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Have you ever wondered why certain patterns seem to repeat in your relationships, leaving you feeling unfulfilled or misunderstood? Many of us carry the hidden scars of unmet childhood needs into our adult partnerships, often without realizing it. These unresolved emotional wounds can create barriers to giving and receiving love, often manifesting as conflicts and struggles in intimacy. Understanding and healing these deep-seated issues is crucial for building healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

In this episode, we delve into the profound impact of childhood experiences on adult behavior and relationships. We'll explore how understanding and internalizing these early life influences can help recognize and address the missing emotional elements from one's upbringing. The discussion sheds light on the importance of processing past traumas, engaging in healing conversations, and employing therapeutic techniques like role-playing and letter-writing to reconcile unresolved feelings. By emphasizing the intertwined nature of individual and relational growth, this episode offers practical strategies to help listeners navigate the complexities of maintaining a strong sense of self while fostering fulfilling, intimate relationships.

Talia Bombola, The Confidence & Assertiveness Specialist™, is a Certified Psychodynamic, Licensed Psychotherapist, and Relationship Mentor for Women. Her work centers around helping anxious women feel secure by increasing self-worth, confidence, and assertiveness & rewiring beliefs about themselves, men, and relationships. She helps you heal the “not enoughness” that is blocking you from living a life overflowing with satisfaction and self-worth.

In this episode

7:06 Talia’s journey from personal development to professional practice.

11:20 The dangers of tying self-worth to external achievements and goals.

14:45 Understanding the importance of developmental stages in shaping a person's sense of identity and self-worth.

18:56 The role of psychodynamic therapy and reparenting in healing childhood wounds.

29:03 Exploring the benefits of reconnecting with parents to address unresolved childhood experiences.

41:38 The importance of maintaining one's individuality and sense of self within relationships, particularly when faced with disapproval or differing opinions from loved ones.

46:57 Balancing closeness and autonomy: Navigating conflict and personal growth in relationships.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Take time to journal or meditate on how societal gender norms have shaped your behaviors and expectations in relationships.
• Identify activities or practices that reconnect you with both your feminine and masculine energies.
• Spend time in nature, establishing rituals like grounding exercises or mindful walks to rediscover innate wisdom and balance.
• Explore Jungian principles or depth psychology concepts to deepen your understanding of the soul's role in relationships.
• Develop skills to hold space for your partner's emotions, acknowledging their fears and pain points without attempting to fix them immediately.
• Set up a daily or weekly routine that includes both productivity-oriented (masculine) and relaxation/nurturing (feminine) activities.
• Make conscious choices about your relational behaviors, aiming for authentic interactions rather than defaulting to gender-conditioned responses.

Mentioned

Rewire Your Relationships (online program)

Triangular Theory of Love

True self and false self (*Wikipedia link) (article)

Eriksons Stages of Psychosocial Development (*National Library of Medicine link) (book)

Relationship Map To Happy, Lasting Love

Connect with Talia Bombola

Websites: taliabombola.com

Facebook: facebook.com/taliabombola

Instagram: instagram.com/taliabombola

Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/heal-through-humor/id1657508931

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Talia, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I can appreciate just all that you're in and your life, just really continuing to support people with your work and all the wonderful things you're doing. We're going to be talking about personal goals and people continuing to achieve personal aspirations, and also staying in relationship, showing up for a relationship. 

For people who are just getting to know you, what would you like to say about where you're coming from with your perspective, who you are, and how this became of interest?

Great questions. Great multi-bullet-point questions. So this field of self-development, self-help, therapy and coaching, came of interest to me when I was in middle school, I want to say. So a long time ago, a very long time ago, when I had no wrinkles and my skin was perfect, and I didn't have a baby at the time. I fell in love with self-development at that point, because it was like the only hour or two a week I felt heard, validated, listened to, and accepted. That foundation transcended to continuing therapy into adulthood, and then realizing I could do that as a career. Like, wait, I can do this for other people? Other people can feel the way I do, and I can be in the chair? That's so cool. So then that started my entire career. 

The specialization of confidence and assertiveness overall, I think, came from my own personal life. But it also stemmed from what I knew was so much of value at the core, which is the individual self, and we'll always be an individual self, whether or not we're in a relationship. It is of the utmost importance to remain that individual self, especially when we're in a relationship. Otherwise it can look like, I'm sure you've heard, codependency, counter-dependency, where it feels like our own identity is eclipsed by the fact that we now have a partner or that we're chasing the next echelon of relationship. Or we're dating, when are you going to get engaged? We're engaged, when are you getting married, when are you going to have kids? Can we just be happy with the current level that we're at, and how do I balance who I am in relation to what role I have in whatever type of relationship we're in? 

So it was both a personal and a professional interest. I think, obviously, to talk about it today, being able to maintain those individual goals is how people can maintain a healthy relationship. That's a lot of the times, the couples I work with, where one of the struggles is, aside from the normal topics that people have conflict over. Part of the conflict, I think, since my background is in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy, so how does your childhood impact your adulthood and the way you view the world? So many people are like: “This happened to me, I turned out fine. That's not what we're here for.” I'm like, so does it just remind you of your mom when she said that? They're like, yes! Then they look at me, and they're like: You were right, how did you know? I'm like, I did tell you at the beginning that childhood is part of this, so you knew eventually we were going to weave our way to it. 

I know, long-winded answer. But all of that to say, not only is that of personal and professional interest to me, I think that's crucial for us to be able to talk about that, because of how much individuation (being supported) when we're growing up does have a positive impact on our adult relationships.

No kidding! Well, thank you for giving us a little glimpse into your personal life and how this has had meaning for you in your development, both individually, and likely relationally. Also, just where you're coming from and your perspective, and the real significance of our early learning and how it informs. A lot of what I reference is the attachment research and the early imprint around the system that gets created from those relational models, and the system that lives in us. I appreciate what you're saying also, that so often there's this almost achievement-oriented perspective when it comes to relationship. But I also wonder if you think that this occurs even in individuals, like: Oh, I gotta get this job or this goal. That that can actually take a turn, that it takes us out of sense of self and more externalizing these certain goals, that I'll be happy when. 

Yes, it's contingent upon. I see that quite a bit, and I do think that when we take a look at, I call it like doing-based worth versus being-based worth. So if you are achievement-oriented, the if when—I will be happy if this happens or when this happens—the amount of time you're spending, not in your present life, but also not in your current self, attuned to what's happening in your body; how are you feeling, maybe what are you trying to avoid feeling? If you're so tied to success being how you base your worth, a lot of what you'll also see is external validation being the goal. Or external achievements or awards or success measures that are outside of how you feel, being the goal. 

I've often talked to people, and I've worked with people who are, based on what you see from the outside, very high up in their company, or they have a very prestigious role in whatever they're doing. Not all of them, but some of them feel empty, they don't feel fulfilled. They have accolades. They have awards. They have a whole wall behind them with however many times they've gone to give a speech or what have you. That doesn't replace—it can add to, but it will not replace—that core sense of self and that core sense of self-worth. That's where I caution people to not only rely on those external successes and validation, separate from relationship. That individual goal, if it's: I'll be happy when I make whatever amount of money, I'll be happy when I have whatever title, whether that's professionally or personally. I'll be happy when, like you were saying, leads you to this carrot at the end of the stick. You're constantly chasing and constantly striving, and at what point will you know it's enough? 

That translates, for the clients that I work with, into at what point will you feel like you're enough? Because it's often the external. This will be enough means I am enough. 

That's something that my clients often sit with for quite some time, before we can actually make headway. Some of them pick it up really quickly, usually the coaching ones, because they're driven to get it done. But the ones in therapy, we can spend a lot more time being able to process and talk about that, and especially delve into childhood and where they may have learned that lesson that your worth is contingent upon your accolades, your success, basically everything external to who you are as a person. 

As you're talking about the relational work, as well as perhaps, in psychological terms, we might say differentiation. You're talking about this developmental stage and young adulthood, or even adolescence that begins, that this is all part of the nuance. Because as I'm hearing you, I'm hearing me, there's a bit of the balance that it's both and. That we don't just pursue individual dreams and goals and not be in relationship, and we're not only doing relationship and sacrificing our sense of self, or even just abandoning sense of self to get those accolades that perhaps aren't very resonant on a deeper level. Can you speak, for people listening, about maybe the developmental stage that you're referring to? I have thoughts and ideas, but I would love to hear from you. Do you think that this is a nuanced balance, that it's a both and?

I do think it's a both and. When we're referencing the developmental stages, when I teach this to my students, I go all the way back to infancy, which the first lesson, virtu-ideally, that we learn, based on Erickson stages, is trust or mistrust. So if my caregiver is attuned to me, if they met my needs more often than not, and if I felt safe and comfortable with them, I didn't feel alarm or a reproach, then I would be able to trust them. If I feel what I just mentioned that I don't want to feel, I end up starting out, by very base psyche, with mistrust. So if you imagine each developmental stage, and I think because it was created long ago, we do need to update that. Because lifespan is longer, the word teenager didn't even arrive in the dictionary, I think until either 1913 or 1941. I can never remember those dates, because one is attached to another thing. But it's a fairly new term that we have emerging adulthood, failure to launch. So there are benefits to updating those stages. 

But when we're looking at those early childhood markers, I do think those still ring true. Those ages have not changed, even though some milestones have. You want to look at, did I have a base sense of trust versus mistrust? Then from there, did I feel a sense of initiative, or did I feel a sense of guilt. Did I feel autonomy, or did I feel shame and doubt? So when you're looking at the levels that you come up to, or that you are growing into, you want to have that sense of trust, you want to have that sense of initiative, you want to have that sense of autonomy and those foundations. 

Then, when you're fast-forwarding to what you're talking about, those other developmental stages with differentiation and individuation, we typically see that in adolescents. Now we also know from research, adolescence lasts much longer than we previously thought, and the data can show that the prefrontal cortex can take up to 35 to develop in some people. So yippie for parenting, because it's longer than a lot of us thought. It's not just from 18 to 24, wrap it up in a neat little bow, and here's your middle adulthood. That's not the case anymore. When we're in adolescence, the goal is, do I have a sense of identity, or do I have role confusion? 

So many of the couples and individuals that I work with, who are struggling with their personal identity or goals, or relational goals, in some way, for most of them—again, because they're coming into therapy, so it's already a bias, not everyone—they are struggling because in some point of their adolescence. So we'll round it from, I don't know, 13 to 20 something at this point. They did not feel like they had a sense of identity, or their identity was based on what we spoke about just a moment ago, doing-based worth; their schools, their accolades, their scholarships, what awards they won. I like to mention: all awards are made-up. It's all just that somebody decided one day to be like, here's an award, and we made it on a plaque. It's all made-up. It's all a societal construct. So good on you for striving for it if that helps keep you motivated to stay the course. But what's going to happen when you reach that goal, or on the converse, what's going to happen if you don't reach that goal? Would you still do all that you're doing? Would you still strive for all that you're striving for if you didn't have an award or whatever you're working for at the end of it? 

We have to look at the functions of behavior. So usually, people do things for one of four reasons: it feels good, they get escape or avoid something, they get attention or connection from it, or they get something tangible. When we're doing something because we're motivated by something tangible, and that doesn't come to fruition, what's the story we tell ourselves about not achieving that goal? That also relates to that identity versus role confusion and that amount of self-worth that you were able to establish in that adolescent period, that you can take with you the rest of your life. Otherwise, you end up with great show, but what we like to call Arrested Development, where some part of your psyche freezes at the age that you are still working through that milestone.

I'm so glad you brought up that hurt. Because as I'm listening, and you're starting from infancy and the different developmental milestones or stages, for one that didn't learn trust, didn't learn initiative, didn't learn autonomy, or learned shame, learned guilt, learned mistrust. How do you help people? Is this the psychodynamic work that you're referring to of helping them? Do you want to speak briefly about this?

Yeah. So when we're looking at psychodynamic work, as a therapist, the role that the therapist plays, we're not blank slate. It's one way of analysis, but it's not the most common way. When we're looking at relational psychoanalysis, that's my preference and my specialty, it takes the client coming into the room and being able to trust the therapist that they will be not like an expert one-upping. But I'm on your playing field. I know a lot about this topic. You're the expert on your life. Let's meet in the middle, and let me help you piece together how your sub and unconscious, and your childhood messaging that you received before age about seven or eight, when subconscious is the most prime to learn, which so many people are, like, they're just a kid. I'm like: Oh, that's the worst advice you could ever give! Honestly, everything should be focused on infancy and childhood, and then from adolescence and beyond, we can be a little bit more lax, like, lay off the gas pedal then. Don't just start it at adolescence. Because some of it, it's like the path has been laid, and at this point, it's up to that individual, usually when they reach adulthood, to go back to therapy or go to therapy and realize: Oh, this is my job. Even though I was taught these beliefs, it's my job to unlearn them. 

So with psychodynamic work, the therapist helps the client make connections to what current-day struggles they have, that may be tied to lessons they learned from childhood, what was modeled or not, by their parents' marriage, divorce or separation. What are the stories and beliefs that they have about themselves that are so tucked back here that they don't think to look at it, until it starts causing a problem in their life? Through psychodynamic work, we can often unveil where the genesis of that thread is. We can't go back in time. As far as I know, no one has developed that technology, especially in therapy. We can, through story, go back and reparent our inner child. What did you need to hear at that point that may have been beneficial? If they have a family, how do you want to do it differently? 

Because the subconscious mind can't process no or don't, it's like, when you tell a kid don't do that, they end up doing it. We're like, why did you do that? Because their brain just goes, do it. They just hear that. You have to focus on what you want instead. That's a lot of at least what I include in psychodynamic work. I know what you're not happy about. I know what you want changed. How are we going to go about a different path that doesn't involve simply countering what you're wanting? Well, I'm just not going to do this. Okay, but what are you going to replace it with? So it creates that flexibility of their mind to go: Oh, I actually have a say in this now. I have a say in rewiring my subconscious beliefs to change my relationships, and to change my relationship, the most important one is with myself. That's the basis for every other relationship you'll have, so it's a mirror. If I don't love myself, if I don't have self-worth, I'm going to pick partners who mirror that back to me. But most people who don't have certain level of self-development only stay in the mindset of blaming the other. So it's their fault. Well, no guy loves me, no girl this. Why are you picking them? 

I'm more tough love than most therapists, I think. I'll get in there, and I'm like, well, do you know that you're the common denominator of every relationship? That's not blaming them. It's not saying that they are the ultimate cause of whatever has happened to them. But at a certain point, if you find yourself staying where you aren't loved or what causes you to not love yourself, what are you getting from that? Where did you learn that? Where did that pattern stem from? Does it at all remind you of childhood relationships with your parents, or any caregiver, a teacher? Maybe you got bullied growing up. We call it repetition compulsion. What are you trying to master by recreating the same experience in adulthood? That's a lot of the work that I do with my clients.

Yes, I'm so glad you said that last piece. Because it does really put it into a frame of yes, there is some responsibility that I'm attracted to this dynamic. I am choosing, perhaps even unconsciously, this relational pattern, and I am participating in it. And also, that there's a reason, which you just spoke about, is that we are in effort or in search of trying to have a different outcome. But with the unconsciousness, we're likely going to repeat the drama. 

So you're really helping, and I really appreciate that you're giving voice to the reparenting. That if due to certain circumstances, or our parents didn't have the capacity, or caregivers didn't have the capacity to offer the optimal or more good enough parenting and environment that provides this sense of trust, this sense of initiative and autonomy. That we can, perhaps based on what's being presented in real-time adult life, but how that connects with those similar feelings and beliefs and experiences, that we can say: Okay, how do I show up for that part of myself? Or what did I need that I didn't get? Or how do I help give guidance and support to offer that trust? Do I need more consistency? Do I need more predictability? Do I need more emotional regulation? Do I need more feeling like I can reach and you'll respond? These type of things.

Yes. I think for many clients who didn't experience what Winnicott says, which most people hear this and they're like: I'm sorry, it's how low? 30%. If your parents match about 30%, to use Gottman terms, bids for connection. But really, if your parents attuned to you 30% of the time, that it was enough. I would like to see newer data honestly, but that was enough to have a secure base. I would be curious what the new data would show. I also would imagine there's some sort of blend between actual statistics and self-report, and there's a bias obviously, just with research in general. Because it's like, whoever was incentivized or selected to participate already had, again, an incentive to do it. So when you're looking at that holding capacity and the attunement level to create a secure attachment is about 30% of the time, then what was happening the other amounts of time, and did the child perceive? Because for me, I always focus on the child's perception. Even if I'm sitting with an adult who once was a child, like former child, it's the perception. 

So you can have more expansive conversations, and I recommend my clients who have a healthy enough relationship with their parents where it wouldn't cause abuse or harm, to try to have these conversations. We're not talking about high level psychological terms. It's more about can I learn from you? Hey, my childhood was great in all these ways. I'm curious about this piece. I'm working on it in therapy, if you want to be vulnerable. I'm working on it in therapy. I'm not judging you. I'm not shaming you. Because sometimes we go to our parents, and we don't realize the way that we are wording it and the way it's landing, we're only responsible for how we say it, but how it's landing is the parent sees themselves. Because a lot of the times, they haven't done the work, it was stigmatized, and they didn't have access also are factors. They hear themselves as a bad object. And what we know from object relation in psychoanalysis, if I can't tolerate holding both being a good and bad object, I will split in myself, and I will entirely identify as what I think and perceive you're accusing me of. This is where we hear the classic trope: I guess I failed as a parent, nothing I ever did was good enough! After all I've done for you. I put a roof over your head, I've met your minimum basic care needs. Why are you coming back at me with this? Because we also know emotional neglect is equally as traumatizing in many cases as having abuse or other kinds of neglect. It matters because it does imprint on us in our psyche of how we view the world and how love is supposed to or not supposed to be. 

So when you take a look at the most reparative work that you can do with your inner parenting, the next step that I recommend is, take that out loud, if it's safe of course. It might be uncomfortable, but we're talking about true safety aside. If it's actually safe, you're not going to be subject to abuse, go to your parents and try to heal up in the generations. Because that will also help you to heal out in the next generations, that you're not subconsciously carrying around hurt and resentment and anger that belongs in your parental child relationship, that ends up getting spilled out in your adult romantic relationships. It comes out sideways, because we have no we feel like we have nowhere else to go. And our romantic relationships are the closest—intimately, not sexually, but closeness-wise in intimacy—to our primary relationship with our parents. So if you look at it like that, of course they're going to trigger you. 

People wonder: Well, I didn't marry my mom or dad! Yes, you did. Unless you've done intensive Imago work upon yourself and you know how to undo your subconscious and redo it on your own, which hats off to you if you figured it out, you will end up marrying what feels familiar to you, even if it's not healthy, because it's familiar. 

Totally. As you're saying, the nervous system recognizes that parent-child, that bond and survival, as well as the romantic adult relationship, that our nervous system sees that as survival. So when those threats occur in those bonds, it's going to be activating to our system. 

Okay, so for people listening, I'm fully with you. You're saying, if there's possibility and capacity in the relationship, if parents are still alive, or one parent is still alive, that perhaps we can heal up, and if the parent is able to engage in that. Like, I'm curious, when I was crying or if I hurt myself, can you talk to me a little bit about what happened? Can you give some examples around healing up conversations, if that's a possibility?

So one of the first examples that I give, it's kind of a Trojan horse question. It feels neutral, but really, it gets to the core. It's talking to your parents about what their return to work was like, if they were working parents. Again, for most of us, previous generations, they had to be working parents, at least one of them. Then with stay-at-home parents, that's still working work obviously, it's working in the home versus out of the home. Just having a discussion of what was my early childhood like, not too personally obviously, depending on your relationship with your parents. I can ask more invasive questions, I think at this point, because they've been trained, because they know that's the level I'm on. 

But for the standard person who isn't a therapist and wants to have these conversations with their parents, asking them, when I was little, how soon did you go back to work? Who watched me when you were at work, if you did? What was some of the most frustrating parts about having a new kid? These are questions that you've got to take the temperature of, and that's why I recommend starting with that. 

The Trojan horse part of it is, because of the attunement and attachment, if your parent went back to work at six to eight weeks after you were born, if you were at daycare full-time, or you were with others who may not be as attuned as a family member. So we're talking like, the furthest one out is a daycare where you don't really know the person, then there's family or the tribe or the village caring for the child, which they see the person frequently even into adulthood. That's the most optimum for attachment, if one or both parents can't be at home those first three years, those are the most crucial. To being able to ask, healing up, what was that like? 

If, again, they mention we went back to work super quickly, or you cried every time that we dropped you off, but we just told you to stiffen up your upper lip, and eventually you stopped. That's just behavior extinction, that's not actually the child processing the sadness. That's why bedtime is also difficult. So you can ask about, what was the toughest time? Did I sleep normally? How did you handle it? Because some parents are like: Oh, we had to drive you all the way around, or we put the car seat on the driver. Like, you can even hear in how they self-reflect, if they're able to, were they attuned or not, was the effort there? 

That's where adult you who didn't have, as a child, the critical thinking that you do as an adult, this is where your own reparenting, with that healing up conversation with your parents, you can then piece together: Oh, they did try. They literally tried the best that they could with what they have at the time, and though it will never undo what I perceived or actually experienced as lack of attunement, I get it now. I can have a bit more empathy, or a bit more radical acceptance even, which is when you have to accept something even though you don't like it or you have very strong feelings about it, because that's distress tolerance at its finest. I have to accept this, otherwise I will continue to be plagued by it for the rest of my life and be robbed of potential opportunities with romantic partners. That's usually not the path most people want to take. 

So asking those kinds of questions generally. Like, what was it like when you were frustrated? Or how did you handle if I couldn't calm down? Who else was around when I was growing up? Did you have a best friend or an auntie or an uncle that would help? Asking those kinds of questions can be very illuminating, and it can also help you to piece together. Again, adult you having a conversation with your parents about little you, who still is inside of you in the room, and being able to be having a more cohesive and integrated sense of self. Because you have the answers that you're searching for in all of these other adult relationships, in the striving and the achievement. 

They might tell you, and this happened to me, that: Oh yeah, when you were seven, we remember. And I remember this because I unfortunately have a photographic memory, that I would always get my spelling work and all my homework done before I arrived back at home. Because we had a carpool where I got picked up, we went to get a snack, and then we picked up my brother, so it was like 40 minutes about, and then the drive home. I would always get my homework done in that amount of time. But I remember, the person who would drive us home, they were in our neighborhood, we swapped like a carpool. They would always praise me for how good of a student I was and how smart I was, because look how good she is for getting all of this done. Of course, little me striving on external validation was like: Oh, I'll do it again, just to impress this person. Ultimately benefited me, because I was a good student. I already liked being a good student. 

But it's those little comments that parents, especially if you don't have that psycho education, may not think mean much. But could really mean the world, and have been internalized at such a young age, it becomes part of that person's core beliefs about themselves, about the world, or about others. So that's where schema therapy can come in. Like, how can we restructure those beliefs to benefit you now as an adult?

Yes, and I'm so glad that you mentioned the internalizing, and also building awareness. That if there's recognition of like: Oh, they were thinking about me, or I was born right at this moment in grief. Oh, it makes so much sense. It wasn't me, I wasn't a problem. It was the circumstances, and I can see how I've lived that out, and I didn't know. Now that I know, I can recognize and understand, and also show up that that might have been missing. Or I didn't get those certain things, so I can now see, based on circumstances, why I didn't get it right. Not that I'm flawed or unlovable.

That's a good way. It wasn't about me. It was the struggle of my parent trying to be an adult, while also raising a child, while reparenting themselves, but not having the word for it. Essentially, what that looked like was being triggered, sometimes of a very high level, with your child crying, it can be infuriating at times. If you just look at it on the surface, it's because it's noise, it's chaotic. It's pulling you away from the autonomy that you strive for so many years to have, that you get rid of, when you have a kid, and it goes back to asking your parents for permission to go out again, because they have to watch the baby, or asking someone for permission. That you feel triggered also because it takes you back, whether you know it or not—obviously, usually not, because it's your subconscious—no one met my needs as a baby when I cried. Maybe they were there 20% of the time. Maybe they were there 80% of the time. The ones who had higher levels of attunement don't struggle as much, typically, with attuning to their own child, because they internalize what that felt like. 

So that's where I think the healing up conversations can be very beneficial for the parent also, to take with them, if they are still alive, for the rest of their life. Even if you had a strenuous relationship for many years, oftentimes, those healing up conversations can give you maybe a solid three to five years, where if they pass on and they're no longer with us, there's not that felt sense of hurt and resentment and anger and vitriol that you're holding on to for the rest of your life, that you never got to address with your parent. I recommend, if they're still around, even if it's uncomfortable, try, make an attempt towards this. Because what if it works out? What if it doesn't? You're in the exact same spot, and you're like: Okay, I knew this about them, further confirmed. Then you can have radical acceptance. 

But what if you tried and it does work out, and you have a better relationship with them? Most people are uncomfortable with what could be different. You mean I could have a healthy relationship? But then I wouldn't have something to blame all my problems on. So sometimes people block themselves from healing because they get stuck in their own dysfunction, and they know it. It's familiar. They'd rather not change it, because it also gives them a position to not have to take responsibility for their own healing.

And it can be terrifying, as you mentioned, the unknown. I would add, I know we're getting a little psychological here, and I love it, that even if a parent has passed, there's even the empty chair technique or Gestalt. For people who don't know, do you want to describe what that is?

Yeah, so you don't have to do it in therapy. It can get very intense. So if you have a therapist, I recommend doing it with somebody who's trained. If you were trying to “microdose” this on your own and do it yourself, like DIY empty chair. The concept is that you speak as if the person were in the room with you, whether they're alive or not, and what do you really want to say to them without a filter? Usually, clients start with the surface level. Then we get really into it, and they're like: Well, I didn't realize I was holding all that inside. You could do this out loud, that narrative. You could also do this in a letter, and that's where I recommend grief counseling. 

There's a specific style of grief counseling where it takes you through understanding myths about grief and loss. Loss is not only for when someone has died, it's for when you didn't get the relationship you wanted. You got a job, there could be grief of having to leave an old job. It's whether you have a gain or a loss, grief is involved. It takes you through a specific narrative that then you can write a letter to this person, you go over the highs and lows of the timeline of your life with them, and you can write a letter to them. 

You can either forgive, which is to give as you gave before, so you don't have as much of those angry feelings. Or what I like to teach, is acknowledgement and release. I acknowledge that all of these things happened, and I release it from having power over me anymore. I release it from causing me to get blocked from what I really want in my life. Then the way that you interact, both with yourself and this person that you've done that grief work around, is so much more neutral, and you have a much more enjoyable and positive experience in your life. Because you've addressed all of that stuff that can either come out in the empty chair technique, or when you're doing narrative therapy or journaling, you have relief. You are not holding on. 

Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, I think is somewhat of a phrase. That's very true if you're holding on to those beliefs that block you from achieving your personal goals and achieving your relational goals. It's something that you have to compartmentalize, but ideally tend to, eventually. Otherwise, it's just like an emotional trash compactor, and we all know those things get jammed up from time to time. Then you call us, we're the mechanic essentially, if you're the trash compactor. We're doing a metaphor. Then we help you get unstuck, and we help you to not be as apprehensive or feel like you have no power in achieving your goals. So I'm a lot about empowerment and taking responsibility, and how can you change it even if you can't change others? How can you meet your goals, and how can you have the relationship you desire?

Part of what we're speaking about here, that you're really helping give example to, is the ability to process and metabolize my own experiences, integrate, and be more organized about some of these things that could have been traumatic or really overwhelming or difficult. So as we build awareness, we have insight, we have understanding, we have a different felt experience around it. 

I would add, with empty chair, I don't know if you've ever done this, but it's also part of the exercise, or can be, where if one is speaking to the empty chair of the lost loved one or the one that's not available—in this case, we're talking about a parent—that we might actually go back and forth and have a dialog. So I'll say something, and then give a self a minute. Then I'll actually go sit in the position of the person, and I will just feel what comes up. It might be a response that I was like, oh! It's not from the head. It just feels organically, naturally, the right thing. Then it can be a back and forth exchange. That could be a version of this healing up that you're referring to, and also gaining insight and awareness around: Oh okay, it doesn't change the circumstance, but the way that I've internalized it, the way that I might have a constellation around it, or my tendency around it, my system around it. Then I'm a little bit better equipped to now give the amending things that help me. Because it's not all this unresolved, unconscious, I don't even know why I'm choosing into these things, and it's familiar, and I'm looking for a resolve, but yet I'm not really quite aware. So I can be much more intentional. 

Okay, so I know we're talking about individual growth, and also, how it is in relationship often. One of the things you wanted to talk about, towards the end of our interview here, was just the ability to hold on to self, one's own pursuits. We were talking about the stage of differentiation, how to hold on to self in the midst of loved ones who maybe disagree or don't approve, and how to tolerate that discomfort. Would you like to say a little bit about how this is important, what it looks like? 

So when we're taking a look at maintaining our sense of self and our sense of individuality, relationship notwithstanding, or relationship status notwithstanding, the reason why what we just went on the journey of is so important is that's all part of your intrapsychic structure. That's all part of who you are and who you will be, regardless of your partnership status.

We want you to feel as though you're coloring in the lines. But there may not be a visible line, you just kind of know when to stop. You're like: This is where I am, and this is where you begin. But I know where that is differentiated. 

So for other people who, again, do not have as many skills in knowing who they are and being able to vocalize who they are to others, they might find themselves struggling either to find or keep a relationship. It's not necessarily the partner's fault. It's not necessarily because you have a picking problem. It's sometimes all of those things in combination. Well, I can't get my wants and needs met. It's a classic one that I hear. I can't get my wants and needs met in this relationship or any of the other ones. No one I ever date is good enough for me. I'm not good enough for anybody else. What if the person abandons me? What if the person engulfs me? A lot of those patterns that you see relationally, and this could be romantically, this could be in jobs, this could be with friends and family, collegially, like platonic relationships. If I don't have a strong sense of myself, I also probably don't have the skills to vocalize what I want and need, because knowing what I want and need is part of knowing myself. Who am I? What do I want and what do I need? How then can I ask for that from my relationships, without the fear of abandonment, without the fear of engulfment, and with the knowledge and the empowerment that if this relationship can't meet those wants and needs, I have a strong enough sense of self to not be in it. Or to try to modify it, and if that doesn't work, to not be in it any longer, and go find somebody who can meet my wants and needs. 

For so long, this could be a whole other discussion, so I will keep it brief. But for so long, we weren't teaching people how to know and learn their wants and needs or vocalize them out loud. We've transcended that, I think we've made a lot of progress in that in society. There are still a lot of people, generationally, who struggle with that, understandably; they weren't given the education of how to do that. So when I work with clients on identifying that, you can look at it from a surface level, like, you need food. So start with those. Ask somebody: Hey, I'm going to go grab whatever for lunch, do you want to join me? That also meets the need for social connection. That's a safer need to start with, rather than like: I need emotional validation, I need support, I need reassurance. 

When you can flex the muscle of asking for what you want and need, a glass of water is very neutral, and that feels comfortable and not like you're going to crawl out of your skin, then you can start to ask for the deeper wants and needs, and you can ask for them sooner rather than later in the relationship. So many people fall in love with the fantasy in the beginning of a relationship, and the more space you have to fantasize, the more room you have to get hurt, because that person isn't real. You're not in a relationship with the real person in front of you. You're in a relationship with who you think they could be, with their potential, with your own projective identification of them, if they choose to take it or not. That is also so crucial to talk about, because your individual sense of self is going to become questioned in the relationship if you're with somebody who has a strong sense of self. You know that when you meet the person and they're like, whoa, they really know themselves! It could be off putting for somebody who doesn't have a strong sense of self yet, and we're able to learn that. It's something that we can learn, if we choose to.

Yes. Just to the importance of this, over time, if one partner is really clearly defined and very comfortable being assertive and strong, or even occupying or being a little bit more dominant, and the other isn't, the trajectory of that could be the relationship starts to really represent the stronger partner. It can be very unfulfilling on many levels. So for people recognizing that they could gain some skill to be more defined, to be able to negotiate relationship with this sense of self, you're giving some examples that could be very concrete and easily identifiable. Like, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I need to go to sleep. 

It's interesting, and you might have come across this, or if not, you might appreciate it. I remember coming across, I don't think it was published, but it was shared with me. If you imagine a figure eight or the infinity sign, I think it came out of some dissertation research looking at somatic psychology, but it related to Couplehood. I think what the person was really trying to identify was the point of conflict in that middle. If you imagine, one side represents closeness, intimacy, and the other side represents individuation, autonomy, separateness. That most conflict occurs when we're initiating closeness and intimacy, or we're initiating separateness. The likelihood, if we're talking about a monogamous relationship, of two people to be synced up and want the same amount, at the same time, the same frequency, of intimacy and autonomy. Because we need both, that's what we're talking about is balance. To initiate, that I want some alone time, or I'm going to go for a walk by myself, or whatever it is, or to initiate open arms and reach. I'm not sure if you would agree with that.

I do agree with it. I think it mirrors, at least from what I've studied, the cycle of EFT. That also has the infinity symbol, where it's the point of conflict, but on the top of it is anger, defensiveness, what have you, to protect you against underneath. But they slice it in this way on the figure eight, in both hamburger and hot dog style. But underneath is all of the more vulnerable, maybe the shame. I'm not saying negative in a negative sense, but the unfulfilled parts of the virtues we were talking about. This is where mistrust, where shame and doubt, where guilt, all of those emotions can live underneath those surface level reactions. That when we're trying to meet our own needs and the needs of the relationship, that can mirror or look similar to, in a relationship, I'm trying to meet the needs of separateness and closeness. 

To your point, maybe couples who have been highly attuned for a long period of time can time it more congruently. But that's the struggle, that we have limerence for about 18 to 24 months, where we think the world revolves around them and they're phenomenal and they can do no wrong. Then you start to see them as a real self, where the veil is lifted. You're like: Oh my God, you always chew that way, you're so annoying! Like, ew, you clip your toenails? What is going on here? Then you enter into the power struggle, which is not only trying to get back what you had in limerence, it's also trying to assert dominance. And who's going to have what, and how much of it are we going to have, and who's going to decide it? Not every couple survives the power struggle. The ones who do enter that committed, companionate, compassionate. If we're looking at Sternberg's triangular theory of love, they have all the aspects. They have the passion, the intimacy, and the commitment. That takes time, that takes compromise, that takes negotiation. For the individuals and couples that I work with, it comes full circle. Because it's like, you have a strong sense of self to survive and function healthily in a relationship. 

The couples who make it through to what most everybody is striving for and what media says is the ultimate best, you have to understand that what you want as a self will not always happen. So you have to have that sense of self to eventually not give up the sense of self, but learn when is the right time for you to lean in and get more of your needs met, and when is the right time to lean out and maybe have your partner get more of their needs met? It's not a 50-50, perfectly. It's more about, how do I compromise without compromising myself, and how do I make sacrifices without sacrificing myself, to have a mutually beneficial relationship? That's the work that takes many years, and ideally, it is worth the wait. Because you are learning about yourself, you're learning about your partner, and you're tending to, like we talked about for the first part of the interview, all of those relational childhood unmet needs that are your job, no matter who you're with, to tend to. You just happen to be with this partner. It's still always your responsibility. Your childhood is your responsibility to go heal in adulthood. If your partner is game to help you in couples’ therapy, all the better. But don't pin it on them, because it's not about them, it's about you. They just happen to be a mirror of what's healed and unhealed.

Yes. I was listening to you as you were talking about developmental stages, and one of the frameworks that I like to reference is the five developmental stages of emotional intimacy. The last stage is the more synergistic stage, and that when we're in that stage of real secure functioning, we can be out in the world, and it's much more generative. We're able to give, and the relationship nourishes and supports. It does support our individual pursuits, or maybe the couple is working together on some venture, or something to be helpful in the world in some way. So it is all related, and they do help each other when it's functioning in this place of health that we work towards. 

You have so much to share! I love that you have a photographic memory. I'm like, oh my goodness, how helpful! 

I wish I could put it into a flash drive and get some of that out.

Oh, so great! Well, how do people get connected to you and what you're offering? Tell us a little more.

So personally, am most active on Instagram. So I'll actually message back, and I do Q&A's about once a week, and that's where people can learn more about the couple of podcasts that I have. I try to take reels, the best clips, and post it. So people get a sample of it, even if they don't want to listen to the whole episode. Then I teach a class about a lot of what we talked about today. It's called Rewire Your Relationships. So again, Trojan horse. It talks about, you can have a secure attachment, you can have all of these things. Then once they get inside, I'm like, we're going to start with you. They're like, I thought this was… I'm like, it is, just wait. Buckle up until the last week of class, because that's when it really comes, like we talked, full circle. So that's available at the link in my bio on Instagram. Again, it's called Rewire Your Relationships. Then I use, I think it's called Metricool, somebody told me about it. It posts to all the other platforms. So Pinterest, YouTube. I don't think I'm on LinkedIn, I prefer to be linked out. But Facebook, yeah, I think all of those ones are covered. So you can find me almost anywhere by just Googling my name.

Wonderful! I will make sure to have all of these links on today's show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a great conversation, and I can tell how much you have to offer. I imagine many people will be benefiting from your teachings.

I hope so. If you liked this episode, let us know. I'm always curious to hear when people have these aha moments to be like: Oh, I never thought of it. I love learning. I love when people learn from what I've learned. I think that's the coolest part of the job.

Super cool. 

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