Zach: I’m glad to talk to you guys. I started this thing. Victoria and I or Victoria may know this, but I started this thing a while back at that. I wanted to interview people who were married to relationship experts and just see what it was like really going on behind the scene. Do you feel like you’re married to a relationship expert?

Adam: Yes, I do, I do. And then it’s interesting because then we have our own couples therapy. Yet. Therapist set up the course and the, the, the training that Vic’s undertook. So it was interesting having those sessions because she would slightly scrutinize her in a different way or held at a slightly different standard. Somewhat. So it was interesting to see someone who’s so accomplished in her own field be challenged by someone with just that much more experience, particularly in the realms of our relationship.

Adam: And, I found that very interesting. And I think I could see sort of exponential learning happening on Vic’s side as a result. But it was interesting because it wasn’t quite it wasn’t quite like, you know, the the pupil becomes the master, not in this instance anyway, but out of that environment, I do feel like I’m with, you know, someone who’s very skilled at her, her job and her profession.

Adam: And like when we’re out socializing, particularly for meeting new people, I always pride myself on my sense of perception of people. It it’s definitely my perception of it’s definitely a product of my upbringing and education, which doesn’t hold me in a great light to sometimes I deal or no more frequently, I defer to Victor’s perception of it, and more often than not, her perception is 100% right.

Adam: Particularly, these are people that continue to go on into our lives, and something that I would never have seen or would have discounted it as an observation that she made, totally becomes the case. So true. So yeah, it’s it’s I’m definitely living someone who who knows her stuff and I pressure.

Zach: Yeah. No, I hear you. How do you feel about that. That she’s right all the time. That is a blessing. Is it a curse?

Victoria: Is it definitely not right. Well.

Adam: I think she. Yeah, even she would admit she’s not right all the time. But. No, it’s it’s.

Zach: I’m only asking that question because I think that’s what I heard you say. This idea that she has this perception about what happens or what’s going on relationally around you and that she’s 100% right. Like, if I heard it differently, let me know.

Adam: No, I think that’s right. I think those basic perceptions of people and, their behaviors and what she can interpret from that in a relatively short space of time is 100% down to the profession that she has chosen, and in a way that other people just might perceive it in the same way, maybe over a longer period of time they would.

Adam: But she’s so incisive and so quick. It’s really forensic and it’s really immediate. That distillation of the person in front of her. And I rather like it. I rather like it because, I, like to be right or I like to be well informed. Yeah. So it’s great that there’s someone that can assist in that.

Zach: I feel like I’ve got that going on when I’m like looking at people and I’m like, I know who they are. I know what they’re about. I know what’s going to happen next. I don’t, and, and but I don’t I don’t know if I’m cocky or if I’m correct or whatever, but I do know that my wife has no interest in knowing what I think until she solicits it.

Zach: She’s just like, yeah, I’m just sit back and I’ll just wait and wait and wait.

Adam: Yes.

Victoria: Waits to find out.

Zach: No, it’s more like, you know, if we’re in a social setting and she’s we’re trying to navigate something, particularly if our like if we have to like, make a decision or make a move. I generally let her run the show because she’s the more social, you know, because I’ve got a theory or if I’ve got an idea, I have to sit on it a little bit until she says, what do you think?

Zach: Because. Because it might be the cocky part of me that comes forward and says, well, this is it. This is all the things that I think, and I have to. I trust her to let me know when.

Victoria: She wants to hear that.

Zach: When I’m allowed to say it.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there’s a dance. And, I think sometimes I will say it, but sometimes you just. You’ll come and ask me, what do you think? And then I think, what we’re talking about is observation. And I think that what we’re trying to do is therapist. And if we weren’t already and I think most of us who come to this profession are observers in lots of ways.

Victoria: And we’ve been we’ve had to be so largely comes from I don’t know whether that’s trauma or whether that’s just, you know, the environments that we grew up in, there’s a there’s a I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s always vigilance, but there’s certainly an observation and reading room and reading people.

Zach: Yeah.

Adam: I also think that’s part of that superpower, for want of a better expression in having that ability to really decipher and disseminate and determine people in a relatively short space of time is is, as you say, is to hold that within yourself until it’s either requested from you or it’s the way in which I feel like a lot of you practice, like the work that you do with couples or with people, is to help guide them, but let them do the work themselves rather than being told it.

Adam: So it’s it’s a very attractive quality to be able to seemingly sit there and have the answers or the or the directions of the policy. You want to lead them down, but having to be patient enough to wait for when they’re ready to do that or showing, you know, showing you those signs that that’s the direction in which they want to go rather than going.

Adam: I would be so patient, for Christ’s sake. Look, you’re this, this and this. You’re doing this, this and this. Yeah. Stop doing that, that and that. You’ll get to X, Y and Z. Get on with it.

Victoria: Yeah. Of course, the end of what we do in RLT.

Adam: Yeah a little bit I suppose. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What is that Terry. Sort of I said yeah.

Victoria: It’s, it’s a lot more directive than a lot of, a lot of therapy trainings, which.

Zach: That’s why I prefer couples where to individual work because it is outcome based. It’s like, hey what do you want? You want better, you want less conflict. You want more communication. Yeah. Okay. Well then do this. Don’t do that. Is that which is very different of course lacking. Yeah. So like does that work. No it doesn’t work. Yeah.

Zach: Maybe stop doing it.

Adam: It is a sort of common question I get from the layperson. It’s like, look, what’s it like to be, you know, married to a psychotherapist. And it’s there’s an old curiosity, I suppose, about anything new like that. It’s like VIX always has this example of going to a dinner party or a cocktail party and people doing that thing and going, oh, what do you do?

Adam: And she tells them and they’re the lean in tango. Oh my gosh, that’s right. Or they absolutely literally turn away and go, nope, you must. I don’t want to be looked at by her at all, because I know she can see all the flaws, or should I? She’s going to read me and I don’t want to see the mirror.

Adam: So, yeah, I get it. I get asked it a lot. I think I think it’s a good thing. I think what was interesting when we first met, she just newly trained, and there was a lot of therapy speak that was being utilized in our sort of everyday conversation that I.

Zach: Because Victoria, this is a this is a like a late career change for you.

Victoria: Yeah. I mean, insofar as I was, 27, 28 when I started to retrain because I had spent 20 years being an actor, I started as a child actor. And so, yeah, it was a late change in that, you know, the second career.

Zach: But does it, I want to ask about acting, but in a second. But, if you’re 25, are you still a child actor?

Victoria: I felt like it. Yeah, I felt like it. I felt like, you know, my cousin Joyce, people had known me since I was a kid, and so I didn’t. They didn’t meet me as an adult. I was the kid he’d grown up. So. Yes. And that’s what makes the transition so hard for a lot of people who start in childhood, because people don’t meet you as an adult.

Zach: Yeah. And they kind of want you grow up.

Victoria: Yeah. And it’s so exposing. So you can try on different things. You can’t be a version of yourself that you haven’t been before. I mean, people do try and do that, but you know, it’s it’s hard. Yeah. But I just I didn’t I it wasn’t lighting me up anymore.

Zach: So I really, do you have a child actor in your, in your experience or did you come to acting later?

Adam: I think there was always a performative part of me and my personality as a child. I was an only child and it was a way of receiving attention. But no, I don’t think I was not, formally a, a child actor. Now, I came to it later and I just trained, I went to university, I dropped out of university, knew that I sort of done with academia and wanted to train as an actor.

Adam: Yeah. Then I applied to, you know, series of drama schools in 110 that I might to linger here.

Zach: There’s something I’ve been wanting to say. I was like, on today’s episode, we have one of the stars of wicked.

Adam: Well, that would be pushing it in the extreme. I think you could say we have a person who’s appeared fleetingly.

Zach: Did you that what was it like? Victoria said, maybe it was 7 seconds or 17 seconds. I was I was ready, I had my eyes peeled. I wanted to see what it was. But yeah.

Adam: I think we counted. I think it’s about seven seconds in movie one. I, I’m going to guesstimate in movie two that might extend to 17 seconds, because there are definitely two big sequences in which I’m involved. But who knows how these things get.

Zach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And was that mostly green screen?

Adam: No, I mean, well, a lot of it was obviously. But the sequences I was involved with were these huge, that’s where all the money went. That’s why these movies are so expensive to make, because they were it was a throwback to the old days of moviemaking. They were huge. There were three enormous external sets that weren’t on soundstages.

Adam: Yeah. And that was quite spectacular to see the scale at which they, were making those things, which was deliberate. I think it was a throwback to The Wizard of Oz. I think it was a throwback to when movies got made at that scale. Yeah. And that’s where you see all of the money. And then, yes, there was a lot of green screen stuff, but there were huge, huge sets built in these soundstages.

Adam: Amazingly, you know, I’ve just done a little bit more additional filming for it. And, you know, they did knock up these, the believable sets. So yeah, the scale of it was, is impressive. But the end result, yes. It’s safe to say to get back to a point, to say that I was starring in it, I would say I appear no epiphany to do so.

Zach: Well. And then did she tell you that I was watching, day of the Jackal? And I was like, hey, look, there’s Adam. That’s kind of funny. Yes. And she was like, yeah, more to come. And I was like, oh, that’s cool. I’m proud of him. Good job. And then at the end, spoiler alert, everybody. I was like, he’s a fucking bad guy.

Zach: Like, that’s not cool.

Victoria: Like,

Adam: Yeah. And then literally it was more to come. But again, that was another tie. So she was the first project I’ve ever really been involved in where the end result was so different to my experience of filming it. There was a very definitive narrative arc that I had or my character had in it, and they know exist, particularly at that stage.

Adam: But because these scripts kept coming, coming late, and they were wrangling so many different story arcs and narratives, the final product and unbeknownst to me, they don’t give you a heads up or anything like that. I mean, I did a little bit of ADR, which is sort of additional dialog recording you do after the filming. I thought, oh, they’ve compressed three scenes into one.

Adam: They have. They edited that. So again, that that narrative strand got really cut down. So I definitely was in that a lot more. And then the end result meant that I was in it a lot less. So that’s always disappointing. I mean, that’s the frustration of filming at the stage where it’s, you know, you have to say, okay, but.

Zach: Okay, so here’s what I want to ask. Now, I don’t know if there’s anything here in this question, but this is why I’m eager to have you guys on. When you think about the the job of acting or the role of acting, what does it have to say to the role of being in relationship or the role of being a partner?

Zach: What is the what is what where? Where does being good at that thing make you good or bad at this other thing, which is arguably the more important thing of actually being authentic or being real? Like, I wonder about that and that maybe you guys would have some thoughts on it. Gosh.

Victoria: Listening. Okay. Good actors listen and to be in relationship you need to listen. Yeah. They think.

Adam: Yeah, 100%.

Victoria: Yeah. I think that acting is you know, that’s because you’re never it’s not a consistent thing unless you’re in something for a very long period of time, which most actors aren’t. You’re kind of you’re doing one job, then you’re doing another job. And there’s this kind of you’ve got to meet different people all the time. And in that to really, really have satisfying connection.

Victoria: And certainly to be a good actor, you have to listen. If you’re not listening, you’re just performing. It isn’t necessarily, and it’s what people do in relationship. They’re just performing from an ego, from a place that is this is what I feel and thing, but you’re not listening to the other, you know, in connection and in relationships. So that’s what I take from somebody.

Victoria: It has to teach you about relationship.

Adam: There’s something also about the freedom of not being your self, but being afforded an opportunity to emotionally explore, a character. And there have been a couple of incidences in my professional career, mainly in theater, where I have found this. Well of emotion has bubbled up inside of me because of the nature of the scene that, when I look back on it, is directly related to work that I have not done or addressed in my actual life.

Adam: So relationship father with my parents. But weirdly in the in the safety of the character performance, the emotion can come. And then there’s the single part of you going, this is good because this is really real and effective, and it really feels like I’m upset here and my peers and colleagues get crushed. That’s an amazing work. But actually all it is, is unresolved work that I’m not doing in my in my real life.

Adam: But the just by the quirk of fate that the drama is requiring or the scene requires at that moment, it releases all of that in me. So there’s a weird catharsis in performance as well.

Victoria: You’re kind of doing the work you’re.

Adam: Doing.

Victoria: Unconsciously.

Adam: Yeah. And I will say that, you know, I always get to play sort of slightly maligned or characters, you know, difficult characters or baddies for, you know, as a genre. And there’s something very cathartic in that. There’s something very cathartic in being allowed to behave badly. In, in that arena. But what was striking to me was sort of an untapped emotion that.

Adam: Well, yeah, that’s in me that needs to come out. The only will come out in that arena because it’s not really me. Whereas arguably that’s the work I need to do.

Victoria: Yeah. And if I follow on from that, it’s a kind of integration, isn’t it? It’s a kind of if you think about the work that we do as therapists is to help people to integrate the light, the dark, the shade, the all of us ourselves, all the interject all of that into to kind of really embody who you are fully the good, the bad and the ugly.

Victoria: And if you get to explore those in roles as an actor, then it’s trying something on feeling yourself in a different way. So you do learn about yourself. There is that potential. It’s whether you, you know, I suppose like, like a lot of experiences. Do you then do the integration piece and does it actually translate into relationship?

Adam: There’s a fantastic satirical show that I’ve been watching recently by a guy called Nathan Fielder. Do you know who I mean by this?

Zach: Yeah. The rehearsal, the rehearsal. Yeah.

Adam: And it’s dealing with exactly this sort of scenario, even though it’s for comedic effect and it’s a satire. There’s a there’s the heart of it is completely. Exactly what you’re asking. What is, what is the difference between acting and relational stuff and can performance actually help unlock the work you need to do in your actual life. It’s really it’s really fascinating.

Zach: Okay. I don’t think I would label that show satire. Maybe I don’t understand satire, but it seems like he’s really earnest.

Adam: I think that’s the conceit. I think there’s I think there’s I think that’s yeah, it’s you’re right.

Zach: I just chalked it up to him being like some kind of strange autistic, you know, 70 sort of character that.

Adam: Yeah, I think that’s the.

Zach: Only outlet that allowed him to express that.

Adam: But when you might be right, I’m assuming it’s a persona he’s portraying for the show. But it’s funny you say that because this episode that I watched last night is him trying to court the autistic society because he wants to get access to a guy in Congress and the autistic society going, this is exactly the method that we use for kids.

Adam: We take them through a sort of rehearsal. We take them through a series of real life scenarios so that when they’re faced with them in the real world, they’re sort of better prepared, is that, you know, there’s an exercise that the autistic lady says, we do this without the sick children, and it’s about the eyes. And he would show him a series of images of eyes and had to read.

Adam: There would be four different suggestions of what the emotion was, and it kept getting them wrong, suggesting that he was autistic. But I sense that was for comedic purposes and for the camera. But you’re right, it’s a very fine line. It’s a fine. That’s what’s so brilliant about the show. You’re like, is this a documentary? Is this comedy?

Adam: Right? It’s a satire. And I think it’s all of them.

Zach: Actually, all I can tell you is that I watched the first episode of the first season. It’s the one where he’s, working with the guy who needs to confess that he doesn’t have a master’s degree.

Adam: That’s right.

Zach: And I when it was over, I was so troubled. I was so disturbed in my own skin. I spent the next day researching the guy. Like I went online to fight, like, is he okay? Where did he end up? Like, how did he did, you know, does he still have friends? He’s still doing and he’s doing just fine.

Zach: Just just overall clear like he’s he’s okay. He’s got pictures of himself on Instagram with Nathan. He’s like, this is my friend Nathan, you know? But I was so, I don’t know, rocked by the. Yeah. The thing my kid, my daughter, who actually is I think told Victoria, I think I told you both, but she, she just graduated from college with a degree in theater studies.

Zach: Because she did. She did some acting, around Seattle on the stage. And then she was on TV for a second, and she was getting more auditions, and then Covid kind of shut her down. So she went straight to, like, kind of the academic side. But she brought this home from college. She’s like, dad, you got to watch this.

Zach: I want to watch it with you. I want to talk about it. You know, so it’s funny that you bring that up because I had never heard of it. So she introduced him and here we are.

Adam: Well, I urge you to watch the second season, which is all about him trying to get pilots and copilots to interact and communicate more because there’s a genuine statistic that most air accidents are, particularly as a result of the first officer not feeling they can intervene when a captain is being too didactic and bombastic about their, their attitude.

Adam: It’s really interesting. That’s the leaping off point. And then, you know, but it’s it’s yeah, but it struck me as you asked that question, I thought, God, I was watching exactly this last night.

Zach: This idea of having to practice. Yes. Being in roles and try out different moves in order to gain confidence or gain success in relational environments. Yeah.

Adam: He takes it to the, you know, ass degree for entertainment purposes. But the nugget of it is.

Victoria: That briefly, in another documentary we’re watching about Dean Bowie, he was saying, you know, lots of people emulated Bowie and, and dressed like him and tried things on and, and they asked him what it was like that they were he was being kind of replicated and people were dressing like him. And he said, well, I don’t mind, you know, if people are trying on a different version of themselves, then great.

Victoria: That’s what I want people to do, because we’re not one dimensional. We’re not just one version of ourselves. So it’s the kind of, you know, that creative world allows us to do it. And it’s yeah. Giving us a sense of ourselves in different environments is is great. Do you see.

Zach: That. You see the ways Victoria, that you’re integrating that with your clients and in your, in your world like that. You’re, you’re having them practice or it makes me also think of this whole subpart, that subset of like parts. There are parts of us, you know.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah, yeah I often talk about the parts work and I often work in that way. You know, I often work with people who let’s say someone’s hiding. And, you know, why did someone need to hide? And oftentimes they weren’t I didn’t have a sense that if they showed up as they were and as they are, they would be loved or connected with, so they had to get that or there was investment and so they couldn’t be themselves.

Victoria: So they sidle off and get what they wanted elsewhere. And so I, I talk about that about it was a really, you know, wise move. And, and now it’s getting you into trouble in relationship. Because it’s not that I’m not sure it’s having privacy because I think that’s, you know, perfectly, you know, appropriate. But how do you find a way to be more open and inclusive and also all the parts of you?

Victoria: And then to be accountable, you know, so it was on the call that you did with Terry and Belinda and, and Belinda saying, you know, most of us don’t look at the in the piece that we become the persecutor. And if you don’t look at that, then you’re doing yourself and your partner a disservice. And I think that that’s the work that is vital to help someone to, you know, who taught you how to do this?

Victoria: Why did you see it and who didn’t stop you when you did it as a kid? Those brilliant questions that Terry has that allows us to normalize and humanize the quote unquote, darker, less kind of friendly parts of us. Yeah, less. No. Usually less known to ourselves.

Zach: Yeah. I’ve done I’ve I’ve done a fair bit of academic learning about parts. But what dawned on me one day was I realized I was saying I found myself saying this sentence, Rebecca is driving me crazy. Rebecca is my wife. Rebecca is driving me crazy. But then what I realized was it was part of Rebecca was driving. Part of me.

Zach: Crazy. Yeah. And the second I tapped into that, I was like, whoa, which part am I going to entertain? Am I going to feed? Am I going to? Yeah, of her of me. Like and it was. And now I’m like obsessed with parts.

Victoria: So. Yeah.

Zach: Which of course is an interesting little, semantic trick that, that the acting career has. Right. You playing a part? It’s a part.

Victoria: But I think what’s different in theater to television is usually you get a bit more space to work out who that character is, unless you’re full method in TV and film, there’s there’s not so much time and space to really work out who everyone is, what their background is, and so it does feel more two dimensional because it’s it’s not, you know, as kind of embodied.

Adam: Yeah. And and the source material is often better and better. You’re working with a, you know, a completed play. And often I’ve done a lot of, you know, new writing scene of the playwright there with you. And it’s just the work is just better. There is of course, brilliant film and television, but the access to that is, isn’t, is is readily available.

Adam: And as Victoria saying, you have, you know, a month, five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks to rehearse this work, whereas the economics don’t work in the same way, film and television on the whole to 40 that.

Zach: Well, yeah. And you know, we’ll have these experiences of like, why can’t you be like that character on TV? And I’m like, well, because I don’t have nine actors sitting of nine writers sitting in a room crafting the exact response. And also the the thing that that’s going to solicit, you know, like.

Victoria: There’s that.

Zach: I don’t know. And so I imagine two, you get to it, you get to practice. And then of course, the consequences are relatively low. You might have to do another take. Or maybe you don’t get hired for next gig. But in terms of playing the bad part or playing the risky part or playing the traumatized part, you get to kind of clock out of that and figure out how to bring it back into your interior world.

Zach: Yeah, I’m thinking about the idea of practice. The two of you like, what are you guys practicing? Like it just in your in your day to day when you are trying to make your relationship work, where do you have to practice?

Victoria: I still think I practice, but for anyone who’s listening, who knows the work of RLT that we both do is it’s catching the work, you know, catching that kind of first consciousness and finding the second consciousness and finding the kind of response rather than the reaction. I think that’s, you know, that will I’m much quicker to it. Well, I can speak for myself and you can speak so I can.

Victoria: I’m much quicker to it. I think. Still trip up, I still react, I still find myself in my one up walled off position. That is.

Zach: Is that where you might want to pull it off?

Victoria: Let me out on a bad day? Yeah, yeah. Bad moment. I might, but yeah, that’s where I live. And, And it was modeled for me and also, you know, space. But it doesn’t do me service in relationship. So I have to keep doing that and then learn. Behold, you know, a lot of my clients will turn up.

Victoria: And I get that mirrored back to me. And I just see it. And if I can speak to myself in a better way of kind of coming down from that, or even coming up from when I’m in the shame based position because I do, you know, we all go up and down, but if I can speak to my clients in the way that I can speak to myself to bring myself back into relationship, then that’s how I help people.

Victoria: I think with compassion and love of having done it myself. To kind of get you back into relationship, getting back into more of what you say you want.

Adam: I think, couples therapist, I’m really helped to two big things about not getting the perfect answer straight away. And allowing time for that. And then for me personally, it was my go to was always play. So anything that I was to blame. So anything that I was reacting to was somebody else’s fault. So whatever, whatever I was being triggered by lay firmly over there, it was nothing to do with me.

Adam: And the realization that that you have to turn that around and go, no, that’s all the information, that’s all. I’m working on those triggers and getting interested in the anger or the the close down newness of a reaction. That’s been really interesting to me. And, and I guess health and, and our relationship because it’s, it’s not everybody else’s fault.

Adam: You got. Yeah. The common denominator here is it’s me.

Victoria: Yeah. And that’s confronting when you have children and then they start kind of either doing the same or they start calling you out. Yeah. And your, you know.

Zach: You.

Victoria: You.

Zach: Guys share a son. Is that right?

Victoria: Yeah.

Zach: And how is he.

Victoria: He is eight.

Adam: These are a very interesting age now because he’s at an age that I got sent away to school to prep school, to full on boarding school. And it’s it’s been interesting because I was sort of given the heads up by a therapist that this would be a very interesting time because there will be these unconscious triggers that come.

Adam: Yeah. There’s a, there’s a my son is exactly the age that I was at a time when I, you know, received or got rejected from the status quo of my parental relationships and was literally sent away. And so did you.

Zach: Go to Eton?

Adam: I didn’t get to eat. And no, my prep school was the feeder for Eton. And I rode Millfield and for the those.

Zach: The the only reason I know Eton at all is because it’s a very popular crossword puzzle. Answer.

Adam: Oh is it. Yes. Right.

Zach: Okay, so I’ve learned a lot about Eton, at least in terms of like, you know, its reputation. So only because it. I need four letters that start with E. Yeah.

Adam: Yeah.

Zach: Is he calling you out at eight already? Is he like.

Victoria: Yeah. There’s a brilliant book by, Doctor Ayman about an anteater. It’s all about autonomic negative thoughts that we all have and these autonomic negative thoughts that we have, we can either have blaming ants or we can have kind of lots of different ways of seeing the world, like everything’s terrible and, and they come in and take over our mind.

Victoria: And he uses kind of, you know, well, what if it’s not just that it’s not going on and it’s firing Katies work that he’s fed into it and it’s brilliant for children, and he kind of will call out you and you’re blaming the I think if both of us am on a bad day can be quite, short tempered in certain ways.

Victoria: And, and early on, I realized what that that was no great for him. I only short tempered with him or with each other, necessarily. I just mean with stuff when something goes wrong, you know, just getting a bit rigid. And of course, then he would. My therapist. Brilliant therapist, talked about, you know, naming the shock in children that they immediately go into a shock when you do that and then they have their own responses.

Victoria: But if you don’t attend to the shock, then you miss helping them kind of come back to regulation. And so I taught him that quite young. I would say I’m really shocked. You look shocked. And now he says he shocked me. So he has that language. I mean, that’s a good parenting moment. It’s not always like that. But there are.

Victoria: But he can kind of call us out or just know, well, I don’t like that or I like that, or that was, you know, he’s got some of that language. So that’s useful. But it’s just a, you know, I would say kids around that be useful and most painful mirrors to look at.

Zach: Yeah I want to go back to this, dinner party moment that Adam was referencing where somebody finds out that you’re a therapist and they maybe they lean in and they say, what’s the secret? Like, how does what? Tell me, what do you tell him? Look, what’s your answer? Do you have one?

Victoria: Yeah. Well, they usually start telling me about their life. Yeah. They want, they want, they want therapy. Yeah. They don’t want it. But they they think they want it. And and of course, whether it gives people permission to kind of feel safe immediately or they start telling me stuff, will they think I can handle it? Or they could tell me something they wouldn’t tell someone else.

Victoria: And so then there’s this kind of sense of being understood or held. And then, you know, I’ve had lots of experience of people feeling that feeling really warm towards me because I can do I can do that. And then they leave my life because suddenly I’ve represented this place that like being a therapist, that you’re not then in that person’s life because you’ve seen all of these other parts and they don’t necessarily want to look in that mirror all the time.

Victoria: So yeah, I also had in New York, someone literally I said it. I’ve been talking to them for half an hour and then someone else came along and said, what did I do? And I said, I was a psychotherapist. And this person I’ve been speaking to for quite a while literally moved away, improperly turned their back and walked away.

Victoria: And it was really striking. I was like, wow, I like like I had an x ray machine, like I knew something or even that I was that interested. I think the interesting things, but I don’t know, do you not have that to people get interested and linear.

Zach: I mean, I I’m so I’m one up in Waldorf I’m slightly one up, I’m very Waldorf. So I’m just I’m just above the horizon. But I’m pretty far out west. There’s a canonical story in our family where I was at on vacation, and I was standing in the pool, you know, up to my ankles. I know exactly where I was.

Zach: And this guy, this this real estate agent from Los Angeles was just telling me about his life. And he was asking me questions, and I was asking him questions. And and then he said, what do what about you? What do you do? And I said, well, I’m a I’m a couples therapist. And he said, oh, have you been analyzing me and my wife for the last 20 minutes?

Zach: And I said, well, it depends. Have you been trying to sell me a house in LA for the last 20 minutes? And he was like, no. And I was like, yeah, I’m not, I’m not.

Victoria: I’m kind of.

Zach: Interested in your marriage. Like it’s like it’s not even a thing that I’m doing. So, I don’t typically. What’s that?

Victoria: But no, no, I mean, yeah.

Zach: Why is there something here that I should to. So no, I don’t really give away. I don’t give away my like, I, I actually agree with you. I think you are naturally gifted. It just like making people feel safe and warm and comfortable. That’s part of my I was drawn to getting to know you better. Anyway. I don’t have that.

Zach: Like I’m not. I don’t bring my warmth to the table and invite people to, you know, know me. I had two people at the conference in Orlando tell me, I feel like you’re kind of like avoiding me. And I was like, I’m not avoiding you. I’m just being me. Like, and I don’t.

Victoria: That’s so interesting. That’s my take on you. And also, I would have made up the story that you representing. So you were slightly preoccupied. That would have been like, oh, sure.

Zach: Of course. Yeah. I mean, I do have opinions about the people that said that to me. Of course I do. But I’m always wondering, like, I want things to be really simple. So I ask therapist this question all the time, like when people say, what is the secret? What do you tell them? Like what is your what’s the answer?

Zach: And,

Victoria: Well, the secret I think, is, telling people the truth.

Zach: Okay. Yeah. In your marriage, you think that,

Victoria: Yeah. Well, I think I think it goes back to that question at the beginning, the kind of the observer part. Right. I think that the secret of being a good therapist and the secret of being good in relationship is observing the other and yourself, like both and all the time, observing and calling it, calling them in to the relationship with love and telling them the truth.

Victoria: I’m not talking about out and out truth, honesty about absolutely everything. I’m talking about the relational piece now calling out the the anti relational aspects of each other with love. So you think that’s the piece?

Zach: Yeah. Sorry I wanted to look at this. You, I want to hear a little bit more about this phrase that you, you’ve given me both in writing and now you just said it out loud, calling each other in. What do you guys define that?

Victoria: You did it to me the other day, did I? Yeah.

Zach: See, I’m just to.

Victoria: Make you happy. It’s really good at it.

Adam: I was just invoicing you today.

Victoria: It’s, you know, really telling each other the truth. So I had been really distracted to, you know, I have been distracted. There’s lots going on in my life right now. Yeah. Familial and work wise. And our couples therapist, amazing couples therapist. Died two weeks ago. So there’s a big, you know, space that has gone. And someone brilliantly kind of called it, like, she kind of represents two grown ups.

Victoria: And someone said, just like the grown ups have gotten, yeah, it’s really real. And, and I, you know, maybe unconsciously and then distractedly busy. I was not being my best self. I was kind of giving all of my attention to work and busyness and all the rest of it. And wasn’t being the best wife I was being irritable.

Victoria: Sure. Not very nice. And you very brilliant and kind of just step back. I kind of knew that had not been my best self. And so I anticipated that he felt that the the bad part is I didn’t drag myself by my hair and kind of go back and say that was a crappy move, and I’m really sorry, which I have on occasion done and I need to get better at.

Victoria: And you kind of called me into the relationship by saying, you know, that’s not cool, it doesn’t feel good. And it wasn’t blaming, it wasn’t attacking, it wasn’t it was saying, you know, that doesn’t work. I don’t like it. I come back and that’s what I mean by calling each other in it, saying, you know, don’t you don’t have to get blaming and attacking and, and you equally in the kind of classic narrative of how to speak, it’s not about defense.

Victoria: It’s just yeah, I done that, I did that.

Zach: Do you remember that at a.

Adam: Yes, I do, I do remember that, yeah. I and I think that’s, that’s what the adult, in our relationship taught us the most. I think it’s somehow being unemotional, but not in a cold way. It’s being very pragmatic about it. Like she says, there’s no imparting of blame. It’s just an observation. Yeah. Pragmatic observation, but obviously has far reaching, you know, effects and consequences.

Adam: You. Yeah. The, the the skill at being able I feel folks always mention this. I’ve always felt to a detriment actually very good at receiving criticism. I don’t get too precious about it. We have a process in as actors, particularly in when you’re rehearsing a play where you’ll do days rehearsal or you do performance and the director comes and watches it, or you do a run of the play and you all sit around and he gives you notes.

Zach: Yeah.

Adam: Which is his job. That’s what he’s doing to craft and finesse everybody’s performance. And you’d be amazed at the amount of actors that find it very hard to receive the note, to take it absolutely personally. And the whole process can then become really, really frustrating because you have a series back. So trying to justify or or getting defended or and you’re like, just take the fucking note.

Adam: It’s for the greater good. It’s not an attack on your personality. It’s not. It’s just his observation and that’s his role or her role. So I’ve always been very pragmatic about that, about receiving criticism, about me sometimes to a fault, sometimes I think there there are critics out there who aren’t right or take liberties at it.

Adam: And I know that I’m very good at receiving that. But I think the the tools that Jenna Cups therapist gave us to do that for each other was was great. I think Vicks would admit that she was almost the opposite. She gets very initiate, very reactive to any kind of criticism because it was so part of her original makeup to not be difficult to present, perfect need to not be a problem, so that any criticism in that way would instantly get a reaction to would be, you know, yeah.

Adam: But it’s a very yeah, it’s become a very important part of communicating in relationships. Not easy to do. It’s quite hard because particularly if you know, you’re going to get a reaction because then you go, oh shit. Well now we’ve missed the point that we’ve just got somebody who’s hurt and defended and angry and we’re not discussing what the issue is, and then I can find the worst part of me.

Adam: Then I then go walled off. I offer the information that gets received in the wrong way, and I get I’ve done so within waiting for you.

Zach: You while off. Are you up or down?

Adam: I would love up and I.

Victoria: Know I you.

Adam: Know I don’t. Oh I don’t want off at all in. Oh I don’t know my friend I don’t I what.

Victoria: About.

Adam: Likes below my worst. It’s like if I’m having a shit time, you’re all going to have a shit time. Yeah, I will, I will let off the stink bomb. I have no, you know, no guilt about that at all. Yeah, I’ve got a lot better. But there was a point in time where I’m like. I remember there was there was a comic to that Izzard who said, yeah, this little bit about mad people on public transport.

Adam: And he said, the only way to deal with my people on public transport is to outmatch them. And I always have that voice in my mind. I’m like, you think you’re angry? I’ll show you fucking angry. Yeah, yeah. But yes.

Victoria: It’s not funny always, but sometimes it is.

Adam: But it gets.

Zach: Well, you know, just even the, the, one of the things that I’ve really come to about this whole one up on, off all that stuff and being on a bad day, being out, out in this hinterlands and it’s I think it’s what you’re talking about when you talk about calling each other in is I have this philosophy that like when people ask me what the secret is, I say something like, the secret is taking care of your stuff, committing to health like being healthy, going to the center of health, and staying there.

Zach: Don’t leave. Do not leave the center of health, and eventually your people will come. The people will come and meet you there. And that’s the calling in, right? It’s sort of like, I’ll meet you, but I’m going to meet you here.

Victoria: Yeah.

Zach: In this healthy place. I’m not going to meet you out there. Yeah. In the in the crazy town, you know.

Victoria: And I think, again, to kind of own agenda. That is what she was she was in this you know, I have had a mantra for years. It’s be more Jenna, which is just this space that she she was just a heart. She was just a big beating, wide open heart. And I don’t mean that, you know, she wasn’t sentimental or any of those things.

Victoria: She’d call things out with love and just see things. And she was like, I’m here, you’re there. We’re in relationship. And there was just no walling off. But equally, there was a boundary. And it was I think she taught most of us to do a version of that just by being with her. Like I said, she often represented two grown ups in two ideal parents on a on a good day that could model how to be, you know, and she wasn’t someone who said, you know, you can’t get angry.

Victoria: She would be like, yeah, get angry and be angry, but just be accountable in it and learn how to express your anger.

Adam: I always use humor sometimes in our sessions to deflect or to puncture the seriousness of the moment. And more often than not, she was equally human box and would go along with it. But every now and then in particularly if it was a piece about me, she would not. And she just sit there and look at me and it was brilliant because it wasn’t mean and it wasn’t unkind.

Adam: It was just like, it was quietly just showing, turning the spotlight around again and, shit.

Zach: I’m going to try that out.

Adam: Yeah, it was.

Zach: Really good today. And then my daughter’s taken me a movie. My mom and my wife, my mom, she’s my wife’s taking me out to karaoke. So, I got a big day planned, but I’m so glad to finally be able to talk to you guys. Pick your brains.

Victoria: I’m sorry. Hello?

Zach: Yes, I like.

Victoria: Happy birthday.

Adam: Yes. I get to have a great day.

Zach: I’m going to. I’m going to try anyway. I’m. I’m much more chill about my birthday than I used to be, but I think that’s a byproduct of getting older.

Adam: Yeah. Once you hit the half century, what it what does it mean anymore? Although, having said that, the half century is now the new 40s, isn’t it so. Yeah. Right.

Zach: I suppose, you know, I remember when my dad turned 40 and it was, like black balloons or over the hill, like, welcome to the end of my life kind of whole thing, like I thought, I mean, I was trained as, like a young child at 40 was like the end. And then.

Adam: God, no. Yeah.

Zach: And now I’m like, man, this is just the beginning. This is fun. Yeah, well, what are we going to do? I mean, technically, we’re empty nesting right now, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this a lot, but like the the sound of clients who are empty nesting is something like, well, what are we going to do now?

Zach: Like. And I’m like, that’s so it’s so.

Victoria: Many of my couples.

Zach: With the sound is, what are we going to do now? Yeah. Now what are we going to do. Like let’s we could do whatever we want, you know. So I’m going to come to London in October and hang out with you guys. We’re going to that.

Victoria: We should do it.