The Viall Files - E345 What We Can Learn From "All Too Well" with Dr. Diane Strachowski

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Today we are joined by Dr. Diane Strachowski to dive into breaking down Taylor Swift’s release of her “All Too Well” short film, accompanying Taylor’s version of Red. We wanted to use the release of this updated version of the album to serve as a jumping off point to learn more in our various journeys of relationship and love. On this episode, we talk about how relationships are you doing 100% of 50%, the power of patterns over moments, and how anxious attachment affects your approach with relationships. We also define the five signs of gaslighting, talk about the cost of love-bombing, and how the repair period after a fight is crucial for couples.  “Closure doesn’t come from the other person, it comes from yourself.” Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and as always send in your relationship questions to [e-mail] to be a part of our Monday episodes.  Check out our new "Introvert" merch at www.viallfiles.com today! THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Betterhelp: Get 10% off your first month at https://www.betterhelp.com/ViallFiles MasterClass: This holiday, give one annual membership and get one free! Go to https://www.MasterClass.com/Viall today. Storyworth: Go to https://www.StoryWorth.com/Viall and save $10 on your first purchase! Episode Socials:  @viallfiles @nickviall @backtolovedoc For Dr. Diane’s quiz text “love” to 33-777 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Being your best self feels good. For your loved ones and for you, visit betterhelp.com slash vile files and get back to being you. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another exciting episode of the vile files i am your host nick joined by the team of ally and amanda how you ladies doing just dandy i had a lovely little staycation at your place with jeff yes it was a good weekend after uh having the SWAT team overtake your house yeah yours seemed like a safer bet yeah I'm very well fresh off of a trip to San Francisco you were in San Francisco I was in San

Francisco and it was magical did you take your lady friend or was it to visit other friends no it was to visit other friends but I was texting the lady friend and she loves San Francisco it's there's a little bit of talk of like maybe we should go back together sometime yep all right you know it's the seeds are being planted okay um well we have a really fun episode for you today uh dr diane strachowski did i get that right yes you did we just like to call her dr diane uh she is back with us today uh dr dan was on our podcast, our Bachelorette Recap podcast, breaking down the finale of Katie's season. And I invited Dr. Diane back because we're all talking about Taylor Swift's new song.

It is inspiring. It's beautiful music. All Too Well. Do we call it? Is it like an... It's a ballad. No, it's beautiful music all too well the do we call it is it like an ant is about it's a ballad now it's 10 minutes well it's technically a short film oh short film well it's a 10 minute song but the like 15 minute video is qualified as a short film and everyone's talking about it it's a great song as we mentioned we just just a heads up it's all swifties in this room. I'm a big Taylor Swift fan. I had the pleasure of meeting her once. We have a mutual friend.

She was incredibly sweet, nice, and normal. And I say normal because like she has a godlike presence. And if she wasn't normal, we'd be like, totally makes sense. You're- Checks out. But she was, again, a brief interaction with her, just super down to earth. And I was like, oh my god i'm so

like chill and nice and cool um and she is made a career out of being incredibly in touch with her feelings and empathetic and is a beautiful songwriter to the point where everyone finds it so relatable and that's kind of her gift and she connects with us and we feel seen and heard by listening to taylor swift and and she released this longer version of this song all too well and in the music video and by the way if you haven't seen the music video and you listen to this podcast you should hit pause you should go to youtube you should google taylor's version of all too well and you should watch the 10 minute video because what we decided to do is recap the fight that was in this video. And I thought the reason why we should do that with Dr. Diane is because we talk a lot about relationships

and dating in this podcast. And it is my belief and hope and goal that the people who listen to the show and just the world in general when it comes to love and dating is there's certainly plenty of bad apples out there but i do believe that we have men and women gay straight we just we want to figure out love and dating and relationships we're optimistic about finding our person and we want to have these healthy relationships. And yet we often get it wrong. We find, you know, fights are a part of any relationship, even healthy ones. Early on in dating, we have the best intentions often. And we look back on our relationships and we make a lot of mistakes. on our relationships and we make a lot of mistakes. We have become more enlightened in the past few years, learning about communication styles, attachment styles, which I'm sure we'll

talk about today, which you graced us a little bit when you were on the podcast last time. And we're learning all this new information, but we're also learning at such a speed that we're also misusing a lot of these terms. And with our desire to become enlightened, I think we're kind of screwing up. Obviously, I've been talking a lot about people misdefining terms like gaslighting, love bobbing, stonewalling, narcissism. It's like the internet gave us, it's like the internet walked around and started like handing out simple basic definitions of these words and we're just like oh cool and we're going to try to like take this new tool that we have this information and go around and being like well all right here are your definitions now walk the earth and point out anytime you see this

almost to the detriment i think of relationships because I think it's become a distraction. I don't think we are intending to for most people, but sometimes I think it's become a weapon that we're now using. I want to break this episode down as how can we watch this fight, which I think is a very relatable fight, relatable in the sense that

if we're just looking at what we see, not necessarily, we're not going to like assume, you know, Taylor and obviously the Jake Gyllenhaal part. We're just going to take this fight as like a case study of what we know watching the fight, right? And, you know, what can we take away from it? What can we learn about these situations? Because this is a fight of what seems like two people who are not understanding each other not empathizing seems like one person feels a little bit uh ignored uh invalidated not maybe getting met their emotional infection the other person almost seems like they almost might feel like

they can't get it right. Or maybe this don't feel as strongly as them and feel guilty for that. And they're responding in a toxic way. So how can we watch this? How can we kind of humble ourself to point out things that we have done in relationships? And then how can we use this video to say, well, next time I find myself in this situation, what would Dr. Diane tell me to do? And I think that's our hope of this episode, that I set up some appropriate upfront expectations because this is not about determining whether Jake Gyllenhaal gaslit Taylor Swift.

Like that's not our goal today. We don't know. We're just gonna try to understand this episode and fight and I'll be better lovers and partners for it. I think we can just call them Sadie this this episode and fight and i'll be better lovers and partners for it i think we can just call them sadie and dylan let's just call them sadie and dylan great that way we we just neutralize it do you want to break down the fight first and then we can on a more macro level talk about like redefining again i think it's always a reminder a good reminder what is let's redefine gaslighting let's understand it i'd love to have a discussion about you know what is it about our

society that has taken these terms and adopted them to mean something slightly different than what i was originally meant because people seem to be connecting with some of these moments as a way to articulate a feeling. But is at the same time, is it still dangerous to casually define things, especially when these very things happen? Like gaslighting is a form of abuse. It happens in these extreme cases. And there's a reason why that's there so how do we talk how do we still identify these feelings while still not necessarily blurring the lines between something that is abuse and something that is maybe feeling invalidated I think Nick before we even get to the fight we

need to talk a little bit about what comes before that. Okay. Because here, the way the story plays out, right? She leaves her scarf. Clearly, this relationship is moving fast, you would say, right? She meets the family. She feels this sense of home comfort. They're upstate New York having this amazing time. The wind's blowing in her hair. We already see a snag

because he gets out of the car, throws the keys, right? He's already yelling on the phone with someone else. I don't know who that is. Yeah, like we don't, he's just mad. Right. So then we get to the fight. And yes, the lead up is here suddenly she feels very young. She's the youngest person in the room. Everyone's chatting. They're catching up on 10 years worth, right? So clearly that makes her feel insecure. She goes to touch his hand.

He drops her hand. You can just see her sink. I mean, and we've all been in that moment where your heart just sinks sinks and so then we find them in the kitchen and in the kitchen then he says you're acting pouty yeah like there's a vibe where she and we i think we've been in these fights for like you know you're both either one of you is mad and the other person knows it or you're both mad and you're just like who's gonna bring it up you

know we've we've all been there totally right pre-fight standoff yeah it's like this weird game of chicken and you feel especially you know and when you know your partner's mad at you there's a natural feeling of defensiveness right or and then maybe you're just like and in that situation is it possible too because what we're seeing in this general fight right too and we talked about this last night i think one of the most common relationship problems and you would know better than anyone dealing with you know couples is that often in relationships where there's problems, one person feels invalidated or unloved and the other person feels-

Flooded. Yes, like overwhelmed by the expectations of their partner. And they're doing their best version of that. And the other person thinks that can't be possible that this is your best. I think Sadie is emotionally triggered. version of that and the other person thinks that can't be possible that this is your best i think sadie is emotionally triggered and i think dylan is getting flooded and he is saying this is too much for me because that's my big question too when it comes to gaslighting like what is the definition and then where i'm confused still is that like what we learned from Dr. Solomon, and I've talked with Darlene about it and talked with you about it, is this very specific thing that came from this playbill, this playwright of this kind of perpetuated, systematic, ongoing, deliberate attempt at manipulation, changing someone's reality.

deliberate attempt at manipulation changing someone's reality and where i'm confused and i'm hoping you again can clear the air and it's like people are out there on the internet talking about signs of gaslighting right like like symptoms like you know when you're like i think i have a cold and you google symptoms you're like oh well shit i guess i got it one thing i've saw i've seen a lot is people saying things like well I don't really know how to define it but let me this is this is a sign of gaslighting and my understanding is that gaslighting

it can't just be like a one off thing someone says because it has to be like this perpetual ongoing thing and it seems like a lot of people out there will see an example of gaslighting. Like when someone, when,

when this Dylan guy says something like, Oh, we were having fun until you fucked it up or something like that, which is like a dick thing to say. And certainly could be used as a way to manipulate your partner. But is, does that, you know what i'm saying does that make sense i want to break down the five ways because i think that'll be helpful because

i think two things were actually happening in this kitchen scene so definition of what gaslighting actually is if you want to break it down countering the abusive person questions the memory of the other person like you're making this up, withholding, pretends not to understand, forgetting, an abusive person might deny something, trivializing, and that's what I think is happening here, that you minimize the other person's concern, seeing them as unimportant or irrational, or you can divert, changing the subject. Those are the two things. Now, again, changing the subject. Those are the two things. Now, again, we're painting a picture of what happened even earlier. Sadie clearly, as I said, in my mind has anxious attachments out. She needs a lot of validation, to your point. She needs to feel important. Why she's triggered in that moment? Because she feels like her partner has abandoned her. And that's oftentimes a wound that an anxiously attached person feels. So they interpret the situation as an abandonment. That's an old wound

for them, as opposed to he was just preoccupied with his friends. And then we could talk about how you might handle this in a relationship if this is you. That's I think our hope is that we can watch this and say, here's how people might be feeling. Can you relate in these situations? And then what would you recommend a more productive way? Like if you feel, say, triggered, like you feel ignored by your partner. Yes.

And you feel like you're frustrated by that. They didn't hold your hand. They didn't show you PDA. They gave more attention to your friends, co-workers, et cetera. What's the best way to articulate that? And then also on the flip side, when you feel attacked by your partner and you feel defensive, well, how should we better appropriately handle that as opposed to doing what Dylan did? Should we accept the term of gaslight?

Because which is also interesting, it's not in the diagnostic manual. It's not in the DSM, no. We're overusing it too much to use it as a feeling. It is classically meant that a narcissist, and in the cycle of narcissistic abuse, that also includes like love bombing, and then you devalue and you discard your person excuse me and then you sort of hover and classically gaslighting came into this idea of narcissistic abuse sure so in this moment sure there's a smattering of trivializing and diverting yeah i mean there's a ton of it in this fight.

When I watch the fight, I feel like I've been Sadie where I'm just like, why did you act that way? Why did you treat me this way? Why did you like, that seemed rude. We were around these people and why did you say that?

I feel uncomfortable. And then I've expressed that to partners in the past. I also feel like I've been on Dylan's side of the feeling where it's just like, it's somebody who I know I have been aloof and not present. I've been called out by partners by, and appropriately so been called out, but also I've been attacked by partners where they start yelling at me and I've gotten defensive and I've been like, what are you talking about?

Sure. And so we have to look at this in the pattern of the relationship, right? If he's doing this all the time, and so there's gradations. What I want to say, if you see one person having, they're a great person otherwise, treating you really well, and then one time they're preoccupied with their friends and they don't treat you well, but then they repair it so here's to dylan's point he does come and say i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry and then she says there's nothing else for me to do here and then they kind of move on and we see their love story going on but we know that this was the beginning of the crack as she called it right there's chapters in this short film and that was the first crack and i do believe that it was at that point too

that dylan got flooded by sadie like oh shit he says it oh shit now this yeah that i'm held hostage so he said a couple things first the trivializing part i'm not making you feel that way you're feeling that way that was triggering for people to watch. And then he said, now you're holding me hostage. And he was calling her selfish. Versus, and now Sadie's not without fault here. She was also emotional and yes, could have done a better job. But basically she said, you treated me differently.

So to me, there's an emotional imbalance here. That she's saying you treated me differently. So to me, there's an emotional imbalance here that she's saying you treated me differently. And he's going off saying, you're selfish and you're emotional. And how dare you kind of do this to me, hold me hostage. So that felt like a higher weight. What do you mean? Meaning that if we're comparing the two, she's clearly emotional, but also she's clearly more invested. I mean, as it plays out, right,

we see that Sadie, there's an emotional imbalance because she's fallen for him harder than he's fallen for her. Yeah. It seems like he doesn't love her the same way. Sadie's more in love with Dylan. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

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slash V-I-A-L-L today. That's masterclass dot com slash v i a l l terms apply but i'm assuming like in early relationships that's that's a common thing right to like two people meet you're dating for a couple months one person could be really excited the other person could be i really like this person they're great but like just a little slower and maybe and that could be for a variety of reasons could be maybe they got out of a relationship and they're still like slowly, they're excited, they're capable of dating, but just a little bit more reserved

because maybe they fell hard the last time, et cetera, et cetera, or who knows, you know? And so how do we deal with that? You know, I guess what I'm trying to, I'd love to have these tools provided by you is because all these little moments that we're talking about, they're so relatable in terms of the disconnect between, it's really just all these moments, it seems like, are expectation versus reality. In relationships, we have an expectation of ourselves and our partners,

and then we have the reality of the situation. And we often, our expectations aren't matching our reality. And we sometimes try to force it, like force it, like square peg, round hole. And we do it in a way that doesn't work. Sure, and in a more ideal world, Sadie would have also calmed down first because the problem here is when you're triggered you are emotionally charged okay she's upset he's upset nothing good

comes of that we actually have studies that say that we can predict with accuracy couples that break up because their blood pressure gets up too high over 100 beats per minute without exercising. And John Gottman has done studies to predict couples. If they do that very often, they're more likely to break up. Is that a personality thing or is that a compatibility thing? It's more that you both are triggering each other. So that could be anyone. Because we've met people who seem to be more reactionary than others. Sure, sure.

Does that play a role or is it just? So it does come back to your attachment style. Okay. Because Sadie is the more anxiously attached person. Everything has more meaning, more weight. She's hanging on his every word, his every look, what he does or doesn't do. I do believe, again, he got flooded by her in that moment. And you can start to see him shutting down, thinking, is this what I'm signing up for

longer term? And then later, eventually, he breaks up with her. If a more perfect world, in that moment, Sadie would say, I felt really lonely. I know you didn't mean to. You were preoccupied with your friends. But if that were to happen again, it would mean a lot to me if you held my hand. If you talked, if you put your arm around me, if you talked about us. Because she also says in the song, you kept me like a secret.

I kept you like an oath. Right? There's a difference. There's good context also with I mean sources have said that she was like planning on saving herself for marriage and then like really thought she was going to marry him so they like slept together that was the first time she had ever slept with anyone and I feel like that line might have been hinting at that because like for her it meant so much and she was like that was an oath and like it was and he was kind of just like had this little girl on

the side like that's what a secret feels like to me i'm curious with you like often early relationships people are dating and some people are like i you one night you have a great date call on mom and be like i had an amazing date and other people are we'll see we're slow to tell friends how much does that play a role early on in dating where someone it feet like again expectation versus reality you want your purse the other person be just as excited as you but they they don't they're it feels like they keep you a secret because my advice to every anxious person i call her nervous nora and she's like 46 of the population i'm just gonna throw out there's just like a general nervous Nora as anyone who has an anxious attachment style. 46%.

46% according to my quiz data, which I think is what happens. And so I say, slow your roll, girl. You have to calm down. It's okay to like him, but take a wait and see approach. If you, and yes, I did thought she probably lost her virginity. Calm down. It's okay to like him, but take a wait and see approach. And yes, I did thought she probably lost her virginity. I didn't know if that was confirmed or not, but all the red too, the red scarf and the red mug and the red lipstick. I mean, there were lots of, again, metaphors to that.

So clearly your first love is a big deal. Oh my God. It's a huge deal. So hard to get over. And she kept saying, you know, we'll remember this. And she's just clearly hurt that it wasn't, it didn't mean the same to him as it meant to her. And then I think talking about ghosting,

then as we move the story along, then he doesn't show up for her birthday. And I think the rest of the story to me felt- Were they still up for her birthday and i think the the rest of the story were they still dating in that on her birthday so they broke up i think early december her birthday is december 13th so i think there was potentially an expectation that he would come which is what the song the moment i knew is about because she just stood around like waiting for him and then ended up crying at her birthday because he never showed up but in the, the moment I knew everyone was asking where he was. So clearly people either still thought they were together or there was like, they were still clearly ending things. So in a more perfect world,

also Dylan would have said, you're flooding me right now. This is too much. I feel like you're ahead of me. And that's why a lot of people do ghost. And I think it's important if we just look at dating trends that let's say he's the avoidant person. I don't know this for sure, but he needs something different. He needs space, peace, distance, quiet, respect. She needs love, validation, acknowledgement, closeness. So they have competing needs. And these are the majority of couples I see. He didn't ask for space. He broke up with her because oftentimes this is the case. The avoidant person feels the pressure

or the weight of the relationship is on them. And if I'm not vibing you the same way and I can see that you are so in love with me, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Yeah, it's almost seems like people will say, this is only gonna end with me hurting you. That's right. I'm just gonna break up with you now.

Even if I'm hurting you now, it's less hurt than what it's going to be. And I don't know how to deal with that. That's right. And it felt cruel to her, right? She said it was a cruel breakup. And then the only thing he could say is, well, it's your age.

Because he didn't have the words or the language for it. And oftentimes, this is when I work with people, oftentimes men who have the more avoidance stance because boys are less likely to be raised in a more emotional kind of home. And so he doesn't have the words for it to talk about how to be vulnerable, how to stay in it. Because the three-month mark, which is also significant in a dating relationship, usually it is about month three or four where you really do decide, are we going to go for it or not?

And I think that was the stress point. That's what we talk about in attachment styles. It's the boiling point where you start to see differences. She needed something different than he needed. And that's really what happened here. And then she didn't get the closure in my mind and hence that's why she reels from it and why it's so difficult because she's also given up so much of herself for him yeah and then she takes

that energy and writes it in her book i always get get asked, why did he or she say this when we broke up? What did it mean? Or things like that. And it's just like, it was the heat of the moment when you're trying to break up with someone, you're trying to get out of a situation and for the most time, try not to hurt them, knowing that you are hurting them with the action of breaking up. So we often say things we don't even know what we're saying or mean, and not that that's okay, but we in the receiving end need to be careful putting so much weight on what's said in the breakup as to why it broke up

because we're going to reassess. I mean, I'm assuming Sadie Taylor or whatever. Again, she wrote a song 10 years ago. I'm guessing Taylor has answered a lot of her own questions as an adult. Absolutely. And I think personally we put too much emphasis on closure. Closure is not something that you're going to get from this person. You give it to yourself.

You say, I learned something from this. Part of the question is how did you get so ahead of yourself? So taking responsibility for your own part of it. How did you wrap yourself around the story of this emotionally unavailable person and get, again, so wrapped up so quickly? And I think that's the ownership that we can learn after the fact and say, well, I need to work on this in the future because that's my pattern of attaching too quickly. Another question I want to ask you about, a lot of times we hear in, let's say, toxic relationships.

And would you say that there's a difference between relationships that have toxicity and relationships that are just straight up abusive, right? Because I think we've all said or things that we recognize, like, that was not, that was toxic. Like, I was being toxic in that moment. Is that was not i that was toxic like that i was i was being toxic in that moment is that that's right there's and it's the same thing with how do we define narcissism as a personality trait because it is diagnosable and that's a pervasive way of being

versus what is narcissistic behavior yeah like what is being selfish that's right being self-consumed in this moment where you're like i oh my God, for three months, I was like, all I cared about was me. Why don't, you know, and like we have these, you know, we do that sometimes. Sure, and so we're all on a continuum. But if this is happening for you and you're a young woman

and you have your boyfriend who's done this, you approach him the first time with goodwill. Honey, I know you love me, but you were preoccupied what I need from you next time. Now, progress that. If he is truly a narcissist, he's going to dismiss that. He's going to say, what are you talking about? He's not going to take that feedback in, and then it's going to continue. So, that's what you're talking about more abusive, and that might even lead to domestic violence, where the person is being physically, emotionally abused.

So it's all a range. You might be toxic once, you might have acted out in a toxic way, but that doesn't mean you're a toxic person or an abusive person. And so we're differentiating that. Yeah, and I think that's kind of like, as we learn these terms, we're identifying these things. And it's so easy to see when it's happening to us, hard to see when we're not looking in the mirror. Oftentimes in these

relationships, people will say they'll feel stuck. We will recognize these patterns in our partners. And we all did the kind of a, I wanted to fix them you know we this has been going on for a while but how do we determine the right time to get out because people will talk like they're stuck or or in let's say if you are dating a nurse an actual person are there people who are a person who's narcissistic are there people who like what role and responsibility is it on us in a relationship where it's when do we are we fighting too much i guess versus actually calling it stuck as if we don't actually have ability to say this isn't healthy for me i need to remove myself i need to leave um michelle and the bachelorette you haven't seen the episode she literally talks about how

she was getting physically sick and until until the relationship ended and she removed herself that she started feeling better. She didn't say she couldn't get out, that she almost implied that she was just trying so hard to make it work. So here's the classic thing. The anxiously attached person usually has a parent who's available sometimes, not other. They learn the habit of working hard. And if that's me, I learned that this is love. So I got to get in there. I got to fix you.

I got to try harder. And if I love them more, if I love them through it, they'll turn around. But what you have to do is stay conscious. Your head, heart, and mind. Have a journal. I tell everyone, one of the best advice pieces your head, heart, and mind. Have a journal. I tell everyone, one of the best advice pieces, you're dating, write it down in your journal. Your journal doesn't lie. You have that weird feeling afterwards of the situation, go back and read it and reread it. Look for patterns, not just one-time behaviors. But if you're starting to feel like

you're losing yourself, if you're starting to feel like you are, this person is holding power over you and your life is getting smaller and you're feeling bad about yourself, that's time to get out. Those are signs to say, this is not healthy. This is not making me a better person. I don't feel good about myself. I feel like I've kind of lost myself. Losing yourself is another sign. And people can also get into, again, people pleasing. So I don't feel you start saying to yourself, I don't like you don't recognize the person. That's right. And a part, a big part of it is fear of being alone. So how can people get better about this?

Recognize that I'm OK on my own. Recognize that I would rather be empowered. And I think that's the positive story about here, Taylor being empowered to say, you know, I made something. This is like her redemption song. And she's saying, I'm not going to let this control me anymore. Yeah. So, the same thing for any single woman to say, I have to decide and be in a good place myself to welcome love in. But if it's getting ugly, and I'm losing myself, I'm going too fast, I'm getting too

attached to my self esteem is going down. This is not healthy for me. You don't want that for the long term. And you more more women tend to be anxious attached? Yes. Well, so it's 46 then we have some who are also avoidant women it's it's your family of origin is what sets the tone for how you will the way you describe it i would i would guess i would more anxious attached and i feel like i get it from my mom do you have an opinion on this from a little bit you might know yeah i i can see that i mean you you love easily you love to love um you you fall for people we talked about that in your experience and that fighter mentality like early in my relationships i was i was the fixer yeah i was like all right you can break up with me again i'll just let me know what i could fix you know like nick i'm the same so i can totally

relate and my my dad was a little more- Certainly younger me. Yeah. And my mom was certainly anxious. And so we pick this up from our parents. We do just because we have hundreds of thousands of experiences with them. It's going to imprint on us. And so therefore, if I want to heal though, if I want to heal in a good relationship, I'm going to need to heal myself, my nervous system, my nervous mindset, my nervous behaviors. And then I need to also connect with my partner because the partner is half. And when you talked earlier about what could be some techniques, I'll give you a technique that people can use for couples.

It's called leveling. In every relationship, there's a person who's complaining, right? every relationship there's a person who's complaining right sadie is the one here complaining louder but dylan also had his own complaints sure and if i was a therapist working with them i would actually need to bring out both of them because what happens is the imbalance the person who has the complaint is like higher up in some ways and the other person feels like my feelings are invalidated here also because I don't have equal weight, equal footing with this. Yeah, I feel like that's a very relatable feeling

for everyone. I mean, yeah. So as therapists, we also want to connect with the person who's not bringing forward the issue because I know that there's something going on there and it actually helps the person. If I'm Sadie and I have all these issues, if I hear from Dylan that he has issues too,

I actually feel relaxed more. Yeah, that makes sense. It levels me out. Because I also feel like, again, in most of these cases, we're talking about people who have the best intentions. They're like, oh, you know, especially how many young couples we're just like, why can't we just get back to when we were like, we're so in love, right? Because it's the honeymoon phase.

You haven't really dug deep or haven't hung out with each other long enough to know each other. But then you start doing and you're trying to find that thing. And that does make a lot of sense where it's just like, okay, it's not just me frustrated. You're frustrated. So now, yeah, that makes a lot of sense where it's just like, okay, it's not just me frustrated. You're frustrated. So now, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so if I approach my partner and I said, you know what? You're really scared about moving in or you're really scared taking this next step. So am I.

You see, I approach it and I give you space to actually feel ambivalence. But if I, as a lot of women do, I'm certain you're the one. I know, and if you don't think that I'm the one, and then where's the man to go with that? So if we can approach it with, I'm scared too, and I'm not so certain, how about we figure it out together? You see, that opens up a whole other world for this relationship to feel like it gets on some equal playing ground to actually then build a foundation. So my encouragement to women is recognize that you might be super excited, but use a wait and see and then give your partner some space

to feel ambiguous because ambiguity is actually more common than people think. At all stages of relationship, you could be going along courting, but then you feel ambiguous. This is a big question i don't know i mean i feel like nowadays that's more and more common of course relation people court and date for longer now than ever we're like super like vague about like defining a relationship and who we're dating and are we if we have a defined relationship do we talk about it like it's i think vagueness and ambiguity has become the new norm. And here's the other thing. We have the define the relationship talk usually, who are we?

But then what happens is you end up in this limbo phase where you're together for a long time and now you need to define the future. It's like, now I need to talk about, okay, what are the next stages and how do we move this along? But I think there's healthy relationships. Back to the point, people have to have hope, right? There's healthy relationships. Secure people don't usually love bomb. They don't need to come on so strong. Oftentimes, people who are insecure will act out in these ways. So if we take all the terms, ghosting, gaslighting,

stonewalling, and we put those in context, they're more likely to be done by an insecure person. But we all at times can be insecure, right? That's right. Like you said, there's a spectrum of times it might come up. What is love bombing? What is stonewalling? Again, I think these are more terms that are thrown out.

And again, after you define love bombing? What is stonewalling? Again, I think these are another more terms are thrown out. And again, like after you define love bombing, what's the difference between being excited and getting carried away with your feelings versus someone who's being manipulative and potentially abusive with their love bombing? Absolutely. So I give a classic example of love bombing and I use myself as an example. So I met this guy once, Nick, met him out once for coffee. We hit it off and then he was taking a trip. He sent me two dozen roses every day for a week at my office.

It's a lot. A lot. But at first, right, you're flattered. The woman's like, oh my God, this is like so amazing. He sent me roses, right? But then what's underneath the behavior, like look at the thorns, what was underneath that behavior

was to get me into a relationship quickly. So he had two children and he traveled a lot. And I suddenly became like the nanny. I was suddenly like in this relationship because oftentimes love bombing is about progressing the relationship unnaturally fast. So it almost comes with a price. That's exactly right.

So the price has a tag and the tag is I want you, the insecure person doesn't want you to have to be ambivalent with them. They want to get to a commitment quickly and if i give you lots of gifts and i shower you and i tell you you're the one right away i'm gonna hook you quicker so i don't have to feel the ambivalence from you interesting yeah that makes a lot of sense and before you know it then i'm in this relationship with this person and suddenly i'm well, that honeymoon period lasted very short. And love bombing can also come at later stages, too.

Someone says, you know, I'm uncomfortable with everything you're doing. I break up with you. And then you love bomb me after the fact. You start sending me gifts. But the big takeaway, it comes, you will probably, if you're being love bombed, if you're paying attention, it sounds like you will quickly find out what the cost of that action is.

That's right. If you pay attention, you're getting back together, moving in, whatever. Whatever that stage of relationship, it comes with a cost. Yes.

As opposed to maybe someone who meets you you're super excited they find themselves to be a romantic and and someone asked me what's the difference and i i took a unprofessional stab at answering the question and and said well if if someone gets excited that person should be able when you check them being saying hey well we just met kind of i want to take it slow they would recognize the speed at which oh yes i i know i know i'm getting carried away i'm just excited that's exactly right and kind of humble himself the love bomber might try to suggest that reality doesn't apply to them. They will justify it. They will make you

feel bad for questioning their intention. That's right. And then ask for the thing they wanted all the time. So if they're a narcissist who's love bombing you, then they are, again, going to be devaluing you, kind of disregarding you, and then hovering. So that falls in the spectrum, which is I want to hook, you know is I want to get you locked in quickly. And then when you give me feedback, I can't tolerate that because Narcissus, who was a Greek god, fell in love with his own image. And he can't handle feedback. Remember, the narcissist actually lacks empathy, which is a whole different thing. I mean, it's like this person. And emotional people,

anxiously attached people are less likely to be narcissists. Some of them can. More avoidance can be narcissists because they have a hard time just taking in emotional content. And that somehow means that you are seeing something wrong with me. And I've created such a facade to make people think that I'm great, that if you start cracking away at that, I'm going to be defensive. I find it fascinating when people say things now that we've talked and learned and people are talking about narcissism so much more recently. They'll be like, I wonder if I'm dating a narcissist. I think my person is a narcissist.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, we don't know how to diagnose this. But just the thought would suggest that maybe you should leave. Why do we find ourselves not doing the obvious in those situations where we're talking to our friends and calling in and being like, I think this, am I dating a toxic, narcissistic person? And I'm like, I don't know, but you're like, it sounds like you're dating a selfish person who maybe they're at a bad time of their life

or they feel really insecure and they're getting carried away with trying to get validation. But like, it seems like maybe they need to work on themselves. Why do we want to stay in these? Well, we're back to the pattern of working too hard. And here's the other thing. And Taylor, even in her song, she used the word shame, which is a really impactful word.

Because we can feel shame about our own emotional needs. Like, I am too needy. I'm too much. I felt this from other people. Like I am too needy. I'm too much. I felt this from other people. So I come into this relationship already feeling like not completely empowered or settled.

So I'm going to think, well, maybe I can still make it work. And so to your point, like, why don't you just leave? Because I'm afraid of abandonment. I'm afraid to be alone. It's a much bigger deal than you think. I mean, I have definitely had clients or other people that said, you know, it sounds so easy just say to leave. It's the hardest thing in the world.

And so it is oftentimes the avoidant person who ends up leaving the relationship because the anxious person can't even imagine pulling the trigger on that. Yeah, but they're capable of it. Of course. Because again, when I was just like wondering, you're describing these two attachment styles and 20 something me sounded like the way you're describing it like anxious attachment to a t like i was like there's no such thing as breaking up my parents fought hard this is what they taught me my first love it was like i would be like oh fuck are you breaking up with me today or thursday you know and and eventually i mean it took me years but like eventually i realized again what i was doing and and my unwillingness to like accept that maybe

this wasn't healthy for us and i needed to leave and be okay with being alone and finally was able to do that. So I'd certainly empathize with the challenges, but yet being someone who has done it, do we just have to like take years? Like I took so long to learn that tough lesson. Can we speed it up? Yeah yeah can anxious attachment people learn these tools to to not you know like i talk about like i just i missed out on so much in these moments while i was fighting for these relationships and especially my first love and when we would fight or when she would break up with me i would just get into my feelings and and just focus obsess of like how what i could do better what i could work on and why was i you know and i missed out on friends

and families and experiences and i and it all in the name of love and all because it was like too hard you know i tell this joke where my dad one day was just like, I'll never forget it. It was sitting at the kitchen table. He's just like, you're just going to have to get over it. And he was just at his wit's end with me just being, you know. And I said to him, there's a better chance I'm going to fly. And I meant it. I meant that I was more likely to obtain a superpower

that would cause me to levitate and fly than get over it and move on. Thank you for sharing that, Nick. But we don't want to minimize how hard it is, right? I can totally feel that. I have had so many heartaches myself. But I do think that we can speed it up a bit. And so how can we?

Well, we can learn secrets from the secure person because not everybody is insecure. I want to put that in context. I call my secure person Secure Sophia. Secure doesn't feel this way. She doesn't. Sophia or Steve doesn't feel that, doesn't worry about abandonment, doesn't feel flooded, doesn't worry about being vulnerable. What they have is the power to stay calm in their body so they don't race ahead.

They feel the flutter, but they don't get so wrapped up in their own nervous system. Their nervous system is regulated, we call it, so they can kind of manage and they're not having these highs and lows. They can also think rationally. And their story about love is a positive one because the other problem, talking about expectations and hurt, the anxious person has this story of it's only a matter of time before somebody disappoints me and they carry all their hurt from relationship to relationship as opposed to secure Sophia or Steve says you know love like you've never been hurt they don't take it all so personally so I can enter into my next relationship and move on quicker, actually, with a sense of

confidence. So I have a calm body. I have a story that's positive about love. I have a calm mindset. I teach people mindset tools. And I can then actually act with confidence, which means if Dylan came to me and he was overreacting, I'd say, dude, what are you doing? I don't know if you noticed,

but you did look a little bit self-absorbed there and you didn't do much. And with objectivity, without my own overreaction, I could hold you to what you're doing. And now we're onto something. And then as a couple together, one secure person can actually really help the other person heal. And that's called earned attachment, where a couple then really co-regulates with each other, helps each other calm down, because that's what successful couples do. They help each other calm down, relax into the relationship, and now you have corrective experiences that counteract all the hundreds of thousands of negative experiences you had in your family growing up.

And how do you identify those things because that all sounds great sounds yep we all we all want that right and and is it just a learned experience is it like you know because you're talking it's just like i feel like i have that now in my current relationship depending on the fight or whatever uh it might take longer to get there darlene taught me that if if for fighting for longer than 10 minutes we just take a time out time out is a great because we're just like we're being our childlike selves and not that we have to exercise these muscles all that often thankfully i'm thankful that for the first time in my romantic life that I have a partner who, like what you described, it's like we do a better job of getting ourselves out of these insecurities and states than escalating them. but like how is it just a matter of like hiring fast i mean hiring slow firing fast in terms of like when we're dating and out there and trying to find this person like how do we identify whether

we're dating someone that is anxious attached and has like work to do on themselves because like we want to be empathetic and being like i don't know i have work to do on me and who i'm not how do i you know what i'm saying like here's the thing nobody's perfect and sometimes i give people too much benefit of the doubt I know for me as an anxious person I would give people too many chances but if I was more Sophia and I had a model and I knew that there was a secure person out there and I could model after her and be more objective in these conversations and these touch points then I think I could have just weeded through them faster and had less heartache so I've been doing this psychotherapy for over 20 years. And I've really just identified this four-step model.

Like these are the key things. And we know it's called bottom-up healing, which means from your brainstem up. It is your nervous system. It is the way that you think. And you have to work at them. Rinse, wash, and repeat. It's like doing therapy, doing training for your body to get stronger because again the players are out there if even gross there's 10 to 15 percent of

people who are narcissists we used to think it was one percent narcissistic personality disorder which is very severe but if if 10 to 15 percent are in this realm you've got to just be fast enough and quick enough and nimble enough that's actual narcissists or people who like is it on the spectrum on the spectrum that's right so so but that's a lot more than that yeah yeah so if you write a room of 10 people um pay attention so what i say two people could be that's right so i say pay attention notice yourself but work on yourself because if you're going from relationship to relationship just to avoid the feelings of loneliness, you have to be so certain with yourself to get to that point. And we can save some people. The fact that we're even having this podcast, we can save some people, you and I, in our experiences,

my clinical experiences, to help them move through this faster. But if you feel stuck, you're not stuck. You're scared. Identify, we call it name it detainment, identify your fears, I'm scared, and think through that. I've been through this before. I've done hard things before. I can do it again, but my gut is telling me

I'm never gonna get my needs met with this person. I need to actually be in a relationship that's easier. But here's the other thing. Secure functioning people are sometimes boring. Right? They are. Yeah. And so we go, oh my God, I want like a secure Steve.

He's so like, you're great. I'm like, he's not going to love you. It's kind of boring. We all joke. I think we've all been there in relationships. I've had it in my relationships and even like natalie and i will joke sometimes where you know we are aware of it but it would be like let's fight about how much we love each other you know in a playful way we make these jokes right you're right like we have to acknowledge that the reason why we loved the

notebook so much it was because it seemed exciting i I want a guy who's going to threaten to kill himself on a Ferris wheel so that I go on a date with him. Like, that's romantic. And we watched it. He's doing all of these grand gestures. And we do have to normalize it and say, that is not love. That is infatuation.

That is too much. Again, back to, he wants to avoid his own anxious feelings of ambivalence that you'll put him through otherwise. And so you have to look at underlying this. But my advice is always get help, get therapy, talk to other people, be more objective, be your own objective person, write in your journal, go through all of these things. And the best advice is look for patterns. These aren't one-offs. That's why it's so hard to just analyze a one-off and say, what is that?

It's more of the bigger pattern that we're looking for. For the person who's in their first love, because the first seems to always be the hardest to get over because, I don't know, in my experience, you just don't know the difference. It was easier to get over my second heartbreak because even though it hurt as much and maybe even more in the moment, I was like, I have gotten over this before. And I don't know how I'm going to get over it this time,

but I do know it's possible. And just that thought alone was incredibly beneficial to me. But for the person who doesn't have that perspective or foresight, who is afraid of being alone, are there tools or reminders to give them the encouragement they might need to take that leap of faith for themselves and face that fear of being alone when they know deep down that maybe this isn't the healthiest relationship for them well the data says that quick break relationships that go no contact are easier to get over than the

ones that go on and on and part part of this relationship is the tearing off the band-aid again and again and then the expectations and it's like the hurt the heart needs time to heal and it's like the heart needs time to heal. Okay, so in grief, your heart just needs time to heal. Be gentle with yourself. Be compassionate. Do lovely things. Take a trip that you would have never gone with your ex.

Create novel experiences. Surround yourself with fun, happy people. Try a new hobby. Go back to graduate school. Do something different for you. Invest in yourself different invest in yourself to get over your ex then it's not so scary because you you're not going to be you're going to be less likely to invest throw yourself back into the next relationship so grief is grief we wish that that went along faster or smoother you're going to have your ups and downs. The bargaining stage is where like, if only if I talked to him,

maybe if he's in therapy, how about this? And how about that? We bargain with ourselves a lot in those moments. Too much bargaining. He wasn't your person. I was really good at bargaining with myself. Right?

Like at dangerous levels when I was younger. Well, if I just, you know what? I can put up with this. You know what? This is okay. Yeah. Yeah.

It's fun that she did this to me. It's okay yeah you'll do anything to get that hit again because it is a biochemical thing it's dopamine serotonin you get that hit of love it is chemically something that's happened do you think people can be addicted to that feeling of getting back together with their ex like it becomes this thing that it's not your typical addiction if we look at that it's that's questionable about love addiction but in the brain what's happening your brain looks like you have ocd obsessive compulsive disorder your brain is circulating on the same thought

again and again and again and the feeling of obsessing over having that dopamine serotonin rush again is powerful. Yes. It can drive you to overlook a lot of negative behaviors. But if you're in a calmer state, if you've done your healing, if you recognize that's my anxious attachment, that's my avoidant attachment, if you work through that and then actually practice new behaviors, you're never going to go back. It's only going to be up and now you're going to have more skills for the next person. And again, as someone who's lived it and done it, it's like, yeah, I sometimes wish I could talk to younger me and it's tough, but it's a real challenge to try to, especially the first time, your excitement levels.

And part of us is we just want to enjoy falling in love. You meet someone, you're like, oh, shit, all right, well, what do I need to be aware of going in? Sometimes you just want to get in the car and drive. It's a great feeling, right? So know that you're stronger than you think. Know that you can handle it again nobody can anticipate other grief and you'll get through it because you have to yeah we're always so afraid to move on and we're stronger than we think in that case and yet we're so willing to continue

to hurt ourselves through our whatever it's stubbornness or fear like that fear of moving on also turns in this willingness to like keep taking these metaphorical punches with our insecurities being triggered our emotions be you know feeling like we're not ourselves just like we i think we all have been in relationships where you wake up you're just you're miserable we've stayed in miserable relationships for so long and it's just like that take that strength that you've shown or that ability to endure this pain and apply it to just being alone well i do love taylor's that the quote is love is short forgetting is long and um also that phrase that we don't have the ending yet you don't know your end story.

And it all makes sense in the end. We're not there yet. Like if I had known, if someone could have had a crystal ball and told me, oh, Diane, this is going to be one in a series of many, you would look at it differently. But in the moment, you don't have that perspective. So that's what we can tell our younger selves, younger people, that your story's not over yet. You're just

beginning. And if you can look at it and say, what can I learn from it? What can I grow? And that was me. And I did these things. And next time I'm going to check in with myself and do these things differently. Then you've actually made something of it. One thing about the music video that maybe this is just the film school in me, but like the blocking for the fight scene felt very, very like it illuminated what was happening, which is like, they were both cleaning up the kitchen and she was there scrubbing plates and he was going and getting the plates and he kept putting them in the sink.

So she had more and more plates to scrub. And it feels like that was kind of in terms of like, why is it so hard to walk away from this emotional labor is because I think in that moment you're insecure and you just want to get the thing done. You just want to clean all the plates. You just want to get the thing done. You just want to clean all the plates. You just want to get through this fight and you're so focused on like getting the task done that it's hard.

I think sometimes that can, and you know that your partner isn't helping you maybe the way you want to, but you just want the kitchen to be clean. You just want to get it done and then you kind of lose sight of like how futile it might be. That's that challenge too, because you're just,

we've been told either by our parents or by TV or movies that love is pain and that we have to like be willing to work and work and it's in our vows you know and things like that and and you know obviously that those are all true things I either know marriage is perfect we have to go through ups and downs right we have to endure it but it's finding that balance between what is acceptable and and holding and setting our own boundaries in our relationships holding ourselves accountable enforcing those boundaries and then accepting them from our partners versus taking on all that weight of the relationship because i can you know because you're determined

to make it work you're you're like I've decided this is going to be my relationship and I'll make it yeah like and I've and let's face it there's nothing harder than a relationship because a relationship you're only responsible for 50 percent right my career I can work hard and I'm responsible for 100 of that but that is the frustration because no matter how hard you decide, it's got to be two people committed to it. But yes, we have this analogy that relationships are work. What they are is time. I say a good judge of a relationship is it's easy, not hard, right? If you're working too hard at the beginning, I mean, you put energy into sustaining the love and quality time together in having date nights and doing special things. But it shouldn't be that hard.

And if it is, it's not a good sign. My favorite quote is relationships are like farts. If you have to try too hard, it's probably shit. I love it. Allie coming in with a good fart joke. Love that. Gotta quote you. That is something I had to learn for for myself it took me a while and i because younger me there was no as long if it was if it was work and i was willing

to do it it was special as opposed to understanding the difference between like you said the hard work should be going into continuing what is already great and maintaining because that is hard work, especially for a lifetime, not constantly fixing something that's never even worked properly. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're secure functioning together, then there's so much more energy to do other things. Because, right, if one person's super emotional, it's taking up a lot of the energy of the relationship to manage the insecurity so again couples therapy is another way to move beyond that to now you've made a good investment this person is good for you then then you want to maintain

maintain that and you might need some help about it and and before we wrap what is can you define stonewalling for us stonewalling um is another way of blocking like i give you something and you block me and you say no um it could be like eye rolling um one of the other signs of a relationship if you ever notice this if you ever see anyone eye rolling you talk to them and they go roll their eyes be very careful that's the number one reason why relationships don't work out eye rolling it's yeah it's dismissive right i mean it's if someone's talking to you and and they roll your eyes it's it's a horrible feeling so these are just

diverting ways right i give you something you don't listen so everyone makes mistakes to our point earlier we all have moments of that where we could be considered toxic, where a piece of our behavior could look really negative, but it's how the partner responds in the repair that's crucial. How, if I come to you and say, I was really hurt because of this,

how do you receive me now? Do you get defensive and stonewall me? Or do you open your heart and say yeah i could see that so one's workable and one isn't what is the appropriate amount of patience for again because like depending on the day that we had things going on our emotional kind of state of mind going into a fight can all impact how we go about a fight, right? So what is the appropriate amount of patience for your partner if you feel like, okay, wait, this feels like stonewalling and checking that versus like how much rope should we give our partners?

Or if they stonewall all the time, I'm in a toxic abusive relationship versus like someone having a bad day and feeling stonewalled. Well, so back to the point earlier that we talked about even gaslighting. I'm very careful to ever use these clinical terms with anyone. I'm not going to tell my husband you're gaslighting me or you're stonewalling me. Should we stop using that in our relationships? I think we should. I think we should actually keep them for significant situations where there

is a pattern. And even then, the person's not going to give me the validation I need. Then I might need to talk to a therapist about all of these sets of behaviors and then make my own decision. But if I say to you, you're gaslighting me, where are we going to go with that? Because you're going to feel blocked. You're going to feel like, wow, I'm this horrible person. It's not a conversation opener. So let's be careful. Let's just say, speak to your own feelings. I'm feeling hurt. I'm feeling invalidated. And make a request. So in couples therapy, I say it's a complaint is different than a request. A request is, hey, next time, could we do it differently? Could you hold my hand? Could we do these things? A complaint is you always,

you never, how come? There's a very different vibe to it. It's always never stuff. That's right. I hate it. I always, it's something we do. So speak to your own lived experiences and make a request for something else.

That's perfectly, that's great communication. Final question before we go. And we have a big audience of women that we, obviously I love and adore, you're my audience. I've always tried to be empathetic with my audience and this show has helped me in my relationships and myself. It does feel like,

and maybe it's because women are more in touch with their feelings and seem to be more willing to be more empathetic or maybe they're interested in these phrases, but it does feel like the gaslighting the love bombing the stonewalling it seems like the perception is that it's exclusive to men doing it to women and is that just a result of women paying attention to these terms more? But in heterosexual relationships, I think we're often doing it to each other or no? Well, there could be equal numbers of women who are gaslighting. I think if the man's more emotional and he interprets it, what her behavior and that's

what she's doing, it's not really gender specific. her behavior and that's what she's doing it's not really gender specific but the women tend to feel more fear of men as opposed to men feeling afraid of women just biologically so that's why i think we see the emphasis more on women holding on to these terms because there is more idea of threat that i could be hurt by a man physically or otherwise, as opposed to men don't recognize that as much. That makes sense. And I feel like that's why like the power of naming something where it's like feeling like connected and just feeling like so much of the time,

it's like you're feeling unvalidated. So I think in some ways it's validating having a term that feels like it is encompassing an experience. But then of course the debate is like, but if you are using that term to describe a lesser like thing on the spectrum of that experience like are you diluting the term or you know or creating new problems in the relationship because you're right because that's the thing is you know someone dm'd me and i thought stated it well is that like there's a reason why these terms are being so rapidly adapted because i think it's putting i think

there's a lot of people and especially women in these relationships for the first time feel like they can identify this behavior. Because by definition, it's so sneaky and it's so easy for you to write off and say, no, I'm being dramatic. I'm being X, Y, Z.

And so, yeah, to have like, for the first time it feel like, oh, we're all talking about this specific thing and we understand what it is. Sure think hindsight is 2020 but it's also very dangerous to look go back and just be like well this was how like i have a very one-sided opinion of all my relationships it's my side right i can try to empathize with my exes and things like that but like you know i think again my concern sometimes with these terms is it helps us identify with these behaviors and fakes us feel seen. But I think it does a lot of

what we talked about this past hours. How do we hold ourselves more accountable to help us put ourselves in these healthier situations? Sure. It's the same thing like attachment styles. If I label it, then I understand I have a name for it. It's called my anxiety.. It's my nervousness. Then I can actually cure my nervousness. If I label it as this is a behavior and we can all agree that it's a negative, toxic behavior. But then the question is, as I look at it from a couple's perspective, then what to do with it? Then do I raise it? But I have to get back to making a request what I want different. I have to own and talk about my experience because if I don't tell you how I'm feeling, I can't expect you magically to mind read and fix it. So I'm always thinking about, okay, let's identify. And then if it keeps happening, then that's a whole different level.

Yeah. Because almost like the identify helps you feel seen, but in some ways it feels like it almost alleviates any of the role you're playing in a sense. It's like, oh, well, you were doing this and I guess then I'm good. Because because if you were doing that then i couldn't have been doing anything wrong yeah or even if if we go back to like narcissism so i have to hold myself accountable like well how am i being attracted to all of these how am i allowing these people into my life what am i doing um it's not just like, oh, yet another narcissist. What do I do with that? Right? Now I have to then take it in and say, what do I need to do to react differently or how to respond or teach other people then what ownership do you play in that?

Yeah. Well, Dr. Diane, we could go on forever, but we do have to wrap it up. As always, thank you so much. I hope that you guys learned i know i learned a lot and i hope you guys found this enjoyable not only fun talking about a cultural relevant topic but also informative because i mean these are just some of the things that we constantly get wrong constantly are working on trying to get right and i think we're all just trying to find that relationship that makes us feel that it's worth it

good and worth it and healthy and happy and comfortable and secure and all those wonderful things

please let my audience know where they can find you on social media or look you up or work with you if that's something that they're interested in doing

sure I work with people in California though because that's where my license is. But I'm Dr. Diane Strakowski, the Back to Love doc, B-A-C-K-T-O-L-O-V-E doc. And if they want to take my quiz, all they have to do is send the word love to 33777. And you will get instant access to my quiz. And you can find out if you are a nervous Nora or a secure Sophia or Steve. And,

and then I do have online programs for people to actually help them work through these four steps. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. We will be back. Don't forget to send your questions at ask Nick at cast media.com cast with

the K for ask Nick episodes. Next week, we are back with the wonderful bachelorette, Michelle. She will be in studio and we'll get an update on that, on her life, hopefully a chance to get to know Michelle the person better and not just the bachelorette. And be sure to check that out next Wednesday. Until then, have a great day.