Terry Real and Belinda Berman-Real

I'm an alcoholic in recovery, and before I got sober, my wife would commonly say that she felt like she had three children. So we've moved from three hats. She has three children to I have three wives, and that's my favorite.

I made her a child yesterday while we were interviewing, with her. So I interviewed Zach and his wife for the podcast. Similar to what we're doing. And that was really fun to hear her accidentally say, my three kids. And I was like, oh, we're going to pause on that one for a second.

Here we go.

Yeah. And then I have one nine year old boy and two dogs that run the world for me.

So and then you have Ryan.

And then my husband Ryan. That's right. We're coming up on 15 years. Married, at the end of the month.

Well, great. And congrats your recovery, Jack.

Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's, it's a big. It's a big part of my story that I'm really grateful for. That's what I mostly am. Is grateful. I don't I don't mean this. I always say this never to make anybody else feel badly, but I don't really identify with congratulations. Like. And congratulations doesn't doesn't resonate for very much because what I mostly am is a grateful like I don't feel like I've accomplished anything. I just feel glad and free. Which is, I suppose there's some good congratulations in that, but mostly I just feel like I'm really just thankful to be in this space, so I.

Yeah, I took six addicts. Yeah, that's what they say. So.

Yeah. Great.

But just so that they no longer have to be guided by their penis.

Yeah, yeah, I feel like that. I mean, the part of Teresa's work that I really resonate with is this idea of the wise adult. Because when I talk about my sobriety, I mostly talk about growing up. I don't really even talk about not drinking. I talk about leveling up from very, very, a very a very, I don't know what the strong commitment to being immature and unconscious ways to like an actual step process of of growing up and like, kind of owning that you got to be you got to be an adult if you're going to going to make a difference in the world.

So, leaning into our work over the last few years has been actually timed pretty consistently with my sobriety journey. In fact, I, I think I told you, you've heard me say this before. The last time I studied with Terry in October of 2019 was the last level two that you did live. And then, of course, Covid happened, and I got sober about a year later. So finishing level two, getting sober and fall of 2020 and then kind of leaning almost quick, pretty quickly thereafter into the rest of my certification process. They've been those things have been in parallel for me, which has been really, really kind of fun to kind of almost like accelerate the process, you know, like kind of add whatever.

But, enough about me. Here's, here's what I want to do. A really, really want to listen to you guys because there's a few things that, that, that I've heard both of you say over the years that I'm intrigued to hear you talk more about. So Lara does that. Cool. If I just jump right in.

Please? Yes.

The first one is this, I've heard you speak several times, Terry. Live, or just on the videos and I can't count the number of times that you say I'm married to this badass woman named Belinda. She's amazing. She is. You know, and I want you to tell us about that because it's pretty rare that people just sort of flat out say, my partner is incredible. So talk to me about your incredible wife.

Oh, my God, what a way to start the day. Right? Go on.

That's your opening. I can't wait to go over there.

Below. What?

I'll tell you. First of all, you know, vessel brand of coke is always on my ass to, have research. And, thankfully, we are moving towards some outcome studies for our LP to prove, that it works. But I'm fond of saying every single relationship skill I teach has been clinically attested. And you're looking at the clinic, right?

That it's awesome with, You know.

This is true. I grew up in new Jersey. I, I drove an automatic, but I didn't know how to drive a stick for those. All that. I still remember what that is. And I remember mind. I said he teach me to drive a stick. And, Great. We met, and he drove me to Manhattan and pulled over and said, okay, you're, And I said, what are we doing here? And he said, do it here. You can do it anyway, right? Or and,

That's.

How I feel about my, marriage. If it works between the two of us and the odds are to work for you. Every skill I learned has literally been. Yeah, I'm very grounded. RLT is rooted in what works in the office. And the relational skills I teach, are, by and large, rooted in what works between us. And our relationship is demanding, and, taxing. And the fabulous, blend and earth assets and say, I'm going to write a memoir of my marriage. I don't have the book yet, but we have the title. The title is a in words. How are they? And then, you know that for my work, I'm not a big on.

Relationships are cozy. Unbroken harmony. That's bullshit. Harmony, disharmony and repair. Closeness, disruption and a return to closest. Over and over and over again. And all the skills come in when you move from harmony into disharmony. But that's also when it's hardest to hold on to your mature self. We'll talk more about that. So and this has been a rich healing, tumultuous relationship. Who? Belinda and I are a hot couple. Meaning.

That we both come from what? And what it is to survive. We're fighters.

Yeah, we both have adoption children that are fighters. I talk about, fight, flight or fix has your knee jerk adaptive response. We both come from violent homes, emotionally and physically violent. And when we move out of our thoughtful, wise, adult prefrontal cortex, our knee jerk response has to fight. We're screw you, screw mates. Premie.

Screw you. And we can look as bad as a couple. That's just starting therapy.

I mean.

We even though we, skills, we can get into that place. Yeah.

That's where you're fighting out.

Yeah, we're fighting for our lives. That's what it felt like growing up. And I think that's what it felt like initially in our marriage.

Well, initially in our marriage, it was, oh, my God, I can't believe I found this perfect. And we're heel, heel heel heel heel. And then the cracks started showing.

Well, in the GSA and.

Kids finally could wear that victory. Your relationship? Yeah. You said that. Well, so then it got rocky. We got, couples therapy after. Didn't do a damn bit of good. And, we had to really pull out of some very tough, places.

But we did, and that's it. I mean, were you that clarification, that your theory that you got more specific, you saw the details, you also saw, catapult from that stuck place, fighting or fleeing to a place of having skills that if we touch that place again, it wasn't happen the way it happened before.

Yeah. It's true. We both we each did a ton of work individually and spiritually. They, and, we spent some time apart, about 15, 16 years ago and came back together again. Our kids weren't clear that we were going to. We were clear we were about, and, came back on a new footing. And I think that I talked to people about becoming partners in recovery, and I mean, relational recovery, not addiction of recovering that state of connection were born for, for, and, I think Bill and, and I are partners in recovery, when we're in our adaptive children, that favorite stuff, but we recover and, you know, I got this idea of harmony. This harmony repair from an infant observational researcher, a pioneer, Ed Tronic, who looked at mothers in em, and everybody's going, oh, attunement. Attunement. Parent should be perfectly attuned. Just like people say. Partners need to be perfect.

Yeah.

Yeah. Bullshit. Chronic says trust in an infant doesn't come from perfect harmony. Trust comes from surviving from harmony, disharmony and repair over you know, peekaboo. I'm here. I'm gone. I'm here again. And same thing with relationships. And we, we've been forced. We're like steel. That's been forged in a fire. And we trust our capacities to recover.

Well, we're trusting our capacity to regulate ourselves and or forget into that adapted part of ourself. We know we're not in our best selves. We know, or that protected part of ourselves that is has no beliefs that anybody is out there to take care of us. So we are fighting for our breath. And Tiernan decided that we no longer needed to do that. We no longer needed to change in other person to feel safe. Yeah, we found a way to self-regulate ourselves because we wanted what being together gave us. It was treasure, And before the treasure was I'll fight to death. You know, we thought that's. That was the miracle that that we would never, ever let ourselves be taken down by anybody again.

Well.

That's so.

So what is it now? What's the treasure now?

Us as an, the love that we feel. It's a concern. It's not just when you have a great sex or take a vacation, or the kids find out about school, it's that we will use. Allows each other and we can feel it. And the love is so Susie that you don't want to give it up. What you get from fighting is not Susie. It is just protection. And if it's with and you're still grieving a lot of your life in that adaptation, then you don't get to feel the love people can really say when they're in a fight. They have no love for their partner or love for their kids because they're so protected by that. A death can't. It's really, when you realize you're in that a lot of the time, you just start shaking your head and saying, oh my God, I get disconnected or I get into this place. It's not about survival.

But it feels like, this what I call looking at your partners or the wrong end of a telescope. Suddenly they're like, you know, a million miles away. And, yeah, and we, I, you know, I say this to my client and it's 100% true. The first of all, 30 years ago, Belinda and I could rage at each other for days at a time. Sure. Merry go to sleep with y'all screaming each other till three in the morning. Go to sleep. Exhausted. Get up at seven, go to work, tell other people how to live their lives all day, and then come home and start fighting again in this. Because on.

Of,

Nowadays, not always, but 99% of the time, if we start to get into it, what are the other areas to take a break? I'm a big fan of breaks and we both know a lot of calls a time out.

Well, they have to do like whatever they all alone, whatever is.

It 15 or 20 minutes and and one or the other will come back and it's not. We'll take time. It doesn't. It's there's not one person who always comes back. What are the other will come back then it sort of sounds like this. I don't know if I.

Want to say you're.

Well, globe.

Or. But I will say we really were dirt about blah, blah, blah. And I go, oh, the. You're, I didn't say I said one unit, you know, where you could really apologize for a blah, blah, blah to go. Yeah. Oh, I'm really sorry about blah notice, by the way. So you give me one blah two blah and still on the table ten years ago, I would have thought for those other two black men. Sure. Good enough and worth what I tell my clients. This is true. What I'm literally thinking is this how do I want to spend my evening? That's what I'm thinking. I call that keeping your head in the game. You know, I want to spend time proving that I'm right and arguing with this person. Or do I want to cuddle on the couch and watch something good on TV and never cozy that it's like, you know, you can be right or you can be married.

What's more important is you've my point. You're so important that I'm willing to ruin this night over it. And sometimes it is, but rarely now. Very, very rarely.

Yeah, I always, but I have a similar thing that I say to couples. It's like when you're fighting a guarantee, you want the same thing. There's something you both want there. Like, what do you mean? I was like, you both want to go to bed feeling more connected and less said.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, yeah, we want that. I go, okay, well, that changed that. Let's back that up. How's that going? You know, and it's the same stuff like, do we really want to do this right now? So I love that, ask you about something that you said. Sorry.

Moving. Let me just say that, like, that's moving out of the you versus me, which is the hallmark of the subcortical trauma, trauma or automatic response of protecting myself and surviving. And it's remembering the US. I call it remembering love. Remembering all I can do as a person. You love. If you can't get there, remember, you have to live with the out of the God. It's in your interest to make plays with them. They're not the enemy and that, as you know, that shift out of that is the enemy. I've got to either right flee or fix. Into wait a minute. Oh, I remember who she is. I remember why I'm talking. I call that relational mindfulness. And that's the very first skill moving out of those immature, automatic responses into something that's thought, well, something they can choose, something that remembers.

Oh, yeah. Wait, this person is in this last year, it's Belinda I remember. And we can cultivate the capacity to make that transition.

And that's what we do with our life.

Yeah. Jack, do you mind if I hop in? Because I have a question about. Is the transformation that the two of you made where you were a hot, hot couple? You burned hot, and then you started to work on yourself and work on your response. Was this something? And when you're working with your couples, what I'm wondering is we are couples therapists, and I'm thinking of this as being very individual work of working on your own trauma responses. Is this something that has to be done in the context of couples therapy, or is this something that you have couples come in and they do individual work with you so that they can start working on themselves? I'm just curious about how does that work?

Can I answer this? Yeah.

Oh.

You can do the trauma work within the individual. Yes. The context can hold the emotion that comes up. So the couple has to be. Ready to not use what they hear from the other person as ammunition in the next fight. And as a therapist, you have to assess that if that's possible, because you know the capacity of the person to manage the wash. And a lot of times people come therapy and they're not there because that wash still exists. Right? And they have to find a way of knowing how to manage it internally. That's the traditional right boundary. And for myself, initially I needed individual therapy. I needed all the airtime for me. And I had a lot of trauma history. Still do, but it doesn't own me.

And that's what we want to see. Each person be able to do that. They know they have this history, they're respectful of it, but it doesn't own them any more. Yeah, they are able to work with those really shattered parts internally and find a way to soothe the. Yeah, and to soothe them. Be able to say, I love this man that I'm with. I want what you can do. The adapted part of me to stand up to this, because the adaptive part of me is ugly, and it's it's part of me that no one would want to be in relationship to. Yeah, but even myself. So I had to learn to be allergic to how I behaved in my adaptation, and at the willingness to work through all those issues was 100%. I know a lot of it was making it Terry's fault. I was so unhappy.

We get presents recorded now right. I mean. Listen, there are, there are ways to peel off from the couples work and do deep, trauma work. I like to screen people off and I do intensive experiences of a week at a time, in, in various places and in work. That's what we learned to do with our mentor, Melody. Belinda did 11 of those weeks with Pia. 11.

Wow.

So I like that, in terms of long term individual, my preference is to do the trauma work in the couples therapy for so long. Has the other partner won't use it against them, as Belinda said. But even then, if I think the other partner might do that, I'll work with that vicious partner and get them to be less vicious and then do the trauma work. But I think it's a sign of the individualistic culture that we're in, that almost all trauma work is one on one behind closed doors.

Yeah.

And you live with your partner's trauma and more importantly you live with the way they've adapted to that trauma.

Yep.

And over and over again when I so for example, Belinda is a fighter. I live with her fighting. We're sitting. It would just never happen to us, but we're sitting in a couples therapy and and the therapist brings her back to her childhood where she damn well better have fought, or she would be dead. Literally dead. And it opens my heart. I live with that fight, or I'm on the receiving end of that fighter all day long. I hate that fighter. And now when I see it in context, the little girl who was trying to it just bring so much empathy. I mean, that intimacy between us. So I think it is infinitely preferable to trauma work in the context of the relationship you're in that you can get away with it. And I think is a hallmark of our anti relational bias as a field in psychotherapy that that's not how it's done.

And you find out the reason why it's not done is our therapists aren't comfortable sitting with couples. They don't know how to create boundaries. They don't know where the leverage is. And then they get consumed with feeling as if they're not doing it adequately so they don't want it. They rather sit with the individual where they feel more expert in how to access the trauma alone.

Yeah, I was just, I was just talking to John and Julie, and they were talking Gottman talking to me about the software that they developed where they can have a couple on screen, and the software is able to take a look at their facial expressions coding and be able to determine the emotions that they're going through and also detect their heart rate. Not only is it doing it for the couple, but it's also doing it for the therapist. Imagine the information that we can gather when we have a couple who both drop into their adaptive children at the same time. Now all of a sudden you have a therapist that's working really hard to contain boundaries, and we have the information to be able to understand what's going on for the therapist as well.

It just is mind boggling to me, the technology that we have at our fingertips to be able to understand the dynamic that's happening in the room, because I completely agree, it's difficult for a therapist to sit with a couple when they're both experienced seeing trauma in the room. And then what does that do for the therapist?

Well, particularly if you have your own trauma like that you're bringing to the table, you know, I wasn't intending to ask this question, but how would you like how do you manage that? And you both have these really traumatic histories. And you're sitting in the office then with couples, you also have their own. Like, how did, do you have you formed language about how the two of you manage your own stuff and those in those settings?

Well, we do.

I Terry, I've seen you work plenty and you're pretty unflappable and maybe to you to blend it, but like, well, how do you what do you attribute that to?

Well, I mean, first of all, I want to go back and say something. I love the software. And, I want to go back to the previous point. Most couples therapists have not had training in couples therapy. And you create in the field most couples therapist or individual therapist to go, okay, I'll see a couple and get over. Well, well, you're over one of them because they have no idea what you're doing.

I'm sorry.

But they, you know, over and over again that people will come and train and alter ego. Oh my God, I was so overwhelmed every time I said, here's a map. Do this. And then that's amazing. So, software is great. What I really want is I want people to learn how to assess what's going on and have a map about what to do about it. And people are overwhelmed because they just haven't had decent training in how to do it. I just wanted to make that point.

But when you're with a couple or an individual and you get triggered, well.

Yeah.

I think it's really helpful to say I'm going to be quiet for a moment. I'm going to recalibrate and that they're watching. My, my doing it or your model and then feel, yes, they feel safer that it can be done because I also I tell my clients I am so whacked out on the inside and have many years that to do that was Herculean. And what the therapy was that got me there. I love doing the deeper work with it inside a couple and but I also know some of what the trauma has done is make it really difficult to trust that you can share it with anybody other than an expert.

And I felt that way. I felt that I well, I've been in therapy since I've been 18, since I went off to college and I let's say, I'm laying in my 40s. Did I start feeling free? The out of control adapted shut. It's still cause trouble with that. I wasn't out of control. I mean, I wasn't overwhelmed by the whoosh, and I could show that to clients. And it's wonderful in a couple. If you have one person in that wish and is really feeling I hurt, leave. I can't be here with you. You're disgusting. To help them take a time out. The other partner watching, they leave for ten minutes. They come back and I can help them through the process of reregulate. And then the partner sees their husband, her wife, being able to do this without having to make the husband or wife change.

To make that implicit in every time Belinda opens her mouth and speaks, is and this is true of all our therapists. Yeah, she's had a ton of training. Yes, she's had years of experience. Her feet are grounded in her own recovery process. And in RLT, we're not above you. We're not experts. We're not below you. And up oscillating. More like 12 sponsors. We've been through it. So if I'm gonna teach you about self-regulation and you're the teacher about mind journey of self-regulation, and speak from that, I do want to say in terms of getting triggered because other people are being clever. All RLT therapists, two things in place. If an important part of your training.

One is good boundaries that are your feelings, that are my feeling. And, in analytic literature, they talked about the different train, empathy and identification. I can feel your feelings. They resonate, but they're still your feelings are not my feelings. So that that helps a lot. Having boundaries. And the other, which I think is even more important, is detachment from outcome.

As a therapist.

Sentence by sense, which is a profound spiritual principle on our work. It's on my life through life. It's not. My journey is true. Journey. I will not tell you what to do. I will tell you what I see and what I see as the probable consequences. So going this way or that way, what you choose to do with it, brother, that's up to you. And that's one, you know, we're famous for being so brutally honest with our clients and getting away with it. So. And worrying is why people listen to us is because there isn't a whiff of agenda.

Here or going one up.

Well, let me do the first version by my Steven Porsche says, our neural pathway to open up, you have to feel safe. And safety is two things. No judgment. You're not born one up and no agenda. You're not controlling them. And so I will lean into you and go, Zach, here's what I see. You're about to lose your marriage, and your kids are going to hate your guts if you keep going this way. Here's why. Let's talk about your relationship with your dad. You thrilled with how there's this, what you want about. I'm, like, right in your face, but are you going to change or not? But I don't care. That's up to you. That's your life. When people get quote unquote triggered as therapists, I'm going to say to somebody, you've been supervising nine out of ten times is because they've been pulled into an agenda.

I'm fixing.

Them. I've got to save these kids. I've got to get married. And there's an extraordinary spiritual freedom that, you know, maybe you guys should stay married. Maybe not it. We do a lot of shrugging. I don't know.

This is what I said.

So that helps.

Us not resonate so much with you, Zach.

Thank you. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Well, it's probably 12 step. You know, one of our great mentors was PML. Adi. Yeah, yeah.

And her, her work. Well, Matt, of getting sober from alcohol, from love addiction to sex addiction.

Fruit addiction, you name it, she was addicted to it.

Wow. The other piece. I don't know if you see this about yourself. I don't think I've ever even asked you, but. As survivors of really severe trauma, from a very early age, we become systemic. We look at the whole picture, not just the individual we're looking at. How am I going to death and dies from all of this? Because if one doesn't come after me, the other will. And so you have to look at the impact. And so we already came into the training with this approach. Systems thinking and many individual therapists don't do that. They have been trained at it and they haven't recovered that way. They see their recovery is all being internal and the intrusions and changing your relationship to that. I think that's important also that I think it's easier to do that if you have this bigger picture you're holding on to, and it's just not getting to one person to change them or change yourself.

You're mailing me the ending.

Well, it begs the question for me, that's kind of detached to what we were talking about earlier. And I don't know if I've ever asked this question in this way, but given the work that you're doing now, both with each other and in your in your practices and in your world, is there a measure of gratitude for your trauma? I mean it.

Yeah, I know I'm being yes and no. I mean, it stole my life.

Yeah.

It took the 31st 18 years. I was in shock. And then when I got out of my home, was the first time I started to feel the impact of it is such a violent way. Internally that I couldn't live my life on the planet. And it forced me to have to get some help.

And.

And I, you know, I was in multitude. I was married before I was in I was in Berkeley. I was in a lot of spiritual relationships. So in my recovery, I was looking for strategies about how to change my family members. I was looking for ways of being able to be in their company because I choose to not to to make it wait. I had that in me that I wasn't going to be disrespectful or cut off my family even. There was a lot of reason to do that because it was my own values system. I would if I wanted, when they died and their birth debt. I wanted to be able to put my head on the pillow at night after they died and say I behaved within my value system and I did the best I could with them. And I didn't have guilt when I called my mother every week. But I learned to stay on the phone only five minutes. Terry held me. I'd always go home and stay in the family.

All.

When we were married, I had a child. My mother put us in her bed, which was, oh, my God. And she slept on the couch out in your living room with a radio on her chest.

It took me, the outside, and we go blend that. We're staying in a hotel. The. Here's the reason why we're not staying at your mother's. You go crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm out here like, let's get it. But I. You know, I love the jack. You know, from my teaching. I love the table in this story. So here's a bill in the story. Her mother, with that sort of borderline personality. Supernatural, whatever. A psychic ability, whenever. Believe that I would go away on vacation, even if we hit it primary. She had no idea what we were doing. Every time I went on vacation, Belinda would get a call that her mother was in intensive care in Lausanne, and she'd have to leave and go. This happened like 2 or 3 on the third time. This is my darling on the third time, Belinda walks into her. This is the systemic barber. Well, it's into her mother's hotel. I see you because she.

Felt like, oh.

You know, I was be.

There in the black.

Mark.

But she walked in and mother was fine as can be and dense up there. And she says, mom, you know, you look okay. Give me your purse. I want your credit cards. And she said, Ma, I'm so anxious about your health. The only thing I can think of you to feel better is shop. I'll be back around five. She come back at five? Result already 20 bags full of, shopping. And she said, my, here's your credit card. I just an x thousands of dollars. And every day you're here in the hospital, I'm going to go shopping. Her mother was out of the hospital that afternoon, and this never repeated again. And it was a totally successful intervention.

So, we learned to it. But I want to go back to this. You know, it. So many of us have read that incredible book, The Drama of a Gifted Child, Alice Miller. Let me remind you the gift of the gift to the child is equal. Being able to read people and circumstances. And what Alice Miller says is, if you're the child of a narcissistic parent and abusive parent, you damn well better develop each you or you know there'll be hell to pay. You learn how to regulate those people because your life depends upon it. And then that becomes a gift. Many of us become therapists.

But then the gift turns to trouble. When you don't allow yourself to see that you've internalized both parts of their behavior, the part that they behave badly. We weren't going to do that. The part that was successful in damaging us there, the real impact of that trauma. We began acting out in our own reality because we knew it was successful and sometimes if you're only thinking individually, you don't look at the perpetrator and yourself. You'll only look at the victim. But the biggest problem isn't the victim, it's the perpetrator. And we all have that. Even if we don't want to believe.

And I think that's one of the great distinguishing characteristics of the work we do or take. We don't just look at shame and helping people come up from one down. We look just as much at grandiosity and helping people come down from the one up. And as a feel. Psychotherapy house virtually couldn't afford that. Hey, you know, it there's now a big deal about narcissistic abuse and all you women with you narcissistic men, you better leave them because they're untreatable nonsense or.

Right. We treat these guys breakfast, lunch and dinner after they know how to eat, how to do it. And as a field, we do not mean and deal with grandiosity. We we protect it. And that's not a psychology, that's patriarchy. Hey. And I think one of our contribution was, and this is different, for example, from if, the adaptive child is not just a protector, in the group around the wounded child, the adaptive child is also what you may have taken in through modeling. And that's really important to understand. Grandiosity. When my father was beating me on the receiving end of his abuse, I was disempowered, made to feel small and worthless. And that led to shame. But he was also modeling for me. He was telling me, when you're growing up and you're a man, when you get to pissed off, this is what that looks like and is perfectly normal.

And as a field, we have not dealt with those as social psychology looks at, identification modeling, but therapy does not. And, in order.

To look at the parts of ourself that can be as, troubling, as destructive as what happened in our family, it might come out in different contexts and different behavior. Like, I have to work this part with all the sex addicts I work with. They I have a really good track record of getting sex addict sober. Okay, so I work with this part.

Yeah, as a field, we have to tonight. You know, everybody is a victim. Trauma, trauma, trauma. Well worth all this trauma coming from. Are we all hitting ourselves over the head with hammers when somebody is victimizing us? We have to deal with the victimizing parts of us. And not just the traumatized parts about. Yeah. And, we we haven't actually done that.

I want to respect our time. We have, well, I'll talk to you as long as you want, but, like, in terms of the time that we committed to, we have about an hour. But. So then let me ask you this question. We, first time I met you, Terry, was actually in a bookstore here in Seattle, and you had just published, how do I get through to you? And I came up and I was like, hear what? You signed my book. And it was. I don't want to talk about it. And what you said to me was, I wish you'd brought the other book. And I was like, damn, that was harsh, you know? And I told Belinda that story, and she said, yeah, Terry used to be pretty hard guy.

Like, he was a pretty harsh dude. So that's 25 years ago. Like, if we were just thinking about kind of where you're at now and if you were, let's say you were in this kind of harsher, more grandiose space 25 years ago. What do you attribute to coming kind of down to now, to this space that the two of you are in now.

To both.

Me, I mean.

Okay, I love it. It's me.

That Terry was and still is, was so attractive. You remember 25 years ago.

Yeah. Well, 25 years ago, you were that you were my age. That's. That's the part still in my mind right now. I'm like, oh, there's hope for me yet.

He one is gorgeous. He is brilliant. He's articulate and he's successful. That's a bad combination.

Yeah.

Yet to the successful part with trying to help them understand the impact of that narcissistic part. And he didn't want to hear it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right up to that. Oh no.

Well then it's really.

Your three minutes. Okay. Go ahead.

That took.

Quite.

That took a courage in me to say you can't live within if this doesn't change. It's just not about me. It's about this that can look so attractive to the world that has a part that is so destructive to himself and others. And he started listening because he was having consequences. Out in the world. It wasn't just with me. I wasn't enough as well. When you started having problems with your trainees or with colleagues, you knew that if you wanted to continue, then you'd have to do something different. And then you had a willingness to ask me, do I do this? And I would say, yes.

I was raised by a powerful, abusive man. And I would say that abuse of power, particularly male abuse of power. No, I'd say white male abuse of power. Yeah. Then one of the great Jim Collins or life trying to figure out what right relationship to power, which I would now say can I mean power with not power over. But it has taken me 40 years to get Tom power over with. Linda's rage was so blatant and over that there wasn't a hard for both of us to say, clean that up for we can't go on. But the grand, my grandiosity, lack of attention or obsession with my career entitlement, had a lot to do with her rage.

And that goes back to what we were saying before. Everybody I see is in a centralist. My wife just is this way. And why was Belinda in rage? Because she's a ranger. She grew up in a raging family. And that's how you get this, the systemic perspective that heals us, that we as therapists can bring. Yeah, but Linda was erasure. I was leaving her alone with two difficult kids while I was off on the road for weeks at a time. She had to worry. She was telling me, I'm in over my head. I'm too traumatized. And to trigger it, to handle this alone, you've got to come back. And I didn't want to hear her. And you know, I have a saying now, an angry woman is generally a woman who doesn't feel heard.

And it. So it was easy to say, this marriage is over unless you do something about your rage. It was a lot harder to say. Let me look at the ways. Much more subtle than you're yelling and screaming, that I'm setting you up to be in rage. But what joy is both Belinda and me is that we're seekers. But this is our version of gratitude. Other people can just go on for long and live in their adaptive child and do okay. But we grew up in such dire circumstances that we either had to reconfigure ourselves, but from the cellular level, or we weren't going to make it as a marriage or even to live or parents.

We wouldn't be able to have kids managed all that rage we have. I don't think we I mean, maybe 1 or 2 time the two boys got so angry. I think.

You know, almost every spare them the spare. Yeah. But we had to learn how to be different than our default for we were going to go under. And that's what George, when he said to a friend or I said, we, the two of you are joined in your trauma. And we both almost instantaneously together said, no, we're joined in our recovery.

I love that. Well, listen, you guys have been amazing. Thank you so much for your time today. And, I will, I'm grateful for the opportunity to to study with you, and to have known you, Belinda and Conrad, that you guys came on, and, Yeah. Just really appreciate you offering us your insight into your relationship, into your work.

Nice meeting book with you again.

Thank you. Nice to meet you, too.

And, we'll see you somewhere.