Brenda and Deborah discuss how to identify and work with the dynamics of the relationships that we experience along our soul journey and what states of mind are the most efficient in how we invest our emotions and energy in them to help them (and us) grow.
Brenda and Deborah discuss how to identify and work with the dynamics of the relationships that we experience along our soul journey and what states of mind are the most efficient in how we invest our emotions and energy in them to help them (and us) grow.
Welcome to the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Minds Pearson and Brenda Littleton. Brenda is an educator and counselor rooted in YY and Ecopsychology. She helps her clients understand the importance of the mind, body, spirit, and earth relationship for healing. Deborah is a licensed psychotherapist and has been trained in traditional and sacred psychology, exploring from the ground up what makes our human experience meaningful, wholesome, and enlightening. Deborah and Brenda invite you to accompany them on a soul path journey as they explore the possibilities of living a more soulful life as therapists, seekers, and lovers of fate.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to SOPA Sessions. I'm Deborah Minds Pearson. I'm here with my friend and fellow therapist, Brenda Littleton, and today we're gonna be looking at the soul of our relationships and how to get along<laugh> in our relationships, especially with those people we might share a home with and call family. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> or anybody that's in our intimate space. So that's what I'm interested in. Well,
Speaker 3:You've been reading Terry Real? Yes. Or real, I guess Real,
Speaker 2:Real. Terry Real. He's mm-hmm. About our age. He's in his sixties. Okay.
Speaker 3:And, um, I know that his work has interested you and there's a few ideas that I'd love to know more about. Okay. And I know that you're in the be in the, in initiatory, um, molding it over and yet it, it, it really has seeped and saturated you. Yes. So, while we may not be doing a treaty on Terry r we are going to investigate with respect to his work with, in being with relationship or in relationship. Yes. So, I love to hear more about the idea of, um, the sense of not being Right. I think you, you had some Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, so, so, so much of what he talks about is when we enter a relationship with another human being, we are gonna bring our family of origin right into it. And the way we defended ourselves and, and stayed. Okay. Which was our last podcast. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, and we have these, um, we, we marry somebody or we're with in a intimate relationship, we're in fantasy. And the minute we hit reality, they show us, um, that they think differently than us. And then we deal with that in a way that, uh, can be really brutal to, uh, our<laugh>, our adrenaline. And we tend to go into automatic behavior. Right. Hence why you and I have a job working with<laugh>, with family systems. And so one of the first questions he, he says, I'm not so interested in the problem. I'm interested in where that person is inside. Like, how are they hooked up? Because if I'm talking to a couple and that person's activated and they're in the limbic or emotional center of their brain, acting out childhood trauma, it doesn't matter what topic we're on, it's going to be at a much reg, more regressed place. And that's typically what we see in our own relationships. And as therapists, we see the topic could be anything. It could be the holidays, it could be how you spend money, but if I'm doing it from a place of woundedness, and if I'm doing it from a place of regression, we're gonna have the same old argument again and again and again. So he points that out, like, where are you coming from? His supposition is, if I'm coming from my prefrontal cortex, my wise adult logic center, I have the capacity to be the following. I love this list. Nuanced, wise, realistic, forgiving, flexible, warm, yielding, and humble. That's the wise adult folks. Okay. Where
Speaker 3:Does that live?<laugh>? Well,
Speaker 2:That lives in the prefrontal cortex. Okay. It's the ability to weigh and measure, to hold one more than one idea to use discernment. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> to manage emotions, to be aware of the feelings of others, as well as my own feelings. That's really what's distinguishes adults from children, the wise adult. I can imagine that I'm having an experience and you're having one too.
Speaker 3:So it's, um, a sense of generosity and compassion mm-hmm.<affirmative> and having a sense of belief that, um, you may be in a contrary conversation and you're not going to lose yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And this idea of the, the guilty is charged. Winning is a big, um, strategy that we tend to get into with other people, and it's really not efficient. His focus has largely been on working with men, um, and couples. And in our culture, in the patriarchal culture, it's about being top dog winning, um, keeping the ego safe. And it's not about cooperating, it's aga about me first and getting outta there unscathed. And so he talks about the you and me culture versus the us the title of his book culture. And he appeals to the sensibilities of a lot of busy people when he says, uh, practicing nuanced, realistic, forgiving, flexible, warm, yielding and humble states of mind is more efficient
Speaker 3:In the, in the long run. The short term in the long run. Yeah. Right. Because for the relationship ex.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:So you're coming into the, the idea I'm a, um, and, and non-violent communication. I'm a facilitator, and the idea is that you both come in with the intention of love and compassion and working things out mm-hmm.<affirmative> as opposed to being Right. Regardless of what it, you know, what it is that we're gonna go through. Yeah. So very different
Speaker 2:Direction. Well, you know, we start off with that idea, but then there's a, a button that's pushed. Okay. And our reflexes, we don't even get a chance to think. Yeah. We go right into how we protected ourself from assault. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I mean, if my frightened self is going to take over and you're now gonna be the enemy, you're gonna be the other. It's not gonna be about us. And I wouldn't even consider that. Maybe you are regressed too. Maybe your, you've gone offline, maybe you've had a hard day. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, maybe something work didn't happen at work, or you're not feeling well. You see, children can't take that perspective unless they've been trained in it to know that parents are separate from themselves and have their a bad day and maybe, uh, aren't reflecting their best selves unless a parent tells'em that. So learning how to take the other person's perspective, or at least create space for it, is a huge breakthrough. Yeah. I mean, we've taught active listening for years as therapists, but what he's really saying, it doesn't matter if you're creating room for the, the patient conversation of parroting what your partner said and reframing, reframing it. If you're activated, you can throw it out the windows. You're gonna say like, looks like you're feeling sorry for yourself. Am I right? You know, the active listening isn't gonna work. So it's much more a conversation about me and you trying to become us and the awareness that I've gotta get back online and be very generous.
Speaker 3:So how does one become, um, observant of when, when they're in the, the freeway of emotion of being activated? Like how, where are the stops? Where is where is, like I say with the metaphor, the freeway, where are the off-ramps to be able to get off that track?
Speaker 2:Well, one of them is to recognize the red flags. Um, okay. It's escalating. Names are being called, um, stonewalling. I don't wanna talk to you. Contempt, defensiveness. The things that John Gottman talked about. Yeah. In, uh, the seven principles of making marriage work. It's like, oh, those are, when that happens, it's like weevils in the oatmeal. You don't wanna keep going. So being mindful if it's escalating and it's not working out, yeah. That would be a sign. We're off track and he normalizes it. We're gonna get off track it. I'll use myself as a Guinea pig. I work with a lot of couples, but he's my own couple. I can tell when Michaels does something and my blood pressure goes up right there, um, he said something and I'm activated. I'm now offline my choice. Especially having read this book and, and learning from it and being reminded, we need to be reminded of these things cuz we don't get reminded enough in our culture that we can get activated and it look like high blood pressure and, you
Speaker 3:Know, headaches, clenched
Speaker 2:Fists and headaches and deep hurt pain and wanting to run sleep apnea. Sleep apnea. And in the moment, just like with my body's going through, I feel defensive. I feel contempt. I, I feel criticized. So what I do instead is I soften and take a breath. And now my adult, when I take a breath like Buddhas brain, the book Mark Hansen's book mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I immediately signal to my heart that I'm not being chased by crocodiles. When I signal to my heart that I'm not being chased by crocodiles, my amygdala stopped sending messages to my brain that I am in deep danger and I am thinking from my limbic system, my emotional brain, which then allows my brain to tell me I'm safe, which allows my adrenals to calm down and stop pumping adrenaline so that I wanna fight, flight, fix, or freeze as well. Yeah. And faw make it all better. So when I become aware of that, I can stop and soften. And then when I take the breath and I take a step back, okay. Really, sometimes I'll literally take a step back and then my, I wait for my adult and because I've preloaded some of these thoughts, I'll say he's activated or he's not activated and I'm activated. I can literally assess who's activated. If he's activated, like he's<laugh> yelled at me the other day, you're being so impatient,<laugh>, you're just not patient. And because I had read Terry's book, I said, I took a breath and I thought he could be righted instead of going into my typically regressed defense posture. I just looked at him and I said, you're right. And he looked at me like, what?<laugh><laugh>. I'm not used to that. And, and I thought I would rather be free to quote my teacher rom doss than write. Yeah. I was annoying. I couldn't see how annoying I was just smashing into things, trying to get out of the house and forgetting half the things I was, I was running out this, he was right. And then I create room for his point of view. Okay. I'm not as a woman, I was raised in the time era feminism, which says the guy is trying to crush you. And I learned to be harsh. And one of the things that Terry says about harshness, we all received it as children. Almost all of us did. That there's no redeeming value in being harsh. So I'm looking at that too as a major principle. Could I have learned as a child without someone yelling at me, calling me a name, being impatient with me being harsh. Being harsh. So stop, drop and roll. And I just let go of it. I just let go. He said I was impatient, so what? And I just kind of riffed on it and he kind of went, yeah, I'd like you to really remember your phone this time. You know, because you come up the stairs, you leave it nine times outta 10. I'm like, you know, you're right. I do. And honestly, Brenda, it felt like just, it just rolled off my shoulders.
Speaker 3:You don't have to carry it.
Speaker 2:I don't have to. I don't have to be. Right. What a burden.
Speaker 3:And that's the ego burden. Yeah. It's just like saying you carry all this burden, all this weight you have to maintain the sense of, um, protection and being Right.
Speaker 2:This is what, what Terry's list of what the adaptive child. Go
Speaker 3:Ahead. Well I was just thinking you've been having a very tight, high dense load of patients. Yes. And and it's interesting that you are impatient when you are like full of patients.<laugh>. That's my youngest as in
Speaker 2:Part contact as a therapist. Yeah. I sit with this my wise adult. Yeah. My wise adult breathes. Takes time, does a lot of listening. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> enters the stream, uh, in a very different way. And that's really important for all of us to be aware of. I have my professional self and most of my clients are like that. They do fine. They're very successful people. Yeah. They know how to work with their clients. They know how to work in their businesses and run things. It's when we get home that we regress because I'm gonna take off that mask and put it on this door and I'm gonna be the child now. Yeah. And you're gonna take, you're gonna take care of me.
Speaker 3:So what does Terry say that what Terry's
Speaker 2:Talking about the adaptive child. The what I've learned to be when I'm activated, this is how the brain goes black and white versus nuanced. Perfectionistic versus realistic. Relentless versus forgiving. Like, I'm gonna fight you tooth and nail to the ground. I learned to do that with two older brothers who teased me. I just get in there like a wolverine versus forgiving. Rigid versus flexible. Like maybe part of what he's saying is right. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and I benefit from it. Harsh versus warm. Think how much distance there is. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:<affirmative> between the two. Maybe
Speaker 2:He cares about me. See my activated brain would never think that Michael cared about me. He's been critical of me. Yeah. Like my brothers were critical to me. Yeah. And when I really, I, I just wanna do a commercial for maybe your parents didn't abuse you, but your siblings might have or mm-hmm.<affirmative> somebody else in the family. Um, hard versus yielding. Like if I'm just staying on this place versus yielding, yield the position that's an, an adult certain versus humble. So much healing happens with humility. When the ego burden is literally heavy when I go, I can be wrong, I can be late, I can be ignorant of something and I still have a right to exist
Speaker 3:And it's all okay. I mean, you may not wanna perpetuate it, but the idea is that the, I think you said the key word is I could benefit from this.
Speaker 2:I could benefit, and this is a hint for all of us. If I'm tight in my body, the somatic, the soma mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I am going to be black and white. Perfectionist, relentless, rigid, harsh, hard, certain. So I need to take that breath. Yeah. I need to take a step back, maybe go wash my hands, listen to the podcast, listen, read the book. There's lots of resources. But I'm really down the rabbit hole with Terry cuz he's really, he's a seasoned therapist like I am. And to know that I can listen with love and interest, uh, David d Burn's work in the five secrets of effective communication. It begins with I can validate what the other person is experiencing. If I were you, I'd be you. I can ask questions about it. Nobody thinks to do that when you're activated. Like tell me more about my impatience and how it's upsetting. I'm curious.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And the idea of those questions, a sense of curiosity feels like that's the language of prefacing us versus me.
Speaker 2:Yes. Cuz once I bring you in, you have your own way of seeing the world that could benefit me. Yeah. And you are alone in it. And if I join you, even if you're like with people who have Alzheimer's or any kind of dementia, they, they don't recommend saying there's no flying monkeys on the wall or you know, or Uncle Burt is not standing there. It's like, what is Uncle Burt saying? What that, what I'm experiencing at that moment is my reality. Right. If you join me in it with love and patience and empathy for that's what I'm experiencing.
Speaker 3:So the idea of why it's attracting you, like the idea of it's grabbed you. Um, you find a lot of validity as as I do as well. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, how is this living? Like how can you apply this, um, say with children or, um,
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, with within the family. Well,
Speaker 2:We don't need to be harsh with our kids. We can ask them what they're going through. We can validate their experience. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> if they come home and say, I hate my teacher. Um, rather than, oh, your teacher, I met her back to school. I'm back to school. They're just fine
Speaker 3:Know. Dismissing. Dismissing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wanna drop out soccer. A lot of my kids say, uh, the parents are like, they can't drop outta soccer. Invest in it. You know, they're gonna be team player. Ask'em what they're going through. Don't, you're not in it to win it. Yeah. You're gonna join him. I feel tired, I don't wanna go to practice tonight. Ask more questions. What's it like for you? Going to practice every night. Mm-hmm. Uh, I can't get my work done. That's gotta be difficult. I don't have time to be, you know, just to relax. Well that's gotta be hard and inquire many times when you choir. Cuz generally they hire me to inquire gently. The kid will say, I'll say, are you saying Cause I'll ask a question. Does that mean you don't wanna play soccer anywhere? No. I, I like soccer. I just don't wanna be doing league soccer. I'd rather just play at the school. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I like soccer or I'd like to take this season off cuz I really like to read.
Speaker 3:So the idea of valuing what's going on in one's life, not dismissing it well,
Speaker 2:He so frightened his parents that if they get off the beaten track, we brutalize them. Mm. And so often what we're here to do and is nurture our children, guide them at in a conversation that is non-critical and empathic. And then set healthy limits from that place with them
Speaker 3:Together. And not what, what you're explaining is feeding the back line. In my, my dialogue about when we teach our children, when we show by modeling that we dismiss our children mm-hmm.<affirmative> as kids, they learn that their real thoughts, their ideas, who they are, their needs are dismissed. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And this is what you do with these parts of our life. When we have a need, my parent dismissed it mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, or not fully engaged with it mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I was encouraged to give it up for their needs. Um mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So as you mature, you take that conditioning with you so that when you're older and working in, in a profession or in a relationship, um, you're, you've learned to rely on the, the facility within yourself to dismiss your needs. Yes.
Speaker 2:And not even to know their needs. Yeah. Because in many cases where children are helicoptered Yeah. And essentially rewarded for being better than everybody. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, again, that, that sense of inflation. I see kids who are suicidal because they're really good at what they do. They're awesome students, they're awesome athletes. And they are saturated with this idea that if they couldn't do those things, it'd be unlovable. So they either become bullies to themselves or they, they achieve these heights and bullied. They grew up to be bullies to their children. Yeah. Only love these es these elevated parts
Speaker 3:As well as all the somatic issues that mature by 40 50. Or sometimes they erupt when we're in our fifties, like irritable bowel or mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, the immune autoimmune, things like that. I
Speaker 2:See our kids checking out. Yeah. When they're overly helicopter, they get to an age. It's usually adolescents, uh, when they're gonna rebel and they find something to numb. So they'll find, uh, oh my gosh, everything, um, alcohol, pot, you name it. They'll take grandma's pills, they'll take, take anything, but they will drop out completely because there's no place for them to have their own thoughts except the thoughts of they have their, the parents' thoughts. And like bronze says, your children are, they really have their own thoughts. They come from tomorrow. And we seem to be so frightened of their thoughts if we create room. I remember with my son Zack, he was quite a different thinker and I had to stand back when he'd say, I don't see why I actually have to go to college. What's this college thing? It's such a drive. And I would have these long conversations where I'd listen to him. Like, what else would you be thinking with? Like, tell me your thoughts about it. Yeah. He says, well, I can learn on my own. And we went way down the rabbit hole with what interested him. And it was quite frightening because he was saying things that
Speaker 3:Frightening for you,
Speaker 2:Frightening for me. Cuz he said, I don't see why I can't just live in nature and read books. And I'm thinking he, that's, don't we call that houseless homeless? And I'm having all these fantasies, but I, I learned to stay with him because he would, he was such a strong kid in this, um, he would just shut down and do what he wanted to do anyway, so I went along for the ride and I found that he had beautiful thoughts. Yeah. And I just ask him questions like, so if you live out in nature, where would you live? And have you looked into shelters and you didn't go to university? And what if you changed your mind, how would you go about it? Like with that? So it can lead to these beautiful, brave conversations that are nuanced.
Speaker 3:I gotta tell you that, that's how I lived my life.
Speaker 2:Ah, like zacharia
Speaker 3:<laugh>. Yeah. I did. I didn't go to college until I was 40.
Speaker 2:See? And you're
Speaker 3:Here. I'm here. And I lived out in nature and I read the books<laugh> and I, you know. Yeah. So, um, it is possible. You see, I
Speaker 2:Think we need to see those things. I think there's such a tight narrative in the patriarchal view that we must get ahead of everybody. Yeah. I, I just paid for Zach to go get a bachelor's degree for eight years while he took every elective and explored his musical career. So we ended up getting some of that living up in Humboldt County and really got to explore his wild sides, which was great.<laugh>. I love it. Until he was 40 and then he became a psychotherapist.
Speaker 3:I know, me too.
Speaker 2:You guys gotta talk.
Speaker 3:Um, the little attention or the atten the adjunctive, I should say, um, outcome of this conversation is in my larger work of, um, working with people, um, in how, how how they abdicate their own self-worth Yeah. Is many, most of us have all been taught from our, our parenting, you know, our primary caregivers, our, our school, our society, the concentric circles, um, to dismiss that inner work that what you've just been des describing, and it leaves this imbalance, but it does create this need for validation. But we don't give it to ourselves. We look for it outward and we crave it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, we act because we don't own it ourselves. We haven't been able to, uh, we haven't been val validated, we haven't been encouraged to believe and, and value who we are and what we say and how we wanna do things. And we're having all of these discordant, you know, pressures saying, no, do it this way. So when we're older<laugh>, we tend to not have that stealthiness inside and that sense of belief. And we do abdicate and we, but we still have the same appetite. But instead of self-fulfilling it, we search for the outward. We, we go outside to validate mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And that's where we hook up with a lot of issues that allow us to experience these things to then create discordants and, and heartache and grief to come back eventually to that line of self-care. Because we, we, we travel all those places, all those positions outward, and we, we get those, uh, those, those attendant lovers that, that, um, can build us up and suckers dry because we don't know we have an experience from within ourselves. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> what that looks like and feels like, you know? Yeah. We, we we need the outer. I
Speaker 2:Love when I'm watching you because what you're doing is your hands are coming to your heart mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And they're saying when you know, when you're in, when you're going in and you're, you know what you need and you desire and then your hands go out. And so that is the, I call that the point of power. When I take the point of power away from what is heartfelt Yeah. And close to me and I place it out in you, uh, then I'm gonna be disappointed. Absolutely. Because I just absolutely gave you my passion. It's like Zach, well quote one last time before we're done. He said to me when I bought him the last set of oil paints and he'd given up painting for music and he said, if you love painting so much, why don't you do it? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, which I started because I realized I wanted a son who was an artist, but I did not, or at least when he showed an interest in art, I thought that was fabulous. And when he gave it up, I was heartsick. And when my son handed it back to me, yeah. It first I was insulted and then I was invited. I stopped arguing in a harsh, rigid way. Became more yielding my wise adult said, I think my kid just taught me something. Yeah. I've denied myself the artist within, which is the name of our next talk We're gonna get to.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Deborah.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you Brenda.
Speaker 1:And that concludes this week's episode of the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Mights Pearson and Brenda Littleton. If you'd like to hear more about living a more soulful life, please subscribe to our channel on your favorite podcast app and be sure to check out the show notes and links below. For more information from Deborah, visit soul path sessions.com and for brenda brenda littleton com. Thank you for listening and remember to follow your soul.