Fixing vs. Feeling: How to Get on the Same Team with Elizabeth Ferreira

Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forrest Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today I'm here with a very special guest. Back by popular demand, I asked the people on YouTube who they wanted to see more of this year, and they all said this person, associate therapist, and very importantly, my fiance, Elizabeth Ferreira. So Elizabeth, how are you doing? Wow. What an introductione. I had to roll out the red carpet for you. I really felt it. You're a podcast celebrity. You're who the people are. I don't know about that. You know, they come for me and Rick. They stay for you. We're really flying by the seat of our pants today. I'm feeling loose, I guess. So today we wanted to talk about something that came out of conversations that we've just been having with each other. Our kitchen conversations. Our kitchen conversations about work that we're doing with clients. I do a little bit of coaching work. Elizabeth does a lot of therapy work with people. And some of the themes that we were finding in that also reflected our personal experience and some of the stuff that we've bumped into as a couple, in addition to people who kind of work in the world of mental health. And so we thought we would kind of bundle all of that together and have a bit of a conversation about it today. So I want to start with you, actually. We're flipping roles a little bit. Flipping the script on me here. Much to probably Rick, who saw this coming years ago. Years ago. Finally, Forrest is coaching and sitting with people and having that experience. I think generally, people kind of view you as this very logical, not so much a touchy-feely kind of guy. Pretty rational. Rational. I like learning. I like knowing things, stuff like that. And it's been interesting watching you sit with other people that kind of identify in that way. and kind of, I don't know, sometimes you have this joking, like chagrin kind of energy to it, but coming out of your sessions being like, man, I've just sort of turned into Mr. Rogers here. It's so true. I've become the warm and fuzzy, very humanistic type person. I think in part because the people who often seek me out to work with me see that more logical, rational, I can take this guy seriously, it feels like he knows his stuff aspect of who I am, which is true. I also have that as a big part of my personality. But then what emerges in the work together is these are people who often want to get more in touch with their feelings or more in touch with the ability to relate to other people really empathically. That kind of sensitive boys club thing that I've talked about on the podcast in the past. And they want to be able to find that in their relationships and open up to it. And then, you know, shoe on the other foot, you've talked with me a lot about how you are the emotional, feely, heart-centered person. And then it turns out that you end up holding up the more logical, rational stuff inside of the room with people, problem-solving driven. How do we actually do things on the ground to make your life a little bit better day after day? So there's this funny thing where we've both leaned into the opposite side of who we are a little bit in our work with people. And I think that that really speaks to the importance of having the yes and of this and being able to access both sides of the street. And maybe that's a place we could kind of start. I want to follow some curiosity that I have. I'm sort of wondering, as you're holding this container with other people, what does it feel like for you to be confronted with someone who's in that logical, analytical kind of part maybe as more of like a defense? Both of these aspects are good and useful, and both of them are kinds of defensive adaptation often and how they show up, particularly in relationships with other people. The more logical, rational side, the kind of sharp scalpel of your big sparkly brain can be a great defense against needing to feel painful feelings. Inside of relationship, this often shows up as a lot of problem solving. Here, let me fix that for you. I'm a big fixer, So I really get this. And then the more kind of emotional sensitive side, there's a lot of good stuff in that. Joining, establishing the shared base of connection from which we can solve problems, feeling of you and me together so that there's this sense of team and that team helps everybody feel really safe. At the same time also, if you just only ever live there and you never move into more problem solving, well, that can be a kind of defense against needing to actually do something. And I think that I've learned a lot from you about how to be with both of those parts. So these days when I work with somebody who is the more cognitive, logical, rational, I really like it. I find that work very natural because I know what worked for me. I think I find that more natural and intuitive than if I were working with somebody who is really the opposite end of the coin. I think I would struggle more. So I'm curious about kind of these adaptations or these defenses. And I want to kind of invite you to be a little more personal than maybe you've been in the past. Sure. Because it's something that we're sort of also kitchen talks. We're talking about emotional touchy-feely is feminine and logical analytical is masculine. And I think it's really dangerous to create things in such a gender binary because, one, then what happens to you when you're an adult? And it's like your whole life you've been told you're not allowed to do that. But also I think it can remove certain aspects of people being seen in other identities or forms like that. And I think when we were talking about this, it really became clear we both have these energies inside of us. Yeah, I think everybody's got both. Yeah. And so I'm sort of curious if you could walk me through and people listening your kind of reminiscence on how you felt that pressure of being socialized to actually kind of sharpen the scalpel versus stay open hearted. Well, I think there are two pressures on people that are really big. One of them is definitely gender socialization. As we talk about this, it's going to be natural for me to use terminology like masculine or feminine, particularly more masculine traits when I talk about that logical, rational stuff, and more feminine traits when I talk about the more empathic relational stuff. There's some evolutionary psychology in how these traits might be distributed unevenly on a gender basis or on a sex basis between men and women. But the reality is most of this is pretty constructed. So there's the pressure of that socialization, but then there's also just the defensive adaptation of these strategies. I think that I did receive socialization pressure, but I grew up in a pretty progressive household with a pretty touchy-feely dad. I was definitely not hit over the head with like boys don't cry rhetoric, that kind of stuff. For me, it was often really defensive in nature. I was a big feeler. I was very, very, very sensitive. And hanging out in that place, particularly when you're on the playground with other kids, very dangerous place to be. A lot safer to be a logical, rational guy, a lot safer to kind of close those aspects of yourself up. And that's a story that's echoed by a lot of the people that I work with. Then on the other hand, I was really rewarded for the more logical, rational stuff. I had a natural affinity for it. I could do it well. I could perform in a classroom. And bottom line, the more sensitive, feely parts of me were sources mostly in my experience of suffering, frankly. These were the ways that the herd got in. And the more logical, rational stuff was what I was really benefited when I did it. And so it was like, okay, obviously I'm going to gravitate more in that direction over time. So that was definitely a big part of my experience with it. I don't know if the opposite was true for you. I think trauma complicates things where there was this insular experience of I was expected to be highly attuning and empathic, particularly to my mother. But then in the extended family, that was viewed as weakness or a vulnerability. But what I feel like is kind of my experience is The more emotional space is what comes up first for me, I would say. And then I kind of have had to learn how to hold that and include kind of the logical, analytical, or more directive, action-based kind of thing. But yeah, I think it's like a little more complicated for me. But what I see kind of across the board is in a lot of family systems, girls are expected to perform like girls and boys are expected to perform like boys. and I'm just going to say I kind of hate that the girls are allowed to be the more emotional unmoored one and the boys are more expected to be kind of aggressive push your feelings off to the side um just overall feel less yeah and the bummer of this is that everybody needs both yeah you want both you want to be able to play with all the toys you want access to all of the moves on the chessboard, particularly inside of your relationships. I think that our relationship story from a problem-solving perspective, like how did we go from where we were to where we got to inside of our relationship, is really a story of two things happening at the same time. It's a story of me getting that things got better for me when I hung out an empathic relationship with you for a longer period of time before I tried to fix a problem. This required me to be able to do two things at the same time. It required me to trust that you would eventually be open to moving into problem solving. And it required me to be able to regulate my own emotions that came up when I saw you in distress. And this is a big thing that people don't always talk about with fixing, where fixing is often an attempt to solve something that's called emotional contagion. So when I see you feeling bad, I don't want you to feel bad anymore because I am sensitive boys club. You know, there is that feeling center that's inside of me and that, by the way, is inside of most, if not all men. And when I see you in distress, a really easy way to move you out of distress is to provide the solution to your problem. So all of a sudden, I don't have to feel bad anymore if you stop feeling bad. But there are a lot of practical reasons that somebody might not be able to move into problem solving immediately. For starters, they want that sense of team. They don't want to feel like they're doing it on their own. There's a lot of advice in life that is so easy when we give it to somebody else. And we so struggle to apply it to ourselves. Even me as a captain problem solver, am I always applying all of my great solutions to other people to my own life? No. No. I'm not sitting on the mountaintop with all of this stuff. You know what I mean? We're all human. It's really okay. But that's a project. So on the one hand, I had to do all of that. I don't want to put words in your mouth here, but you're part of the process. But what I've seen in you is you've become much more proactive and much more solutions oriented and open to solutions as time has gone on. I don't know if that was something that you actively worked on or if it just kind of happened as other stuff was going on? Before we met, I was still living in an environment where all my survival strategies had to be there. And I was fairly emotionally closed off. I was very focused on achievement, goal orientation, even though I was way more artistic and I never really felt like I had a ton of, I guess, like intellectual game. I was in school a lot and I was always doing something. So there was always this energy that I had of constantly being oriented out. And, you know, what would often happen was when nobody else was around and I was finally by myself, then this like eruption of kind of like emotion would kind of happen. And I think what occurred in the beginning stages of our relationship was the unraveling of this sort of false identity that I had constructed in order to protect myself. And that was an incredibly vulnerable and frankly chaotic moment. And looking back now as someone who's training to be a trauma therapist, it's very clear to me, oh, I was triggered a lot. Meaning the part of my brain that could fire to actually get to problem solving was not really online at the time. So I would be coming to you with what appeared to be kind of out of left field emotional material. But the real kind of ask was, I'm not at a place where I can problem solve yet because I've never even been taught how to regulate this. I either totally cut it off and pretend it's not there, or I am showing you what happens when I don't do that and it is completely overwhelming and chaotic. And I think that during that time, that was the most turbulent moment because as I was learning a lot about myself and what happened to me and the impact of trauma on me, I was really able to see how it was affecting you as my partner. And I think we both really showed up in ways that helped move through that. And a part of that was, and I know this as someone who works with trauma, is that if I'm sitting with someone who's actively triggered in session, no amount of problem solving is going to move that person into a place where they can actually hear what I'm saying. There is a distress that is happening to where the body is in a fight or flight state Yeah your brain not working that way It not working that way So that attunement is necessary because now we entering co The experience is able to come down And now I'm able to move back into that problem-solving space. And so over time, to sort of say this back to you, what I saw is that you became more internally regulated in a way that let you move into that more rapidly. Yeah. You needed less and less fuel to be able to make that transition. But like everybody, you still need some fuel. If I'm problem solving in a work environment, the most logical, rational, not empathic, entombment environment you can imagine, what do I still want to hear from my manager? That they're not going to fire me if I get this wrong. There's some basic level of emotional relational stuff that helps every logical, rational communication go as good as possible, right? Like that's why we talk about emotional fluency inside of the workplace or being able to create psychological safety in work environments, things like that. So this is important everywhere. And there are people who are going to have more of a natural inclination one direction or the other. They're going to find it easier to do one or the other. But over time, the hope is that it becomes easier and easier for you to access the whole game board. And I think that one of the things that helps people with that is just this kind of thousand foot view of the whole thing, appreciating both of these as important aspects of the whole process and appreciating your nature and temperament. My nature and temperament was to have a lot of game with logical rational and to be very uncomfortable with that emotional intimacy because that was where a lot of my pain was. I had to go into that material in order to process it, and that was not fun for me initially. Yeah. And to add, if the story from my family system was weakness is bad, meaning vulnerability is bad, it was incredibly difficult for me to move into a space that I had not practiced a ton, which was this more kind of rational, how do you, okay, what's the step plan, all of this, majority of my life before kind of entering into a heap of things. but trauma work myself, was sort of just shooting from the hip and being really lucky and having a lot of stamina. I have an incredible endurance for pain. But it was even more distressing to show you my distress and how difficult certain things were for me to do in that space. I wonder if that's a piece of it. We actually haven't talked about this before. But I wonder about that showing incompetence, for lack of a better way of putting it, inside of a relationship as being a big point of vulnerability for people. Like if I go into that more relational place with you, that's a place where I'm uncomfortable, yes, but it's also one where maybe I don't have as much practice. Also, frankly, most guys have a lot of wounding experiences around showing vulnerability. They were really punished for doing it. A lot of guys receive messages these days around being more emotionally vulnerable and responsive with their partners. And so they say, okay, and they try it and it really does not go well. Maybe because there's a lack of skills or they don't know how to communicate that. Maybe it's something I think we're going to talk about in a bit, this idea of in order for somebody to kind of fall apart like that, well, the other person needs to be able to hold the container at least a little bit. So if you're bidding for more emotional openness from your partner, you need to be able to have the stability inside of yourself to hold that greater degree of vulnerability, right? Somebody needs to be the person who's kind of like doing that job inside of the relationship. And that kind of an inversion can be very destabilizing for people just because they're not used to it and they don't have practice with it. I think socially, we are really uncomfortable with our emotions. I think we're really uncomfortable being witnessed in our vulnerability and we're really uncomfortable naming things that are painful. I think as a society, I've always felt that logical is good and emotional is bad, or at least that's what I felt I was taught when I was younger. And so I really built a mask of, I don't give a f**k. And I could be in a way like emotionally present and I could have some layers of like intimacy with people, but I was never actually being vulnerable in those moments because I had a lot of practice being emotionally attuned to frankly, a very emotionally chaotic mother. so it didn't freak me out to sort of be with someone who was unhinged what freaked me out was actually you i felt incredibly intimidated early on in our relationship with just how cool common collected you appeared to be and honestly it was like very attractive to me it's something that like really drew me to you because i was like oh this is something that i like want and it looked so natural. And what I experienced was when I would really be honest and kind of drop into my own emotional space of trying to be authentically vulnerable with you, it would make you cry. Sure. And I would be like, oh my God, I did something bad. Like I cracked the person that I thought was just cool, calm, and calm. Well, f*** me. Like, I guess I'm just too much. And it would, like, reinforce my own withholding and lack of vulnerability in the relationship. And it would push me into trying to be your equal in terms of what I would define as more masculine traits. And I tried to suppress my more feminine, I guess, or, like, the emotional, chaotic, like, vulnerable place. We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors. Now, back to the show. There really is something in guys seeking out highly, in terms of gender socialization, classically feminine partners, and then essentially complaining when they aren't masculine enough. Yeah. What's that about? Yeah. Like, what a weird, huh. Yeah. And I don't know if I have anything to say about it other than there's a lot to unpack there. But I do think that it's a real thing. I mean, inside of our relationship, to some extent, I sought out somebody who I perceived as being very empathic and very sensitive and very emotional and extremely artsy. I met Elizabeth at a dance thing where she had the full cockatiel haircut and was extremely bi-coded. The whole situation. And then inside of our relationship, one of the things we had to really figure out was my frustrations around this kind of problem-solving thing. Yeah. And my own fixing tendency and my perception that you weren't interested in problem-solving. What's kind of funny about this whole thing is that it's really easy for us to view that as nature. so forest nature is this logical rational thing elizabeth's nature is this emotional sensitive frankly that's it's adaptation it's adaptation it is not nature and it is really really critical particularly inside of like a therapy or coaching context or something one of the big revelations for people is who i am is constructed and yes if i get down beneath all of it I can find something that feels like true nature. But often that something is very different from the performance that you're doing, including the gender performance that we're doing on a day-to-day basis, the mask that I have learned how to wear, the way that I've learned to kind of move through the world. And I don't know if it was like a revelation to you that I was in fact this incredibly sensitive, very touchy-feely person, or if that was something that you saw the whole time and knew was in there and it was just going to be a matter of time maybe before it popped out. I don't know what your experience of that was, but I've never doubted that about it. I just didn't know how to do it. Yeah, I think that was the thing that I felt was that it was in there, and it brought up my own insecurities of like, oh, I'm not good enough to be allowed to have that part of you, which I was very desperate and craved. Because to me, that's where a lot of my intimacy kind of comes in. And also, I think historically, I was way more rewarded in previous relationships for not being the emotional one. I found myself being often pushed into this certain type of presentation or archetype, and I was rewarded for that. But the one that I was never rewarded for was a more standard, feminine, classic, archetypal thing. It was either like I just could not figure out how to fit into that, or... I think you're a good chameleon. Yeah. I think you're a good chameleon, and you're a flexible person. Yeah. And so you kind of move toward what you felt was needed by the other person or what they were pulling for from you. Yeah. And so I think the shift in our relationship was what happens when I stop being the chameleon and I get really honest. And I think what I have observed in you is that oddly, the more that I've been able to really own the fact that I do have classic masculine traits, it's freed you up to kind of be more in your feminine. Yep, 100%. And that's the area where breaking out of those words, I think, can really help people out. Because I had to really, as somebody, I mean, there are literal comments that have referred to you as my beard, Elizabeth. Your beard? Yeah, my beard. There are literal comments. Like from Ted Lasso? No, no, no, no, no. Yes, absolutely. You are that beard, Elizabeth. But no, the way that people mean it is in the sense of like a gay guy who's doing a performance of straightness by being with a woman. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. So or vice versa. Yeah. And that's still something that to some extent, if you're a guy who is somewhat sensitive, somewhat relational and, you know, works in mental health or whatever, like you just got to deal with that. That kind of comes with the territory. So for me, it was really helpful to move away from thinking about those as being, like you said, quote unquote, feminine traits, and more toward them being traits. Emotional sensitivity, desire to connect with other people. These are positive traits in anybody. These are good traits. There are a bajillion women out there who are looking for a guy who has those traits because they are uncommon. Therefore, they are desirable. And when I was able to think about them more as just being traits and less as being feminine traits, it got a lot easier for me. And this is why I know we're doing a lot of this language of masculine and feminine, but I don't know how else to really. Yeah, it's a convenient way to talk about it. It's a convenient way to talk about it. But really what we're meaning is thinking versus feeling. Yeah. And hello, this also happens in queer couples. Oh, for sure. Like people who technically identify as having the same gender. Guess what? There's often one that presents as I'm more thinky, I'm more logical, analytical. And then there's another one that is like, but what about my feelings? Yeah. And often, even inside of those relationships, as you've told me many times, you adopt that language. Yes. You know, I'm the husband, I'm the wife. The people are the same gender and have the same gender identity and all of that. And I think it just speaks to how insidious this whole structure that we are all trapped in of socialization. I mean, thank God for the queer community and communities that are ringing the bells of like, hello, this is highly problematic. Because it is. I mean, look, I'm not going to lie. Nothing sounds worse to me than like being in that standard leave it to beaver, like old school family system structure of like mom stays home and takes care of the kids and wears the apron and wears her pearls and lipstick every day and is quiet and the dad goes out and does work and comes home and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because it's such a performance. And I think that when we start to observe things from a more psychological perspective, we realize that all of these categorical differences we've created don't actually exist. Sure, yeah. Like you are just as emotional as I am. And I am frankly just as logical as you are. But it's how do we balance them within what we perceive as we're allowed to, what we're rewarded for. What do we get hit over the head with versus what do we get like, oh, praised for. Yeah. And, you know, people are going to have a 60-40 or a 70-30. I think that in a lot of ways in terms of where do I hang out, I hang out in the emotional relational place and I figured out how to do all of the other stuff in order to handle those emotions That my distribution of the pie I don know if that makes me a more logical rational person or a more emotional feely person. In a way, I don't really care. They're both very important to me. I use both of those tools a lot these days. And I think that that's also something that can help people figure this out inside of a partnership because one of the most common stories that like walks in when my dad used to talk about couples walking into the office there was a twitter thread recently along those lines where there was this guy who you know was i think he was an engineer or something like that he had a big twitter presence and he basically posted something to the effect of my wife has come to me for the last three weeks with the same problem over and over again and she's just not interested in solving this problem. How can I get her to solve this problem? Sort of the framing of it. And then there were a million responses. Hey, bro, you got to hang out in some kind of empathic attunement or relationship before you move into problem solving because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And his response to all of those was, well, that's nice, but I don't want to do that. I want to solve her problem. Tell me how to solve her problem. And the deep irony in this is that people were telling him how to solve his problem. And he wasn't interested in it. Because he wanted them to get that his wife was the problem. That was the real motivation. Can't you see my wife is the problem? Somebody empathize with me about this wife being the problem or whatever it is. And I just think that like this is a dance that we would do with each other all the time. I don't know if there's a what to do about it other than appreciating both sides of it. I think how to move into actual change with this is first what we're talking about is become very aware of how you've been socialized. What's your tendency? And what beliefs do you have about this stuff? And where do you feel your kind of vulnerability a little bit? Kind of you feeling that, but not knowing how to do it. And for me, wanting to problem solve, but literally not knowing how to move through that. For me, what I found helpful was getting really comfortable with discomfort and practicing being the one that doesn't know and being open to leaning on my partner's strengths. Not in a codependent way, not in a way where I'm expecting you to handle these things all the time, but in a way of, I don't know how to do this yet. You already know how to do it. teach me how to do it. And equally, I can help you in a different way. One person in the relationship is often the trellis and the other person is this rose. And a rose is healthier when it has a trellis to climb up on. But we need to take turns being that for each other. And I think a part of that is being able to take on the qualities that you see in your partner, even if they feel unnatural, even if you feel vulnerable, like I don't quite know how to do this. Like for me, I feel like you started to really trust me more and frankly allow your rose bush to climb up my trellis when I started to kind of embody and practice traits that I saw you modeling. Absolutely, yeah. I'm wondering in work you've done with people, there is that person who is typically more sensitive and is more the rose. and there is that person who is more the trellis and the rose is making the bids to the trellis. Be more relational, be more emotionally open. Tell me how you feel, all of that good stuff. Hang out with me in empathy before you move into problem solving. And the other person says, okay. And then they try and it might be messy. It might be unskillful. And often what you've reported is that the rose kind of falls apart. It doesn't transition well into being the trellis. My guess is that in terms of the distribution of people who listen to this podcast, there are probably a lot more people who listen who are in that typical like rose model. And so this is a helpful thing to talk about learning how to do. So it's not just about, you know, hey, guys, listen to your partner more empathically attuned. Obviously, all of that's important. It's also how do we create the space for their emotionality to be on the table more? Yeah. And I'm wondering what you've seen about that. Is there something that tends to help people? Are there key skills? Is there some kind of a process here? Just anything you want to talk about? Well, because everything for me gets filtered through the lens of trauma, frankly, a person needs to do their own work to a certain extent. And the thing about if I condense trauma work kind of down to what my own little theory of it is, is that someone's literal life force energy gets trapped somewhere within them. And trauma, the layers of defense, the layers of survival strategies blocks that person from moving into actionable change outside into the world. There's sort of a feeling of being caged and trapped within oneself where you have all these desires, but you can't do anything with them. So it's a block on problem solving. Yeah, but that block is incredibly painful, and it's not in that person's control. So there is this side of the person who, in this metaphor we could say is the rose, that has a ton of trauma. That when they are not triggered, yeah, I want to be this way with you. But what happens when a part of that trauma soup is having relational trauma, developmental trauma, even maybe some big PTSD moments? Like now the space of relationship is going to be riddled with all of these landmines of potential trigger. And when we know about triggers is that that part of your brain that can problem solve, the part of your brain that can be the trellis, that's gone. so what I notice help is you have to do your own trauma work first which means you have to free up that energy you have to find a way to claw yourself out of it enough so that you can take all of this force inside of yourself and bring it out into the world and what that does is it creates a ton of space inside of you, space for your own experience, but now you have room for somebody else's experience. And once that foundation gets laid, like for example, I'm not going to lie, when you come at me sometimes, like it's rough and it's rough because it's triggering for me, but I learned how to hold myself being triggered, how to take care of myself, that self-regulation piece, and still have enough room for your stuff to kind of hold your stuff. And I think when you have trauma, that is incredibly high practice. But even if you don't have trauma, we're just not taught how to do this well. And so kind of setting the trauma stuff off to the side for a moment, because let's say, you know, blessed be, you had a great childhood and you don't have these triggers within this like relational dynamic. Okay, well, now we're competing with how we've been socialized, which is kind of the piece we're talking about, which is, well, I'm the woman in the relationship and you're supposed to take care of me. What does it mean if you don't open the door for me? I'm the one that I should cry and say these things and you take care of me. And now all of a sudden that paradigm gets flipped. Discomfort. What does this mean now? All of the external judgments people have on this start to filter in. And so I think it gets down to you have to be able to shut out the outside world to some extent. And you need to be fully present with the many layers of the person in front of you. And what I often see, because a lot of the times I'm working where one person in the couple has complex PTSD and the other person does not, is that actually the person who has experienced trauma has a lot of wisdom, attunes to their partner pretty accurately most of the time, and has a lot of stamina, actually, to kind of be in that uncomfortable place. And what I see a lot of the time is that the person who does not have CPTSD really, really struggles to either make contact with their emotional world. They find it incredibly distressing to have that rural shift of like, well, if I'm not the giver, what does that mean? How do I receive? Ooh, I've never learned how to do this. And there's often the story of like, well, I don't want to hurt my partner. And I think that's made louder when we're working with trauma. And there's this like a little bit of like a differentiation between the one that's like, well, I'm not traumatized and the one that is, where the one that isn't traumatized is like, well, I don't want to traumatize this one more or I don't want to hurt them more. And it's like, you can't, you can't. I mean, they've already survived to the big bad thing. And if you're anything like me, the catastrophe that is potential within a relationship is not going to be the catastrophe we survived when we were children. And so then it starts to shift into, so what is it about you? What is it about your temperament, your nature, how you've been socialized, that is making moving into more intimacy and forms of togetherness challenging? And almost always it's, I don't feel safe. Yeah. And that's the thing about the emotional relational moment is that it's all about helping the other person feel safe. That's what we're doing by doing that is we are giving the gift of the clear communication of it's all right. I'm not going to be mad. Or even if I'm frustrated, I'm okay being here with you for a while. That same team feeling is, I think at the core of pretty much every healthy relationship I've ever witnessed in life. Yeah. And maybe the number one thing I would point to in the relationships that don't seem as healthy or don't seem as successful. Yeah. There's just not the feeling of same team. We're both in these two different boats. And we hope that on a day-to-day basis, we happen to be rowing in the same direction. But there's no guarantee of that. I think going there, though, like that getting on the same team feeling can be very, very stressful. because all of a sudden you're very implicated by another person. That's a lot of what I see in some of the people who I've worked with where you don't want to feel implicated by that person. That person's distressed. That person's really emotional. That person gets intense. I don't know if I, do I really want to take that on into my little rowboat of this life? And that's a fair question to ask yourself in any relationship. Just as it's a fair question to ask yourself in a relationship, Do I want to be with this person who can't move into empathy very effectively with me right now? Those are both legitimate questions to ask. And part of what you're looking for is some kind of a growth curve. One of the things I've always said about you, Elizabeth, is that you have a remarkable growth curve. You learn incredibly quickly. You've changed enormously in the time that we've been together. And it was maybe, I don't know, I don't know if it was number one, but it was certainly in the top three of traits that really, really drew me to you as a person. you've just been 10 out of 10 about everything I've ever brought to you, which is really pretty remarkable. And that was possible because that incisive scalpel that you learned how to have, you learned how to not slice through me. Yeah, totally. Got to be a little kind about it. Yeah. For sure. Back to the show after a quick break. Now, back to the show. So maybe we could talk a little bit here toward the end about what helps people do that, what helps people move into that more emotional relational space. Well, I think this is kind of your territory a bit more because what we're really kind of focusing on more is that more logical kind of perspective. And so I'm wondering, what have you seen as you've been sitting with people that even in just between the relationship between you and them, that kind of helps the warm, fuzzy Mr. Rogers kind of come into the space? I think that a lot of people who lead more this logical, rational way really do not like how painful their emotions are. They do not like it. They don't want to feel that way. They don't want to feel that imperiled by somebody else. And so when you start to tread in that territory, it just feels bad. There's a lot of individual work for people who are that way around emptying their own bucket. The bucket of tears, the bucket of things that they wish that they had done, the feelings that they pushed down over time, and experiencing out. Because a lot of what's happening when you move into emotional relating with somebody else is your own material is being activated. So if they're talking about this feeling of insecurity or vulnerability, or I don't know how to do this thing, if you talk about that to me, what do I do in that moment as a social mammal? I think about my own experience with those things. I remember that time when I couldn't do that or didn't know that thing or whatever it was. That's really painful. We don't want to do that. So you have to do your own emotional processing work I think a lot of this starts with various forms of exposure and various forms of emotional processing where you start to get more comfortable touching that stuff Can I ask you a question about that Absolutely Yeah. What advice would you give somebody who's sort of noticing that they're there of, I identify as this more logical person. I hate the feeling of my feelings. Why would I even go there? What's in it for me? Yeah. Yeah. What's in it for you is you stop feeling like you want to cry all the time. So that's, I think, part of what's in it for you. I just think a lot of these people, man, maybe I'm projecting, maybe I'm generalizing from a small sample, but so many of the people who are this way act as they do because of a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty inside of this landscape. And as you become more fluent with it, you just learn how to play chess better. And all of your relationships just kind of start improving because you spend a little bit more time getting it. And you know how to communicate to the other person I get at in just really small ways, in really nonverbal ways even. How you angle your body. Are you actually looking at them? Are you really listening to the feelings that they're trying to communicate through their words? Or are you just listening to the verbal content? These are these little things that you just start to do more naturally. And what you see almost always is people get teary as they contact their own material. This is often accompanied by a kind of movement into a younger part, to use that sort of language, reclaiming of exiled parts of their personality. And then you just start feeling more complete over time. You have access to more of your own emotions. You feel your feelings more. You're able to move through them when you feel them. And what this means is you don't have to adapt around them as much. So you don't get so mad when somebody says a stupid thing to you, because you're just like, you know, you have more freedom with it. If you're watching a movie, that's that way. And you want to cry, you cry. If you don't want to cry, you don't. You just get more freedom. I think that's really wise and well said. And I think the words that really stood out to me, and I mean, the whole thing, I thought that was like a gem, everything you just said right there, but that feeling of completeness and freedom. Yeah, totally. And I think that everybody wants that. I think we all want to feel like a complete whole person. And I think we want to move through our lives with as much freedom as possible. Right on. And also, frankly, there's a certain amount of enlightened self-interest in this whole thing like that person with the twitter thread 90 seconds dude 90 seconds 90 seconds of hanging out in hey i get it uh some learning some simple language are you looking for solutions or are you looking for empathy yep sometimes i don't want solutions and i'm the solutions guy sometimes i want you to be like, yeah, Forrest, you're doing great. It's okay, buddy. We all want to be able to do all of it. And I think that that also accentuates the freedom aspect that you're talking about. Wow, I think that was the goal, Forrest. Put the pin in the end of the thing or whatever it is they say. Elizabeth, thanks for doing this with me today. Thanks for doing it with me. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed it. And it was, I really liked having more of you kind of in the conversation. Thanks I really appreciate that That's very sweet And we should do another episode soon Yeah Because the people demand it And one of the things that people asked after That you already started talking about a little bit Was being in a relationship with somebody with trauma Or complex PTSD Or just a mental health condition in general And I think that's a really interesting one We could do sometime if you want to I'll give a little So I'll give you a little, you know, a moosh-boosh. Recognizing that if you're in a relationship with someone with trauma, that they are not as fragile as you think they are. That the fear of hurting them is getting in the way of something really magical happening. And I've experienced this in our own relationship where there were parts of me that were so frozen in survival that I don't think I would have ever achieved what I achieved without having someone kind of like pushing me off the edge. And I'm screaming going like, what? And you're like, no, you'll be fine. You got this. You'll be fine. And I think if you are a person who's in a relationship with someone with complex trauma, trust that if you're a good person and if you have a lot of love for this person and your intention is that and your goal is that you wish for them to be more free and safe. that you can be less self-conscious of how you are making requests and asks of them. This person has already survived something that I think the majority of people that have not experienced trauma couldn't even fathom. There is a strength in people with complex PTSD that I think is often overlooked because we've existed in a body that is filled with trauma on top of getting this far in life. And that creates a huge container. And whether that person realizes their container is that huge, I think you can trust as their partner that there is enough space in there for you and you can advocate for yourself. On the flip side, because I can't help myself, if you're the person with complex trauma and you're with someone who doesn't have it, really being willing to look at the ways in which what you are doing is coming from a place of survival rather than this is coming from a place of growth. I think that we get safety and discomfort very confused. Being unsafe is a very different thing than being in discomfort. And you need to become more comfortable being uncomfortable. Well, I think that was more than an amuse-bouge. I think that was the first 10 minutes of our next episode. I mean, we should have just turned the cameras on and let it roll there. I thought that was fantastic, Elizabeth, and right on and so consistent with our experience inside of our relationship. Absolutely. So I look forward to talking about this. Yeah. To be continued. I love today's conversation with Elizabeth. I always so enjoy having her on the podcast. And today we talked about these two big families of tendencies that everybody has to some degree, but which due to a variety of factors that we talked about at length in the episode, people tend to develop one of them more than the other. And on the one hand, this is this kind of logical, rational tendency that shows up in interactions with people, and particularly in relationships, as this kind of fixing impulse. I'm going to solve your problem. You don't have to worry about that anymore if you just do the things that I told you to do. Then on the other hand, there's this more emotional, relational, feeling-based drive that people have to connect with each other, to empathically attune, and to feel a real sense of safety based on those relationships. So when somebody shares a kind of problem, or it might feel like a problem that they're having, inside of a relationship. Maybe they're not looking for problem solving. Maybe they're not looking for fixing. They're looking for attunement and emotional connection. And the conversation with Elizabeth today covered why do people have these different impulses? Why do some people develop one and others develop the other? The answer to a lot of that is gender socialization. Then on top of that, people often have kind of more of an innate tendency toward one or the other. And really what we said over and over again inside of this conversation is you need both. Both of these things are good. Both of these things come with their challenges if they're misapplied or if they're taken to an extreme. If you're just the logical rational scalpel or if you're just the hyper emotional relator, you're only going to be able to make half of the moves on the chessboard. So how do we open ourselves up to the possibility that everyone can be both, at least to some degree? And how do we look for the parts of ourselves that we've left behind, the parts of our interior that are true for us. Like I was saying, I have the adaptation of being the logical, rational guy. That was a defense that I developed over time. It was also something that I had a natural affinity for, and that's a really normal combination for people. They have a natural affinity, and then they also get rewarded for that natural affinity. So it becomes a kind of defense against these other painful experiences, or the things that they're just less familiar with and less comfortable with. And then over time, I had to do the work of connecting more with what was true all along, which is that I was this sensitive, touchy-feely, very emotional person. It can be really helpful to see how each of these tendencies can solve a kind of problem for a person. Fixing is a great way to deal with emotional contagion. I'm putting some separation between the two of us. I'm essentially complaining about the fact that you've brought this to me, and I'm suggesting a really easy way to take this painful emotion off the table. On the other hand, the more emotional relational attunement can be its own defense. It can put other people into the role of having to solve your problems for you. It can be a kind of defense against agency. You're just hanging out in emotion forever without being interested, really, in moving into problem solving. Hey, maybe there's a part of you that's concerned that if you moved into action, you wouldn't really be able to solve the problem anyway and you would rather not find out. Inside of a relationship, the best advice that I could give people is to really lean into the part that you do not do naturally. If you are the more logical, rational person, really lean into empathic relationship toward the person that you're dealing with. If you're the more emotional, relational person, really lean into embracing maximum how-to problem-solving, how do I make this better? One of the wisest things that Elizabeth has ever said to me, and I'm just paraphrasing it here, but it's basically that when we adopted the other person's viewpoint was when our relationship started getting a lot easier and a lot better. And we still deal with this. This was an active process for us. I had to do a lot of work to get in touch with that more emotionally open, sensitive part of who I was. And she had to do a lot of work to get increasingly open to the problem-solving aspect of it. And what let us get there was me being increasingly willing to spend somewhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes just hanging out in the experience that she was having before I tried to fix it or change it. When I did that over and over again, over a long enough period of time, enough trust developed in the relationship that she began to take my advice, I think, a little bit more seriously. She got more comfortable moving into that kind of doing aspect. And frankly, she was fantastic whenever I did move into that emotional vulnerability. She received it incredibly well. When we see these tendencies as a combination of adaptation and socialization, it really helps us move up to that 10,000-foot view. This really lowers shame. It reduces our identification with these tendencies. We take a lot of really complex material, particularly about gender socialization and gender performance, kind of off the table. It's just not such a big deal because we see it all as constructed and changing and not the way that things have to be. I don't have to be the logical, rational person all the time. I can be the emotional, sensitive person and still be a great guy, and still be very masculine, and still be connected to this logical, rational, sharp scalpel part of who I am. I get it all. And that's really what we want to encourage people toward here. getting it all, being able to make all the moves, use all the tools, play with all the toys, and just have a bigger sense of possibility in their lives altogether. I hope that something in this episode was useful for you. If you've been listening for a little while and would like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple, wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you are on YouTube, you can give this video a like, you can leave a comment down below. If you're on Spotify, you can leave a rating and a positive review. You can also leave a comment or a question there if you want to. On Apple, I'm sure you can do much of the same thing. We would really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you'd like to find another way to support the show, you can find us on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash beingwellpodcast. And for just a couple of dollars a month, you can support the show and get a bunch of bonuses in return. If you'd like to read some writing from me, you can also find me on Substack. So until next time, again, thanks so much for listening to the show. Deeply appreciate it. It's so crazy to me that so many people listen to these podcast episodes. I'm just deeply touched by it all the time. And yeah, I hope that you're doing it because there's something in here that you're really connecting with and that hopefully is helping you out a little bit. So until next time, thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon. you