The Daily Stoic - Clinical Psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson on Building Lasting Relationships

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Ryan talks to clinical psychologist, couples therapist, and author Dr. Sue Johnson about how Stoicism and Emotionally Focused Therapy complement and enrich each other, what psychology can teach us about the nature of human relationships, her best-selling book (and a game-changer for Ryan) Hold Me Tight, and more.With a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Hull and an Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of British Columbia, Dr. Sue Johnson is a British clinical psychologist, therapist, and author most known for her work on bonding, attachment and adult romantic relationships. She co-developed Emotionally Focused Couples and Family Therapy along with her colleague Les Greenberg as a psychotherapeutic approach for couples based attachment therapy. Her work has garnered numerous accolades, including being named Family Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association’s Society for Couple and Family Psychology in 2016.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we bring you the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of

the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of the world of of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

What would markets really this life have looked like if you went to therapy, if you got help? What would comedists's life have looked like if you could have done that? You know, Stosis, as we've said before, isn't about suppressing, stuffing the emotions down. It's about processing, dealing with them, coming to terms with them.

So I hope it doesn't surprise you to learn someone like me has gone to therapy. We did a great Daily Stoke video about this recently on the YouTube channel, which you should check out about mental wealth and mental health, but it might be unexpected that one of the forms of therapy that I have spent quite a bit of time in is called emotionally focused therapy, right? Because again, that seems like somehow antithetical to stoicism. But it isn't as today's guest and I explore. I'm having Sue Johnson on. She's actually the founder of emotionally focused therapy,

one of the most interesting forms of therapy out there, I think. It's particularly popular with couples. And her book, Hold Me Tight, was a life-changing book for me. I can't recommend it enough. I'll carry one of the few relationship books that we carry in the painted porch. So I'll link to that in the show. Seriously, cannot recommend it enough. Great book. And our new book Love Sense is also

about exploring long-lasting relationships, which as I talk about in Lives of the Stoke is actually a really important breakthrough in the Stoke tradition. The Stokes sort of coming to terms with the idea that no man is an island that the city, the state, the world depends on people coming together, having children, forming long lasting bonds, not just with themselves, but with their own parents, family, memory, extended family, et cetera. And so I'm really excited to bring you this episode, this conversation with the one and only Sue Johnson. You can follow her on Twitter at DrUnderscoreSueJohnson on Facebook, Facebook.com slash Dr. Sue Johnson.

But I think the best place to start with Dr. Johnson is with her book, Hold Me Tight. You can grab that in today's show notes. It's a wonderful book, and I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Hello. Hello. You guys hear me? Yep. I can hear you. That is amazing. We made it work. That is amazing. We made it work.

Well, I have a feeling that if Sinec had to deal with technology, he would have written a different philosophy because when he said you can't deal with external events, that's true. And I can't deal with the internal events around this stuff either. Nice to meet you. It's great to meet you too. Zoom tests all of us and our stoicism. Yes, I think so.

And I cannot do this stuff. So. But here you are doing it. So I appreciate it. Yeah, and I want to actually, I want to thank you because I had to learn Latin in school. I was educated by Catholic nuns, but we only studied Tassages, not Sineka. Oh.

And as a result of knowing I was going to talk to you, I went and looked up some of the things from Sineka. And I really liked, liked a lot. And I felt like it, I could just see all kinds of connections with our work in the Haldby tight groups and things. And the book we do for the public. And also in our therapy work with emotionally focused therapy. So. Well, I do think there's a lot of connections and I have personally gone to EFT.

So I've benefited quite a bit myself. Thank you. Well, that's amazing. I'm so glad. Yeah, my wife and I did EFT focus couples counseling. Hey, that makes me feel so good. I just can't believe on some level that the our work, you know, it felt like for a long time that we were, um, that I was talking and with my colleagues were talking and nobody wanted to hear and I felt like I kept saying, hey, you guys, we've cracked the code of love this is amazing attachment. Attachment science. We've got a map. Hey guys. And everyone was like, no, no, go away. No, no. And so now I'm flawed when, you know, I meet somebody like you and you say, oh, yes, yes, I know, we have to. I'm flawed. I was on a beach. Where was it in I can't remember. Belize this man came up to me and said, you are the woman who wrote that book called me.

And I was I said, yes, but actually it wasn't terribly good, because he was mad. He said, you're, you're the woman who, my wife reads this book to me and I have to listen to them. I said, I'm so sorry. But it's neat. We now have, somebody told me just this morning. We now have 91 centers associated with our institute, that train therapists and teach therapists

and stuff all over the world from Iran, can you believe Iran, Egypt, Finland, the things are very introverted. So to be able to do, give them something that they you know will actually sort of say yes or right, you know we might consider this is something. Anyway, well let's let's start there because I think at first glance, it might seem like emotionally focused therapy and stoicism are at complete odds with each other because people think people think stoicism means has no emotions or stuff down and suppress the emotions. And then they might hear emotionally focused therapy and think it's, I don't know, some stereotype where they put you in a room and you scream as loud as you can.

Yes, for those. Yes, exactly, but both of those stereotypes are totally off the mark in my experience. Yes, they are. And I think a better way to think of it is, if you honor your deepest emotions, which are ingrained into your nervous system, if you honor your deepest emotions, which are ingrained into your nervous system, if you honour your deepest emotions and you understand them and you can order them and you can get into balance with them, you're more connected with yourself and you can take the risk of connecting with other people, and this is about the creation of emotional balance.

It's not about. Catharcy comes from a Latin word you know that means diarrhea. So, I think you're right though, you're saying something quite profound, which is that, I think our culture in general and my profession, psychology distrusts emotion and only sees it as somehow, well, the thing about emotion is it's fast and it's terribly powerful. So, you know, they just see it as a kind of problem, but I think, I actually think Soneka, if I sat down and talked to Soneka, wouldn't that be wonderful? If I sat down and talked to Soneka, I would say to him, Soneka, actually, all the new research says

there's nothing at all irrational or illogical about emotion. It's how we deal with it that's the problem. And he would say, oh, so that's very, well, what would he, I don't know, he'd probably say, I don't know, he might say go away, but he would say, oh, Sue, that's very well, what would he, I don't know, he'd probably say, I don't know, you know, he might say go away, but he might say, I'm not going to talk about these things with the woman. He'd probably say something. Yes, unfortunately, excuse me, that's still live and well in some places. I hate to tell you, yes, we've, I've had the privilege of my work is used by the extensively by the US Army and by the Canadian Army, which pleases me very much.

But, you know, I've had the privilege of going and actually doing, hold me tight groups based on my books with very high-up officers in the US military. And, you know, their basic take on emotion was, hey, I gotta keep my stiff upper lip, I'm English, I don't know about that one. Stiff upper lip, you know, ma'am. You know, ma'am, why do you think I should do this? And I can tell them.

I can tell them. And actually, that work we did there was very powerful and I was honored to be able to do it. And it ended up in the New York Times, which was great. Oh, interesting. Yes. I think people, the way I understand it as the two coming together is, you know,

if you think that stoicism is about suppressing the emotion, that's only going to work for a certain amount of time. You can stuff it down, but eventually it explodes outward. And so actually, if the point of stoicism is to not be driven by, or ruled by your passions, then actually the only way to do that effectively and sustainably is to explore them, understand them, deal with them so that one has the ability to say, hey, I'm not gonna go into a jealous spiral here. I'm not gonna lose my temper on this person.

I'm not gonna do X, Y, or Z, but you have to understand where that's coming from and why you call this the dance in your work. Like, I have to understand the dance that's about to happen and then I can either participate or not participate. Hey, you should come and teach me, you have to be sometimes, or do a hold me tight group. Absolutely, you know, and I think that's right. I think what our work does is it says, let's listen, let's befriend these emotions, let's listen to them. Let's let's look at them. Let's walk into them and through them. And then when you have that kind of balance, you can turn to instead of saying to your partner,

why do you always say this to me or I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I'm just or going to a rage, neither of which helps your partner see you or come close to you or support you. Instead of doing those things, you can walk into your emotions and say, I'm getting triggered right now because when I try to talk to you about this and you turn your back on me, my whole body tells me that I'm not important to you. And when I say that to myself, I can't breathe, and you're right, I get incredibly angry, and I need to tell you that there are times when I'm unsure about how much I matter to you, and that's very hard for me to say. And my experience all through the years and all our research studies, we have 20 positive outcomes studies, I think it's fair to say we've changed the field of

couple therapy and couple intervention and we get incredible results. I mean, we see people have what we call these core bonding conversations. They understand how their emotions kind of leave them down the rabbit hole. They understand how they scare each other and they're able to look at the dance they're in. And then they're able to touch their deeper emotions and share them in a way that pulls the other person close. And when they do that, the power of those conversations still, after all these years, blows my mind, these bonding conversations, it's like our brain is wired, our nervous system is wired to say, that matters, stay with that, that's good stuff, that's what you need to be survival. So I think we've come a long way actually in understanding emotions, love. The only thing that I found

was kind of weird when I read a little bit about Sineka was he said, think he said somewhere, not exactly an expert on it. You are, but I'm not. So I think he said somewhere that the main problem was anger, which I thought was interesting, and I could see how he would think that. From my point of view, working with couples all these years and also working with individuals, we're working more and more with individuals now in EFT, especially traumatized individuals. If you had to push me, I would say, hmm, well,

I think the main issue is really how people deal with their fear, how they deal with their vulnerability. Sure. You know, so that's sort of, I think Sinecom might say, yeah, because it seems to me from some of the things he said, he thinks that you need to turn and look at your vulnerability, not deny it. Yeah, he's, it's interesting to think about who Senoko was writing to. Because sometimes he's writing these letters, sometimes he's writing these essays.

But, you know, he is the advisor to Nero. If you can imagine all the pupils to get stuck with, to get stuck with Nero. I think it makes sense. If you think about being in a position of supreme power, of having the power of life and death over other people, where you're making these decisions that affect millions of other people, you know, anger would be such a poor emotion that you have to figure out how to keep on not not even suppressed, but you have to you have to understand when you're feeling it, why you're

feeling it, be able to process it and do your best not to make decisions out of that anger, because you know, he has a line in his essay on anger, he's saying, like, look, ordinary people can start fights and get an arguments and do these things. But he's like, that's, that's a luxury not afforded to a leader because you have to be bigger than a lot of these things because so much is depending on you. Isn't that a fascinating point of view in our current world? Yes. Our whole world seems to be exploding. The idea that a leader should be able to regulate their emotions, not stuck in, let's not just stay with anger,

not get stuck in what I don't know, fear of not looking the strongest or fear of somehow feeling smaller or whatever that is, seems to be so much fear in the world right now, not getting stuck in that and being able to keep your balance and look at things like the common good. Yes. There's another man that I read that I don't know how to say his name. Is it epi-cleetus or epi?

Epi-cleetus. No, no, I wonder I couldn't say it. Epi-cle-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t- or epi-epic-tetus. No, no wonder I couldn't say it. Epic-tetus, okay. Well, he, yes, and he, I like, he said something about, we should recognize that we all come from a common source. Yes. And I think attachment science says, hey, we're all different, but we're all the same. We all have the same longings.

We all have the same longings, we all have the same fears. We all need love and that's not sentimentality. Actually being able to turn to a safe other is the best survival strategy we have in this life. And, you know, for example, emotional isolation predicts post-traumatic the effects of trauma more than any other variable. So, you know, we're really starting to understand that some of the cliches around love are true, love grows us, love is our source of support, right? But I understand that an a leader, I think a leader needs to be able

to have that bigger perspective and move into, okay, you know, what's happening here. Bit like my couples do in their, in their hold me tight classes or in their therapy, you know, they can stand back from, I'm enraged or I'm going to shut down and shut you out. They can move into what's happening here. We're in this dance, we're triggering each other, I'm getting triggered. What's happening with the trigger? And is this the dance we want? But you have to be able to take a meta perspective to do that.

So at first, when people who have been told, love is impossible. It's a mystery. And nobody knows how to do it. My parents certainly believe that, you know, love is and they adore each other. And they basically destroyed each other. Mostly in front of me, which is probably why I created EFT and wrote, hold me tight. EFT and wrote homey tight. You know, and I, that was an interesting thing because my father was a very strong man. He went through World War II, who was very strong. The one thing he never could deal with and never did deal with

was my mother up, I'm leaving him. So, you know, I think all of us and particularly, need to be able to have this emotional balance. Hard to come by. The present world. Hard to come by. I was just thinking of the dance and leaders and you raised an interesting point there in my book on stillness. I talk about Kennedy in the missile crisis. Here's this moment where

a world leader, you know, Cruz Jeff makes an unprovoked, dangerous bit of escalation, an active aggression. He puts missiles on the island of Cuba. Now, there's reasons he thinks that this is the right decision. Yes. And there's reasons that Kennedy knows it's an untenable, you know, change. And so Kennedy has to realize how to respond. But he also, I think quite brilliantly realizes that he and Cruz-Chefer in a dance. Game theory is kind of an example of the dance that you talk about, which is, if I do this, they will do this. And if they do this, then I will do this. And he realizes just how terribly and quickly this conspire

all out of control to everyone's detriment. And I think, you know, what I've taken from emotionally focused therapy is understanding, okay, I've reached out and they're pulling away. This is the dance that we have, or vice versa. And so now I wanna pull away, and then they wanna reach out. And that ends up in a bad place very quickly. And the reason a leader has to understand this and also be able to be the bigger person

is that's the only way that you stop that dance from leading to a place of destruction or death or worse. Yes, and I think that the scary lesson in that when I look at it and when I look at couples and how is that if you do not, if you cannot stand back, get your emotional balance, listen to your own vulnerability, imagine the other persons or the other powers of vulnerability. If you cannot do that, the dance gets its own momentum. Yes. It does you.

And when you look at the way wars start and when you look at conflicts in general in intimate relationships and also between countries, I mean, there's a certain point where the process, you know, the one that we know in our world is the sort of macho thing of, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean, it's happening right now in your friend, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, you know, and the trouble with that one is, it's like a rabbit hole, And the trouble with that one is, it's like a rabbit hole. People get caught in it in their intimate relationship. I've heard couples say the craziest things to me. I had, I supervised one where these couples

were both terribly traumatized because a lot of our clients were fighting depression and anxiety and PTSD as well as couple distress and the isolation they felt in their relationship was just making everything worse. But I remember one couple having an argument, but who was gonna commit suicide first? How?

And it was really about threatening the other person. You were like, well, I'll go upstairs and take pills. Well, no, because I'll go out into the kitchen and hang on, hang on guys. Let's just take a deep breath, which I think Seneca would approve of. Let's just take a deep breath and look at the dance you're quoting. And our experiences, when we help people do that, and they don't feel blamed or silly, Then we help people do that and they don't feel blamed or silly. They know we have a map to their longings and their fears. They know that we're all totally vulnerable in relationships because we're human, not because

we're weak or immature, right? When they know that and they can, when, and someone helps them see that dance and how they're pushing their partner away and everybody's hurting. I really, human beings, we're in little crazy. I'm also completely brilliant. You know what? Human beings have the ability to say, yes.

Okay, I see it. I see how the way I deal with my emotions, the signals I send to myself and out into the world, keep me stuck, keep you stuck, keep us stuck. I see it. Okay, let's put on another pair of glasses. Let's see how we're terribly alike. Let's see how vulnerable we both are, how we both want to be seen, heard, listen to. And I think this matters in leadership. You know, I don't know if you put it in your book,

but my wonderful colleague in Israel, Mario, Mario Mika-Lanza, who's a attachment scientist and our stuff is all based on the attachment science. scientists and our stuff is all based on the attachment science. Mario did this amazing study with the Israeli military. I can't remember where he published it now, but basically looking at leaders. And he found that when leaders were what he called secure, meant that they could do just what we're talking about. They could tune into their motions, they weren't controlled by them, they could have balance, right? They were able to see other people's emotions, they could keep their balance, look at the dance that people were

caught in. When you had secure leaders, the recruits who went through the training in the Israeli army were the groups were more cohesive, they were more cooperative, the soldiers ended up more skilled, they felt more competent, and they did not have so many breakdowns and so many people just exiting because they couldn't stand the stress. So the soldiers felt more confident and competent,

they learned their skills, The teams were better teams. And this came from the leader having this sense of balance. And of course in couples therapy, the therapist is the leader. So, you know, we train therapists to not just be skilled but to see things from a particular perspective and to see other human beings from a particularly perspective that we understand people's vulnerabilities and we also understand that you don't have to be taken over by them. Zeno famously said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing.

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you want to talk to faster. You can post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash dough. That's LinkedIn.com slash stoic. That's LinkedIn.com slash stoic to post your job for free, terms and conditions apply. Well, one of my one of my favorite passages at the beginning of meditation, since his Marcus Aurelius is great work, which I think you would love. He I'll read this passage. You can tell me what you think of it, because I think it captures love. I'll read this passage sheet. You can tell me what you think of it.

Because I think it captures the full scope of what you're talking about. He says, when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I will deal with today will be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and serenely. But he says, they are like this because they can't tell good from evil.

But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not the same bread, blood or breath, but the same mind and possession, possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet and hands and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower,

to obstruct each other is unnatural, to feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him, these are obstructions. Well, that's fascinating, and I love it, except the only bit that I think is bit naughty is when he says none of them can hurt me because unfortunately that isn't true. I think and then we get into the old idea of storicism which you talked about which is that storicism is something to do with denying your

emotions which I don't think it is and you don't think it is. I think the the Stoics what they do though is they make a distinction between hurt and harm. And sometimes they use them interchangeably. I think his point is that someone can't say something mean to you, but his point is that external things can only harm us if we choose to accept that we have somehow been deprived of something or lost something, right? So like Epictetus, for instance, talks about how offense, taking offense requires two people, right, that we choose to be offended.

And so I think his point is not that people aren't going to do things that quote unquote hurt, but we have this ability to decide, hey, they didn't mean to do it. I actually haven't lost anything. My character remains intact. So therefore, I haven't really truly been harmed by this. Yeah, but you said something really interesting. You said my character remains intact. Our attachment science says, and our experience with all these couples over the years says that that's right if you have a secure sense of self which you get from having at least one good relationship in your life where somebody's been a safe haven for you and and treated you like you really mattered and you were precious and some of us have not had that had that. And if you have that secure sense of self, yeah, I think you can be attacked or be challenged or whatever we like. We're all terrified of rejection on a bad level. I think you can have those things happen and you can still see the humanity and the other person, you can still see, oh, we're caught in a dance.

You know, they were triggered by what I just said. And you can almost like you can see it. You can even have your feelings hurt. And you can still have a sense of, you can order it. You can make sense of it. And you can still have some choice about what you do next, right? Yeah. The tricky part is that if you don't have there, unfortunately, we get caught in fight and flight, and I was trying to think about to make it concrete.

A person example, you know, like in COVID, I don't think she's mind me saying this. My daughter decided that she wasn't going to get vaccinated. And the whole family went kind of nutty, including me. And I was having a health problem at the time. So the whole family basically said, you're not taking care of mom. Yeah. You're at me. and you can imagine the sort of labels and everybody got very threatened and the dance started. And I got mad and she shut

down and then I shut down and then I said, fine, fine, I don't care, you know, which is nonsense, of course, because otherwise I do care, or else I wouldn't be getting so hot. But I hadn't read SNCC, but I do know about attachment science, and my couples have taught me a lot. So I was able to step back and say, hang on, hang on. This isn't really about what are these arguments about rights. This isn't about rights. Why am I so triggered? Oh, I'm triggered because I'm a human being. This person matters to me. And I feel abandoned. I feel like what I wanted to say was, oh my goodness, Sue, you're sick right now. Of course I'll get vaccinated just in case I hurt you. I can put my principles aside. That's what I wanted to say. So then I was able, having got some

emotional balance in me and looked at my vulnerability, I was able to see my goodness. She's been attacked all over the place by the whole family. Of course, she's going to build her walls and start rounding on about rights. Of course, she was. That's what I do too. So I was able to step past it, which I think is what Sineka was trying to say. He's trying to say, you don't have to be controlled by these inner feelings. But the more you know them and we friend them, the more it control you have over them, you know, and I was able to reach, which takes courage and Sineka talks about that somewhere too. I was able to reach and say, hey, see the dance we're stuck in, look at what's happening. I think we're both hurting. I think you feel rejected, I feel abandoned. Shall we talk? Because I don't really care about the arguments about vaccination. I care about you being willing to find a way

to come and see me like I'm Ratter. And then same thing happens in our couples. Then she said, oh, see, now we're playing a different game. We're listening to different music, but the dance has changed. Then she said, oh, well, of course, I want to see you. And I said, well, you said, well, I said, well, then how can we do this? And we came up with a very simple thing, which is, she comes to see me regularly. And before she came to see me. She'd take a COVID test. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, our family had gone into whatever you call it, you know, the stuff that starts me was blaming, pointing fingers, shutting down a relationship that's spiral. Yes, you see you should write books on relationships that's right, that's right, relationship. I've been I've seen so many of those over the years,

but couples have taught me that we're vulnerable, our emotions are powerful, but if we order them and understand them and accept them, we can move through them and find a place of balance and in that balance, hopefully we do recognise that we're all the same, we're all human beings, we're all vulnerable, we trigger each other and we can step past that to a place where we can say, I'm triggered, I'm threatened right now. I think you are too. Here we are together. So I think you're quote that you lost Marcus Aralius was really saying, hey, we have to understand all this in order to stand together. Yeah. Well, you know, Epic Titus, he says, and Epic Titus is the gloss for that Marcus really

is gets turned on to as a young man. So it's kind of this incredible dichotomy that the emperor of Rome is reading the philosophy of a slave and they're influencing each other. Oh, I love that. But Epic Titus says that our chief task in life is to separate things into two categories, things which are up to us and things which are not up to us. And so this stoic idea of like, hey, I don't control other people. I control how we respond to other people.

It's so basic. But at the end of the day, it's one of the ways through these conflicts. It's like, hey, I can't make this person do this thing. And part of the reason we're trapped in this spiral is that I really want them to do this thing because I care about them and I think X, Y, and Z. And I think they're making a mistake. But it's often when we're trying to make someone do something or we're disappointed that they're not doing it the way we want them to do it, that I think kicks off so many of the dances that we're talking about. You're exactly right. And you know, when we get scared, and I think this is from nine months to 90-year-old, I think people actually, one of the things about

attachment science is people for a long time, till about the beginning of this century, insisted that it was all about mothers and children, And then the adult attachment science got going and I think you're absolutely right, that's right. So, you know, it's, and realizing that, that one of the ways we have a dealing with feeling vulnerable, feeling unsure, fit not sure of ourselves, feeling overwhelmed, confused, alone. Yeah.

Alone is the big one. We're not wired for a loneliness, for a social isolation. One of the ways we have a dealing with it is to try and turn and control everything. And unfortunately, I mean, it's like everything else. Sometimes it works. You know, if you're and manage a small company and you can fire, if you want, it'll work for a bit, not for the room,

because they're all under my knew, but it'll work for a bit. But in relationships that matter to us in particular, and even in global, huge conflicts, it doesn't work because I try to control you. That threatens you, you resist me. The more you resist me, the more I try to control. And it goes on and on and on and we're stuck.

Right, and you can't cooperate from that place. You can't, you can't, I remember way back when I was a graduate student, I was a crazy graduate student. Okay, when I looked back, now I was insane. And I read every single book on couple therapy. And I remember this man who was considered the king of couple therapy the time saying, well, you know, you just sit and negotiate.

You stay rational, you don't listen to emotions and you sit and negotiate. And I was a student and it was very disrespectful. I couldn't help it. I just sat laughing and he didn't appreciate it. And I just said, you're joking. If you're all wired up into flight, a flight and fight, you can't negotiate. This is the whole point. You have to be able to tune into that vulnerability and do something positive with it to cooperate, to negotiate, to be able to say, what's happening here? We've both got a problem, haven't we? We, you know, we do we want, do we want this kind of

fighting? Do we want this kind of conflict? Do we, we've got a problem, right? It's like, I don't know, it's, you know, all things like threats of dropping nuclear bombs, you think to yourself, well, hopefully, we can look at anyone, can look at that and say, excuse me, nobody wins in that one. There's no winners, we're all losers there. Unfortunately, I actually think that these dances of threat and counter-threat and trying to control people, they can get so huge that I don't know, I don't know whether it's Efi, we could even make crazy mistakes that we could destroy ourselves basically. Well, that's one of the things that Krusef, you know, sort of waking up to what he

done, ends up writing to Kennedy. He says, you know, we're both pulling on the rope of war and then not is getting tighter. And he says, at some point, the only way through it is to cut that rope. And I think that's, you know, you each think, hey, I'm insisting on what I think and what I'm, you know, and it's just getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And at a certain point, it's a lost cause. That's right. Because the bottom line is that at a certain point, and I, this is, I think we are learning this.

I don't know if we're learning it fast enough. At a certain point, we have to recognize we're all interdependent. And we're interdependent with this planet and we are not the controllers. There's some things in the Bible about the land was given to man and it was given to man to use. This is over the animals, yeah. Yeah, so it's often interpreted like, we're the reason the earth exists. We're the kingpin and we can basically do what we like. I think we're waking up to the fact no. Not only are we part of this planet and we need this planet and we we need to respect and honor and cooperate with the planet and take care of it. It's true with each other. We need each other. I mean, look at what's happening now. You know, there's a war in Ukraine and suddenly people are starving

in Africa. When I read that, I thought, what? And I said something to my husband, really stupid, like, but Ukraine is a long way for Africa. Just looked at me and I said, right, dumb, right, like because, you know, this is, we need each other and attachment science says, our essential essence as human beings. We are social, bonding, animals. We need connection. We need connection to survive, to cooperate, to work together.

We need, it's about survival. And, you know, this emotional sense of connection with other people isn't sentimentality. It's the biggest survival code built into our bodies, and we have to listen to it. So I think it's amazing. It gives me hope that Christophe, who must have had lots of pressure on him, I guess, to be the big, you know, macho dude, in control, I think that's incredible. Look, Christchaf could actually say to Kennedy, hey, we're both stuck here. Hey, he's the one that started it. You know what I mean?

Like for him to come to that and realize, you know, like that he was a part of that process that they were both complicit in it. To me, that's what you're talking about in an emotionally focused therapy. It doesn't really matter why the dance started. It's who first realizes, oh shit, we're doing it again. Let's see if we can unwind this. Yes. I think it's sometimes hard for people to acknowledge how powerful the dance is. You know, I've done so many research studies, I must have watched thousands of tapes of

people fighting and bonding and, you know, so much. And what I remember is being appalled that my mother, with whom I had a very conflictual relationship, would arrive from England, and I would talk to myself all the way to the airport, and I would say all the things we're saying to each other. And I would feel in control and balanced, and she would come down at the airport, down the road, and she down the escalatorator and we'd be standing waiting for her luggage and before her luggage arrived she would look at me and say something

like I don't know why you wear that color you know that color really doesn't suit you and oh my god what have you done to your hair again and we'd be off and the dots would start, I'd turn, I'd be like somebody with my back to the wall, I'd turn and make some savage sarcastic remark, right? She'd reply in the same thing, we'd shut down, move away from each other, and then five minutes later, we'd start again. And we did that until she got on the plane. And I remember being humbled by, and I think Sineka would agree with this, by the fact that my cognitive knowledge didn't translate, you know, impeccably into me being able to manage this relationship with a plumb because the fact of the matter was we fought each other for decades by that point. And

we would have needed, actually, I was really sad, I wish we'd had some EFT, we could have gone and had some, then I think we might have made it. I don't know. some EFT. We could have gone and had some, then I think we might have made it. I don't know. What are my favorite lines in in meditations from from markets goes to what at least I'm trying to do as a parent as a spouse. You know, he says you always have the power of having no opinion. And I feel like so many of the so much of the conflict in relationships, particularly with parents and children, seems to be rooted in the parents having opinions about stuff that's really none of their fucking business to be personally honest. And that if they just kept to themselves, the relationship could continue as it was, it's the, you know, you call it judgment, you call it opinion. What if you just didn't think about it at all and you focused on yourself?

So I feel like so many relationships would just, uh, would just operate better. Yes. Um, uh, I agree. I, I, I, if, when I find myself being judgmental about my kids, I do tell myself, let it go. There's none of your business, but it's sometimes it's fun. And usually what I, if I pay attention to that trigger, right, which is part of ordering your emotions, and listening to them and using those the compass, but not having them control you, if I pay attention, there's usually some sort of anxiety under there. Yeah. And so, you know, unless it's something like one of my children just announced they were going to vote conservative.

And me, that's very strange. But I did manage it. I said, oh, how interesting. Well, then, well, you should listen to my political view. No, they don't have to. You know, but usually there's an anxiety there. And I remember watching a father and son that we worked with. And the son was doing things.

He was very young. He was only about 11. But whoa, this kid was bright. And he was doing things like picking up chairs and putting them through the TV and through the windows and the father would order him, like he's in the army. Go to your room, do this, do this. So it was very interesting where the kid said, all you are, you just, all you don't care about me, all you, this was hard to get to, by the way, but we did get there. You don't care about me. All you do is order me around.

You know, tell me how I should be. And, you know, with support for me, bless his heart. The father was able to say, I do do that. I do order you around. I do. You're right. I do tell you what to do. I didn't have a dad. I really have no idea how to be a good dad to you right now. And your rage is actually

scare me. I don't know what to do with them. So you're right. I stand behind my wall and I tell you what to do. And I start supporting him and saying that must be so hard to feel like somehow you don't know how to be a good parent and this is going wrong and not knowing how to fix it. And he he starts to cry and he says yes I don't he turns to his son and says, I don't know how to be a good dad to you right now. And I don't know what it is you need. And the kid with a nipple bit of help. I was able to say, I need you to come home and ask me how I am. I need you to come, I need to know your care. I need to know that I matter to you. I need you to take me out on the Saturdays

and play ball with me, you know. And the father is a man that he says, oh, you want me to do that? He says, yes, I want you to do that. So you watch this man who's never been parented, desperately trying to deal with his sense of failure as a parent and, you know, and the way he does it is to try and control everything his son does. You watch the son react to that. And then you watch them being able to talk about their triggers, come to a place of balance, and start to see each other. And the son was delightful.

He used all these expletives from comics. I can't remember them now, like, smack a roux. And, you know, who says that? I don't know. You know, he used all these incredible, when his father did something like said, well, you know, I didn't know you wanted me to give you attention.

And, ah, breaks your heart. You know, sometimes people break your heart. What we don't see, you know, we've all got our blind spots, but what we don't see. So I think it's great that Christchurch and Kennedy could talk. I hope we still can do that. Isn't that what a full mature human being can do, a full mature, and

this comes from attachment science, which tells us what real strength looks like. You know, it's not denying vulnerability, it's being able to accept it and manage it and order it, and then turn and look at your impact on others and recognize your own needs and be able to step back and have this perspective and say, oh, you know, we're caught here, we're stuck here. What do we both want? What do we both, what is the, What is the important thing? Wasn't there something about Israel in Egypt? There was something that the people from Harvard get, they wrote a book called Getting to Yes, years ago.

They went and they helped Egypt and Israel make peace. And as I remember, it was something about the Sinai Desert. They were fighting over the Sinai Desert. And then, and then when they could have these open responsive conversations, where they weren't listening to their fear all the time, or their anger, they could actually say, oh, well, I don't really care about the Sinai desert, actually. And I think the other side said, well, no, no, the dry. I said, well, what are we talking about them? What's the issue here? So, you know, what are our goals?

And they found that they weren't incompatible at all. And that piece has held, which is interesting. You know, it's, I think Sineco in in the end wasn't he really trying to call for wisdom. He was trying to say, let's have an ideal about what healthy mature human beings are and what they are capable of. Mind you, if he was talking to Nero, not sure how effective that was going to be, but wasn't Nero, Nero was quite a character, wasn't he? He was a deranged, yeah.

Yeah, he was deranged, so I don't think that's going to work. But at least Teneca had an idea about what health and maturity look like, and so does attachment science. And, you know, we see people in relationships not just improve their relationships and have them stay improved over years, we see them grow each other up. Right? We see them because that is what happens in a good love relationship. A good love relationship helps you regulate your emotions, befriend them, understand your vulnerabilities, not feel ashamed of them, turn and share them with your partner in a way that pulls you close. We see attachment science and our work in EFT shows us how

shows us how what resilient, mature, a human looks like, and how we can get there. You know, we can, and the main thing to do is to be able to see everybody as human beings, see our joint vulnerabilities and our joint shared goals and move towards them. There's hope in that. You know, as I say that to this, hope in that, whereas these days when I read the papers, I don't know. There are times when you think, my goodness, me, we are descending into hopelessness. I read a lot of Buddhism. I particularly like Pema Shodran, who's a Canadian Buddhist nun. I think she's wonderful. And I saw her last presentation. She's now 86. And I sat on Zoom and listened to her last presentation. And she said that the ancient Buddhist texts say that we are entering a 500 year period of darkness. And I thought,, oh great, I didn't need to know that. Thanks for my

Well, then I don't, but I'm going to not believe in the interests of Shooting you're not being able to control external events, but I'm able to control me. I'm gonna decide I don't believe that because that's too much because that's so too much. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident

not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about

the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. You know, if you didn't know, it wouldn't upset you, which is, I think it's also a thing I try to practice in relationships and life. I try to go, if I had accidentally deleted this email before I read it, I would not know it's inside it, then I would not be upset. And I would just be giving this person a chance to think better of the dumb thing that they sent me and

You know the same is true for this random news story that I sought out You know for no reason is now making me convince the world is about that. That's amazingly mature Run I think Sineka would be proud of you. I must say I have tried to go there. I do manage it sometimes, but I'm afraid there are times when you're right. I say to myself, if you hadn't read that phrase or if you if you didn't say this to yourself when you woke up this morning, you know, I think at this morning I woke up and said, Oh, I've had bad experiences with technology in the last couple of weeks with podcasts. Oh my goodness, it's all going to go wrong. And then I had my coffee and I thought, well, if you just don't say that to yourself, if you stop

that story going on in your head, maybe, um, maybe the little workout and it did. Unfortunately, I'm not quite as, I can't quite reach your level or whatever. I tried and say I was good at it. Oh, alright, because unfortunately we're human and we get triggered and we get, you know, I particularly, I know that one of my triggers is that I feel that I and my colleagues have worked amazingly hard over the last 40 years to contribute to the world of relationships and to contribute to psychotherapy. And occasionally, occasionally, it feels like somebody will send me an email, which implies that that's not true or that

we haven't done anything or that we're somehow deluded, which is always possible, you know, deluded or irrelevant. And I know that that's one of the emails that I do delete it often, but it's stuck in my, you know, it's one of the places we all have sensitivities, right? No, no, I think that's right. The last thing I was gonna mention to you, because I listened to you on Tim Ferriss's podcast

who I know and love quite a bit. But you talked very movingly about Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine, who I have read a fair amount, and I actually just read a book about Winston's relationship with his son Randall. Yeah, which was very bad, actually. Yes, that the relationship was not good. Yes, you're right.

It was just a reminder to me of the generational trauma that comes from poor attachment and not dealing with the emotions that we're talking about here. That's right. You know, Winston, the thing that fascinates me about Winston Churchill, I'm fascinated by him. The thing that fascinates me about him is he had a completely judgmental hostile distant father. Yeah. He had a completely, as far as I can see in different mother. He probably had nannies. This is the secret. And John Baldwin, the father of attachment science, also had nannies, okay. But you know, he was sent away to boarding school at Winston Churchill and so was John Baldwin. This is, if you understand anything about touchment science, this is the very worst thing you can do to a young human being

that needs connection with a few significant others to feel safe in the world. And it's always fascinated me that in spite of that, he grew up to be an amazingly brave and in many ways strong human being. However, I think the story you're saying is that he he was so bonded with his wife that when they had fights he used to sit outside her door because they had separate bedrooms of course, because you know, I used to English, right? So aristocracy. So he would sit outside her door and knock on it and say, aren't you going to come and talk to your wini? You know, and basically he plead for her

to respond to him. And that this is the fascinating thing about this man. He could stand up and create a whole, he could do what the man who's leading Ukraine is doing right now too. I don't know if he's ever read Winston Churchill. He can basically stand up and say no. Well, we don't care what you do. We say no, right? This is what we will do. And he could do that. And he could do that and take enormous physical risks. Brave used to stand up on the top of the buildings in London and watch. The air raids come over right watch the Nazi Luftwaffe trying to destroy London. So it fascinates me. He's a story of resilience. But I also think a lot has to do with the fact that he was very bonded with his wife. But he was a terrible dad. It's so hard to give

what you didn't get. And I think that's the struggle that so many of us are on is, you know, he was that so many of us are on is, you know, he was, he was light years better than his parents, but that's not saying much. No, how do you, you're like that dad I was talking about, how do you know how to parent, how do you know how to hold when you've never been held? How do you know how to read somebody's emotional cues when you've always felt completely unseen. How do you know how to talk about your emotions when you haven't even got names for them? That happens all the time right now. People come in and they say, I client, I'm just working with an emotionally focused individual therapy comes in and says, I'm depressed. Well, this is doctors have told her this for years. This is the phrase she uses. Actually, it's a big abstract label. When we go in,

she was never seen, never listened to, never given words for her emotions. When we go in and take that apart, what we come up with is not depression. What we come up with is heartbreak. not depression. What we come up with is heartbreak. Ah, that's different. And it's not an illness, it's not a dysfunction. Heartbreak is what happens to human beings when they are never seen, never held. And heartbreak, you know what to do with heartbreak. you grieve it, you see the little broken child alone, and you grieve it, and the adult self, her adult self, and I help her grieve it and hold that little child, and then everything changes, you know. So, yeah, you're right. We have to take a massive leap, so maybe we really need stoicism. I think we really need everything. We really need Buddhism stuff. We need all the help we can get. We need all the help we can get. Yeah, because I think

we have to take a leap here. We have to stop being parents even when we've never parented. We have to stop talking about love as a mystery and start making positive bonded relationships. And we have to translate that into more secure ways of dealing with people who disagree with us, you know, more, you know, a fragmented society, a chaotic society, is a dysfunctional society. That's the truth. And it doesn't help anybody. So yeah, and we need a leap. So thank you for reminding me about Sinecun. No, it's my pleasure. I'll give you one last quote from him as we close up. It is to go to the point of that we need all the help we can get.

And the writer that he quotes more than any other writer, the philosopher he quotes more than any other philosopher, is not another stoic, it's not Aristotle, it's not Plato. He quotes Epicurus, which is interesting because they are theoretically rivals. They believe very different things. And he's asked, you know, why do you quote Epicurus so much? Shouldn't you disagree with him? And he says, he says, well, I read like a spy in the enemy's camp, right? I'll learn from anyone. He says, and then he says, and I'll quote even a bad author if the line is good. I love that because I hate to tell you, but I do that too.

because I hate to tell you, but I do that too. I read, I read, you know, people are very different than me. And actually, sometimes the other night, I was struggling because I was all, you know, pompous and thinking, oh, this, I'm gonna, and I actually found a couple of lines I thought, that's really good. That's really good, just get off it. So yes, let's learn, let's learn from my, where did EFT come from?

Holby Tite came from. It came from my clients, from all these couples we work with. Let's get together and learn from each other because we have to make a leap here. We have to make a leap into balance and wisdom or I don't know what's going to happen. You know, so it's been wonderful to talk to you, Ryan. Likewise, and your work has helped me so much.

I really appreciate it. I'm sure my wife agrees, so thank you very much. And thanks for taking the time. You're welcome, okay. Thank you. Okay. Now this was amazing. All right, well, I've got everything that I need on my end,

so I'll just hit end here and... You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Poquile, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa, we're calling it Daily Stoic Life.

It's an awesome community you could talk about, like today's episode, you've talked about the emails, ask questions, that's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual Real lives you get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend just for the daily stoke life members quarterly Q&As with me Clothbound edition of our best of meditations plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts and this is the best part

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