NASW Social Work Talks - Ep 120: Getting Real with Relationship Expert & Author Terry Real

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

In our latest podcast we chat with Relationship Expert, Author and Social Worker Terry Real!  An internationally recognized family therapist and best-selling author, Real is dedicated to helping couples build lasting, loving relationships. With a revolutionary approach known as Relational Life Therapy (RLT), Terry equips individuals and couples with the skills needed for deeper intimacy and authentic connections, transforming both their personal lives and their relationships with others.

From the National Association of Social Workers, this is Social Work Talks, and I'm your host, Elizabeth Lamott. And what a thrill it is to welcome Terry Reel to today's conversation. He is a legendary speaker, bestselling author, trainer, couples therapist extraordinaire. He has written many bestselling books. And today we're going to be discussing his most recent book, Us, which was published in 2022 and just released on paperback last month. Terry Real has also developed a groundbreaking approach to couples therapy.

It's called relational life therapy. It underpins all of his writing, all of his teachings, and it breaks down for adults how to cultivate stronger relationship skills so that they can develop more authentic connections for themselves, for each other, and really for the planet as a whole. So Terry Real, welcome to Social Work Talks. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful introduction. Thank you, Elizabeth.

You're so welcome. So many of our listeners are social workers or other mental health professionals. could we start with you just describing for us what led you to choose the mental health field and how you decided to become a therapist? Oh, my gosh. I tease and I say I began my career as a family therapist at about the age four. You know, the great Alice Miller, the drama The Gifted Child, the gift of The Gifted Child is extraordinary EQ because you have to regulate these giant grown-ups that you're depending upon. So as I've written about, as many of you already know, I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional family. And one

of the great works of my life is breaking that chain. My first book was about male depression. and I say I am the son of a depressed violent father. He was the son of a depressed violent father. I have two sons 37 and 34. They don't say that and their children won't say that. And that's probably the greatest achievement of my life.

so i i became a therapist because i had to yes and and in what you're describing you're breaking this intergenerational cycle but not only that you're teaching other people how to do it as well not just in your clinical work but in what you're communicating to the world with your writing. Tell us a bit more about the book Us and how that built from your prior publications. What I take on in Us is the essential mistake of Western civilization. Gregory Basin the father of family therapy

anthropologist talked about what he called the epistemological mistake which is that we stand apart from nature I talk about the toxic culture of individualism the word individual means

that I'm apart from nature that's the definition of it I stand apart from nature, and that fuses with an even older tradition of patriarchy, which teaches us that we're above nature and in control of it. and the control of nature and the nature we're trying to control can be our bodies I've got to lose 10 pounds our minds, I've got to be more positive

our spouses, our kids you can control from the one up you can also manage up you can control from the one down don't set father off is a form of control codependence is control and the essence of the work I do

and teach is coming out of this delusion into what I call ecological wisdom we're not apart from nature, we're in it I like to say our relationships are our biospheres we're not above them, we're in them we're also not below them, we're in them we're in them and they're always changing

and once we realize that we're in it that we're systemically linked to each other then the whole world of right wrong me versus you power, all of that's bullshit and I talk about enlightened self

interest. I don't like altruism. It's in my interest to keep the biosphere healthy because I'm in it. Yes, your deep psychological understanding of language and these subtle shifts that you've made in the conversation, I'm finding them so powerful in reading your book, in sharing it with clients and in learning more about you, that's one. Of course, another well known one is who's right, who's wrong, who cares? It's just a basic frame of how to let go of right and wrong, I think for connected reasons in terms of what you're describing. Am I following you with that i feel very empathically held by you elizabeth i think you're understanding quite well listen let me give you a story i love to tell stories this is a true

you know my specialty are couples on the brink that no one else has been able to help that that my beat and uh this isn't quite that but uh uh here here's the i'll do is classic heteronormative her to him you're a reckless driver him to her you're overly anxious i don't know if anybody Okay, so they marshal their evidence, they argue their case. This is how most people do things. Who's right, who's wrong? What's fair, what's not fair? No, I'm telling you, you're nervous.

You're nervous about this. No, I'm telling you, you're reckless. One session with me. This is a true story. Her to him. Honey, let's start with that. Change the energy. honey, I know you love me.

Call me crazy. Call me a nervous Nelly. See, she just takes the whole objective battle off the table and speaks subjectively. Call me crazy. When we're driving and you're tailgating and switching lanes and speeding up, I get terrified. Terrified.

Now, you care about me. When you drive by yourself, whatever, I worry about you. But when I'm in the car with you, you don't want me sitting next to you being terrified. You care about me as a favor to me. Even though you know you're a safe driver, could you please slow down? And him to her, absolutely. Okay. and what would have been a fight

I've been for 40 is settled in 10 minutes because it's not about you me it's not about right wrong it's not about fair unfair it's not about objective reality objective reality has no place in personal relationship

right this is my experience let me remind you you love me as a favor to me could I humbly ask sure honey I'll do that for you that's shifting from the world

that we normally live in which is about individuals and power to the relational world we're in this together we're an ecosystem as a favor to me

as a part of being in it together and building on this beautiful language that you've created, a piece of it that I hear in these examples is the accessing of the wise adult self. And if triggered in a fast driving car, taking the adaptive child self's hand off the steering wheel and attending to them and caring for them so that we can show up as our wise adult self. And I find that so powerful. Can you break that down a bit more for our listeners? Yes, it's critical. Look, the name of my institute is Relational Life Institute. The name of the therapy is Relational Life Therapy. Guess what? What's curative in my

work is teaching people to live a relational life in this planet what does that mean well it means that you remember the ecosystem you uh but that it takes the prefrontal cortex and like a lot of systems i have a three-part system I inherited from my great mentor Pia Melody we talk about the wise adult part prefrontal cortex

thinking choosing deliberate, intentional unfortunately that's not where we live all the time there's also what we call the wounded child part of us, very young

the part that just experience the abuse or neglect, all feeling, first moments of life to about four or five, between this very mature part and very immature part is the part most of us live in, thinking it's an adult, but it's not. I call it the adaptive child part. Pia called it a kid in grown-ups clothing this is the you that you cobble together to cope a fight flight or fix and what happens is that in the heat in the heat of the moment we get trauma triggered uh the wounded child comes up we most of us have about two seconds worth of tolerance for that And then the adaptive child steps in and says, I got this.

And you do what you learned to do as a kid. And that part of you is running your relationship and often making a mess. So the core skill that I teach is what we call relational mindfulness. It's akin to a spiritual practice. Take a breath, take a break, take a time out. get reseeded in the part of you that can be skilled that wants to be skilled and then go back into the fray you know sue johnson was totally right once you're triggered skills go out the window but we have to deal with you know you described you described it so well

that when you're triggered, it's not just that the skills go out the window. We relive the trauma of our adaptive child self. Yeah. And there you have it. You don't remember trauma, you relive it. You relive it. I think that's so important for people to keep in mind. And I mean, Terry, I feel like you're taking the way that many of us skilled couples therapists work, and you're growing it and you're amplifying it. I mean, I always thought of this, yes, as a childhood self and yes, as a reactive self. But it's like you're putting them together

in a way that can more deeply help someone. Well, yeah, you know, I love my spiritual friend, Thomas Ubel. And from him, I love this phrase, always be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child. You did exactly what you needed to do back then. Good for you. But I have a saying,

adaptive then, maladaptive now. Can I tell you another story? Please, please do. Yeah, this is also true. This was a couple on the brink of divorce. The guy was a chronic liar. Lied about everything. Of course, that's untenable.

Okay, so in RLT, there are three phases. One, loving confrontation, which most therapists don't do. We're too nice. Elizabeth, let me tell you what you're doing over and over again that is blowing your own foot off. This is the adaptive child trying to run your relationship. once i have that established where did you learn this from where did this come from and rlt is pretty unique in that we do deep trauma work while your partner's sitting next to you

it kills me it's part of the individualistic bias of our field that almost all trauma work is done behind closed doors no no go back to that childhood experience with your loving partner next to you they live with these immature parts of you let them see where they come from all right so where did this come from and then the third phase are skills let me teach you how to do it differently so here's the guy chronic liar okay uh because i'm a relational therapist i ask him a question that seems brilliant, but for people who have trained with us, it's falling off a lot. He was the kind of guy, you say to him, the sky is blue, and he says, well, it's aquamarine,

and he's not going to give it to you, right? So there are three sources of data. the report wife says he's a chronic liar his behavior with you it's not blue it's and how you feel sitting with him it's good so i say to him you have a black belt in evasion you're a master evader who tried to control you growing up sure enough his father what he ate how he closed

what courses he took I said how did you deal with this controlling father he looks at me and smiles that's the force of resistance that's health that smile and he says to me

guess what I lied brilliant survival My father said, don't play with Henry. I played with Henry and told him I was playing with John. So I say to him, brilliant boy, well done. Guess what?

You're not four and she's not your father. Maybe it's time for a new, they go away, they come back two weeks later, we're done. We're cured. And they were. I say, okay, there's a story. he says she sent me off to the grocery store for 12 things

sure enough I came back with 11 she says to me where's the pumpernickel I want everybody to feel this he said every muscle and nerve in my body was screaming to say they were out of pumpernickel

and in this moment I took a breath I thought of you Terry we can lend our clients our prefrontal cortex they can borrow our brain I thought of you I looked at my wife and I said

I forgot the god damn pumpernickel true story and she burst into tears and she said I've been waiting for this moment for 25 years

that's healing it's healing and it's change in the moment psychological growth and change rlt is known for producing characterological transformation in jig time big time another corner of this that i think is so important that I want to make sure we get to is the clarity and the structure in which you break down the process of a repair. Because, you know, you talk about relationships being in harmony and disharmony, and the idea that that is natural, that is life, and that where we tend to really struggle is that repair to get us from the disharmony back into the harmony so so can you break that down a bit for our listeners and our viewers please yes i owe this to the

infant observational researcher ed tronick uh he along with barry breslton was one of the first It's actually stick a camera for the mothers and infants and see. And what he came up, the rhythm of relationships is closeness, disruption, return. You know, the infant's totally relaxed. And then those gasps were a noise. Infant freaks out. Mother freaks out. The boss freaks out.

And then the gas passes or the nipples. And then we're back to it. It's like walking. balance in balance our culture does not acknowledge this rhythm a good relationship is all harmony

it doesn't equip us to deal it's so unrealistic you're talking to the guy who coined the phrase normal marital hatred that disharmony phase is raw that's ok

so what makes life dicey is when you shift from harmony to disharmony you know we all marry our unfinished business we can return to that when you shift

into that you shift into your trauma the adaptive child comes out and does what it did to survive but it doesn't work when you can move into the wise adult part of you, which can be cultivated,

you can then reach for the skills that will lead you back into repair. And I break them down. You can go to my – there's a way of speaking, there's a way of listening, there's a way of making repair. But you have to be in the part of you that wants to make repair before you'll use those skills. So, may I also, because so many of our listeners are social workers, as we continue this conversation, I want to read a passage from page 101 that shifts us a bit, but I think will be of interest

to many of our listeners, you write, relational life therapy transforms patriarchy, transforms individuals one couple at a time. The preservation of individualism has historically required the suppression of the less privileged voices, the unacknowledged social underpinning of both forms of individualism is caste, privilege, and exclusivity. You and me consciousness is rooted in competition as if resources were limited and only the strong survive. The us consciousness, by contrast, embraces the whole, acknowledges our relationship to the unseen, the orphan, the exiles. Once we incorporate the perspective of the excluded, priorities reorder. And the reason i want to share this is i think social workers in particular are so poised for this

to speak to the way we work in terms of our training and activism and understanding so i wanted to share that and just get your thoughts oh that's beautiful and thank you for yeah i'm very proud of being a social worker and social work as a field is systemic as a field, we're ecological and we have a long standing tradition of whelping the marginalized to the table and understanding the consequences of oppression and marginalization

I'm still grappling as a school, for 40 years I've been writing about patriarchy. And we're just really opening up to issues of racism and other forms of marginalization. But the gift of bringing those without voice into the table is they have a different story to tell. You know, my classic example of this is, how many of have heard that the alpha male, and this is a grounded anthropology, the alpha male, the strong gorilla gets the female. Well, that's a story told by alpha male anthropologists. And when anthropology opened up to women anthropologists, lo and behold, it turns out there's also a male

in gorillas and primates that they call the relational male. This is the guy who groans and takes care of the kids. And it turns out the relational male gets just as many mates as the big, strong alpha male gets. But we wouldn't know about that if we were just listening to male anthropologists. So different voices have different perspectives. Yes. We're still grappling that with the school.

You know, I talk, in RLT, we talk a lot about the adaptive child. When we started grappling with issues of oppression and marginalization, we had to shift that. There's also, if you're a marginalized person, an adaptive adult that's adapting to trauma and oppression that may be happening in the elevator on your way up to the therapist's office. and so calling that the adaptive child and referencing it just to your family

doesn't hit this we have to have a bigger perspective for example as a white male therapist telling a black female client or a black male client you need to be more vulnerable Oh, really? Easy for you to say, buddy. And for me to say to a black client, you need to be more vulnerable, without some explicit acknowledgement of the complexities of that.

And the complexities of my saying that as a privileged white male, your invulnerability, which may make you a very difficult husband to live with, may be just what you need when you leave your apartment and go out on the street. and if I don't have a more nuanced understanding of all of this I'm going to blow it with you so I think social work has been attuned to these systemic issues and issues of oppression in ways that give us a leg up the the issues of oppression are ones that um so many of our clients feel and you're you're speaking to it so thoughtfully i can't help though but be curious do you notice uh any kind of gender differences in how clinicians train in relational life therapy and if so what do you

observe there and how do you navigate that? Yeah, it's interesting. I used to be pretty glib about it because I didn't want women to be disempowered. The first phase of the work is confrontation. And another distinguishing characteristic of royalty is we don't just take issues of shame. We do deal with that, but we also deal with issues of grandiosity. helping people come down from the one up, which psychotherapy is neglected for 50 years. It's tenacity. Yeah, and I think the reason why we neglect it

is because of patriarchy. We're nice to perpetrators. We protect the perpetrator. Don't lean in and confront a grandiose man. Being nice to someone who's grandiose rather than dealing with them replicates the traditional feminine role. We're going to nurture you out of your grandiosity.

Good luck with that. So we find a way of moving in and saying, look, Bill, we call it joining through the truth. You hold the person in warm regard and you're clear as a bell about their rotten behavior, both at the same time. Bill, you're a decent guy I've been with indecent guys

they're called sociopaths you're a warm you've been a cheater and a philanderer for 20 years you know what's sad Bill I'm talking to a decent man who's behaved indecently for 20 years

will you let me rescue the real you from this crap. That's how we work. We tell the truth with love. People always say, well, can you get away with that because you're a man? Can a woman do that?

I always used to say, yeah. Which is true. My wife has no problem confronting men. Pia, our great mentor, used to say she was a cowgirl. The way here coming on right now is what I call coming on like garlic mouthwash. So I used to say,

no, no, confidence trumps gender. If women can take their seat and do this. But my students confronted me. And now I say, it's easier for me as a man. It's harder for a woman. And having said that, you can do it. So it's nuance. Yeah, and as our women therapists train, you know, it's harder for many of them to stop being pleasing good girls and be assertive and aggressive. but

by the time they're done with their training they don't have a problem yeah I mean even the way you're giving these examples it's so it's both thoughtful it's gentle, it's kind

but it's direct and it's so psychologically grounded and for anybody who's not familiar with your books Reading it is the same way. I mean, I'll share, even as you talk about this grandiosity, first of all, as an aside, I love how you, at really well-timed points, you will say, dear reader. And it feels like when you're reading it, it feels like you mean that.

And there's this point where you say, dear reader, think about it yourself. Think about your own internalized grandiosity. and I'm sitting there and I'm like, huh, I don't think I have that. I can't think of that. I pause and then it's like I'm having a conversation with you because the next thing you say is, if you're having trouble, why don't you ask your spouse? And literally he was sitting right there and I asked him and it was a worthwhile conversation. And it was a little bit like I got a little bit of your brain and I brought it into our conversation. And it's just very powerful and beautiful the way that you write. And, and I would say my only my only issue with

your book is I often suggest books and films to clients to do in tandem with our work. And so many of them are finding this so powerful, but the thing they will not do with your book is read it slowly, which I want them to do, and they won't do it, they just can't put it down. and they'll admit it they'll say I know I was supposed to just do a chapter a week and we were going to talk about it but I just had to keep going well if that's the worst criticism I'll take it uh I also love people to read uh listen to it I'm proud of the way I read it and Bruce Springsteen did the intro and his reading is phenomenal and it's beautiful to listen to Yeah, it's a beautiful introduction and your voice comes through very beautifully on the audio book. So that is another option for our listeners and our viewers and information about is in the show notes section. I am curious what direct advice you have for clinicians who are just starting out in our wonderful field. What advice would you give them?

Come and train in an RLT. We will have to go to the Institute so that that is an option for people. I expect many, many people will be interested in doing that. I have a story I would like to share with you. Oh, please. And it happened in March of 2020. I received an email from your institute inviting any colleagues to join a call to talk about what was about to happen with this global pandemic. And I joined, I assume, along with hundreds,

maybe thousands. And you were so direct and encouraging and concrete about the transition that we needed to make and that we could make and that we all did make for varying degrees of time. I want to thank you for doing that call and for helping me and so many others get started. And as one of our last questions, I am curious how you feel that the pandemic has shaped your work and shaped relationships.

There's a sound to it. And one of the things I'm really proud about in RLT is it fans out the shift from power over or managing up the two different variants, more traditionally male, more traditionally female. But the shift from control to ecological interdependence. You know, I talk about what I call coming out from under the great lie, the lie that a human being or group could be essentially superior or inferior to another, grandiosity, shame. and that dynamic of inferior superior plays out in our brain plays out between partners, plays out between races, plays out in our relationship with

nature and moving into relationality means being in right relationship to yourself to your spouse your kids to other races to nature itself

and one of the things I say is that as a species we will trade in the paradigm of dominance and power for the paradigm of cooperation

and interdependence or we will die or we will die so the same shift that can transform a marriage I believe is the shift we're on the edge

of as a species and I don't you know I'm not a fan of neutrality this is the fight of our life and we therapists and social workers

we therapists are change agents own that yeah we're so poised to own that we know we know more about how to live wisely

than the culture at large such a good point own that uh terry real thank you so much for joining this conversation um and discussing this wonderful book us uh listeners please do check out the show notes section of our website for information both about the book but about how to train at the relational life therapy institute um and i hope that someday we can continue this conversation with your next book. Thank you for joining us.

I would love that. Thank you, Elizabeth. And what a lovely interview. Thank you. Thank you very much. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. Don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.