Adjustments at Close Range

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome to Emotional Sobriety, the next step in Recovery. With Dr. Alan Berger and Tom Rutledge. Practice conversations to convey rather than to convince. I like this because it urges us away from an adversarial relationship with our, our fellows, and it puts us on the same side of whoever it is. If we're talking about whether we're conveying or convincing, usually that means, you know, there's a bit of tension. We're at loggerheads, the adding more self that we talk about with our words. We're walking with another person through our feelings and our train of thought. We are not only giving ourselves the full expression we need to feel fully present in the moment, but we're giving the other person access to that. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Let's kind of really dig into this because it's. It really reveals a lot of different issues that really need to be addressed when we come to communication and what would be clean and healthy and direct and straight communication, because that's what we're talking about. So like Tom is saying in this nutshell, when we're conveying something, we're trying to reveal ourselves to another person. We're trying to say, this is who I am. Please see me. The issue becomes what causes that. And typically, and I would say most of the time it's anxiety, is we're trying to convince somebody of something because we feel that there's a threat involved. You know, if you don't, if you don't. If I don't convince you that I'm a good person, you're not going to love me anymore. If I don't convince you I'm not a bad person, you're not going to love me anymore. So what happens is we're trying to deal with our anxiety by controlling the other person. We're trying to unconsciously manipulate them into being what we want them to be with us or responding the way we want them to be. So when that happens, obviously the first issue here is for us is we've got to become aware of when we feel threatened and anxious. Because you could think of anxiety as just a threat, right, is that we're perceiving some imaginary threat to the situation. It's not a. It's not a physical threat. A physical threat, we would have fear. If I'm holding a gun to your head, you're not imagining I'm holding. I'm holding a gun to your head and you're scared. There's an objective reality to it. If I'm imagining, you're not going to like me. Or you're upset with me about something, and I'm afraid that that's going to. Right. You know, end our relationship or change your feelings towards me or whatever. Now I'm anxious, right? Because I'm imagining that. So the first step here is to really become aware of when we're anxious. Now, I know my own personal experience with that is interesting. If you would have asked me 30 years ago, did I think that I suffered from any anxiety, I would have said, I don't feel any anxiety. I didn't know I was anxious. Now it turns out I am. I can get very anxious about things. I mean, I'm a lot more anxious than I thought I was. It's like I didn't want to see that I was anxious. So in my mind it meant that that's a weakness. Right. And I think a lot of people have a trouble owning it because of what it means to them if they're anxious. So the first step is, is to try to understand your relationship to your own feelings. You know, we had John on our show last week. And one of the things that's so wonderful about John Ammodeo is because he's. What's called. His approach to therapy is called focusing. It was started by this Eugene Genlin, who was originally a gestalt therapist, and he also worked with Carl Rogers a lot. And the whole part of focusing is being able to go within yourself and to be able to experience what you're experiencing and allow your organismic wisdom to provide direction to your dilemmas. So when he says, John will often say, you read it in his writings. Sit with your feelings. Be gentle with yourself. Sit with your feelings. Experience what you're feeling. Because it's such a big part of his therapeutic approach to helping people is to befriend our experience and to accept whatever feelings we have, they're ours. You know, this is what you know. Tom often refers to Roger's discussions with us about self acceptance from Nathaniel Brandon's point of view. And Nathaniel Brannon talks about the three levels of self acceptance. And one is befriending yourself. Right. You said it earlier. Is not having an adversarial relationship with yourself, being on your own side. But the second level of self acceptance, in terms of Brandon's concept, is that we accept all of us, all the different feelings we have. Even if I'm angry, if I want to be hurtful, we own that. Not necessarily that I feel good about that, but it is a part of who I am. And then his third level, just because people are saying, well, what's the third level is to have. Have compassion for our mistakes. Right. And not to excuse our mistakes. Not to create alibis for ourselves or enable ourselves, or as Tom likes to call it, as having a codependent relationship with ourselves. Not that way, but to have a understanding of what's going on. So I can understand that in any situation, what was ever. What's driving me for this is that there are motives, there are forces at work in me. You know, I'm just not an. Let's say, a jerk. I acted like a jerk, but there's a reason I became a jerk in that situation. And maybe I felt threatened. And now that's. I'm trying to, you know, deal with it by being a jerk or whatever it is. And so those are the three levels. And, and the second level is what really, what John talks a lot about, accepting all parts of our experience and growing from that. Well, the more we become aware of how we're experiencing things, the less it has to. The less we're going to allow it to control us. So if I'm anxious instead of speaking from my anxiety, Right. Let's say that's the first voice. I can listen for the second voice. So this is my anxious voice. My anxious voice would want to convince you I'm not a bad guy. My second voice says whatever it says, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm just anxious right now, and I don't want to try to control you or anything. I want there to be space for your feelings, too. And my. Right now I'm just anxious about, you know, I've done something wrong and I. I can see you're upset with me. I'd like to hear more about that. [00:07:25] Speaker B: If we're going to convey rather than convince, you got to get straight about what it is you're trying to convey and where you're starting from. [00:07:32] Speaker A: That's right. That's exactly it. [00:07:34] Speaker C: We always have to bring it back to ourselves. It's. And, and one of the things. I'll just. I'll just take it where you. Where you talked about the conveyance. In a. In a. In a healthy conversation, you. You don't have to know. You don't have to know, and I don't think you meant it this way. You don't have to know exactly what you want to convey, because in a healthy conversation, you're going to keep your defenses down and you're going to learn more about what you have to say. It's. It's it's. You have a. If we're having a good conversation, then I say, you know, to Patrick, you know, you know, it's not unusual in our conversation to go like, oh, wait a minute, you remember I said that a minute ago. It's like, that's not it. Because that, well, I got it now. And it's. And you keep. And it's. So it's a, it's a progress. It's, it's a organic thing where it keeps going. The other thing I just want to back up to is I wrote this. A younger version of myself wrote this when I was writing my first book. The chapter titled is Conversations to Convey. And we think of, with our western general humanoid selves. Think of conversations as to convince somebody or something. You know, we think we're supposed to come up, we're after. We have to end a conversation with some agreement. It's like, nah, most of them, we don't need to do that. Conveying just means I'm going to tell, you know, it's. I, I cannot remember the woman's name. I heard do this. I wish I did, because it's one of the greatest things I ever heard. In a speech, a codependent workshop, she said the, the definition of, of intimacy is into me. See, a conversation is not something I need to win. And I'll just say this one last thing. These days now when I work with couples, what I say is, you know, when we use the language of go have this conversation, I say, don't have a conversation. Begin a conversation, because, just open it up. Because a lot of times, and we've all been there, you get anxious because you feel like you're losing the conversation. And it's not a competition, but you do feel like you're losing. And basically, if you were to freeze frame it and interview each person, they would both tell you that they feel like they're losing. You know, if that's the feeling, then we're missing a point of communication. [00:09:46] Speaker A: If we pay attention to what's important, something else may surface and it will provide some direction to what we're. We're trying to, what we're talking about or what's even important to us. If I start off in one direction, I think this is important. And through our conversation, I realize this is really coming up for me now it's important to follow that into switch subjects if the subject that surfaces becomes more important than the one you're on. And that's where flexibility comes in. Is being able to flow one of the Things Tom was saying when we started this is that healthy communication is presence centered, meaning that we stay, stay in touch with what is happening for us in the moment. Right. And we follow that. If this comes up and it's unexpected, we go, wow, you know, all of a sudden I'm starting to think about this. You mind if I talk about that now? Can I share this with you? You know, it just surfaced for me or I had this thought about, you know, something that, you know, so. But we have to stay, I think that's the other part. We have to stay coordinated with the other person. It's almost like to stay in step with them. Right, because that's where I like to use that term. Is it okay if we do this now? Is it okay if we do that? I mean, even a good therapist will do that. You'll see a good therapist really checking in with some of it. Is it okay if we go in this direction now? Especially if they're working with somebody new after we get familiar, we don't necessarily have to do that as much, but we've got to find some way to trust each other in that conversation and that we both want to move it in a good direction and most people do. But I'll tell you, anxiety, if we don't identify it, it's going to, instead of keeping us at a higher converse level of conversation, we are going to drop to our lower self and now we're going to drag that conversation down to the lowest common denominator. It's going to turn into arguing, trying to convince, trying to anger. It can turn into name calling, walking out of the conversation. I mean, the anxiety can create so many problems to stay connected in a good way. And so this becomes a very important topic in terms of emotional sobriety because one of the big things for emotional sobriety is learning how to have a healthy relationship with our feelings. [00:12:14] Speaker C: We lose that a lot of times in long term relationships. We, you know, you think we, you know, you're together a long time, so we must be really good at communicating. No, not necessarily. Sometimes you just, you use the time to get into really bad habits. So, you know, you know this, Alan. We work with people who've been, been together for a long, long time and they love each other, but it's like they're, they just suck when there's a, when there's a conflict. And, and, and so, and one of the things we're talking about here is, is being able to get well on the same side of the problem. I love, I can't remember where I first heard that, but it was, it was like the idea that you solve problems from an adversarial position. You have to work to get on the same side of the problem. Who taught us how to communicate? Most of us have ridiculous, you know, not great role models. And culturally, we don't really have great role models. And it's like, like, so it's okay to not know. [00:13:07] Speaker B: I'll just foreground some conflict I had yesterday, which is that there's a new apartment I'm semi sharing with my partner. I keep breaking shit accidentally. There's like a, there's like a switch in the bathroom. That light switch in the bathroom that I toggled incorrectly when we first got moved in. And it was unusable for, like, a few days. And so, like, we had, like, a dark bathroom that, like, was just not the most fun or convenient to use for a little while until we could get it fixed. And then yesterday I finished taking a shower, and then I'm, you know, flossing my teeth, and the shower curtain just falls like a ghost pulled it down, you know, like, when I'm standing next to it. But I was the last one to use it. So it was, you know, we could just say that I, I, I'm the ghost. Yeah, I broke it. And the thing is, is that, you know, my partner's the, you know, primary occupant of the house. She's there 247 and needs everything to run smoothly. And so it really sucks whenever, you know, something breaks or, you know, I put something, I put something away in the wrong drawer, and so she doesn't know where it is. And I can definitely see, like, where we need to go with this is getting on the same side of the problem. I feel like I'm this on the same side of the problem and that, like, I want to make sure that everything works in the apartment too, and that she can find where everything is. But there's just a learning curve. Like, I'm just like, you know, sometimes she breaks and sometimes I forget where to put things. But in our conversation about it yesterday, I'm being very diplomatic here. I was just trying to, I was trying to tell her about how I was on the same side of the problem and how, like, how, how can I do this better? How can I, you know, not this up or how can I, you know, we communicate what you need as far as organization better so that I can be a better, you know, apartment buddy. And, you know, it's going to be, it's going to take time because, like, it's. She's just not used to, you know, living with another person. And I'm not used to living with another person, to be honest. It's been years, so. But it's like, I know that, that, that the, the game is getting on that same side and, like, making sure that we're, you know, we were always, like, putting it into things, into that framework of, like, if there is a problem, it's like, no, no, we're on the same team. You know, it's all about just communicating with each other. [00:15:41] Speaker C: But you gotta be careful because somebody. Somebody just saying we're on the same team could also be a part of them. The control thing, it's like, you know, I need you to get over here. It's like the thing about being on the same side of the problem is both of you are more comfortable. I love what you've said because it's like. And I'm not trying to scare you, but you, you. What you said is. And I was looking at Alan as we were doing this, like, there's. There's so many things in what you said. I thought, oh, okay, well, here we go. Now we're moving to another stage of relationship where there's this often characterized by a power struggle. Not giant power power struggle, but. But now everybody's kind of positioning themselves and it's a beautiful. It's the time to learn this stuff, by the way, because otherwise you get into the bad habits of. Let's have a huge argument over who put the two toothpaste in the wrong spot. You know, it's like. Because that's. That's not whatever any conversation needs to be about. [00:16:35] Speaker B: That's after I'm at that. That's about where the level I'm at is like, I know that. I know that no epic conversation, an epic argument needs to be had over something like a light switch or a shower curtain. But I'm still struggling to, like, okay, how can I. What's the next thing I do then? Okay, I know that to not, like, turn into a big child where I'm, you know, screaming and throwing things around, but how can I. The real next level of this kind of conflict resolution, right, is just. Is actually resolving it, right? It's actually communicating in a way that you're understood and then the other person feels they're understood. [00:17:12] Speaker C: Well, first of all, so we don't just miss the obvious. I mean, one of the things that would help a lot in your relationship if you would learn how to turn on a light switch. But, you know, you got. You got to do that in your own time. [00:17:24] Speaker B: Tall order. Tall order. [00:17:25] Speaker C: The conversation has to go deeper than the content of that. Just. Just. [00:17:28] Speaker A: It's. [00:17:29] Speaker C: It's. And I don't mean you have to make everything a huge deal, but when you're starting to live with somebody that's. [00:17:33] Speaker A: It's. [00:17:33] Speaker C: There's a lot of discomfort that you're going to experience. It's. It's like, you know, and it doesn't. And I think to set the norm, that it doesn't have to be a huge discomfort. You know, it's okay for us to talk about little things. This. I'm not used to this, because I haven't been living with anybody. That's important. [00:17:49] Speaker A: Well, you know, I like to think of those things as adjustments at close range. [00:17:53] Speaker C: Right. [00:17:55] Speaker A: Perfect adjustments at close range. And always underneath every one of those conflicts, Patrick, is what I found is that there's a negotiation going on in terms of how much we versus how much I is going to be in the relationship. Are we going to do this this way, or am I going to do this my way? And we're trying to negotiate that. That level of intimacy. Right? Because intimacy, you know, real intimacy is when they're pretty balanced, right? Where I'm together, but I'm not losing myself. Right. That kind of a thing. And so every one of those conflicts has to do with, are you going to do it my way or are we going to do it your way, or are we going to find a way together to make this work? Right. You see? It's that kind of a thing. So that's what Tom is saying when he says, if you go beyond the content and look at what is underneath that, what is driving that discussion, you're going to find it's in negotiation. And everybody. I have rarely seen two people come in with the same level of comfort for how much we versus how much I is going to exist in a relationship because of our different families. Right. That's why I like to say every relationship, we used to call it a mixed relationship, which meant like a white person with a black person or a white person with a brown or a brown with a black or whatever. But the truth is, every relationship is a mixed relationship because we're all coming from different families. Right? My family does things one way, your family does things another way. And we're trying to put those two family cultures together, and there's going to be some adjustments, like Tom is saying to that whole process, if we don't see that as a problem. And we just see that as an adjustment that's getting on the same page, the bigger picture. [00:19:50] Speaker C: Because that's what you're saying. This goes to what I said. [00:19:53] Speaker A: Like. [00:19:53] Speaker C: Like, don't just have a conversation. Open the conversation. Put some words to it like that, that. So that you can. First of all, when you do that, you have a little bit of a. You have a place to land for a little bit of a sense of humor. You know, I'm having trouble with those adjustments. It's like, look, let's go. You don't feel like you have to figure it out if somebody gets a. You know, if you don't do something. I like to be done in the bathroom. It's like. Like, you know, I don't get offended and spend the rest of the day being mad at you, you know, and pouting or whatever like that. It's just, like. It's just part of the process. We'll. [00:20:25] Speaker A: We'll. [00:20:26] Speaker C: We'll figure it out. Just have that sort of we. Not exactly what Alan said. We. We. Mentality. We'll get it. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Well, thank God. I mean, I'm. I'm just reflecting now. Like, we did have very different parenting styles growing up, you know, her and I. And the thing is, is I get that, and I think it's cool. Like, I. I don't. I'm not starting with the expectation that, like. Well, I. I mean, I understand why we're at different places or why we see things differently now. The trick is in that resolution and kind of. And it's a lot of under. Understand rather than to be understood on the way towards being understood. Right. You start by understanding the other person first. I was gonna point out, Tom, like, you seem to have a pretty. Like, you seem to have a very sweet relationship with Deedee, and you guys have been living together a really long time. And you were talking about the. The storm recently and the ice and the describing how you were under the blanket with, like, all the critters or on other. Under every blanket in the house. Like. Like in your living with her. There's a lot of facets to it because it's such a big property, right? And there's like, it's. It's like a whole operation. It's not just like an apartment or a house. It's like, you know, you've gotta, like, service all these areas of it. And over the years, I imagine you've had to kind of, like, work with her in figuring out, like, how do we run this system together without totally pissing each other off at the different ways you go about it. Like, was that something. I'm guessing that was something that was provisionally right. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:03] Speaker C: Well, I think that's interesting you say that because I. Looking back and we've been. To get. We've been together 40 years and it's like, like it's. In part of what you're talking about is something as simple as just the division of responsibilities. And, and it's like. And we didn't. I mean, if we, if we, if we came in and looked at it and said, okay, let's look what that, how that, how that stacks up now. It probably doesn't really resemble what it was at the beginning. We evolved into, into, into this. But the mo. The most important thing I want to say to people is do the work about relationship. Because when you get frozen in. When you get for, for eight days and you're going to be under the covers, every blanket in your house, you're going to be under the covers with this person for eight days. [00:22:46] Speaker B: A lot of, A lot of horror movies, you want to be with somebody [00:22:49] Speaker C: you want to be with. And then it's like. It's a beautiful thing when you can do that. [00:22:53] Speaker A: So what's that Beatles song, eight Days a Week? I love that. [00:22:58] Speaker C: Stuck with me. [00:23:04] Speaker A: I need your love, babe. I'm serenading you guys this morning. [00:23:08] Speaker C: I love it. [00:23:09] Speaker B: No, we brought Eight Days a Weekend. And then what's the other one? You can't do that. That's the other emotional sobriety Beatles song. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Oh, that. That's the one that, that's the one that. John was such a. John Lennon. [00:23:22] Speaker C: All the pissed off songs are John Lennon. [00:23:24] Speaker A: It's like, yeah, all the controlling and jealous songs. [00:23:29] Speaker C: I mean, what's the song where he threatens to kill the person? You know, you can't do that. [00:23:34] Speaker A: You can't do that. I mean, my God, you're right. Everyone. It. It just shows. And, you know, it's so good because, you know, you know, they wrote those songs when they were in their teenage years, right? Yeah. So it really shows what their consciousness was back then. Man, it's great. I love it. I thought that was a love song, by the way. You can't do that. [00:23:54] Speaker C: Oh, well, we, we thought that, you know, I promise, I never spent any time, you know, perusing over the lyrics for, for the Beatles. Now when we get, when we, when we, when we got to Jethro Tell and, and Elton John and stuff like that, then that. Now you, now you Spend time with lyrics, but Beatles, not so much. [00:24:12] Speaker A: That's right. [00:24:13] Speaker B: You ever have one of those, like, interactions in AA that really rub you the wrong way or that, like, you know, you're kind of being friendly with somebody and they, they just act really, like, inexplicably mean or rude to you, and you're just like. And it sits with you. You might not know the person very well, but you're just like, ah, that. [00:24:32] Speaker A: This didn't. [00:24:33] Speaker B: That interaction didn't work out the way I wanted to. And anyway, he called me yesterday. Like I've been seeing him at the meetings for the last few weeks and just kind of waving to him or, you know, just kind of maintaining a respectful but a distance. And. Yeah, and he called me and we talked for like 15, 20 minutes, and he ended the call by saying, I appreciate you. And it was, it's really nice. And, and, and what it was, what it turned out to be is just something about, like, boundaries or he had boundaries that he was, you know, anxious about. And I think that, you know, it's kind of like maybe you get to a certain point and you're just a little bit reluctant to make new friends or you just don't want to. You know, maybe you're, you're, you're. I think it's totally okay to come to come to a meetings because you need to hear the message and you want to. And you want to sit and just kind of be a part of that. But maybe you don't want to, you know, get close, quote unquote, with, you know, the other guys in the group. And, And I think that's totally valid and cool and. But I think he's. [00:25:43] Speaker A: He's. [00:25:43] Speaker B: He's one of those guys that maybe goes back and forth on that a little bit. Maybe sometimes he wants to be a part of. And he wants to kind of like he wants it to be a thing that'll extend more outside the meetings. And then other times not. But. But anyway, what. That kind of. By the time you called me, I was trying to do my emotional sobriety and basically like some. Anybody can be either pissed off at me or anybody can kind of feel however they want to feel about me. And that's doesn't need to change my truth. And that doesn't need to, you know. Well, somebody else's opinion doesn't need to be my opinion about myself. And so you're also talking. [00:26:21] Speaker C: You're also talking about, you know, just being sure we keep in our repertoire the benefit of the doubt, you know, Because I mean, it's like, and we need, we need, it's, I mean that, that seems a simple thing, but that you, you know, there are some times you've worked, been with somebody, you've done something like that, you need to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. That's the, that's where the boundary work needs to be, you know, and, and, but, but a lot of times because of our previous relationship, relationships and stuff like that, we'll, we will jump with kind of a knee jerk reaction and just, you know, pile a bunch of assumptions onto somebody because they spoke to us in a certain way. And you, what I like about that is, is, you know, you, you probably weren't thinking of it that way, but you, you were open to that, you were open to the benefit of the doubt. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Yeah, right on. And, and how lovely. I didn't think I'd have another phone call. That dude actually, like, I was just like, the feeling I had when I got off the phone with him was like, oh, well, yeah, that guy doesn't like me. And that was kind of awkward. You know, Lesson learned and peace and love be with you. But what this, what this reminds me, but what this reminds me of too is just like there's so many so sensitive people in these fellowships. That's how we get the ism, is that we're just very, a lot of us are very sensitive and very empathetic. And all these like things that I had kind of like felt or touched on in my interaction with this guy, it's like, oh, he had that clocked completely. [00:27:50] Speaker C: You spotted. You got it. You know, when we talk about the sensitivity of other people. Okay, what's that the best question to ask? What's my, you know, because this be an interesting subject sometime because I mean, I don't know about how judgmental you guys have been in your, in your lives, but, but judgment, very. Judging people quickly has been a way I protected myself or thought I was protecting myself for long time. You know, it's, it's like, and you know, you know, and if I didn't, if, if I, this is with hindsight, I didn't know if I thought there was a chance you were not going to like me. I, I disliked you first, you know, and I judged people very harshly and I have lots of experiences now that I can tell about judging people very harshly who later became my good friend because I just, because I got stuck in a situation where I needed, I had to be with them. And then, then I had, I was, I was forced in a situation where I got to know them and I couldn't judge them anymore. I liked them. [00:28:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I. Tell me what you think about this. My. My sponsors been having some difficulty with, like, a cousin that, like, they had some bad experiences with, like, years ago. And the memories of this cousin keep coming up, but the cousin, like, every few months will shoot him a text or. I'm just like this boogeyman of this person you don't know that you're thinking of quite a bit. You need to get in touch with them so that they're no longer the boogeyman, so that, you know, you're actually, you know, you're dealing with the one to one of this person that's been bothering you so much, rather than a projection or like, you know, an imagined. Imagined version of what they are that's bothering you day and night. And, you know, more often than not, if you can kind of make that connection, you know, you can. You purge. Whatever. The thing is, I know because I've. That's happened to me a bunch of times. [00:29:32] Speaker A: Well, you. [00:29:33] Speaker C: By the way, you can just. I'm just. Now I'm just doing therapy, I guess, but it's like, it's. You can. You can. You can take another step before that one, which is just to say to somebody, you know, what do you. How do you think the conversation would go if you. If you contacted him? You know, because that. Because that's where. That's where the fear comes out. I mean, it may be that, I don't know, you know, he's real open. Or it might say, oh, well, I think this guy would, you know, come over and shoot me. You know, it's like. But just. Just. It's always good. I love finding out what people imagine because we imagine all kinds of. [00:30:05] Speaker A: That's right. [00:30:06] Speaker C: They get us. That get us in trouble. [00:30:09] Speaker A: Sam. Sa.