In Each Other’s Care: Building & Sustaining Healthy Relationships with Stan Tatkin – Replay – (288)

Happy New Year! Here on Therapist Uncensored, we are gearing up for Season 10. The first episode of that season will be coming along shortly, but in the meantime, here's a replay we know you're going to love. Enjoy! Let's start a band. Well, we can't start a band unless I get you on board with our mission, our purpose, our vision. Otherwise, why would you do it? You don't do it because you love me, you do it because you love what we're going to do. Couples, unfortunately, don't think this way. And that's a big problem. Couples come together based on emotion, feeling, duty, perhaps, but they don't come together like other unions based on shared mission, shared purpose, shared vision. And they don't co-construct an architecture that guides them towards what's right and what's best. They don't even think about that until they get into trouble, in which case they operate as a one-person system of me, my, I, and you, you, you, which starts the threat system, starts the whole process of becoming adversaries, which that's not what they're supposed to be, right? So secure functioning is one where we commit to a system that remains fair, just, mutually sensitive, collaborative, and cooperative, especially when one or both of us is under stress. And that's where the challenge is. The manner in which you and I will interact when either of us is under stress is very different than when we're feeling good. Welcome to Therapist Uncensored. Building on decades of professional experience, this podcast tackles neurobiology, modern attachment, and more in an honest way that's helpful in healing humans. Your session begins now with Dr. Ann Kelly and Sue Marriott. Hey, you guys. While we know relationships are wonderful, they are also really hard. Many of us believe that they shouldn't be, that if we have good connection and good communication, things will just go smoothly. But it's really that belief that can make us feel stubborn and even more hopeless. So relationships take work. It does for Sue and I. We can make it look easy. It's not. And one of the ways is because many of us, we differ. We differ in what activates us, what makes us feel threat, the expectation. And it's these differences that are held in our body, not our thoughts. and they influence how we talk, how we love, how we fight. So holding that belief, if he or she or they could just understand me, if they love me, they do something different, is not really true. And we're talking about relationships with your partner, your teenager, your mother-in-law. So Sue and I have created an online course that can help you understand yourself and those you love in a different way. This is not just for therapists, it's for everyone. Although the good news is if you're a therapist, you can get CEs along the way. And all of you can use the visuals and the worksheets individually, or you can even use them in your own private practice. So while the course is based on our book, Secure Relating, Holding Your Own in an Insecure World, it is definitely not a replication of the book. We talk directly to you. You learn how to understand more deeply your attachment, those you love, the neuroscience behind it, and how to build secure types of connections right now in your everyday relationships. Rather than changing one another, y'all can shift together in very important ways. It's very powerful. We're getting great reviews. Check it out. It's at therapistuncensored.com slash BAS. Therapistuncensored.com slash BAS. The BAS stands for Beyond Attachment Styles, The Science of Growing Secure Adult Relationships. And by the way, the cost of the course is about the amount of one individual therapy session, and yet you get hours and hours and hours of what we think is extremely valuable information. So check it out. so thank you stan tatkin for coming back and joining us we are very happy to have you thank you sue it's good to see you you're a repeat flyer for us and for good reason that you're one of the clinicians and i think this just such an incredible job of translating the complex science and making it usable in real life, which is what this podcast is all about. And you're a real leader in that area. So Stan Tatkin is a prolific author. He's a clinician. And my personal favorite, the one that I've used the most with clients is Your Brain on Love. Fantastic, very accessible. But he's also written Wired for Love, Wired for Dating, love and war and intimate relationships. He developed the psychobiological approach to couples therapy, which we refer to as PACT. And he and his wife, Tracy, created the PACT Institute. And then you have a new book, In Each Other's Care, Guide to the Most Common Relationship Conflicts and How to Work Through Them. So we have a ton to cover. Definitely want to get kind of your updated view on the field in the world, but to just kind of launch us, you said somewhere, I don't remember exactly where, and I'm paraphrasing, that human beings are wired to co-regulate, and that some of the evidence of that is how that we are much better able to read our other person than ourself. So maybe that's a good launching point. I just went through this with a couple that I was just working with. So we human primates are best when face-to-face, eye-to-eye, skin-to-skin, but especially face-to-face, eye-to-eye as adults because we're visual animals. And so because of the way our brain is wired and the way data is processed in the brain, if I'm close to you and I can see you directly, because we're legally blind on the sides, I can error correct. I can attune better with you if I have the visual field as well as the auditory field and other sensory inputs. That's not a guarantee of misattunement, right? Not being misattuned, but it's better. And so what happens is that at close proximity, I can see shifts and changes in you before I notice them in myself. And you can do the same. And we believe that this is nature's way of co-regulating each other's autonomic nervous systems live, which is essential for managing states, states of mind, emotional states. Also, we have the ability to amplify states by looking at each other. So we could amplify positive states that are dopaminergic, like exciting love. Only we can do that. We can't do that with another species, but human beings can do this. However, that amplification effect can also be true with amplifying negative states, including anxiety or anger, fear, and so on. So we're better and more efficient using interactive mutual regulation, co-regulation. It's called lots of different things. But it is exactly what probably got you into the relationship in the first place. If you were unable to do this very well, you probably wouldn't have continued. We call it co-dysregulation. No, the co-dysregulation. It's kind of, yeah, just imagine yourself saying a joke that falls flat, and you'll probably start to get a little sweaty in the moment because you're misattuned with your audience or your person. Yeah, again, so I think of that as the hanging high five. Yeah, the shame that comes with that. So what are your thoughts then about online therapy, all the movement towards Zoom related to this idea of proximity? What do you think the impact of that is? Pre-COVID, I was against it. I didn't like the idea because in my work, I pay a lot of attention to micro-expressions and micro-movements, blood flow, pupil size, muscle tension in the face. So I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to regulate two people online. And there are still sometimes that I'm concerned about it. For instance, if the connection isn't good enough, I will back out, and I'll suggest that we do it another way or some other time. If the lighting isn't good, if any of those things aren't right, then I get nervous. But COVID taught me that telehealth can actually work pretty well if the conditions are right. I get to see their pets, their children, their environment. It's a little close to like at home, working with people in their home, and that part I like a lot. And I found that I could actually make up for some of the things that I can't see by studying movements in the lower part of the body and determining pretty good which foot is moving, which arm is moving, our finger, you know. It's not perfect, but it's not as bad as I thought. So it's okay. Now that we're post-COVID, I do love seeing people in my office again. It's just better. Totally. You know, all of my groups, I do time groups, and they all went online, and we coped, and it was fine, and we kind of thought it was okay. But when we went from online back to in-person, massive difference. It was the contrast where you could really, really feel the power of the proximity. Do you find that over telehealth you get more fatigued than in person? Absolutely. Yeah, me too. I mean, we're looking at pixels, and so we're having to interpret so quickly. Pixels and constant light coming into our eyes. It's not variable light, and we're stuck in one position, and they're stuck in one position, and it is much more fatiguing. PACT is particularly applied to couples therapy. And one way maybe to give everybody an idea of what PACT is and some of the principles, and I wonder about on Zoom, there's a lot of distance moving back and forth and ways of actualizing some of the stuff you're talking about in the real world. So how do you do that on Zoom? Well, I still can have people face each other. I can still record people and play them back. It took some doing to do that because in my work, the research I did was all with digital video and changing the speed and playback and also doing frame analysis, frame by frame, how we started to study people and partners and voices and movements and faces. so I find it still a very important tool especially for playback for couples but they have a bedroom and so I can do bedroom scenes and for your audience so they know bedroom scenes are really useful but they're PG only not creepy it's all about staging something at a glacial speed to investigate what happens at night or in the morning if they're having problems with going to sleep or waking up or sex or pillow talk or anything, the bed is a good anchor for building in new ways of working together. Can you give an example of that? Well, let's say a couple, this is a real couple, a couple that comes in and they get in fights every morning because he wakes up and has the proper amount of cortisol, which is getting him up and ready to get out of bed. And she has more of a cortisol dump at night, more anxiety, and so wakes him up to talk. And in the morning wants to cling and hold on to him. And they get in fights over this. So we stage the nighttime and we also stage the morning and how they could actually work together to get what they want without causing a threatening situation, which is what they manage to do. And so that just takes only a few moments to correct. So we start by playing or setting the scene, rather. Set the scene. Where are you? What time is it? Which side of the bed are you on? What are you wearing? Where's the door? Where are the kids? So setting the scene gets people into it. Yeah, orienting. Orienting, exactly. And then we play the scene step by step. So this happens, and then what happens next? And it could be very detailed. You know, when you come into the room, what are you seeing? And then we get that report. What are you anticipating will happen? How do you think it going to go if it something that keeps repeating What do you think your partner thinking So we slowing things down to a pace where people can start to experience the errors they are making in communication, in the interactions, because real time tends to be too fast. And we mostly don't know what we're doing or why. So this slows it down. It's for investigation. So what do you think they're thinking? What are you going to do next? Or what happens next? And then we go to the other person. What are you saying? What do you think they're thinking? What are you anticipating? And so on. This allows the therapist to, or investigator, because I'm wearing an investigator's hat. So you feel anxious, but you don't say anything. Is that correct? No, don't say anything. So rather than say anything, you do what? So it's kind of like going back to the scene of the crime. So you saw the bloody knife, and then what did you do? I went up to take a shower. Okay, so you see the bloody knife. You didn't call 911 and you decided to take a shower. Is that correct? I don't have to ask why. Just saying that makes it sound not great. Right? So all I have to do is let the record show they're thinking this and they're doing that. They don't check. They don't talk. They don't communicate. Right? So this could be very effective for exposing the mistakes they're making everywhere, not just in this scene, but also what they could do differently tonight. In the case of the bedroom scene in the morning, it's not simply that. It's also correcting the scene. So we play the scene. We see all the things that they are not doing, could have done. Let's correct the scene. What could you do at this moment? Just you changed the entire outcome of this event. just you. What could you say or do at this moment? And then we ask the other person. And we try to get them to come up with at least three things they could have done or could do the next time that would change, likely change the course. That increases the chance that only one of them need to remember only one thing that changes the entire thing. So that's why we do the correction of the For this couple, we directed it knowing that one person was insecurely attached on the clinging side, the other one insecurely attached on the distancing side. And so the solution actually is fairly clear. How is the distancing person going to feel not trapped? How's the clinging person going to arrange it so they don't feel abandoned and rejected? and the solution there is a clinging person says you can go, I know you want to get out of here that's good, but I want my hug and so grabs what they want and beats the other person's timing pushing them away which does a lot for reducing threat for the next time that person now doesn't believe they're going to get physically trapped both are good everything changes for now and that's how that works slowing the scene down and what you're saying catching errors as you know the research says that one of the ways that attachment gets carried forward is this information bias and so you're not lecturing them or what have you you're having them slow down so that they can catch it themselves so that the bias on both sides that amplification that sounds really lovely and then the other thought is that by like you're saying staging it then you're giving them a body experience so that there's muscle memory of these things in the bedroom. Exactly, which is why we have to replicate the location, the body positions, and so on, because the body remembers. And because, as best we can, we're trying to intrude on procedural memory. Procedural memory is the automated memory that we, cheap memory that we use to do our day, to do everything, pretty much. It's recognition-based. It tends to be based on pattern recognition, which is great for speed, terrible for relationships, because threat system also uses pattern recognition. So slowing everything down allows people to see and hear and understand what the other person is imagining, too. Because I didn't know what you were thinking as you were driving home, that you were expecting me to yell at you. That explains a lot why you came in looking like you were unfriendly. And so it teaches that we're reacting to each other at all times, and things aren't what they seem. If I come in and I'm feeling apprehensive, I am afraid, but I will act in a way that could be threatening to you without realizing it. And that's what gives way to these loops that we get into, where the system begins to react to itself at lightning speeds, And then we create our personal narratives, which we think are accurate, but the personal narratives always serve the self. They serve my interests only. And that's what you were talking about in terms of making wrong assumptions, because the survival instinct doesn't have a lot of time or doesn't include you. It includes me only. You're the problem. Most of this is happening without people's direct awareness, and it's happening so fast that most of what we attribute to another person as purposeful isn't. It is automatic and reflexive. That's mostly how we operate as human primates, unless we're fully relaxed. So someone's listening, and they think, yeah, I can be clingy sometimes. My partner can be clingy. I can zip up. But, you know, if you speak directly to them, are there things that, you know, just kind of from the hip, quick things that you might suggest? I think insecure attachment. Insecure attachment is basically a memory of what happens when I depend on someone. And so it really is most acute in love relationships, romantic primary attachment relationships, which makes them very hard, harder than all others for more than that reason. So I'm remembering, and if I'm insecurely attached, I'm remembering either a situation where my independence, my autonomy is being hindered, usurped by somebody else's needs and wants. And I feel like I'm always under demand. I always have to perform for someone else. And I resent it, and I want to get away. So I distance. I distance as a way to protect myself from being smothered and trapped. So my behavior, because I'm afraid of this, is not conducive to collaboration or cooperation. I'm behaving in a way that is actually threatening to you, which turns out will compel you to behave in ways that reinforce my earlier fears. So it's self-reinforcing. If I'm on the clinging side, again, same thing, insecure. I fear rejection, abandonment, punishment. You're not going to love me. I can't grab what I want. I can't say, come here, give me a hug. That's what I directed this partner to do. Why don't you hug me? How come you never do this? How come you're... It's a whole different way of directing their wants and needs, which puts more pressure on their partner. These people in the clinging group are given to constantly testing their partner, do you love me? Do you want me? And so on, which is also distancing in some way. So that's the problem. In order for me to understand you, I have to understand why you're doing this and where it comes from and not respond in a way that reinforces it. That's the way out. And sadly, that can only be done with another person. But I should know what I do that is clinging or distancing so I could take a responsibility for it. I'm sorry, I snapped at you. That was my not liking being interrupted thing. I'm sorry, I was negativistic when you told me how lovely I look. That was wrong. So both things must be true. I have to know what I'm doing and take responsibility that's not really secure, functioning behavior, fair or just or sensitive. And as your partner, I have to understand the animal I chose so that I don't misinterpret you and start using a stick or a whip with something that I actually should be using in a way that's helpful to you and reduces your sense of threat. This takes a lot of understanding. Most people will never do this because human beings, like all mammals and all living things, are energy conserved. We do the least amount necessary. And so we are generally automatic creatures who are going to do exactly what we know, exactly what we've seen and experienced every time we're under stress or threat. That's as fancy as we get. And sadly, it's not good enough to sustain relationships. Which is part of why we do the work that we do, right? Is offering this hope and a path. So you mentioned secure functioning. What does a secure functioning system look like? And also, if you can address dyads versus polycules and polyamory. Secure functioning is a system that's based on social contract theory. It's not secure attachment. Although a secure functioning relationship will lead partners or those involved to secure attachment, I'll explain why. Secure functioning is predicated on the idea that, let's say it's just you and I, you and I are coming together as adults in a symmetrical relationship as equals. Shared power, shared authority. Nothing similar to family, where there's an asymmetry. So, we are supposed to share power and authority to bosses, to generals, to executives, that are co-creating from scratch this thing called a relationship, which is actually an abstraction, doesn't exist actually, except in our heads. So we better get our heads together and agree on what this thing we're calling a relationship is. What's the point of us? Do we have a shared purpose? If not, we need one. Do we have a shared vision of where we're going? If not, we need one. And then we have to have shared principles of how we're going to govern each other so we can protect ourselves from each other because we're animals. And we know this, we should know this, love is not a factor. Friendship is not a factor. We have to plan for our devils, not our angels. And we're basically co-constructing a new culture from scratch, not the one we were given as children, as child, and we're doing it collaboratively and cooperatively. It's a two-person psychological system based on real interdependence, meaning we have the same thing to gain and the same thing to lose, you and I. We're mutual shareholders in everything we do. Therefore, we have to consider each other as we consider ourselves, or we'll be mistaken as the enemy. This is a very difficult thing to do if one isn't oriented towards teams, team, unions, alliances. Let's start a band. Well, we can't start a band unless I get you on board with our mission, our purpose, our vision. And otherwise, why would you do it? You don't do it because you love me. You do it because you love what we're going to do. Couples, unfortunately, don't think this way. And that's a big problem. Couples come together based on emotion, feeling, duty, perhaps. But they don't come together like other unions based on shared mission, shared purpose, shared vision. and they don't co-construct an architecture that guides them towards what's right and what's best. They don't even think about that until they get into trouble, in which case they operate as a one-person system of me, my, I, and you, you, you, which starts the threat system, starts the whole process of becoming adversaries, which that's not what they're supposed to be, right? So secure functioning is one where we commit to a system that remains fair, just, mutually sensitive, collaborative, and cooperative, especially when one or both of us is under stress. And that's where the challenge is. The manner in which you and I will interact when either of us is under stress is very different than when we're feeling good. So those are two areas which in each other care is actually focused on Lack of co architecture of what this thing is We flying a plane that half built or not even built Dangerous We don't have any agreements. We don't have any structure. We don't have any permission to govern each other. So that's trouble. And then we don't know how to remain collaborative and cooperative when stress starts to get higher. And then we start to accrue threat memory. So it's very clear how this starts to happen, very predictable, and it is not specific to any person, religion, race, gender identification, sexual identification, culture, nothing. Every place in the world that involves human beings, this is the human condition, a problem for all of us. Yeah. Ann and I are working on the book, Secure Relating, and it's exactly this. And that our threat system is being manipulated. We are being forced into these defensive states. Now, polyamory and attachment, and just want to hear your thoughts on that. So dyadic relationships have been the popular unions in adult romantic primary attachment relationship. Ignoring, even from the beginning of our time on the planet, other alternative ways of being together. There are secure functioning relationships, by the way, that are non-sexual, that are not romantic, and still follow certain rules. There are triadic relationships. There are polyamory. There's today and has been consensual non-monogamy. Secure functioning applies because it still requires the people who are in charge of the structure to co-create or to all create a social structure, basically, that is fair and just and mutually sensitive. And that accounts for differences, accounts for differences, which means that people must continually find where they agree and where they are the same. they cannot afford to do what most people do, low-hanging fruit, where we're different and where we disagree. That's easy, right? So the stakes are just as high. Organization and hierarchy matters have to be predetermined and then adjusted as necessary by the people that are involved or relationships will disintegrate. Any system that's too unfair, unjust, insensitive, will disintegrate. So people have to keep that in mind. It takes the same kind of adult thinking to think ahead what could possibly go wrong and to predict and plan and prepare for it rather than to just allow things to happen. You know, there's a lot of misunderstandings and myths around polyamory around it's when somebody can't commit that then they just want to widen the sphere. Here's why there's been in science, and I think science is part of this. You know, science has politics just like everything else. Science has biases based on sex and gender. So science has looked at the attachment system primarily in dyadic orientations. Because of the first one, the infant-caregiver-dyadic relationship, obviously not the only primary attachment relationship, but when we look at primary-primary, what the attachment researchers are saying on a biological level, that our species tends to pair bond in groups. and this happens even in polygamous and polyamorous cultures, that there tends to be one person, usually, one person to whom we pick as the primary. That person is who we will run to first when we are in the most distress or we want to share good news first. We don't run to everybody. and so based on that on a biological level there's an expectation that that primary is the main person for calming soothing for sharing for regulation and we find that in for instance in polygamous societies like in Africa in Africa there's only one tribe now that isn't polygamous I think 46 of the rest or 44, whatever are all. And if you go and you travel around, you'll see in every village there are two big huts, and then the huts get smaller. The two big huts seem to be the primaries, and the other ones not as much. The same thing happens in Utah when the state breaks up polygamous groups. the male will often pick the one that is the primary. So this is all theoretical, right? This is all theoretical based on the research within Vincent's own. There has to be some rethinking here because obviously there are many arrangements that people can and will have and have had in all kinds of relationships. And secure functioning doesn't mean it has to be this or that. I don't care. A clinician shouldn't care. What I care about is that everybody agrees. So, you could have any kind of arrangement. It doesn't matter. But are you fully informed as adults? And are you in agreement? Or is someone feeling that they have to do this? Otherwise, they'll lose the relationship. That's what I'm on the look out for. But that's it. You know, there's the myth of you open it up because you're afraid of intimacy or that, you know, I think there's a myth around insecurity in these relationships. And even as you're describing it, to have the maturity to be able to navigate these kinds of complexities actually really calls for quite a bit of security and self-awareness and a capacity to communicate well and to know what you need when it goes well. I mean, there's different people everywhere, but when it goes well, so I think my understanding as the research is that it's actually the ones that make it, you know, like they really have worked out. And there's the idea that sometimes in marriage, kind of the institution of marriage, that we assume secure functioning, or we assume, okay, well, I don't have to worry about it because we're married now. Yeah, no, no, no. Secure functioning is a conscious, raising the bar much higher, a social-emotional area of intelligence. Yeah, you know, you don't get married and have tenure. It is tremendous, tremendous work. It's pay-to-play. It's deal or no deal, as it should be. The only thing that interrupts that is the attachment system. The attachment system is the I-can't-quit-you biology. On the good side, it holds us together. On the bad side, it keeps us in unfair or bad situations we shouldn't be in. So that's another thing you and I have to deal with. Right. Well, and I want to talk more about that because that gets into the reality. It gets back into your book and the reality of what it's like for two human beings to try to have a life together, which can be quite messy and painful. but if we can separate out like when we think of security and we think of this equity in relationship sometimes you'll get pushed back or i will get pushed back around that's codependent or that's too dependent right so can you say a little bit about the difference between kind of healthy interdependence which is what we're describing and this more problematic kind of merger or enmeshment or i don't want to keep using pathological terms but when it misses the mark So, codependence, as it has come to be, because it's gone through some different iterations, it's not a bad term. I could have used it to make it into something actually appropriate, but it got co-opted because it originally was co-alcoholic. And then it turned into codependent, and that became a pejorative idea. that basically is a one-direction-only relationship where you are in love with your alcohol or drugs or your work or yourself, and I am over-focused on you. It's not a two-way street. I am doing things for you in hopes that I will get in return, which goes back to childhood, by the way, and that's an unfair situation that we are both engaged in. interdependency is that again the field is leveled you and i have the same things to gain and lose therefore you can't do anything that is unfair to me because that's suicide pal i can do that back to you i don't think you want that therefore there are checks and balances with both of us You play fair, I play fair, or we can't exist. That's the fact of it, right? That's the fact of it. So fairness and justice is a subjective thing that has to be reckoned with. Otherwise, if I do anything that's too unfair to you, I better watch my back. Because that is when people do things that are unfriendly and that are hostile and that are warlike, right? We're warlike animals. People have to understand this. The human primate is a warlike, aggressive animal that is self-centered, selfish-oriented, always moody and fickle and opportunistic, and above all, xenophobic. We otherize. If I don't understand you, I otherize you. You're not me, and therefore, I am not your ally. I'm opposed to you. And partners can do this, and they do it. We see this happening throughout our culture right now because we lack a shared purpose and vision in the country. And that same thing can happen in a small system like a couple or a throuple or whatever, you know, a group that you are affiliating with. It has to be a certain way or it cannot continue to exist. You know, what I really like about your book is you go into very into detailed fights, common fights. So I want to hear some of the common ones, but let me throw one at you first. And unfortunately, this is a, not unfortunately, but it's a, it's kind of a heterosexual example. So I don't want to have gender stereotypes. However, the female partners in therapy, and this isn't necessarily couples, but for you to be able to speak to it. And there is labor, unfairness, there's over-functioning, fear to bring up, just ordinary things. You said that you were going to do the dishwasher and you wait until I remind you and then you want accolades because you did it. You know what I mean? Like just that when that tilt begins to happen. Super common. So tell me about that. First, we must separate out from two different things. One, we must accept that all people are difficult up close. All pain in the asses, all burdens, all irritating, annoying. We are all disappointing. We're all contradictory. Okay, them's the facts. Now what? That's not going away. But being dangerous, threatening, that will kill us. That literally will kill us because a threatening relationship has too much interpersonal stress. which is going to cause wear and tear, and we live a shorter lifespan, are not happy, and we get sick very early. So just being in a relationship is not a guarantee of health. You have to be in a secure, functioning relationship. Otherwise, YouTube will die soon. So this is about understanding each other and accepting each other as is. I have to accept you. If I take you as my partner, I'm accepting you whole as is. You don't need to change. What we will have to change as we go is how we do business. That's different than changing who we are. Different. And we have a hard time thinking this way, that we are, in fact, different people, different minds. We are going to disagree. We're going to step on each other's toes. We're going to irritate each other. That's fine. Now we have to work together. So we build in guardrails to push and limit each other so that we can get things done. If you were to see Tracy, my partner, and I, on any given day getting a lot of things done, you'd hear a lot of, don't, stop, go, move. And we do that with full permission We good with that And we get a lot done That is two different people operating together That how Anne and I write Yes, it works. We don't get bogged down and like, why do you always do that? Because we've agreed we want to do it this way. And it's efficient and it works. It doesn't have to feel great. It just is not threatening. And it's not an attack. And so we give each other permission to do this. And it works. So people have to find how they can do business together because any system that's together has to serve a purpose beyond love and emotion. Has to. If a union is based on emotion, it's going to break up based on emotion. Right? So what's an example of a purpose, a couple's purpose? We survive and thrive together. I have your back, you have mine. We are time travelers. We are going to protect each other from a world that is inherently, always has been, unkind, indifferent to us, unpredictable, and violent sometimes. We don't have a contract with anybody else that we have with each other. We are in charge of everyone and everything, including each other. we run the show wherever we go perfectly safe perfectly secure it's not the place we're in it's the relationship is what protects us it's home we built it that way we made it that way not because we're super fun and great people we're pain in the asses like everybody else but we're smart and we organize this thing based on our differences not on what we should be for each other. That is a good life. We decide what's the best thing we could do in this situation, even though it will likely be the hardest thing to do. Remember, we do the easiest thing. And that is generally self-serving. Doesn't matter whether you like it or not. I feel good. But that's suicide in a two-person system. Can't think that way and expect it to go well. So I can imagine people hearing this thinking, what, I'm just supposed to keep doing the dishes you know and i can't change him no you both are in charge your legislators legislate come together this isn't working we have a problem not i we have a problem if i have a problem you're gonna have a problem pal pal being you know any gender and so we got to do this a secure functioning partnership works on problems not each other we work on the problem never each other because that's war. And so we're smart. Let's come together. And this isn't working. Not fair. Listen up, because if it's not fair for me, you're not going to like me. I'm not going to be a good pal. So you got to pay attention here. We're in this together. So that's the idea. The spirit of this is that we hold each other to the same standards, the same standards. If we decide this is how we work, this is what we do. I must do it, you must do it, so do it. Because our survival depends on our adhering to the principles that we created based on what's the best thing or the right thing. So say us both, right? I'm not going to decide what the right thing is for you. But the right thing is now into moral reasoning. What is the best thing? quality of life value. What's the right thing? A fairness and justice, right? What's the right thing we could do, even though it will be the hardest. And that's what most partnerships don't do. Yeah. So say more in your book, what are the common things that partners don't do that they get in trouble with one another for? Anything that's not pre-organized, anything that wasn't set up by the two of them, anything they didn't think about ahead of time, anything they didn't plan for or correct that didn't work. So in medicine, something happens, a patient dies or something goes awry. There's a post-mortem meeting. Nobody is being blamed. We're as a group looking at medicine. How can we prevent this from happening in the future? That is smart. That is what we all should be doing. Couples don't do that. We keep repeating something. We don't say, let's prevent this from repeating because that's going to cause us a big problem. Inflammation, inflammation threat. Yeah. What we say is you don't love me. If you cared, you would do it. All of those things, right? And this is where there's a confusion between family and two strangers, strangers, always strangers, having to get to know each other every day and not resting on their laurels and not sticking with automation. It's a career. Therefore, I have to stay attentive. I have to be a good expert on you. I have to be a good handler of you, you and me. We have to work together or we don't solve problems and we don't create anything. And everyone around us is the worse for it because everyone's depending on us being good at this. So that's really the idea here. This is not a luxury. This is a necessity. If we were in Ukraine, we wouldn't be doing a lot of the stuff we do. We'd be too busy trying to stay alive together. We would know what's important. We're not organized around what's important here because we feel too safe. We're not. you and I can protect each other from the whims of the environment, which includes everybody. If we don't think that, we're not going to make it. So that's kind of one of the organizing principles in the book, right? Nice. We survive and thrive together. Therefore, we do not cross each other. We do not throw each other under the bus. We do not subjugate each other. We do not demote each other. We do not behave in a way that we wouldn't also like. So one thing I wanted to say about In Each Other's Care along the lines of where I'm moving to be inclusive, because I've been part of that problem unwittingly, not purposely, is that all the examples in the book, and this is a book that's organized by complaint, which is fun to do. It's fun to read, and this time I actually did the audio version of it too, which is fun. But I made sure that I cloaked, as best I could, gender, sex, sociopolitical, economic, positions, race, culture. You know, probably not perfect, and anybody will read into it anyway. But to try to flatten this out so that other people, anybody can identify with these problems, which are basically human issues, right? What I hope to do in the future is to be much more focused in the area of ethical non-monogamy and polyamory. But I'm working really hard to think it through so I can also justify it on the science end so that I can be very, very clear and coherent with it. And that's why it's taking a little bit longer. But I have been writing about it, yeah. Yeah, no, and I really like you saying, and I do as well, you know, having been part of perpetuating systems and that it's a process to undo. So, for example, the flattening it out, I think, is great. Like even being aware that we unintentionally, you know, this, I mean, from early attachment research, it happened, right? Like we can't know what we don't know. In our book, we are handling it a little bit differently in the sense of like we're kind of amplifying socioeconomics so that people will project themselves into it because you've been able to neutralize it. And it's easier to project yourself into the story. So what we're trying to do is really be inclusive in this different way of naming some of the specific issues around race, around the things that have been overlooked and marginalized in the attachment literature. And it's more important now than ever because there's a lot riding on this. Things have moved forward, and there's, of course, a huge force, counterforce, that's trying to send us back to the Stone Age. Which isn't hard to do when you start stimulating our amygdala and our HPA axis, and we get into our protective system, and all of a sudden, we're just monkeys that are at war. And our propensity to otherize, which is famous. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things I really like about the book, like I said, is it's very concrete. It's very practical. So if you're in a couple, I would highly recommend it. It's called In Each Other's Care by Stan Tatkin. But also therapists, there's a lot of therapists that listen and folks that might be interested in getting training through the PACT Institute. How would they find you? You can find me through thepactinstitute.com, P-A-C-T institute.com. There we do trainings all the time, all around the world. This is a polytheoretical approach that is a bit difficult to learn, but it's really fun. It just takes a while to sort of integrate it. And then Tracy and I do couples workshops online throughout the year, and we're doing a couples retreat next year in Portugal. which you should not miss. That sounds really wonderful. The other thing about the Pact Institute is the community. There's a community of therapists that are actively supporting one another. I'm on that list, and I see things come across that are just so resourceful and real mutual support of working through specific problems and finding resources. They share a lot of their own ideas and just concrete materials. Like, here's an example of a vision, a couple's vision, things like that. So really recommend that for sure. And is there anything that has surprised you or that you've changed your mind on kind of since last time we talked or, you know, in these recent couple of years? I think on the social justice piece, which was always part of PACT, but was not at the forefront. I think over the years, I found that I obsess on each little piece that has become integrated and PACT. This last piece has been an obsession on structure, co-organization of the relationship and how vital that is. And the second one, the manner in which we will all interact when one or both of us is under stress. Those two areas are key to long-lasting, happy unions of any kind. So it's not perpetuating kind of the institutions that are there. It seems to me that like you're saying, create your story. But just do it together. You're creating your own civilization, your own society to protect each other and to create Shangri-La in your own home. That's the relational home. And then the two of you can deal with the vicissitudes of life, the social injustices that are bearing down on you. At least you're together on this. And you are operating always as allies can never afford to be adversaries. Beautiful. and are there online resources, PDFs, videos, anything like that that people might find? We're actually now dealing with another company that we've hired to get rid of our paywall and to start to make the stuff that has been held behind that paywall for therapists and other people in the PAC community and actually make that available. So we are actively working on making the site and this work available to everybody instead of protecting it like we have been. Right, right. Well, and the other way of doing it is you pick up your books. Or pick up my books or listen to podcasts like this one. Absolutely. Which is what we're here about is bridging this incredible science, this life-changing material that, yeah, most of the time, you know, you're very privileged typically to be able to sit in an individual therapy's office and get this kind of care or be in an institution and learn it that way or in a lab. So the whole point of our show is to really bridge and make this material available and understandable and useful for everybody. I'm a big fan of you and your podcast. Bravo. Well, thank you. And I'm a big fan back, as you know. So if this has been useful to you, which if you're still hearing us, then I hope that it has been, please do consider who else might benefit and share the podcast. The other thing that you can do to really help us out, doesn't cost a thing, is if you'll go to wherever you're getting your podcast and give us a rating and review that helps other people find the show, which is part of what we want, to share it freely and widely. Okay, so thanks for listening, and we'll see you around the bend. Therapist Uncensored is Ann Kelly and Sue Marriott. This podcast is edited by Jack Anderson.