know riffing with each other and it's so much fun right you just want to come back to it again and again right that's the dopamine part the thing that makes you want to come back again and the and then other drugs involved here to like noradrenaline for attention testosterone which adds the eroticism the excitement and so to get and there's more than just those those are called the catecholamines but there's more than just that there's there are connecting neurotransmitters that are that are produced when we're connecting with another human brain something that we can only do between human brains that's called an amplification effect we don't have that when dealing with animals we think we do but it's basically masturbatory it's basically our amplifying o --- e of the lovely things between mother and baby or father and baby these quiet but alert states that are not exciting not down-regulating not so you know anything low but just relaxed and safe and then the other one is being able to co-manage distress in a way that attenuates in force shortens it that's done as a team so it's not denying things it's not sweeping things under the rug but it's being able to metabolize distress in one or both of us quickly and being able to shift into another state skillfully so that if we do get into conflict this morning it doesn't bleed into the afternoon we're able to skillfully shift in and out of these states without holding on too long so think of it also as the peristalsis of the belly that we're able to hold on and let go together hold on and let go together tense and relaxed and couples that are really good at that don't accrue a sense of threat they're not afraid of anything they can talk about anything because they don't have the experience of being held too long trapped overwhelmed run over defeated any of those things because they're good at doing it how much of this in your experience comes naturally to people on how much of it is cultivated through intention both to say that Tracy and I are simply good at it because we're skillful would be a lie I think that there's something fortunate about Tracy and I that the match something about our combination that is fortuitous I don't know that that can be conveyed or taught or even described well except subjectively both of us realize that we're kind of lucky in some ways and yet we also apply everything you know the principles that I have been created impact and around secure functioning largely based on science largely based on research but also our experience how much of that experience is because we naturally are good at it as a couple and how much of it is because of our skill sets hard to say and that's something I struggle with as a teacher in as a therapist I still have been able to take some of the hardest cases in front of me and have you know have made those cases those relationships better not just in the short run but permanently and the older I get the more I do this the better I get at it but it's because I have a very very strong stance on where I want them to go what I believe in and there's a lot of techniques that I used that maybe other therapists don't there's a lot of aspects to the pact approach which is poly theoretical and very complex pact a psychobiological approached a couple therapy its poly theoretical and that we it's not just psychological theory a developmental theory neurobiology arousal regulation theory it's bring together all these different worlds but so we have to drawn more than just a psychological approach which means the training is more complex and lot of moving parts but I think it also has to do with being very clear about secure functioning and having that clarity I think also helps couples who are looking for some kind of way to view themselves a container as you put it that actually fits who they are and fits their experience in their history in a way that makes sense that actually puts them into context not in pathological terms but in natural terms in terms that make complete sense is basically no fault no angels no devils that helps them understand the nature of being human which involves everybody not just unique to them and the way out and that there is only one way out and that is they either work together or they suffer the consequences they either work together in the way that is secure functioning truly mutual collaborative or they suffer there is no other way and I think couples who are in enough pain which we make sure they are that's therapists are willing to go there if if the therapist keeps them in distress significantly so that there's no other place to go I guess I can't just leave that hanging here tell me what you mean by that because a lot of people will just hear those last few sentences to say you do what the therapist is nothing has nothing unless unless the patient has distress or is in distress we don't want to change we don't want to do anything that's going to rock our world unless we absolutely have to we don't care about new ideas unless we're wanting those new ideas so the good therapist knows how to turn the heat up and to create maintain a level of distress that leads to interest without distress there's no interest without interest there's no influence and so you know as therapists we don't have any special tools that appeal to people who aren't interested right if you're not interested I got nothing for you it doesn't matter how good I am but if you're in pain if you're in distress and you really want to feel better and I know how to point in a direction that gets you the most bang for your buck in other words makes it worth your pain to go someplace then I'll leverage it I'm talking finding pain amplifying it and leveraging it toward a therapeutic stance which in my case is secure functioning so that's how we get people to move they're not interested in these ideas unless there's a distress nobody really cares I mean it's interesting but no one's going to go about trying to change their life because of it if they can keep things as they are that's everybody well I'll do that if we can bend realities to feel better even it's even if it's at the cost of getting better we'll do it that's part of human nature yeah it's it's interesting to me to hear you share that lens from the therapeutic standpoint has a largely lifelong entrepreneur and somebody who's gone deep down this sort of how do you create an experience story a message that inspires somebody to adopt a change in lens and behavior or something make a decision take an action that is in some way beneficial and takes them out of a state of pain a lot of people in my world are terrified of creating any experience that allows that person to step into an own the current state of their reality which often is pain and I've always taken the other stance and that you're almost doing a disservice if you have the ability to capture that as motivation for constructive behavior and decisions you're almost doing a disservice to that person or that those people that community need to not speak to that again getting someone out of pain is very nice if you're a parent best friend lover but if you're a clinician and you're being hired paid to first of all take a stand for a reality take a stand for in this case your patients best you believe in their best until they prove otherwise which is they fire you you have to assume that people coming to therapy don't believe in themselves to a certain degree do want to get out of pain as quickly as possible like all of us do and we'll do anything to get out of that even at the cost of their real self in cost of their future the therapist then has a very tough job something like a parent would have probably should have done and by taking a stand for that patient's health whatever you determine that health is for me it's secure functioning and individuation and so on so I expect them to be a certain way and it's that pressure of expectation that pushes them there and also allows them and me to be in a certain amount of distress for a time as the juice as the sort of the motivator for finding a way out that's different than before but one has to that's a different kind of love I guess is to be able to hold hands and help with people and to make sure they stay there with the belief in them that they will also help themselves out of this thing into something bigger and better Piaget called this disequilibrium period of disorganization where we don't know anymore who we are or what is real and if we're able to tolerate that we're reborn into a new organization where there's more of us available now we become wiser smarter right but not everybody knows how to tolerate those periods especially if you have trauma in your background or you weren't supported they're terrifying and we'll fight them tooth and nail we don't want that kind of disequilibrium we want to feel better now and not change that it's a good gig if you can get it haven't found someone yet who's that massive that long-term how are you okay through this process though as the person who's in there holding the hand feeling some of the feel and on your feeling sentient emotional human being who's got your own stuff you making this your career are you working with hundreds thousands of people like privately through workshops seminars and Institute out on a personal level how do you stay okay I you know I think going through my my own suffering and here's my own therapy and having so many wonderful people in my life who have saved my life and who have made my life better and hold me up even today I don't feel separate from people when I'm working with them I feel you know they're by the grace of God go I this is me and it for me it kind of going back into the fray reminds me of what I had to go through what I live through and I'm a true believer I guess that they can do it and as long as I can believe that they can do it even if they show signs that they're gonna crash and burn today I've learned that things aren't what they seem I can play the long game the couple is always playing the short game I can see the chessboard they can't I'm willing to go through hell and even breaking up with them but they're breaking up knowing that they're still going to exist after a while doing this work you begin to know that relationships are really really sticky and like the song breaking up is very hard to do so I know things they don't I can see a longer picture I'm playing the long game and that gives me an advantage which gives them an advantage it doesn't scare me so much anymore when I see things to send a great in front of me when I see people act out when I see people threaten the relationship when they break up in front of me because I know it ain't over until it's over it's it's it's hard to explain I've just been doing this so much almost like it's exposure therapy that's just there's a certain point I know that I can't control anything right and I know they'll be okay so we have a you know we have a sane impact for the therapists kind of a serenity prayer to help them and it goes like this I am a couple therapists these people picked each other they're in each other's care what they do or don't do is not my problem my only job is to push them towards secure functioning and then I am a couple therapists these people picked each other I didn't pick them they're in each other's care they go home with each other I don't go home with them they're not my problem really my only job is to get them to be secure functioning in this life or the next and as long as I hold to that I'm okay so you have to let your ego be it's a collaboration it's a this is not about me this is about them they're on stage this is about their the music it's not necessarily the easiest place to land I would imagine for some for many no but but it is gorgeous and I do fall in love with my couples and I do feel blessed to be a part of this and I've learned so much I mean I every time I'm with a couple and it's my favorite place to be is in the seat in the chair I learn a ton so you know it's it's a completely reciprocal and collaborative and going back full circle it's a lot like my experience in music I feel like I'm still doing music which feels like a good place for us to come full circle actually so remember this is a good life project so if I offer that phrase out to you to live a good life what comes up gratitude finding away daily to look at what and this I learned from being taught a Japanese form of psychotherapy called nikon it's so easy to look at what we're not getting and how we're being mistreated and ripped off but we don't do as well as look at what we are getting every day and what people are doing even if they don't care to be doing but we're still getting those things there's something about counting blessings and seeing what you have that should be done along with what you're feeling angry about to balance out the day and one of the things I've learned is that no matter how selfish I am I still get things in spite of myself if I do an accounting of that and I feel very grateful for the people in my life and the people who have passed who are responsible for my even being here today and so I think that for me the good life is taking an a you know a full accounting everyday not just what is not there but what is there and what you keep getting in spite of all your attempts to to spoil things thank you you're welcome thank you hey thanks so much for listening and thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible you can check them out in the links we've included in today's show notes and while you're at it be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode and then share the good life project love with friends because when ideas become conversations that lead to action that's when real change takes hold see you next time you