The Future Starts Now: Naming, Pacing, and Rebuilding

Hey, so this is your third podcast to you. Listen to your first two podcasts.

No.

You haven't even listen to yourself.

No, I haven't even told anybody. Although my husband, I didn't know that that you put a blurb on something, either a TikTok or an.

Oh, yeah. No, no, no, your face is like, all over the internet now.

Yeah, I didn't know that that was happening.

Sorry. That's Jason's fault.

Well, let me all. And he saw it like he showed it. He's like, you look so pretty. Is like, what are you talking about? And I saw my gray hair.

Oh. Yeah. You do that for you?

I do, I hit it today. Because if this is happening again, like, I don't want that look. Yeah. But. So he told me, like, of course one of my kids is like, wait, what are you talking about? Where's mommy? I want to listen to it. Oh, now.

So has anyone, as far as you know, I listened to it.

No, I have not. Like, I think they'll tell me if they do. Yeah, I didn't send it to them. Yeah, yeah. I guess for your purposes, I should tell a lot of people because you could get a lot of listeners.

Yeah. I mean, that's not how it works. You know, you get I know. And then those the cool people's cool people listen and then they. And then they become your fans. And then you become an influencer.

Yeah. No. Okay. Yeah.

I had a couple questions that I just realized I never knew the answer to. Just because that now that I have you, I'm like. But I was thinking about, how I was asking a little bit earlier this week if there's any flag football tournament because I want to come maybe see. How did you choose volleyball? So for context, any coaches? Volleyball has for a number of years actually really good at it, but it's not a sport I think I would like naturally associate to the old you that I knew. And then all of a sudden, you were touching volleyball. So how did you end up in volleyball?

Well, it's more how did I end up playing volleyball? That's the answer because I played volleyball and I played a couple years in college.

Okay, right. How did you end up playing volleyball?

Because,

Volleyball is the thing I get obsessed with during the Summer Olympics. It's so fun. I don't watch it outside the Summer Olympics. But I want to know, like, what volleyball is.

Yeah. So, in eighth grade, I was the shit at my school, and I didn't know other schools existed. And I didn't know what high school was going to bring. And so I entered high school, and there was another girl who was great at basketball. And my first love was basketball, and she was so good. And I was intimidated by her. And she didn't play volleyball. So I played volleyball and excelled. Yeah. And then went on. And then when I ended up coaching because, I had twin daughters who were in, like kindergarten or first grade, and if you wanted them to play basketball, you had to coach. So I coached basketball, and I became pretty good at it. And then I went to a volleyball assessment and it was run poorly. And then I realized, okay, I'm really good at coaching basketball, but I hate what it does to my body. Because everything's up for debate. The ref is part of the game. Like I don't like.

It's not what it does everybody athletically what it does on your body like.

Internally. Yeah. Emotionally Yeah I would, I would ref and the commissioner would come I mean ref I would coach and she'd kind of put cones by me that I couldn't pass because I got so into, coaching. And so then I, the, the middle school needed and I just, I was like, oh, this is so like the ball's either in or out. It's not debatable. Yeah. Like it's just so much fun. And I was beginning to listen to oh My body gives me information that I should listen to. And it's okay to do things, that you enjoy and that don't take a toll on your body. And it's okay that even though I'm good at coaching basketball, I don't do it because it takes the toll on my body. So I had.

A I heard a rumor that the body keeps the score.

Yeah. Me too. That would be a really good title of the book.

Did the girls play volleyball.

Semi did. Yeah. Yeah she did. And then she coached, she ended up coaching with me and now she coaches and we coached together for a while. And now she coaches on her own. Yeah.

Last week I went to the U-Dub Husky women's softball game. The doubleheader. I went to just watch volleyball and, not volleyball. I went to watch softball. What occurred to me, and it's the same thing with volleyball, is how much it's not just the sport, it's the entire culture. Like, it's an entire culture of kind of an subculture of kind of rules and cheers and rituals. And I was really into it, I dug it. I felt like I felt like you could take sort of any. Like if, like if the aliens invaded and they're like, we need a softball team right now. And they had to grab like 18 girls. They would show up and they would be able to do it.

Yeah.

They would just be able to do it, and they would know the cheers, and they would know how to support each other, and they would know how to like throw from third base to first base. And I don't know if I was exactly like that in terms of.

Events like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a, yeah, it's it's own subculture. And the rules are pretty much the same. It's kind of like an AA meeting. You go to an AA meeting, it's the same everywhere. Like. Yeah, yeah.

That's cool. The thing I like about stuff like that too, is it's important to me to be attached to things that I like. Been around for 100 years. You know, like somebody just invented, a culture around softball or around volleyball, around cheerleading or around beauty pageants or around book clubs or whatever. And there's this we're still doing it. We're just still doing some of that stuff just because we are. Meanwhile, everything else is changing in the universe. Like, I read once that, the last 100 years are the 100 years in human development. It's the 100 years in human development when people 100 years ago couldn't even possibly imagine.

Or.

They didn't have the capacity to even imagine what 100 years in the future would look like. Hey, you know, even people, people before that, they could imagine it. They might be wrong, but, you know, it would include things that were visible evolution of their of their thing versus what we've done with the cloud and the, you know, social media and with satellites or whatever. It's like. It's insane.

So why is it important for you to be connected to things that have been around for hundreds of years?

I think because I think because I need to believe in the long game. Like I need to believe in, that the stuff you do at the basic, foundational level matters. Because if you don't, then we're just we're just all making it up as we go. And that that feels really distressing to me.

I get that. Yeah.

Yeah. So what we do sometimes is we just banter. We talk about nothing for a while. You know, we switch over to the topic and I don't know.

I'm not sure what the topic. Yeah. This is I don't know. It's pretty. I was surprised that we did a third because I was like, I don't know what we're talking.

You, you you did all your best of you. But it also, you've been teaching me a new word that I'd be interested to hear more about. Which is something that you wrote down. What is it, titrate? I don't even know what that is, but, Well, I, I know what it is because you've told me a couple times, but, I'm interested to know why it's top of mind for you, particularly when it comes to thinking about how relationships work. Titrate. Titrate.

Yeah. Yeah. Or titration. Yeah. Yeah. I have a client that was. He's super, super smart. Probably the smartest person I've ever known. And he was out to prove to me that that wasn't a word.

That's a, That's an interesting cocktail party question. Who's the smartest person you've ever known? Sidebar I'm going to think about it.

So titrate is the word that's used to describe when you get an IV at the hospital and you have a bag of fluid and you need fluid and titrate the word that when it does drip, drip, drip. So it's a slow, a slow burn pretty much like research because think about it. And this is goes right to our topic of marriage. Like. Because if you didn't titrate that fluid into you and they just opened it up, it would flood your system, and it wouldn't be good for you. And one of the things like, I heard a marriage conference once, probably 20 years ago with this title and I'm like, oh, that's such a need. And it was I do now what?

I'll do. And I'm like, yeah, nobody's teaching us how to titrate into marriage. Like we have this to talk about. So you have a softball team and accounting firm merging your cultures. Yeah. Yeah. And that should take a very, very, very long time. Yeah. And nobody's really telling us to like, hey, start an 80 year conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of was told that when I was, all my fears were on full blown monkey talk, and I was trying to convince, my colleague's wife that I shouldn't marry Matt because of this, this, this and this. And she goes, yeah, I see those. And she said, and if those things are still true in 20 years, then you might have some issues.

Yeah. But she's like, yeah, marriage takes time and time takes time. But for people who get married with a lot of either big teacher on or complex trauma, the concept of time needs to be really taught. It would have been helpful like that. That comment 26 years ago was very helpful to me. Yeah. Because everything felt immediate when I got married.

Did I did I feel like I can't remember if I said this to you over the last, couple recordings, but did I tell you that one of my new questions right now is when does the future start? When does the future start? Right. Because couples come into our our practice and they want a different future. Yeah. When does that start? Oh. After our kids graduate. Oh after, you know the or when I'm like okay. Because you know, the idea that I think I say here's another thing like I think I'm actually grappling with this. This is, this is, this is notable. The song right now that Madison has requested is, a song that reminds. But is it exactly on. Excuse me while I go over here and, look for a text from your teenage daughter.

That's her. Yeah. You'll like this. Her therapist is having her, put together a playlist of the like, not the decades of her life, because she's only 17. But, like, yeah, of her life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a great assignment. Yeah. New category song that that I think portrays or explains me well. And there's a lyric in one song. It's a Martin Sexton song called In the Journey, and it's about the journey, and it says it's in the journey where you find there's no destination. And I'm like, I think this is actually what I'm grappling with right now. Is, is like the difference between getting there and going there. And I think people who get married literally think we did it. We're there. We got there. It's the end of a very long, stressful, expensive process. So we've arrived and I just am like

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I thought, I thought so like I thought oh good. As I'm, I'm married I check the box now I'm a adult now I'm an adult you know. And it turns out that's when I began to learn how childish I actually was.

Well yeah. And really, nothing changes. Yeah. Like, I remember I finally got my Virginia license because it took a long time. And I remember I'm like, that changed everything and nothing at the same time. Like same office, same chair, same client. Yeah. But yeah I remember getting married, I'm like okay now what. Like actually nothing really changed. Yeah. That magic feeling of getting married is gone. But the there's a lot I don't know if you. I had a conversation with somebody this morning where she's like, I just don't know how I'm going to. And she was grieving about, she's close to her daughter, and I was going to go to college, probably on a volleyball scholarship.

And she's seeing the gaping hole that's going to be left between her and her husband. And she's like, and she's just weeping. She's like, I don't I don't know how I'm going to do. Like grieve this. And it didn't occurred. I'm like, well, this is part of it. Like that's the whole future thing. She was thinking like when and when am I going to, how am I going to grieve this. I'm like well this conversation is part of that. Yeah.

Future starts now.

Yes. The future is now. Yeah.

Don't don't, don't. So, okay, so we go back to titration and we've got these, you know, sort of, dramatic shifts or notable shifts in any version of the relationship that sort of calls for immediacy or calls for, you know, urgency. Like, where does transition begin to fit in as you think about it clinically?

This is and maybe I'm forcing this, but there's one thing. This is the last time I'm going to be on here. And I'm like, we need to bring up the whole defensiveness in marriage. I love it because. Favorite topic? I love defensiveness because of what I've learned about it. Okay. Because. Because it's typically a bad thing that we're defensive. And it's actually a good thing for the person that's being defensive. Because if you think about it, I'm defensive because there's a part of me that needs defending. Right. And it's changed the whole thing. Like so that means I'm doing something good for me. Yeah. But I don't know that until somebody says that has that information.

And it all sudden when Matt gets defensive I can go Gosh, there's a part of him that needs offending. I wonder what part that is. And that's a whole different conversation. Then you're defensive. No I'm not. And that typically sometimes that defensiveness means you're outside your threshold of tolerance. And that's where titration comes in. Okay. So I have a threshold of tolerance. So when I got married my threshold of tolerance for emotional closeness was negative ten. And I was married and that was a dilemma. And if somebody had just said like expose. Right. You're going to have to titrate meaning, you're going to you signed up to go swim in the deep end.

You first have to learn what water feels like. Yeah. Because I was extremely defensive when I was newly married. Extremely. And I can look back if kindness I'm like, right. Because I was so scared and I felt like I was at stake. So I needed to defend and keep me safe because I felt like I was in danger.

Yeah, I'm into it. I could think of so many ways. This just the ways I talk about it with people. But I want to. I want to, How do you invite people into that? What I found is I kind of have two kinds of clients. I have. This is not fair to my clients, but let me just say, because this is not strictly true, but, like, I have two kinds of clients. Have clients that kind of are capable of doing the work and clients that aren't capable of doing the work. I have clients who are like in therapy, and they feel good about being in therapy because they're smarter and they should go to therapy, and therapy is the thing that they're doing, and it feels like the right thing. And they're grown ups and they put themselves on the back for going to therapy.

And then I have other clients who are like, now, what did you say? And yeah, we tried that out and it didn't go and I don't know. And gosh, this feels really hard because I do want to go from negative ten to positive ten. And I use a grading scale. I go, you know, people who go from F to A+, you know?

Right.

They go from F to D minus. And by the way, because of the kid I raise them like, and when they get a D minus, you're like, this is amazing.

Yeah. Thank you so much. That means you actually took the test. Yes. Yeah.

You were. I mean, you were at school.

This is cool. You know, that scale is what titration is. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

It's backing them up because you can't. The body can't handle that stark of a you can't go from a from.

Yeah. Or you get the bends. Right. That's another version of it. All right. If you're down and under pressure and you just kind of come up, your body can't handle it. Yeah. Okay, so you've got this lady. She's at the back end of her marriage. Her kids are about to leave, and she's trying to figure out how to do the second half with this guy that she barely knows. Can she start titrating there? I mean, is that Carrie? Is there enough hope for for folks who are in this?

It's interesting because she gave great imagery. She said, I feel like as a mom, I'm the book The Giving Tree, and I'm a stump mom, and my husband is also he. He works really hard. For on behalf of us. But he's not part of us. So he's his own stump. And then so I was like, oh, that's good, a good visual. So can you start with because this is where you are, your two stumps, Next to each other. Not touching each other, but like you just named your starting place and just naming your starting place can that that can create the bottom of which you want to move from up from, but until you can name where you actually are. That's why naming so helpful. Yeah. Because it's an is and you have to resist. And she's like I know. And that's so bad I'm like, nope, it's not so bad. It just is. Yeah.

Okay. There's two things that I still want to do, by the way. I'm sitting in my backyard and in my backyard. There is in front of me through the wall in front of me. There's a tree that, when we moved into this house, it was a stump. Like, it literally just was a, like a they had cut the tree down to sell the house. It was a fresh stump. Now it's a stump with an entirely different tree growing out of it.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

It's like it's, it's a whole different. It's like the sonra of tree. And the root system is in the stump of the old tree. Wow. Which is happened over 20 something years. And,

It's a hybrid.

It. Yeah. So it's kind of a, it's it's called Trading Street or whatever, but, I want to go back to. But when you say something like that to her, hey, we're just two stumps here. Does that encourage her? Is it encouraging? Is it discouraging?

What's. Well it's helpful. What's really helpful is if the husband can, like, you want to get. And you're like, I've used a lot of, like, your paring and repairing imagery. Yeah, like, you want them on the reading the same book and kind of on maybe, maybe not the same page, but the two pages that are next to each other. So what would be necessary is to hear if her husband connects with that imagery. Yeah. Because then if he does connect with that imagery, that's for a woman. That's a lot. Yeah. There's just some safety in knowing okay. Like it's not that we're our two stumps, it's that we're in agreement. We're on the same page of that. That is a point of connection.

Yeah. I do think that that's a big thing, like the idea that we have some the same thing that we're working on.

Yes. Or the same or we're living in the same reality. Yeah.

And that connects to the to a second thing that you were talking about, that you said that I really do want to circle back on, which is this idea is what did you say. There's power in the naming. Yeah. A second to one of my clients yesterday. And you know she said okay fine I can see that. But now what do I do with it. And I'm like I know right. But the awareness then, then the naming actually what it does is it changes your vocabulary. Then it can change the way you open your mouth.

And you also can begs the question, what do you want to do with it? Oh, but until you know what it is, you can't use that question.

Yeah, this is a little bit of cheating because I think the it in my office, in a way, is intimacy. You like I want intimacy. How do I get that? Through awareness. And, you know, again, it's sort of I said awareness helps you decide how to open your mouth. You know, how to what to say when it comes out of your mouth. Because if you're not aware, you're just going to say, I'm defensive, I feel attacked. But if you can slow down long enough to appreciate that I say this to my clients all the time. Feeling attacked isn't the same as being attacked.

Yeah. But it's interesting. Where you have to dignify, though, is I'm going to feel defensive for a couple reasons. One. One is I'm being attacked. So I have to defend or the system that I have put in play to, to manage pain and fear is being attacked.

The system and.

My soul doesn't need to be managed.

Pain and fear is being attacked. My soul doesn't know the difference.

Okay, no. So if I have a client who's a really good person, a good dude, right? And so. But that good dude ness has allowed him to avoid a lot of his own fear and pain. So in in conflict with his wife and she exposes where he may not be a perfectly good dude. That system that he's putting in, that he's put in place is being attacked.

So here we have two stumps there defending some system. They they don't have big tree. They can't hang a tire from this tree at this moment. They are armed now with awareness and common language. And now they just show up.

Well now you ask them all, what do you want to grow into. Because they are stumps. They used to be trees. So they have been pruned and given away. I mean that's where I go back to your boat. Boat. And I talk about like you know Sky saying he's on his fourth marriage to the same wife like you had the opportunity to go, okay, well not what do we do, but who do we want to be? Yeah. And where do we want to go? But that's why it's so important to, like, make sure that you have a common language that you agree with because if you don't agree, then you can't go anywhere. Yeah.

I get I'm having this is this is what I'm feeling a little bit like ambivalent about right now, which is I get accused a lot when I'm teaching of. Being a little too theoretical, like a little too umbrella, a little too like contextual versus content tips, you know, skills. I can do that all day long. I'll tell you what to be like. You're like, what should I do exactly? This is what you should do. I have read that 100%. I will give you a fish. Here's a fish. Yeah. You know. But I get accuses around word, but, like, maybe critiqued for being a little to teach him how to fish. She, Because people are hungry, they want to eat what?

They have to eat a fish in order to get the strength to learn how to fish. Right? Okay. Okay. Right. So if you get thrown over a boat into tumultuous water, it's not very helpful for me to critique your stroke. Yeah. You first need a dinghy? Yeah. To rest on, to recover. And then we can critique your stroke. Or, like, how come you got thrown off? Yeah. So they're both that. That was helpful.

Literally. I've never considered that before. They need to have a fish in order to get strong enough to learn how to fish.

Yeah. Okay, here we go. Yeah.

I'm going to wrap my head around that.

So did that what? That came up because you were. Did you think we were not doing the.

I think the.

Stance.

I think you and I always have a tendency to kind of float above, kind of like, like this is the thing and this is the deep roots of this, and this is where that comes from. And this is the really great question that we could or should ask sometime in the future. And we, and I always go, oh, it's so good. And. Yes. And I said and then, but again, there's most people and this is not an insult to anyone. Don't have the burden of thinking emotionally all the time.

Sure.

You know, like, my kids are kind of mad at me, actually, for raising them to be emotionally intelligent, in part because they can't communicate with their peers. They're like, right. I want them.

To see what my.

Friends and my boyfriend's to be meeting me at this deep. And I'm like, sorry. You know, and so what I really want to do is make sure that, like, the, the folks who aren't as practiced to have something to practice, you know, with their actual, with their actual hours in their actual day, you know, and so.

That's not to be a plug here, but the, the marriage counseling workbook that you published is so good for that.

So, the one with Laura, what is called reconnect? Yeah.

Yes. Because it does do the practical. Yeah. That's true. I had I use some of those the other day and gave some people homework out of it. I direct some copies and said, here, go fill this out.

And, you need to send me $0.95 because that's, copyright infringement. Okay.

I want to give.

Yeah, I don't know.

But it was like this. Oh, right. I mean, even for me as their therapist, I'm like, oh, we should have done that actually way back. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think maybe the point is just do something. Respond. If you find yourself with awareness, then then open your mouth. I think that that, you know, and obviously.

Oh, okay. Talk. Or here's the.

Thing. Pick up the book or whatever.

Yeah, it's I've learned, from my own time in therapy, the concept of narrating my internal dialog. Okay. So I tell Matt what I can, I tell you what's going through me right now. Like, can I tell you the feeling I have and the thought that I put to it because I don't want it? I'd have to first believe I, you know, I don't want it there. Yeah. And and too like, I don't agree with it, but it doesn't mean it's not happening. So I'm narrating. So I talk about what's going on inside of me instead of letting that what's going on inside of me talk. It's been very helpful. Because and I'm sharing about me. Yeah. I have a story to tell. Yeah. Where that worked. Well. Just do it. I don't think I shared it with you on the first one about my dad. Like I, about the wanting to throw Matt through the window. I could I had no sweet.

I don't think I've ever heard this story.

It's a really powerful one for me and for our marriage. So my dad was homeless and dying, and I was responsible to find him a place to die. So it was very stressful. And when things get stressful, it's really hard for me to look up and ask for help, so I do it all myself. So my head was down for six weeks doing this thing, and I would come home and that would want to be there for me. And I'm not ready for anybody to be there for me yet. And so I walk into the office after spending some time at this hospice hospital, and he's sitting at his desk and behind his desk is a window. And all he said was, how are you?

I think I do remember the story. Yeah.

And inside of me I screamed get the f off of me and pictured me pushing his chair back and through the window. But that's what happened inside. What happened outside was I'm fine. And then a couple minutes later, I asked, hey, can I tell you what happened inside of me? I was like, sure. And I told him exactly what happened. I said, you asked how I was, and I had this a rage that I wanted to push you through the window. And he goes, I felt that. How? And there we were. We're connected. Yeah. There's inside me. Not done that. My like, containing myself and going fine. He felt it anyway. We would have spent very like probably 6 or 7 hours parallel playing in the house, being cordial to each other, but just that I was able to name what happened inside. And he said yeah that's what I felt. We were then connected and we didn't lose those six hours. He really went on from there. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm into it. I do remember that story. I love that story. I thought when you said just now that you're like, did I ever tell you the story about my dad and wanting to throw Matt through the window? And I thought, oh, my God, been wanting to throw Matt through the window as like.

He wanted to do that too. But he never called him that. He called a mark. Oh yeah.

And wonders never cease.

Yeah.

And thank you so much for coming on my podcast. I loved having you. And, of course we'll talk more, but, maybe even back in this platform. But, that's this is this has been fun. This has been fun. Hope you have fun.