Pursuit of Wellness - How To Create Your Dream Relationship: Codependency, Social Media Boundaries, Gaslighting & Narcissism | Mark Groves

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Ep. #102 In today's episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by Mark Groves, a renowned human connection specialist, the mind behind Create the Love, the host of Create The Love Podcast, and co author of Liberate The Love. In an age where it’s so hard to disconnect from our screens, we talk about ways to prioritize your relationships, step away from social media, and find ways to really reconnect with yourself. Whether you're navigating the complexities of modern dating or seeking to strengthen your existing relationships, this podcast offers invaluable insights and practical advice. As someone committed to nurturing my own relationship, I found our conversation truly enlightening and left with a wealth of actionable tips. Join us as we explore the intricacies of genuine connections and embark on a journey towards liberated love. Leave Me a Message - click here! For Mari’s Instagram click here! For Pursuit of Wellness Podcast’s Instagram click here! For Mari’s Newsletter click here! For Mark Groves Podcast click here! For POW Brand Promo Codes click here! Show Links: Harvard Human Development Study The Light Phone Man's Search for Meaning The Anxious Generation The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure The Myth of Normal by DR. Gabor Maté + Daniel Maté It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel Beyond The Pill by  Beyond The Pill The Business Of Being Born The Business Of Birth Control  Liberated Love Sponsored By: Go to Chomps.com/POW, to see all the delicious flavors and get 20% off your first order and free shipping. Get warm weather ready with Quince! Go to Quince.com/pow for free shipping on your order and 365- day returns. That’s Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash pow to get free shipping and 365-day returns.  Go to Hungryroot.com/pow to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free veggies. Further Listening: EP. 41: Signs Your Hormones Are Imbalanced w/ Dr. Jolene Brighten: Coming Off The Pill, Periods, Medical Gaslighting, IVF & Infertility, Endocrine Disruptors, Seed Cycling & Becoming Your Own Advocate EP. 11: Dr. Mindy Pelz On The Truth About Birth Control, Hormones, Cortisol, Fasting & Cycle Syncing Topics Discussed 02:50 - Harvard Human Development Study  04:14 - Mark Groves’ interest in human connection 8:38 - Prevalent problems in modern relationships  13:44 - Relationship with social media and setting phone boundaries 16:43 - Advice for dating and social media 19:54 - Returning to analog and cutting toxic relationships 22:06 - Complexities of deleting social media 25:08 - Genuine relationships and interactions 30:28 - Living your life for social media 35:45 - Healing codependency in a relationship 38:03 - Recovering yourself in a relationship 39:23 - Healthy ways to manage conflict 43:16 - Gaslighting and narcissism 44:12 - Knowing when someone is right for you 50:10 - Examining traditional gender roles 52:16 Revolution against Birth Control 56:51 - Sleep training 01:00:56 - Combatting modern interventions 01:02:53- Top tips for mastering emotional regulation 01:08:03 - Knowing your personal values 01:10:18 - Homesteading and forest bathing 01:13:10 - Liberated Love

If you start to treat your body well, you can't tolerate BS relationships. If you start to stand up for yourself within relationship, you can't eat unnutritious foods. It's impossible because the other choice becomes in conflict with what you know to be true now. This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn. What is up, guys? Welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. Today, I have a really fun episode, something we haven't spent a ton of time talking about. We are talking about relationships today with Mark Groves. Mark Groves is a human connection specialist, founder of Create the Love and host of the Mark Groves. Mark Groves is a human connection specialist, founder of Create the Love and host of the Mark Groves podcast and co-author of his new book, Liberated Love. We covered so many topics

today, all about relationships, whether you are currently in a relationship like I am, or you are looking for the right person. There's tons of good advice in this episode. We talk about the most prevalent problems in modern relationships, social media and setting phone boundaries, advice for dating and social media, returning to the analog dating and cutting out toxic relationships, the complexities of deleting social media. The way that I found Mark was through his viral YouTube video all about how he's deleting his social media forever and it was what inspired me to actually take the month of August off social as well.

We talk about codependency in relationships, healing from codependency, finding yourself in a relationship, healthy ways to manage conflict, gaslighting and narcissism, how to know when someone is right for you, examining traditional gender roles, the revolution against birth control. As you can tell, we went all over the place in this episode.

We talked about knowing your personal values, choosing each other in a relationship, and so much more. I felt really, really inspired after this episode. Obviously, I've been with my husband for over 10 years now, and we are constantly trying to improve our dynamic and work on our communication skills. And I really felt like I walked away with so much good advice. I really think you guys are going to love this episode. With that said, let's hop right in. Mark, welcome to the pursuit of wellness. I'm excited to be here. There's nothing I like more than wellness. Same. We're in the right space.

And I like the idea of it being a pursuit. Me too. Because it never ends. Like you're always learning more, you know? And you can always get better. Like you can always take up more space. You can always get louder. You can always become not just healthier, but radiate.

Yes. Radiant. Radiant. Radiation. Change your mind along the way. Evolve. I mean, for me, having you on today to talk about relationships, I haven't really done an episode like this yet.

And I think it's something that I haven't even really tapped into. So we're evolving today. Well, man, I would argue at the basis of health is good relating. And, you know, there's the longest running study on well-being from Harvard. What is that study? It's called the Harvard, I want to say, it used to be called the Harvard Men's Study because it only studied men,

which they finally added women to it, like way to get up to date. But now it's a multi-generational study. So originally it was looking at men from Harvard versus poorer neighborhoods in Boston and they wanted to see if there was a socioeconomic impact, like how did where people grow up impact their health as they grew older? And what they saw was that the greatest predictor of your health in your 80s was not what neighborhood you were from, not your cholesterol, your blood pressure. It was the quality of your relationships at age 50. And

for a lot of people, there's like, oh, so I have to be in a romantic relationship. No, it was just the quality of all your relationships. So if you didn't have a romantic partner, but you had really good friendships when I was like really focused on my fitness journey and it's something that was really missing and I've been implementing it more now and just seeing the change in my mood and my overall quality of life has been incredible I'd love to start at the beginning of your journey and how you became interested in human connection where did everything start for you? Well, when I was young, my dad and I used to, my dad was the one that I would talk about like relationship stuff with. So, you know, we, I would, I have so many memories of sitting in the living room with him and him and asking me questions about, um, my relationships. And, you know, when I was young, I was, I, I, I would have maybe like thought, I didn't consider myself a good partner or an

attractive choice. Like I was very afraid of facing relationships and being chosen by people. I got bullied a bit in elementary, junior high, I was overweight. So when I lost weight, all of a sudden people wanted to talk to me. And I was like, wait, but I was the same person, you know, last year as I am this year. So it was hard for me to really understand my relationship to fitness because I played sports started to be more like, I want to maintain fitness so I can maintain being attractive so I can be chosen. Obviously, it was helpful for sports. But the motivation was still from a, you know, a place of low self worth. When I was was in so i would talk to my dad a lot about relational stuff i started dating in like maybe grade 11 and he would we would break down like

how humans related he would give me advice on my relationships so it started there that was like the birth of it i consider myself blessed that my father was emotionally related to me. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. I'm really lucky, especially in that generation of men. And then when I was in university, I was in sales at an electronic store in Canada, which was called Future Shop, which was like Best Buy in the US. It was a lot like the 40-year-old virgin, if you've ever seen the movie. Yeah. It's really funny. Whenever I saw that movie, I was like, that was exactly like Future Shop.

So we learned all these aggressive sales techniques. I learned nine different ways to close a person. You were having thousands of conversations, so you had to learn how to build rapport really quickly and to ask for things, like to get someone to engage in a behavior change quickly. That cost them money and hopefully didn't lead to them regretting the choice they made. Otherwise, they'd return it and you wouldn't get your commission. And I then went into pharmaceutical sales and it was in my late 20s that I went through a breakup.

And I thought to myself, like, why am I so good at talking about everything but my feelings? Like, that's not a skill set issue. There's something else going on. Why, when I've chosen to leave a relationship and I feel most connected to myself, why do I feel most judged as a failure, as being afraid of commitment? And it really made me want to understand why am I so good at every relationship but romantic ones? And so it made me, because of the background in pharma and science, I was like, I'm going to study them. I'm going to read all the science on them and I'm going to learn how to logistically and through skill sets, how do I

become successful at love? At the same time, because I was having an existential crisis, I read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And that was the first time I ever thought, maybe I'm actually here for something. Maybe I'm not just like here to become a good provider and have a house and a car and kids. And that was the first time I ever even thought of having a purpose. And I could sense that what I wanted to build was you know that idea that your mess becomes your message oh right I know you know that love yes yeah and and so that's really where it was born was this obsession and really thinking I'm learning all this why did no one teach me this

like why was there no class on this this is the most important thing I could have ever learned in my life. I know how to do the Pythagorean theorem, but I don't know how to navigate conflict and turn it into deeper connection like that. I don't think I've ever used the Pythagorean theorem since high school. I don't remember it personally. And I feel like what you're describing is something that many of us still struggle with is like how do we solve conflict in a healthy way I think a lot of us take what we experienced in childhood or what we saw and bring it into our adult relationships whether that be friendship whether that be you know with our with our spouse what do you think is the biggest issue that we're

facing in relationships in 2024 like what are you noticing is the biggest issue that we're facing in relationships in 2024? Like what are you noticing as the most prevalent problems? I'd say it's twofold. I'd say the first one is that there's really a low attention span to everything. So when we're in connections, we're thinking about other connections. So in the research, if your phone is face down on a table, you're less vulnerable in conversations. I think a lot about how social media in general is constantly evaluating you. So not just your followers and non-followers, just people. 24 hours a day, there's an availability of a criticism of you.

So your nervous system is constantly on hypervigilance. Add to that that there's an availability of a criticism of you. So your nervous system is constantly on hypervigilance. Add to that that there's an algorithm also assessing you and that's a non-human thing, right? And that one is determining whether the content you're creating is actually worthy of being shown and they won't ever tell you what the actual answer is to that. And even if you think you figure it out, it's going to change anyways. So I think that deeply impacts us because we're constantly thinking about that when we're in a conversation like this. Yeah. Like I now have a great relationship.

I'm leaving social media on June 1st because. I know. That's how I found you. Oh, really? Your I'm deleting Instagram video. Yeah. I loved it. Well, I felt like there was so much relating to it for people who have spent so much time creating on these platforms

and are feeling depleted, exhausted. But the reason I say that pours into our relationships is that there is so much of a fear of missing out. Even in our connections, it's like, well, what happens if there's something else better? And so if you add to that, that I don't think our skills at handling difference, I think it's pretty amplified how bad we are at that currently, especially. We don't really break bread anymore with people we disagree with.

We're not exposing ourselves to diverse thoughts. And I think all that is putting us in some sense of crisis in terms of relationship, you know, but in terms of a lot of things. I think one thing we've all learned from this podcast is protein is super, super important. And are you sure you're getting in enough protein? Whether you're focused on weight management, better metabolism, hormone regulation, bone health, the benefits of high protein are abundant. But most of us aren't getting enough protein in and it can be really difficult to find

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and premium fabrics which i absolutely love i just got the 100 organic cotton sleeveless maxi dress they have it in this beautiful cornflower blue it's gorgeous highly recommend you guys check it out i will be bringing it on my upcoming birthday trip get warm weather ready with Quince. Go to quince.com slash pow for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash pow to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash pow. I think the phone is like such an important thing to talk about and it's almost difficult to put to words the amount of conflict it's causing I mean I can think of like a small example I don't know where I heard this but there's a study if your partner or someone you're with goes on their phone, we immediately feel

rejected and isolated subconsciously. And we're more likely to then go on our phone. And it becomes this like back and forth of who's ignoring who. And I feel like, I mean, I run into this with Greg, I have, you know, a husband who's a CEO, he's pretty ADHD, very high performing, really busy. And I feel like the phone is like a key source of conflict for us. And I think for many other couples as well. And it's how do you solve that problem? Do you create boundaries? Do you create rules? Like how do you go about that in your household?

Well, one, being able to hear it, you know, because I've definitely gotten that and then gotten defensive about it, which isn't helpful to solving the challenge. But creating clear agreements. Yeah. I just bought a thing called a light phone. Light phone. Yeah. L-I-G-H-T. Okay. And it only texts, calls, has music, podcasts, and I believe directions. And so the way they designed it is it doesn't have a doom scroll, like it doesn't have an unlimited populating of stuff, so you can't get lost in any direction. Yeah, and so I'm playing with how do I implement that. So I put like an out-of-office or whatever,

the do not disturb things on Apple, where it says like if you want to get a hold of me, call me on this number. Oh, my God. Yeah, and I put like a out of office or whatever on the do not disturb things on Apple, where it says like, if you want to get a hold of me, call me on this number. Oh my God. Yeah. And I was, I don't get any calls because no one calls anyone anymore. So it would be rude. Exactly. Which I think is really fascinating in dating because someone will be like, oh, they called me. It's too much. And it's only because the behavior of calling hasn't been normalized anymore. Just texting has.

So when someone has a behavior that's outside of the normalized behavior, it's seen as a red flag. But it's actually a green flag, which is the ironic part of it. So yeah, having good boundaries is really the most important. And also the impact it has and like setting aside time to do the things. Because I think a lot of us, we actually need to have time set aside to do emails or texts or social media and batching those things. Because the expectation now is, I remember when I first got a BlackBerry and they're like, here you go, here's a BlackBerry. And I was like, amazing. I don't have to open my computer anymore. Little did I know I was

being sold convenience, but really now working 24 hours a day. And so many entrepreneurs leave their nine to five and step into a 24 seven, which I know, I'm sure you're familiar with. I am just becoming constantly available at all times. And it's almost like you need to set a precedent to teach people like, hey, I'm only available between these hours and not after certain hours as well. And it's really about setting boundaries. What advice would you give? And this is something that I hear a lot of other girls speak about. I've been with my husband for 10 years, so I haven't really ran into this, but I hear women talking about, you know, their partner liking other girls' photos or acting a certain way on the internet or not posting them online. What advice do you give in terms of that? Because social media has become

such an important part of our romantic relationships, it's difficult to even know how to navigate. So many good layers to that question. The first part is social media was not around when I was 20. So I have to acknowledge that if I was 20, I probably, I don't know that I'd have the willpower to not be checking out like booty Instagrams and all that kind of stuff. Like there's the biological part of us that doesn't realize even that doing that is disrespectful to our partnership. You know, but if I'm in a relationship and my partner says to me, I don't feel good that you're following all these models and porn stars or whatever they are, I would think that's pretty valuable information for the relationship, you know, to be able to have a conversation about it. I think if it's sourced, like if I'm following

friends of mine who, let's say, teach yoga or do something like that, and it's causing a trigger, at least any trigger is really an invitation to a conversation. Because there could be a previous infidelity that the other person experienced that the jealousy is coming up and now we can work with that. We can have a conversation about that. Being posted on social media, to me that is usually trying to meet a want,

trying to meet a need with a want. So I need to know that we're good, post a picture of us. I need to know that you choose me, post a picture of us. I need to know that you choose me. Post a picture of us. Now, granted, I think it's healthy if you're in a relationship to probably expose that you're in a relationship on your social media. But I think often it's because what's really going on is the need to know.

Do you know what I mean? And so we try to meet that through a request when we're really, we don't feel safe and secure. I mean this in the most respectful way, but when I see couples overposting about their relationship and, you know, being super affectionate on the internet, to me, it kind of rings an alarm. I'm like, what is really happening behind the scenes?

You know, especially when- Like it's too much too performative too performative and it's like well i know personally when greg and i are having a moment for me to take the phone out would completely ruin it you know like i think it just takes away of this yeah if you don't get a picture did it happen that's the that's the crazy like existential crisis i feel like everyone's having it's like did this moment even happen if it wasn't captured and other people get to see how good it was you know I noticed that when I was at a concert and everyone was filming the concert

which is so crazy because no one else wants to watch that right and I'm sitting there and like why don't you just watch it yeah you know i'm sure it'll be released on spotify anyways you know or youtube or someone else will post it i know yeah i agree with that you know there's i believe that we are coming to a moment where people have a desperate craving to return back to analog. Like, I think social media will be the smoking of our time. And Jonathan Haidt, I just wrote a book called Generation Anxiety, or The Anxious Generation. I just ran into Jonathan last night. I'm a big fan of his.

Oh, he's amazing. At the Time 100 event. Oh, right on. Yeah, and he speaks about kids being raised on social media. I heard him on Chris Williamson. Yeah. Fully obsessed with him. He's unbelievable. Oh, right on. cancel culture, all these types of things. But the anxious generation furthered the deepening of the understanding of how technology has especially impacted teenage girls and young women. And I do think that there is this sort of like why in the road where some people are going to go to the singularity and get chips implanted in their brains and other people are going to move to farms, you know, and return to community and connection.

And that's why I also think there's such a yearning for food that and supplements that are not covered in glyphosate. And, you know, we like are desperately seeking nourishment, but nourishment on every level, you know, in relationship, but also our food, also our bodies, that if you start to treat your body well, you can't tolerate BS relationships. If you start to stand up for yourself within relationship, you can't eat unnutritious foods. It's impossible because the other choice becomes in conflict with what you know to be true now. Wow, that was so powerful. I couldn't

relate more. I mean, going through my fitness journey, I had to cut out a lot of friendships and I get a lot of girls writing in, you know, how do I handle letting go of some of the toxic relationships I'm in? And it's one of those things where you're right, like it has to be equal. If you're treating your body right, you don't want to have people who are disrespecting you at the same time. On the topic of, you know, you deleting social media, I want to dive into that a little bit more. Truthfully, it's something that I've been fantasizing about a little bit and kind of weighing out, you know, the pros and cons. Actually, after seeing your video, it inspired me to decide to delete it for one month in August. I'm going to delete it completely. Just get it from your phone. Okay.

Yeah. Delete it from my phone. I'm not going to delete my profile. I think my whole career will crash. I'm not, I was going to delete mine, but I got like hundreds and hundreds of messages being like, I have posts of your saved. Can you leave it up? Yeah, what's the harm in leaving it up? There isn't. Now, it was just, you know, when you're like having a realization and then you're like, F the system, anarchy. And then I was like, wait, no, okay, balance.

It's relational, right? Yeah. Get the feedback from the other parts of the relationship. And I realized that I, it's like I don't drink. You know, if you stop drinking, often you don't want to be around alcohol. It's like kind of that idea was like, I just want to not be around it. But really what I need to do is to be able to trust that it can exist without me touching it. And I'll just have someone on my team monitor a DM or something like that. But I don't want anyone on my team operating it. Because to me, if I believe that something is inherently toxic and I pay someone else to run it, is that not unethical? I don't know. I've been thinking about that a lot. I don't know the answer. And a lot of people respond to saying, well, there's positives to social media. You have a business from that. I met my wife on Instagram.

Absolutely. I'm not negating the positive nature of everything that can benefit us. But there's also a downside, especially when the relationship itself is only one-sided. If it was like you and I in a friendship and there was a feedback mechanism, but there's no feedback mechanism on this. The whole purpose of social media is to monetize attention. Yeah. You know, and the mechanisms by which it does that actually generate things like anxiety.

So if you say this is causing mental health issues, if it's profit driven, it's not going to listen. Mm-hmm. So I like your idea, though, about testing in August, like, I'm going to leave it. And I wasn't I when I was going to delete it. One of my PR people was like, Well, I don't know how to pitch you anymore. Like, who are you without 1.1 million followers? What about the podcast? Yeah, it does well. But you know,, it was like the way that people perceive credibility and impact is your social media reach. Yeah.

Which is like we've generated this idea that you're only important the more followers you have, which is a dysfunctional thought process. Not that there isn't some correlation to reach, but I don't even saying that I feel like there are people with millions of followers who are, I would say, having some unhealthy impacts on people. Totally. Yeah. It's a tricky thing that you're doing because I feel like society as a whole is moving one direction and you're kind of choosing to do the opposite. And when I think about deleting Instagram, things pop up for me like, what if it makes me a bad friend? Because I'm not aware of

what my friends are doing. You know, like, let's say they post a big accomplishment and I don't say congratulations because I don't know about it. It's like the way that I stay updated with the people that I know. And if I'm not commenting or DMing, does that mean our friendship is gone? Which is a crazy thought to have but it's something that came in my head right yeah and an important one to consider which is wow we've built our interactions and bids with friends over social media interactions and i'm like i'd much rather someone call me you know or text me or whatever but for me if someone got upset because I didn't like a picture or see a celebration they had, I mean, then our friendship is delicate. Do you know what I mean? True. you know, which I think is really, I like to play with those things. Like even when I quit drinking,

I realized that one of the reasons I didn't want to quit drinking is because I wasn't sure how it would make people feel when I was at a party and I was the only one not drinking. You were worried about other people. Yeah. And would it bring up insecurities in them, which I realized was codependent. So I'm like, the moment I realized that I I'm like, burn it. Like, I got to stop because I need to always, when I feel like I don't have a choice in a behavior because of an outside experience of my behavior, then I need to do it because I need to disprove that I can't do it. Wow. Does that make sense?

It makes me wonder like how many of us have like almost fake friendships or fake relationships happening because we're relying on that social media interaction? And when it's gone, what would happen? Who are we? Yeah. You know, who are we without so many things, so many stimuluses? Who was I without sugar? Like that was, I was a different person too because it was like everything that changes your state means you're

escaping a state yeah and i was like okay well i gotta play with all these versions of me that i'm anesthetizing and distracted myself like who am i without my life force going into creating stuff on instagram like what's possible for me i recently read the book uh 10x is easier than 2x by dr benjamin hardy and dan solvent and he talks about how the wrong question is how do you grow your I recently read the book 10X is Easier than 2X by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And he talks about how the wrong question is how do you grow your business by two times because all you're going to do is turn up levers that you already have. But if you ask a question like how do you grow your business by 10 times, you have to throw out everything you know. You have to do radical things. And I was thinking about that as like, well, I know where I can get to using the same mechanisms. But what's possible if all of a sudden I step outside of the paradigm of what people expect of me?

I know that everything else in my life, relationally, when I stepped out of expectation, I felt happier in my life. I started to direct my life. When I started to take responsibility for my fitness and my health, everything changed. I think you just end up realizing how powerful you are. And then when you realize how powerful you are, you realize how much power you've given away your whole life and made your life about other people's feelings, which I think there's a difference about being conscientious of people's feelings and then actually creating your whole life around other people's feelings. Those are very different things.

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I feel like I've been experimenting with removing social media. You know, I've told the listeners I'll delete it on the weekend now because I was finding myself having my perfect Saturday. You know, everything that I could have possibly wanted to do on a Saturday. And then I would go on Instagram and immediately feel horrible about the day that I had had because I didn't socialize enough or I wasn't doing the same amount as X person was on their stories, making me question the quality of a weekend that I'd had. And it was miserable to feel that way. And since deleting it on the weekend now, I feel like I can just exist and really like listen to myself. I feel like so many of us are just dissociated and making decisions based on what other people are doing, which is a crazy

way to live your life. You know? You see so many people just sitting and I've done it. You know, you're just like, you're bored and all of a sudden you're here and your neck starts to hurt your shoulders hurt you're going to chiropractors you're doing everything to deal with this accommodation of looking down instead of up at the world and you know when people say to me like I just can't meet somebody and I was like put your phone away yes like someone's looking for you and you can't see them make eye contact yeah i'm like you're going into air one looking at instagram like that's a great place to meet someone it's gotta be like i'm in a relationship and i'm like is everyone here attractive it's

actually a rule it must be yeah the dogs are all doodles it's just like everything there is just i haven't spent 27 on a coffee in a while so i need to go i mean i live in austin now oh you do yeah and every time i go in there i'm like what was i doing coming here every day it's wild it's so expensive oh my god as a canadian i just laugh whenever i come here i'm like i gotta go to air one and get the they have a keto breakfast sandwich that is oh yeah it's heaven yeah i've seen it. Are you keto? No, but I definitely pivot in and out of that. I don't eat as... I focus mainly on protein.

Yeah, I'm the same way. That's my main. And I feel like if I eat a potato, I become a potato. That's kind of like how... Even though I'm Irish, it doesn't make sense. I love a good potato. I should have been able to metabolize them better. But I really wanted to make sure that my insulin and my insulin sensitivity

was really regulated first before everything. Yes. And then, you know, the more I dove deep into that world, I was like, it's all about that. Yeah. Glucose. Yeah. It's important. You realize, like, all the other stuff, the cholesterol story, all that stuff.

Yes, there are some important markers there, of course. But glucose before everything. Agreed. So you mentioned codependency. I want to talk about that. How do we notice signs of codependency in our romantic relationships, friendships? How do we watch out for it? Yeah, you know, in the book, we define codependency as any relational dynamic where we source security and safety at the cost of ourselves, our own needs, our own sense of

well-being. And really the key words there, at the expensive. So where we're starting to do it is when we are prioritizing other people over us. We're trying to fix people. We're trying to save people. Or we're actually presenting as broken and needing people to save us. We're afraid of doing things and how it will impact other people's feelings. So we put it off. I see, there's, I see it across all types of relationships because the reason I was always fascinated by romantic relationships as I dove deeper into them is that I really saw that they were the amplification of our challenges. Like there's nothing you're not going to want. It turns up the volume on your lack of boundaries. It turns up the volume on your self abandonment, but you start to see, you know, that saying how you do one thing

is how you do everything. You start to see it in everything else. Like if you have bad boundaries romantically, you're going to have them at work. And I also started to notice that there's very few things that people will change for, but love is one of them. And it's maybe the most frequent touch point we have too. You know, I think we all deeply desire love. And if we don't, it's maybe the most frequent touch point we have too. I think we all deeply desire love, and if we don't, it's probably because we were hurt by it. So then we associate the pain with love, and so they start to become the same thing. So we avoid relationship.

But there's a famous saying from Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt where they say you're born in relationship, you're wounded in relationship, and you heal in relationship. So you can only do so much on your own but then you know it's like you feel like you got your poop in a group and then you start dating and you're like i thought i had that figured out and then you realize that you have to learn how to be a you in relationship to other people and people who are codependent which i would argue is most of us still it's not, don't know how to hold on to who they are and be in a relationship.

They either abandon themselves for the relationship or they abandon the relationship for themselves. And we usually find ourselves in relationship with the other person. Right. Yeah. So I see it in work a lot too though, especially in the spaces of coaches, therapists, any providers. Yeah. Yeah. How do we heal codependency in a romantic relationship?

Like, do you think it's possible to heal the codependency issue and then remain together in a healthy way? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think you have people who are together for like 30, 40 years who have established patterns that you're going to have to get into a space of uncertainty. You know, like to be able to step out of codependency means to also step into uncertainty. So, you know, a lot of people don't know how to relate to each other without there being a problem. So, you know, you might have a couple where when one person is healthy, the other one's sick, and then they get better and the other person gets sick. They don't know how to relate to each other.

You have the person, let's say, who's in a relationship with an addict or the person with anger issues or the person, whatever it is. You're trying to get them to change. What happens in the relationship dynamic is this person is always trying to get them to change, and this person always needs something to change. So that's what keeps them together is I'm going to try to get you to change. You're never going to fully because I source power from you being a problem. And you keep me close by being a problem. So yeah, you can heal it, of course. I think the first part is you have to be tired of whatever dynamic you have. And you could be single or in a relationship

and be tired of that. And then you have to be willing to look at where does it come from and create agreements about wanting to change it. I don't think any person can do enough work for two. And that I would argue is very codependent. And it's like the people who are always trying to get the other person to change,

if they stop putting their life force into trying to change them and put it within themselves and stay in their own lane, they invite the other person to grow up and actually step into adulting. And yeah, so it's definitely possible. We walk through in our book, Liberated Love, we walk through a process where we call it the sacred pause. And it's really about creating agreements. If you're single, creating agreements about how you're going to explore relating again. And if you're in a relationship, you both are creating agreements about, okay, we're done with what was and we're ready to create something new.

But we're just going to take a moment to actually gather ourselves and also create what that new dynamic looks like. Right. If someone's struggling with codependency and they feel like they've lost themselves in a relationship, what are some ways they can start refinding who they are alone? Well, a lot of people, when they have lost themselves, probably didn't really know themselves. So usually when someone has lost themselves in a relationship, they were taught that it was romantic to give up who they are

or to sacrifice everything for love. I mean, we see those narratives and stories in things like previous Disney movies. I haven't watched any recent ones, so I'm not sure about the narratives. But the thing that I always recommend to people when you ask them something like, what do you want? What do you need? And they're like, I don't even know. Like it's been so long since I ever even thought about myself. I have kids now.

I don't – I'm the last thing on my mind. So it could be really hard for them to actually identify what it is. So what a beautiful adventure to begin to go on. So I'll say like, who do you admire? And they'll be able to name someone. Usually people you admire embody And they'll be able to name someone. Usually people you admire embody values that you desire. So that's a good way to sort of like not have to do it yourself because you're feeling selfish or whatever. Because that's usually when you start

to prioritize yourself, you have guilt and you feel selfish. Because guilt is normally what actually made it so you abandoned yourself. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. In terms of conflict, I want to talk about healthy ways to manage conflict because I feel like as we spoke about, a lot of us carry what we saw as children into our relationship. So, you know, potentially we saw our parents fight in a really unhealthy way,

have a toxic dynamic. What is the healthiest way of fighting? Well, man, wouldn't it be nice if we were taught how to take conflict and actually navigate it in a way, like have a structure of language? My gosh, I think back when I first started learning about handling conflict, I mean, when you're a salesperson, you learn how to handle objections from a customer and how to navigate those and then get them, you know, sell them whatever they need. I wish they had just taken that framework and been like, actually, if you use the same framework, you can actually navigate these things with a partner. They didn't teach us that, though.

Well, the first part is that the intention going into conflict instead of it's – most of what we do in conflict is something we learn from our family, right? We learned it from our parents. We usually have four behaviors that are evident in all relationships that end in divorce. This is from the research from John and Julie Gottman. And they're called the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which are not softly named, probably for good reason. Super intense. Right. Whenever I explain them, I'm always like, relax, everyone.

We all do them. Yeah. So like when you hear these, it's like, everyone relax. Like we all do them. It's just that when people get divorced, they do them in high quantity. Okay. So the first one is criticism. So it's starting sentences with like, you always, you never.

This makes it so our partner doesn't have any space where they didn't do that thing. That usually pairs with defensiveness. Yeah. So so defensiveness i think we all kind of get we like get protective of what they're saying we might flip it around on them um oh you think i'm late well what about the time you did stonewalling which is withdrawing shutting down hanging up the phone leaving um and uh contempt contempt is things like rolling of the eyes. That's actually the most predictive behavior of divorce. Yeah, rolling of the eyes and making faces of disgust. The reason contempt, it's the most predictive of divorce as a behavior,

and that's because it creates a hierarchy. So you can't be met when you're like one person is looking down upon the other person. There's usually a lot of pain, a lot of like repeated fractures of trust and ruptures. So we first just by knowing that those exist and that we do them is a great way to recognize. Like when I learned about defensiveness, I was like that is my go-to. Yeah. And the antidote to defensiveness is saying I can see some truth in what you're saying. That's one of them.

And the first time I remember learning that, I was in a conflict with a friend. And they were giving me feedback about something. And I was like, this is the moment. And I was like, I can see some truth in what you're saying. And I was like, whoa. You didn't really want to say it. No, I did not. But what was interesting. And I was like, whoa. You didn't really want to say it. No, I did not. But what was interesting is my friend was like, what? And I found myself in a conversation

I'd never been in. Wow. I found myself on the other side of a place that I normally left, that I normally shut down, that I normally attack the other person. And I experienced what it meant to like, oh, now there's more trust here. Now there's more communication. There's a two-way dialogue. So I think for people to recognize that the conflict in relationships are always opportunities to heal.

And I think like, man, imagine if we turn towards our relationships and we're like, and this being true of every relationship, that the friction we experience is an opportunity to heal something and understand each other better. Yeah. I never thought of it like that in my 20s.

I apologize to my ex-girlfriends because I'm like, that was definitely not how I oriented to it. I was a master gaslighter. What does a master gaslighter look like well being that i was in sales i was good at deconstructing what they were saying and then somehow make it feel like they were actually responsible for it oh my god yeah it was bad if the word narcissist was available in my 20s which is overtly used for sure on social media but i would have got labeled that for sure at that time it is overly used i feel like because i learned about it through my therapist and it's a pretty harsh disorder to give someone, a harsh diagnosis.

Yeah, like when you're really dealing with one, you know it. But mine was just like I didn't, like gaslighting is really denying someone else's reality. And I denied their reality for sure and then I turned it around and made them feel like it was their responsibility. So I repent that. I'm very sorry. He's a changed man. Definitely. Definitely.

With relationships and for any of the girls listening who are single, how do we know truly if someone's right for us? I think there's a lot of, as we were talking about options, confusion, FOMO, because of dating apps, because of all the options we can see on the internet now. And I think a lot of girls are running into problems where they have almost like all of these boxes that need to be checked. And people are becoming very particular with the type of person they want to meet. How do we know if someone's the right person well i think having a list of the things you desire is important i'll get asked sometimes by people you know how do i know if my standards are just so high that they're trying to keep people

out and the best thing you could do is just check in with yourself. Like, are my standards actually walls? Like, am I actually using this as a way to not allow people close? I do think that when you're dating, reconnecting back to why are you dating? What are you actually looking for? A lot of the times I especially see this with women. They do not claim what they truly want. And we could argue all the societal, cultural, evolutionary reasons for that. There's validity to that. But if you don't know what you're looking for and you're not dating with that deepest intention, then you'll take whatever looks like it aligns because you're not clear. And most people date from the perspective, okay, well, whatever they want, I want. Oh, they like me? I like them too, I guess.

You know, we're like dating, waiting to be chosen rather than seeing we are choosing. Yes. So when we use language like the one or twin flame or soulmate, those are all beautiful sayings. And I would argue that your soulmate is really anyone who wakes you up to something that you're doing and to the possibility of your own discernment, your own choice. So instead of just saying someone is the one or your soulmate, allow them to show you that they are. Most people will accelerate the dating process and really escalate it too quickly, not realizing that you're always in this opportunity to say no to something. I remember when I was in like grade nine,

it was grade 10. I remember being in a relationship and being like, well, I guess this is it. Like, I just thought once it started, you couldn't get out. I actually thought that as well. I remember dating a kid in middle school and I was so anxious after I said yes, because I was like, wait, I don't want to do this. And I felt trapped. It was horrible. Well, and so often, if you look at the inherited pattern of relationship that we've witnessed, right? And you don't have to go that far up generations. And really like if you're a woman, you go up your maternal line, you might look and be like,

well, when was the last time a woman in my family had choice? When was the last time she had access to her voice? So if you look at what we were taught about, like, the provider caretaker role, right? What happened is, is that then now, if your partner is providing for you, now these roles will be switched a lot of the time now. So it's important to just know how these dynamics work.

Whenever one person is dependent on the other for anything, but let's say for money, money is tied to safety. So if you are paying for everything and I don't have my own bank account or you're just giving me an allowance or whatever the way it is that works. If I don't have my own account that someone else doesn't have access to, then my nervous system, like my body, is going, well, you can't speak up about everything. You can't say how you truly feel about everything because if you do, you're going to potentially lose the relationship. And if you lose the relationship, you're going to lose your access to food, shelter, safety. So when we can actually contextualize that, like my wife and I, my wife isn't working right now. We have a 14-month-old. She's taking care of Jasper. And so I'm paying for things. And I said to her, what would you need? How does it impact you that

I'm the one paying for things and you're taking care of Jasper? So this is a conversation we just proactively had because we recognize that power, and we talk about this in our book, we call them codependent hooks, that they're like ways we unconsciously source safety and security.

So it's not saying that power dynamics don't exist, right? Because they do. But can we take what is implicit, what is not talked about, and what is happening covertly and secretly or unconsciously and make them conscious? So I said to her, what would you need in order to have access to your voice, in order to feel free to say whatever you want, to do? And she's like, well, I'm like, would you want your own account?

How much money would need to be in it? I don't take it personally because I know there's things that are going on in human dynamics that if she said, I need this amount of money in this bank account and you don't have access to it. I'm like, okay, done. That means my wife has an opinion that she feels safe speaking up. Great.

I don't have the model where she's not allowed to have one. But if you look up family trees, you can see that might be true. Wow. Does that make sense? 100%. I think that's such an important point to bring up and something that, I don't know, I've personally, you know, run into the problem of feeling financially illiterate. I'm not someone who really does well with numbers. I'm not very money savvy. And my husband is and his family is. And they've taught me a lot about money. And having an open dialogue and being educated around it is really important. And it does kind of like, it shifts the power dynamic. Do you feel like and I want to phrase this the right way, do you think, I'm noticing a shift from, how do I put this? Like people are becoming a bit more traditional in their values of their relationships.

I'm seeing a lot of women on TikTok and social media wanting to be a housewife and have a man be the provider. Why do you think that shift's happening now? Oh man, that's such a good question. Because I've definitely noticed the same. You know, like the homesteading trad wife trend. Yeah, trad wife. Hashtag trad wife. I think it's multi-layered in that one, you have, if we get into like, okay, the layers of what was the benefit to having women, obviously there's a benefit to women making their own money because they then have access to choice, right? So you have this sort of rebellion against the abandonment of sovereignty, right? From let's just call it the breadwinner marriages of the 50s and 60s.

So in, I think it's 1967, the Divorce Act changed. So now women can actually leave, this is in the US. In Canada, it's similar. I'm not sure about the UK. So they have, in 1967, I believe, that's when, okay, now you could leave marriages just because you didn't want to be in them anymore. Before that, you had to get approval of states, approval of government, approval of courts. And you had to be separated for three years. And then you could leave.

And then it was, I think, in 1986, they changed it to just one year. So all of a sudden, people are like, well, I can hack one year. So in late 60s, you have that, you have the feminist revolution, you have the sexual revolution. So you have all these things going on at the same time. And then, so you have all these marriages start to end, right? And you have this discovery of power, discovery of all the things. Women entering the workforce, women

going to university, all these things, great. But you also now have more workers, right? So companies are like, wow, now we have more people who can work for us. We can make more money. We can increase productivity. We can create more shareholder value. And I think much like I see that you have the book Beyond the Pill. Oh, yeah.

Right. I interviewed. Dr. Jolene?ene no i interviewed another woman uh holly grigsball i want to say is her name oh i haven't talked to her she's great and ricky lake she has the one documentary called the business of being born okay the other one's called the business of birth control okay and they talk about how like women were sold this idea that the birth control pill was part of feminism. Like now they have access to choice. They have access to their own sexuality to not have the risk of pregnancy. And I totally get that.

So this is not – I understand that aspect of it. But there's also this idea that stepping out of traditional roles means a revolutionary act. And so then women becoming boss babes, all that kind of stuff. And so if women became mothers, they were seen as an abandonment, often or shamed for not being part of like, well, you don't have your own business. You're not doing your own thing. You're not working. And then now I feel like how everything goes to one extreme. It's swaying the other way. I feel like we're dancing in a lot of those right now. Yeah're not working. And then now I feel like how everything goes to one extreme. It's swaying the other way. I feel like we're dancing in a lot of those right now. Yeah, I agree.

So I think it's a reclamation of some traditional things. Yeah. You know, and I think that's important in that. I don't think there's a listen, this isn't even an opinion. This is fact. The most important role in any human's development is their relationship to their mother. The United States has, I believe, one of the lowest, shortest maternity leave. I think it's six weeks, something like that. The development of your child's sense of self

happens not just in the first six weeks. I mean, it happens in the gestational, like the 40 weeks in utero, in the womb. And then you have, I mean, years. Kids can't self-regulate until they're about three. So the way that they learn how to regulate is through their mother's regulation, as well as their father's and the people around them. But there's nothing more important to a child's development than their mother. And so I think there is now a reclamation of that role. I think you also have how the medical system, again, not saying there isn't a time for acute medical care in birth,

but they've also medicalized a lot of what was already a perfect natural process. The C-section rate in the United States is much higher than the UK where birth is actually more navigated by midwives. Right. You know, I remember we gave birth in Nevada and the C-section rate is something like 36%. In the UK, I believe it's something like 1.8%. Right. Wow. So it shows you there's actually a profitability to these interventions.

Yeah. So I know that's like coming back to the question. That's a long way around. I think it's all really valid points. And I also think there's like this anger happening that we were all put on birth control and we were all kind of pushed into this box. Like I've had Dr. Jolene Brighton on the show. I've had Dr. Mindy Pelz on the show. Oh, she's great, Mindy. gosh amazing fire amazing she went through all my lab work for me i mean just seeing like the health implications of being on birth control and feeling like so many of us are struggling with fertility feeling like it was almost taken away there's

almost like sold to you as this idea of liberation. Yeah. People forget that behind these things are profit and marketing messages. Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on it too. I'm happy that you're in like a similar space of curiosity because to me it's like, yes, there is like, wait, it wasn't bad to want to be a mom. It wasn't bad to want to sleep with your child. Yeah. To co-sleep. Like, oh, wait, how the hell were we sold the idea that formula

is better than breast milk? Formula with high fructose corn syrup in it. Like I just look at that stuff and I go, it's all so many lies. And then when I think about the story we're taught about relationship, it's this idea that if no one one picks you you're not worthy of being chosen if your relationship ends you're a failure all of it is such bs it's like it's also disempowering and to me it's like the the core of health is having choice but also having access to community connection trust like if the people you're supposed to trust are the people who are community, connection, trust. Like if the people you're supposed to trust are the people who are misleading you.

Like I think about sleep training and no offense to anyone, I was sleep trained. So I don't know anything about sleep training, truthfully. Well, this is a very controversial subject. Is it? It is, yeah. Oh. Because the problem, first off, the fact that we have a

society that's structured that we need sleep training is really the challenge. Like when someone says, well, I had to sleep train my child because I didn't have a choice. I'm a mother of blah, blah, blah, and I wasn't getting any sleep. I was going crazy. Totally get it. But really that shows that there's a lack of resources for the mother, right? So that to me is the actual problem is that we've been taught to move into apartments and away from family. We're not in communities. There's a lot of people who don't live in multi-generational homes. So there's not lots of support because of globalization. We move away from our families. Again, a lot of complexities. Everyone is stuck in binaries.

It's either good or bad. No, it's complex. But my point being that women are not supported. Mothers are not supported. So we have technologies like sleep training. But if you look at it, a baby's nervous system is designed to cry when it needs something, right? But the baby's nervous system is like it's in a cave and it's going, hey, I need you. I'm alone.

I need food. I need soothing, whatever. If you don't come, I don't stop crying because I learned to self-soothe. I stop crying because if I keep crying, something's going to find me and eat me. So what happens is they become disassociated. Wow. Yeah. So again, we can get into the, you know, it's not the right or wrong of it. It's that this was created and sold by pediatricians as perfectly normal. And the original was by a man, I forget his name, but the original teacher of this,

they talked about the tyranny of the child. Like a baby is trying to manipulate you to come feed it and hug it at night. But this is the perspective, yeah. I mean, it's layered. So sleep training is essentially ignoring the crying and allowing it to continue. Interesting.

Now there's a lot of different levels of how to do it that they think mitigates that. training is essentially ignoring the crying and allowing it to continue. Interesting. Now there's a lot of different levels of how to do it that they think mitigates that. But I interviewed an expert on this, a neuroscientist, talking about how there is no way to do it without impacting the neurodevelopment of the child from an attachment perspective. So the best thing to do is run to your baby when it's crying. Yeah, to go through that. Yeah. You know, you're not being manipulated by your child because you pick it up. You know, it's like if your child breastfeeds past the age of two, it doesn't mean you failed.

You know, like I think we just have all these stories where we're saying what is nature is not real. It's like this is just nature. Yeah. And we're trying to say, well, we have all these interventions so you don't have to be a biological i think the prefrontal cortex has created such an arrogance in that we think we're not biological beings with nervous systems yeah it's almost like we're trying to morph into the society we've created but it isn't natural you know yeah we're trying to you know that book from Dr. Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal? Oh no, I haven't seen it.

Oh, it's fantastic. He talks about essentially that we're trying to adapt to a toxic environment instead of seeing that the environment, like these are all symptoms of being in toxic environments. Yep. So everything that's happening are like rapid amount of autoimmune. Yeah. Like you look at all the escalation of mental health issues and we're going like, there's so many canaries in the coal mine.

Like at what point do we go, okay, what we're doing is not working. Yeah. You know? It's almost like waiting for people to wake up. I mean, just even watching your video about deleting Instagram, it had such a big impact on me because I was, I had this like underlying feeling, not just about social media, but in general about the way I've been living my life and the way I see everyone else living their life. I almost

wonder if you are like leading this movement. Like I hope that people watch you do it and almost feel compelled to try it themselves you know i worry about i mean i don't know about gen z because they don't know any different but i feel like my generation like i didn't have a smartphone or social media till i was a junior in college or something like that yeah i mean i didn't have facebook till like 2007 or whatever when it came out emails came out when I was in my first year or second year of university like where teachers were emailing you and that was new yeah you know so and before that you were on the old dial-up you know and that you're not downloading any porn fast on that you're like waiting for a picture to load you know like you had to really earn your porn back then

but yeah i i look at it and i think yeah we're i mean i hope that it causes people to ask questions yeah just like my progression in terms of where i started to be curious started in relationship because i was like well what i'm being taught doesn't make sense. But then I started to see all the systems. I was in pharma. So like I look at it now and I'm like, wow, I was in that machine for 14 years. And I remember when I, the thing that first woke me up in that world was that I studied cholesterol and I was like, everything I was taught about cholesterol is wrong. Like, holy crap, I used to sell a drug for cholesterol. So I was like, wait, if that's wrong, like what else is wrong? And then I thought not only was I sold a lie,

I sold the lie. And then when I started to study relationships, I saw that so much of the impact of why we are dysregulated, why we have gut issues, why we can't absorb nutrients was because of emotional dysregulation. And I saw that emotions and the inability to be in healthy relationships and trauma was actually a core reason of our challenges. And I think it's almost the most difficult challenge

because it's easy, I mean, in my opinion, to follow a diet, to take the supplements. I saw you posted a quote about this today. If you exercise, eat the right things, take the supplements, that's just one part of living a healthy lifestyle. The emotional regulation is the other part. And that's almost the hardest part. Like that to me is what takes the most work. What would be your top tips for someone listening who feels like they're doing all the right things for health and fitness? They're exercising, they're eating the right way, taking the supplements,

but they feel like they haven't mastered emotional regulation. Well, I would argue that emotional regulation is the beginning of all of it. So all of those are really good things and proper nutrition can actually give you more access to regulation. Agreed. So by nourishing yourself, really if you want to look at how someone feels about themselves,

you just need to look at their choices. So if their choices don't align with their values, then they're going to be dysregulated. So when someone has anxiety or depression, the first thing, especially when someone has anxiety, I love the work of Hilary Jacobs Hendel. She has a book called It's Not Always Depression. And in it, she talks about how anxiety is an inhibitory feeling. So anxiety is a feeling when you get when you can't feel one of your other core emotions. So it's not safe to, you don't know how to, anger, grief. It could be something like disgust, joy. So when you don't have access to anger, it'll show up as anxiety. When you don't have

access to sadness, it'll show up as anxiety. So for a lot of people, if they weren't allowed to express or have boundaries, they'll get anxious. So when you start to learn about emotion and the value of emotion, then, you know, like my wife and I in our relationship, what really changed things is instead of seeing her inability to choose the relationship in our first relationship as a problem with her that we needed to figure out how we could fix what was going on in her so she could choose us. It was like, well, what happens if there's brilliance in your not ability to choose us? Like what happens if your body is the somatic canary in the coal mine? Like what happens if what's coming up for you isn't a problem, but it's actually wisdom that there's something in our relationship that's not actually allowing you to choose it. So our book walks people through how to truly like, what are, we talk about the different layers of what shapes you in relationship. The understanding

is important. The, you know, what someone might call the psychoeducation, like, why am I the way I am? We call it the relational blueprint. That's good just because what it does is it contextualizes why you do what you do, which makes it real. You realize that why you do what you do is because you needed to do it to survive. So it's not your fault, but it's not serving you. It's not creating the type of life you want. It's not creating the type of life you want. It's not creating the type of health you want because if you're having challenging experiences with your health, I guarantee that it's correlated to something you learned

or experienced in your childhood or growing up or maybe as a young adult. And the second part then is, you know where it comes from? Okay, how do I create space? We call it in the book a sacred pause. How do I create a pause, a space for me to actually create something new? And that's where the regulating tools come in.

Things like meditation. That's why, although it's all the rage, cool plunging is powerful because what your body is doing is it's saying, you're going to die, but you're not going to die. It really feels like you're going to die. It does. And your body is saying, get out of this because you're going to die. But what you start to do is you start to separate how you feel from what you think about how you

feel. So you're able to be the observer of your experience, not just your experience. So language-wise, because language is really important, instead of saying, I am angry, you would start to use language like, a part of me feels angry. That way you're recognizing through language, you're creating space for more parts of you. So a part of me feels anxious right now. A part of me also feels excited. Okay. And so you can start to play with that. That gives more space to hold more feelings. Yeah. Also looking at your relationships and being like, am I in relationship with people who are actually able to have hard conversations?

And that's why working with a therapist, a coach, what they're doing is starting to teach you, if you've never experienced it, like this conversation is for sure experiencing that, co-regulation. Our nervous systems are communicating on another level that we're not even aware of. If we got into disagreement about a point,

maybe we'd get a bit activated, but we have the skill set to be able to ask questions, probably not create judgments about one another. Maybe if we do, we examine them. So for people to actually do an inventory of their relationships, are they safe to be themselves? Are they safe to express? Are they safe?

Yeah. You know, and that's just a way to begin to touch it. So important too in adult friendships. I think that's a tough spot for a lot of people because it's difficult to understand what an adult friendship looks like versus a high school or college friendship. I spoke about this with my therapist, but my belief system around friendship is referenced from college where I would be inseparable with my friends. Like we would

hang out while we were showering. We would get ready together. Like we were constantly together. And now understanding that people have marriages and families and maybe you communicate a bit less. Maybe you see each other once a week. Like that, that concept was difficult for me because I was like, oh, well, if we're not together all the time, then we're not even friends. Right. You know? Yeah, I do. And that when relationships change, what we desire changes,

all of that is asking us to actually acknowledge that. You know, we were talking earlier about one of the most important aspects of change is really getting to know, like, if you don't know what you want and what you need, right? You start to do this point of inquiry, like who am I? Yeah.

And if you want to create an amazing life, just figure out what are your four top values, which you'll know by when they're violated. What are your four top values? And then make an inventory of every relationship in your life. Are they in alignment with my values? No. What would it take to Are they in alignment with my values? No.

What would it take to get them in alignment with my values? You can look at all the choices you make, all your relationships to substances, your relationships to food, your relationships to exercise, and you start to look like, are these in alignment? Are they not? And if you start to eliminate all the things that are not and start to actually invite the things that aren't to change, if that's possible, your life will be amazing. Like you won't need substances to change your state because your state will be so delicious. You know, and I, we were talking off camera a bit about like how important to be regulated is also having access to resources so like community having access to like being able to you know we were talking earlier about choice in relationship having access to money yeah having access to stuff like that starting a homestead getting chickens yeah i feel like that's the answer i think chickens are the answer

i feel like manual labor or whatever you want to call it, like doing something physical is just like so healing. You know, like getting outside. I have a horse that I take care of. You have a horse? I do. Yeah, no, I'm a full animal crazy person. I've heard that my mother-in-law has a horse

and I'm allergic to horses, but I bump into my allergy because I like being around the horse a lot. There's something about them. I love dogs, you know, for me, dogs. But I think it's crazy that we present science that forest bathing is good for us. Like we need science to tell us that a tree makes us happier. Like all you got to do is sit and look at the ocean or sit and look at another human. Whenever I do workshops and people eye gaze,

I'm blown away by the amount of people brought to tears because they haven't allowed themselves to be seen or seen somebody truly with no words, just to be witnessed. And I think we're craving farms. I think we're craving homesteads. I think that's so evident in what I'm seeing from everyone. And have you, speaking of co-regulation,

have you heard the fact that horses can sense your heart rate and will kind of match? Or when they're in a pack, when they're running in the wild, they all co-regulate so they have the same heart rate wow isn't that insane yeah and it doesn't it doesn't surprise me they're just magic creatures it's like how our kids and we we kids learn from us from mirror neurons and like we learn from each other like like you learn empathy through watching people empathize. And so I think a lot about the impact of technology when like a parent is looking at a phone

instead of engaging with the child or their partner, let's say. And I remember listening to a psychologist give a presentation saying that not only does social media present the potentiality of creating a lot of narcissism, but so does the fact that we're not learning empathy. I also remember reading that empathy is experienced through the ability to mimic. So if you say you're sad, I mimic your sadness with a facial expression. So you see that I feel your sadness. But if I get Botox, I won't be able to do the exact thing.

So I won't have access to the emotion because the emotion follows the change in my face. Oh my gosh. Which I thought was really interesting. Again, not a judgment on people getting that. I just was like, oh, that's fascinating. I wonder how that kind of stuff impacts our ability to be empathic. That's true. I know.

So many layers. I could ask you a million questions. We're going to have to do a part two. I know you have a new book. Tell us about it. So our new book is called Liberated Love. I wrote it with my wife. And it is about how to heal codependent patterns.

So very apropos to our conversation, obviously. And we're really proud of this book. Like what I know to be true about this book is if you want to change your relationships and change your life, it walks you through the process, the how-to. We tell our story.

We tell clients' stories because humans learn through narrative. And there's lots of stuff in there, but especially what's in there is the tools. So like, okay, it's great. Nice to hear all these things, but like, I want to actually change my relationship. How do I do that? I want to actually learn regulation of my nervous system.

How do I do that in relationship and with myself? So we walk people through that and we're excited. We're excited about it. Incredible. Congratulations. Thank you. Mark, where can everyone find you online? Where can they buy the book? So you can find me on my podcast, Mark Rose podcast. I also have a YouTube channel.

The book is at liberated-love.com or you can get it wherever books are sold. The audio book, I'm a big audio book guy. Is it you reading it? Yeah. My wife and I swap in it. But at the end of each chapter, we have an unscripted conversation between us where we talk about stuff from the chapter. I wanted to do something fun because I'm like, I consume so many audio books that for me it was like, okay, let's make something really special with that. So if that's something people prefer, there's definitely a...

And also if you buy the book at bookshop.org in the u.s and the uk it supports small book bookstores incredible yeah thank you so much thank you for having me thanks for joining us on the pursuit of wellness podcast to support this show please rate and review and share with your loved ones if you want to be reminded of new episodes click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast or video player you can sign up for my newsletter to receive my favorites at marilowelland.com. It will be linked in the show notes. This is a Wellness Out Loud production produced by Drake Peterson, Fiona Attucks, and Kelly Kyle. This show is edited by Mike Fry, and our video is recorded by Luis Vargas. You can also watch the full video of each episode on our YouTube channel

at Mari Fitness. Love you, Power Girls and Power Boys. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider-patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team.