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Ever felt like no matter how much you prepare for an important conversation with your partner, you still end up missing each other entirely? In the heat of tough conversations, even the best intentions can get lost as tension rises and defenses go up. It's all too easy for moments of misunderstanding to snowball, leaving both people feeling disconnected and unsure how to find their way back to each other.

In this episode, you’ll discover a radically simple approach to transforming those tense moments into opportunities for true connection. Looking through the lens of openness, which the conversation calls the “aperture effect,” you’ll learn why slowing down, becoming mindful, and attuning to each other's emotional states can help you break free from unhelpful patterns. Explore practical techniques to foster emotional safety, collaboration, and presence so you can turn even challenging interactions into pathways for deeper understanding and closeness.

Kathryn Ford, M.D., is a psychiatrist, couples therapist, and author. Her work is a unique integration of mindfulness, psychotherapy, and neuroscience. After receiving her M.D. degree from Brown School of Medicine, Dr. Ford completed a residency in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her meditation practice and studies developed her understanding of the power of mindfulness for building deeper, more resilient relationships. She has taught at Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford Medical School, and  Santa Clara University, and publishes regularly online in Psychology Today.

Episode Highlights

04:02 The Aperture Effect—an exploration at the intersection of psychiatry, mindfulness, and neuroscience.

09:40 What happens when openness shuts down in conversation?

11:26 The brain’s role in relationship dynamics and mindful self-awareness.

15:23 Recognizing and responding to real-time emotional signals.

17:14 How our openness fluctuates moment to moment: Practical awareness skills.

21:08 Why slowing down changes everything: Strategies for connection over resolution.

26:06 Openness on a continuum: Tracking your state in challenging conversations.

29:16 Regrouping when things get rocky: Navigating pauses and timeouts.

33:53 Moving between vulnerability and defensiveness.

38:13 Vulnerability as the pathway to connection.

42:18 The power of naming your emotional state.

43:30 Learning and practicing aperture awareness and mindfulness.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

• Practice mindful pausing: When you notice tension or confusion in conversations with your partner, pause for a deep breath to ground yourself and slow the interaction.
• Regularly check in with yourself during discussions. Ask, “Am I open or closed right now?” and observe your body for cues like warmth (open) or tension (closed).
• Use the “Two Sentences” exercise by limiting your speaking turns to one or two sentences and then pausing, giving both you and your partner time to process before responding.
• Be explicit about your emotional state, for example, saying, “I’m feeling a bit vulnerable discussing this,” to invite empathy and understanding.
• When things get heated, intentionally slow down the dialogue. Avoid rapid-fire responses and give space for reflection.
• Call a timeout if needed: If either partner rates their openness as a 4 or lower (on a 1-10 scale), suggest a short break to allow both people to regroup and prevent escalation.
• Reassure and regroup: Offer reassurance like, “I didn’t mean to sound harsh,” and check if both partners feel ready to continue before moving forward.
• Acknowledge the need for ongoing conversations: Accept that not every topic needs a final resolution. Focus on maintaining connection, trust, and openness even when issues remain unresolved.

Mentioned

The Aperture Effect (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Polyvagal Theory (website)

Gottman Institute (website)

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) (*Psychology Today) (link)

ERP 340: The Essential Skill Of Tracking Openness in Relationship — An Interview With Dr. Kathryn Ford

12 Relationship Principles to Strengthen Your Love (free guide)

Connect with Kathryn Ford, M.D.

Websites:kathrynfordmd.com

Facebook:facebook.com/KathrynFordMD

Instagram:instagram.com/KathrynFordMD

LinkedIn:linkedin.com/in/kathryn-ford-m-d-1a675b2b

Substack:substack.com/@kathrynfordmd

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Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

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Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Thank you for joining us. It's such a treat to have you back. 

It's great to see you again, Jessica. 

Yes, and I am sharing how much I love your book; this was a topic you shared with us a couple of years ago. The episode on today's show notes the link to that and your new book, The Aperture Effect,we're going to be talking a little bit more about as this really is such a huge component to how couples are interacting, and it's so much a part of the experience,e and yet we're not always focused on it. So, where would you start for people's understanding? How was it for you to write this book, and anything you want to say personally here before we dive in? 

I wrote this book because I was very excited to share what I was discovering. I'm a psychiatrist, and different strands of my understanding, in addition to psychiatry, were starting to come together with my couples work. And I felt like I was finding a new path into helping couples connect better, more quickly, with less pain and without losing their way. And, you know, there's the pleasure of discovery that I think we all inherently have in life. And also, I think we all have the pleasure of sharing what we've discovered. And that's why I wrote the book. When my publisher asked me, why did you write this book? I said, so people can read it and share with them what I found, what I was saying about the three strands coming together. I'm trained as a psychiatrist, which means that I'm thoroughly steeped in psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. 

And also, I went to Stanford for my residency training in psychiatry, because I was at Stanford, and I was in California. Because I was in California, wonderful teachers of yoga, meditation, and all the arts of mindfulness surrounded me. And I quickly got very excited about that. I started spending a lot of time on mats and cushions, and that became a major influence in how I experienced doing my work with couples. The third strand had to do with neuroscience. About the time I was coming out of residency, there was this big uptick in neuroscience, and we started understanding way more about how our brains work than we knew before. And I got very excited about it. I also started to realize that the understanding that was offering us would be very valuable to my couples. In terms of understanding. 

There are certain things that go on that. That's how your brain is wired. So knowing that helps. You don't have to feel quite like such a doofus when you go down a certain blind pathway. And also, neuroscience helps us understand how you can work with that with mindfulness, so that you don't have to go down the blind pathway so many times. So it all started coming together. 

I love it. It's such a gift for you to bring these disciplines together, and just where you are in your field, and the expertise you can offer us here. So I'm grateful to have this interview with you. So let's. For people who may have missed that previous episode, would you talk a bit about what the aperture effect is? 

The aperture effect is very much worth understanding and defining. The aperture effect means the following. 

What I started to realize early, as I started to work with my couples, I started to ask myself, what was it I was focusing my attention on that was helping me chart a path to helping them? And what I started to realize is it's all about their openness. And. And that's very different from me focusing my mind on what their attachment style is, what their communication style is. Yes, those things are important. They're kind of like roadmaps. But when you're driving the car, you don't look at the roadmap. You look at the road ahead of you and eyes on the road, I came to realize, was paying attention to openness. So I started working with couples along those lines. 

And the aperture effect means that 

And so that's the key element in a certain way. Once you know that, it's kind of obvious, like, well, duh. But it's kind of like we look right past it. And I found that my couples were doing what I had been doing before, understanding that, if they started to get in trouble in a conversation, they would start to go up in their mind searching for, well, what's our love language? And what does the latest psychology say about this? 

Which totally took them away from being mindfully present in the moment and understanding that we're having trouble right now because I just said something that made you close down. And that's what the aperture effect is. If you want to have the best time in your connection with each other for the least trouble, go for paying attention to your openness to each other. 

I love this. I love this focus. And it is interrelated. I appreciate you mentioning attachment tendencies and styles, or perhaps even conflict styles, as these things are what we resort to when we notice a threat, when we notice something closing in. That's where it gets particularly problematic in my mind, that we have different strategies. So, if one is speeding up and trying to engage or pursue, as we might say, or one is slowing down and containing, it's like, “Oh, it's not safe to say anything.” These are ways that we manage the closure or the threat. When we perceive something that might be challenging. And even as you're bringing in neuroscience here, we cannot override the perception of a threat. And our loved one in adulthood is very much connected to our sense of safety in the world. 

And so I love this because so many people will say, I have all this information and I feel very informed, and yet when I come to an interaction, it all somewhat goes out of the window. I just don't have access to it. And this is precisely what you want people to focus on. Because if we start closing and then we resort to these strategies, we're already missing the moment and missing what's happening. If I'm understanding what you're saying, yes. 

I would use the word strategy slightly. What I would say is that the starting place is to pay attention to openness and find out about it. And then come the strategies. So the basic thing is, when we're relating with each other, often there's a moment, especially in a difficult conversation or a conversation that just went from easy to hard, right? There's that “oh” moment. There's that moment you go, whoops, things are not going very well. That's our amygdala, our safety center, telling us, oh, you know, run away or hide or whatever. That's an automatic signal that goes through. That signal passing through the amygdala is pinging us. That's the fast track. According to Kahneman, the same signal of the same input will eventually go through our cortex and cause some more complex processing. 

Like, okay, what do I do now? What's the strategy? To wait for that slow process to happen, which is what's important. That's what you call mindfulness. That's what 

Okay, what's happening right now? And what I'm suggesting is, the first question should be, what's happening right now? Am I open or not? Is the person I'm talking to open or not? And you go from there. And the strategies. Yes, then come into play, knowing what to do. I'll tell you one of my favorite moments in therapy. Because it was so telling and so typical. I'm sitting with a couple, working with them, and she wants to tell them something very important to her. 

And as she starts to tell him, she starts to shut down a bit. And as he starts to close, she starts talking faster. And as she speaks faster, he closes a little more. And as she speaks faster and louder, now he closes a little more. And as he closes more, she speaks faster and louder. And now she's repeating herself. And now he's completely closed. At that point, I stopped them, and I said to her, what's happening right now? And she said, well, he's completely close to me. And I said, so if you knew that, why did you keep talking? “Can you guess what she said?” 

“Because he's not listening.” 

“No. She said, I didn't know what else to do.” 

“I didn't know what else to do. Yes, I remember reading that in your book.” 

“And that was the aha moment for me, because this was early in my understanding of the importance and the centrality of aperture and openness.” But I thought my job was to teach people to sense openness. Now, that's not completely untrue, but in fact, what I had missed is that our brain is processing really well all the time openness, because we are wired for that, because we are such social beings that the state of mind of the other human being and how they're feeling about us is given top priority in that safety center. And so we're constantly monitoring and accurately sensing open or closed in ourselves and in each other. So I didn't need to tell her the signal was there. I needed to teach her what to do so that she would pay attention to it. 

Because she wasn't paying attention. And therefore her amygdala was running the show. She was hitting the gas exactly. She should have been hitting the brakes. Right. Because her amygdala was going full force, like, run away. So she ran away with the conversation. Whereas as soon as I stopped and asked her, she didn't even hesitate. She said, oh, he's close. She knew the information. She just wasn't accessing it and using it. At that point, I realized, yeah, that's the deal, I need to help people know what to do in response to that, oh, no signal, so that they will be able to pay attention to it more. And that's when I started doing it. Yes. 

And this is what I get so excited about, having you here on the show describing this. And to be clear, what you're really emphasizing is the conscious awareness of openness, like we're registering it. And I think when I was saying strategies, I meant. I didn't say it, but. But more of the habituated unconscious strategies, like running away, fighting, or fleeing. And we will be responding, but if we're not consciously reacting, we are not necessarily focusing on the thing that could actually access more of this connection and safety and further slower processing for the sophistication of, like, really assessing more accurately what's happening. Okay, great. So I feel like that matches well. Okay, great. So, for people, I just want to emphasize that we are picking up on these cues of openness or closedness from our significant other. 

Our partner's sensing it in us. Sowee already has that information; we're not always paying attention to it, and we don't always know what to do with it. 

Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. And that's why I say this is bringing mindfulness to your couples' work with each other. Because aperture awareness is a mindfulness scale. It's an in-the-moment thing. When I talk about openness, I'm not talking about whether you are an open person as some general character trait or something? That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm emphasizing and pointing to is that our openness to each other is changing every moment in the moment. And if you're trying to figure out if your partner's open based on some general assessment of who they are as a person, that's. That's not actually helpful to you at all. Because their 

We're very resonant with each other in this way. 

So when people say, how do I get my partner to be open to me? I say the strongest trigger you have for getting your partner to be open is your own openness. So the real question is, how do you get yourself to be open so that your partner can open up? You know, our closeness is a natural guardedness. We feel unsafe. So the best way to get your partner to open up is to make them feel safe. And the best way to make them feel safe is to be very open with them. And open doesn't necessarily mean that kind of openness where you share everything right away, you put everything on the table. And it also doesn't refer to whether you're talking or silent. It refers to the openness of the heart. It means being open with someone. 

And when people say, well, I don't know exactly what that is, or I can't, I don't know if I can feel my openness. Sometimes I say one of the ways to reverse engineer that and to kind of work your way back to knowing what this is, think about all those qualities that at your best you want to offer in a conversation, like generosity, patience, good listening, kindness, curiosity. All of those are things that if you're open, you can do that, and if you're closed, you can't. So if you want to know at any given moment, am I open right now or not, just ask yourself, am I capable of those kinds of things? If not, then probably you've closed down without maybe even knowing it. And now you need to figure out what to do about that. Yes. 

I don't know if you would like this question, but when I was, I would say, in my late 20s, experiencing relationship challenges and conflict, I was. I don't remember where I came across it, but I would ask myself the question, am I wanting to resolve this right now, or am I wanting to be right, or having, like, pleading my case or whatever? And surprisingly, a lot of the times I'm like, ooh, I actually am in a place of, like, trying to be right. So it was really a great question for me to be reflecting on in real time. I wonder if you would also feel that it would be helpful. A lot of times, people get body signals, and I kind of get this sense when you talk about openness that, like, oh, I can let my guard down. I can feel relaxed. 

I feel less armored. 

That's the other reverse engineering trick that I teach people, which is that a lot of people feel, well, we all feel everything in our body. But for a lot of people, asking themselves what they're feeling in their body is the direct pathway. So open feels like warm, soft, fluid. Closed feels hard, cold, stiff. So if you're not sure if you're open or closed, just check in with your body. Is it nice and warm and soft, or is it kind of tight and closed and hard? And that's another way to get there. What I find is that once people can kind of do these translations, then it becomes more and more natural and even automatic that they know, oh, yeah, that's that open feeling. That's that closed feeling. 

And, our brain is constantly processing all kinds of things out of our awareness, and the only time we become aware of them is when we have some specific reason to do so. So that 

Once you do, then it's there for you kind of all the time. A bit like riding a bicycle. Like, once you learn, you don't have to think about it. And definitely you. You can't really get to that feeling of openness by analyzing something it's not about. Should I be open now, or am I closed because of what? Throw out the because. Just go straight for open or closed. And that's what we're looking for. 

Well, I appreciate that you distilled this to such a great extent. What could sound simple, but I appreciate how difficult it can be when things have gotten more escalated, or there are high stakes, or it feels really threatening and challenging. I want to talk about it a bit. But just as a side. This seems to map really well with the polyvagal research and also Gottman's research around spuds for connection and the warmth, and then the polyvagal, the tone of voice,e and the prosody or the micro facial expressions. And that's not something that we're gonna fake or try to put on. Yes, we can attempt to kind of steer in that direction, but it's real. Like you're saying, the mindfulness of accessing. Am I receptive? Do I really want to have a connection here? 

And as I was describing, and you're saying, the emphasis on open or closed. And we talked a bit about strategy. One of the things that struck me in our earlier interview together, you were describing an exercise where you were asking the partners to really say one or two, like, sentences. And you talk about it in your book. You have lots of exercises. And I loved how you were really able to help people shift away from the order, emphasizing the importance of resolution, or needing to get out all of the explanation. We're so compelled by this. It's so seductive to think, oh, if they understood everything, then they'd understand. And we can have openness and connection. So it's like we're holding really tight to this idea that we need this understanding to be more open. 

So talk to us a little bit about how you help people reorient here, away from de-emphasizing the need for resolution. I mean, you say so much about this. 

Yeah. Part of what you're talking about is a need for resolution, even in the short parts of a conversation. And also, we're talking about the difference when we're talking to each other. That's why I emphasize slowing down when we're talking to each other. We're usually talking at a pace where we can't even process the content. How many times have you listened to somebody you think? I think I got about half of what they were trying to say, especially if they're speaking very quickly. Yeah.

And the exercise you're referring to is where I ask people instead of saying five paragraphs often, many couples have a. If they think they're sharing the conversation, or what they're really doing is sequential monologues. And that actually isn't a very good conversation. Because if you've ever listened to somebody talk to you for three paragraphs in a row, by the time they get to the end of the third one, you have no idea what they were talking about when they started. In two sentences, you do a few things. First of all, it requires you to think about, okay, if I only have two sentences, what right now do I most want to say? And then it requires you to not respond to that urge to say it again or say it a different way, or add more details, or whatever, just leave it there. 

And I ask them to pause before the next person speaks. That's about the same length as two sentences. That's a really long pause. So the pace of that conversation is sort of like one person speaks and then there's a pause, and then the other person speaks, and there's a pause. And it's very different. Usually, when I first ask a couple to do this, their first reaction is that they get very frustrated. And if I send them home with the exercise, they'll tell me that they didn't do it because they started and they got so frustrated they wouldn't complete it. However, if I'm supervising them and they complete this exercise, meaning they use that rhythm throughout, let's say a 20-minute conversation, very quickly, what starts to happen is instead of getting tense and frustrated, they start to relax. 

Now they start to relax because they do have time to process their feelings. They do have time to pay attention to openness, which they didn't have time to do before. And so they can kind of keep up with what's going on, and they can kind of modulate. Like if the last person, their partner said, made it clear that their partner was starting to get agitated after the pause, then they may want to say, you know, that maybe didn't sound quite right. Let me try it another way. So you can adjust, which is what you're looking for with this aperture awareness. So the most important thing is slowing down so that you can get this kind of awareness. And I think I may have wandered away from your initial question, but are we in the ballpoint part? 

Yes, yes, yes. “I was asking about the compelling drive.” 

“Oh, the approach.” 

Yes. 

“So there's that compelling drive to say everything as if. And you said it very nicely, as if the understanding is what's going to cause the connection.”

The other aspect of resolution has to do with this mindset. People get very frustrated. Like, we've talked about this 10 times, especially when people come in to see me, and we hang up, same thing they've been talking about. 

And one of them inevitably says, oh, we've already talked about this. This goes nowhere. Gottman's research shows that about, I think, 60% or more of the conversations that couples have with each other are on the same three topics. In other words, all relationships have these topics that it's not like you don't resolve. And some things aren't even resolvable. Like, suppose you have a major cultural difference within your couple, and one of you is one religion, and one is the other. It's not likely that you're going to resolve that. As in you're going to agree that you're going to. One of you is going to change. You might, but that's actually not necessary. What you're going for is that with each conversation, the conversation itself and the connection during the conversation get better and better. 

And you do a better job of not alienating each other. And instead of building trust and understanding and openness, that's what the goal is, as opposed to getting rid of the topic so that you no longer have to talk about it. You will be on this topic. So stop trying to get rid of it and start trying to relax, to actually enjoy it, and trust that the two of you can talk about something that may have major differences embedded in it. That's not the end of the world. And it takes a while to figure that out. It does. 

It really does. And I love that you're saying it's not necessary to have a solution or an outcome that feels like a resolution. That, in fact the journey and the process of collaborating, the experience of feeling like we're gonna support each other, we're gonna show up for each other. And while we might even arrive at something that feels like a win in a moment in time, that might change. We might need to have another conversation about what differences or growth emerge, and how we can still work together so that we can engage in this process that cultivates this more presence. And I really get the sense. And you already spoke to how reactive we tend to get as humans in these high-stakes conversations, that the slowing down is helping our nervous system. 

It's a real assist to be able to feel, process, absorb, and use more of that prefrontal cortex to actually get the sophistication. There are so many times my husband's speed of processing or even verbalizing is different from mine. And without this particular focus, it was a different thing, just trying to slow down a bit more. And I would contemplate, and I would ask questions that were so helpful, but I would never have asked them had I not slowed down, guaranteed. 

Yes. 

And so we're able to utilize more of our faculties, as you said, the trust that we get to build, and also the contemplation of this collaboration. Right. And the understanding that is happening in the process. I think in your book, ok you talk about being able to even feel what I just said. 

Right. 

Like how actually aligned is that, or, you know, when I have to only have limited words, or how congruent and aligned is what I'm saying, and having the space and the silence after that to absorb it. 

Yes. 

And then to kind of fine-tune it if need be. So great. So talk to us a little bit. Because when you say open or close, some people might be thinking binary. And you do a really beautiful job of even just laying out. This can be on a continuum, and that can be a helpful thing for people to be cognizant of. 

Yeah, good. Thank you. It's absolutely not binary. We're talking about something that is a complete continuum. Aperture, in a certain way, refers to the same thing we mean when we say somebody got defensive. The defense is closed. Right. But what I found was that the word defensive for me feels very solid. It feels like a wall. It feels like something static that's just there. And you either live with it or you blast through it. Right. Terrible. 

Terrible. 

And negative. It also sounds very negative. 

Yes, yes. 

So aperture instead. The reason for that word is that

It's always moving. It closes a little bit. And it opens a little bit. And closes a little bit. And opens a little bit. So when I work with my couples, I have them put their report about how open or not they are on a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being very closed, 10 being wide open. And they get used to the idea. Because some people, if I ask them, so how open are you now? They say, well, I'm open or not open. That's not really the story. What I want is, are you five or you're six? And so I tell them, think of it as a one to 10. Ten is wide open, one is very closed. 

And five, which is right in the middle, that's kind of the good to go. Point 5 is the point at which, above 5, you are capable of good listening, patience, and curiosity. And. And below five, you're starting to close down enough that you actually are not listening well anymore. You're not talking very well anymore. Things are starting to go south, as they say. So, yes, it is absolutely a grayscale, and it's changing every moment. And just because you were open in one moment, like, three seconds later, you might be completely closed because your partner just made that funny look on their face that you hate. Right? Boom, you're closed. Right. But that doesn't mean you're closed forever. It means, oh, wow, I hated that. So then you might say, hold on a second, timeout. 

I just need a minute to recover because you made that funny face. And I know you don't know what I'm talking about, but it really triggers me. So let me have a moment to recover. And now say again what you were going to say. That's what you can do with aperture awareness. You notice that you close down, and instead of just barreling past it like running a stop sign, you ask for a quick timeout to kind of regroup. And sometimes one of you needs to regroup, and often both of you, because of this aperture resonance; if one of you is closing down, the other one is not far behind. 

So, this is anything four or lower. You would really recommend a pause or a regroup. Now, do you recommend a certain time? Some people have a hard time, even, you know, with the pace of life and work and all the demands, that this can feel like a risk of pushing it under the rug, so to speak. 

Right. So the way I just think of that is, as apertures fall below a five, let's say you're headed towards a four. You are a four. At that point, you probably still have the ability, especially as you've learned some skills, you still have the ability to kind of catch yourself and regroup quickly. So you ask for a timeout, which means that you switch from the content of the storyline of what you were talking to each other about. You switch to what I call the process, which is looking at how you're talking to each other and how you're feeling, how's it going? And so time out. I just feel like I got really upset with what you just said. How are you doing? And the other person says, yeah, well, I'm really mad at you about what you said before that. 

And at that point, you talk a little bit and see if there's something we could adjust quickly that would allow us to try again? Often when people. Not everybody, but often when people are in the middle of a difficult conversation, they don't want to just stop in the middle of it. They kind of want to keep going. So you try to regroup. Like, you might say, yeah, just please don't raise your voice like that, because that really upsets me. And the other person might say, well, you started talking. You threw my mother into the mix. And you know that every time you use my mother as an example, I get really upset with you, so could you just not do that? And then the other person might say, fine, okay. 

And also, maybe we should limit the conversation to just talking about this vacation as opposed to talking about the whole year's vacations. Right? So that's the other adjustment. Just so you know, that you could limit the content is a good way to. Maybe the conversation has gotten too large. You need to bring it back to focus on what you really need to talk about in this conversation. So you make these small adjustments. Then you check in, okay, are you good to go again? Meaning, are you a five or better? If you're not, then you keep talking about, well, is there something else? What else do we need to do? Often, reassurances are needed at that point. 

Often, if you have to call a timeout, what you need to do is some kind of reassurance, like, gee, I'm sorry, I didn't even know that I'd started to talk louder. Sometimes that's just automatic for me. Let me see what I can do. And I really don't want to put you off that way. And that wasn't my intention. Or I realized that what I said was kind of aggressive. It left me before I knew it. I'm not trying to overpower you here. Let me try again. So you reassure the other person about your good intentions, about your caring for them, about your desire for the conversation to go well. And then you go back in once you're back to a five, at least, and you see, can. With these adjustments, are you able to get it back on track? 

And if so, you proceed, I want to say something about what if you can't proceed? And then I also want to say something about tens. So remind me, I have two things here. Suppose you can't get it back. Suppose you have a timeout at a four, you go back in, now you fall to a four, maybe you're down to a three. At a certain point,t you may decide, we just can't do it. Right now, it's good to just call a complete timeout. Gottman's research shows that for flooding, which I love that word, I don't ever remember whether I used it before I met Gottman. 

Right, right. 

But it's a great word. Yeah. And flooding,g I think of flooding on the one to 10 scale is like a one or a zero. That's when you're completely closed. And that means your blood system has now been. You've been stimulated for long enough that now you're pumped full of cortisone, adrenaline, all of those things that you're geared up for a fight. The deal about that state is that you can't instantly change it just because you want to. As long as those chemicals are in your bloodstream, it is a chemical reaction, and they have to be cleared. And that process takes about 20 minutes. So once you get down in the 1, 2 range of aperture, or if you feel like you can't get back to a five, then it's good to take at least a 20-minute timeout. 

The way to take that, usually, there's going to be one of you that wants to take a timeout and the other one that doesn't. The way to do that is, suppose I feel like you've completely shut down, and therefore, I want a timeout. I don't say we have to stop because you shut down. Yeah, that's not going to be very good. Right? That's not. That's going to make things worse. Instead, if you're the person to notice, hey, this is getting off track. We need a 20-minute timeout. You simply say that, like, I would like to take 20 minutes to regroup, and then you agree to come back to it. Or you say, this isn't going very well, l and we need a break. But also, it's getting really late. Let's try this again tomorrow night. 

So when you take a break, be sure to signal that you're going to reschedule, either with a specific time or simply say, I will finish the conversation with you. We'll figure out how to do that soon, but not right now. And over time. Some couples are bad at this. Over time, they can get better. They can learn to trust that. If you drop a conversation now, that doesn't mean you've dropped it forever. And for some couples, they need to learn that because they have gotten into the habit of not returning to difficult conversations. And once you learn that you will and can do that, it's a lot easier than modulating in this way. 

Yes. Thank you. Did you get it? Was that the second? 

I didn't say my second thing. My second thing is this. Just. Just highlight. This idea is kind of on the other end of the spectrum, especially in a challenging conversation, which many conversations between couples are. You're not trying to have everybody be at a 10 the whole time, because if you're at a 10 the whole time, if you're wide open and it's a tricky conversation, you're not putting everything on the table. You're not really having the conversation. What the 10 all the time says is you're playing it way too safe. And if you play it way too safe, you may feel more comfortable, but you're not going to have the conversations you need to have. And over time, that will harm your relationship. 

So you're going to need to take enough risks that you are going to fall from a 10 to an 8, maybe even a 7, maybe even a 5. What you're looking for in a hard conversation is apertures that vary between 5 and 1,0 and usually kind of around 6, 7, 8. The range is really great. So you're keeping an eye on when things are falling. Maybe you need to adjust. Maybe you need to slow down as apertures pick up. You can maybe pick up the pace a little bit, or you could take another risk. So you're trying to get the hang of the right amount of risk-taking so that you're in that sweet spot, so that you can discover things, but without too much pain and injury. Mm. 

And so important, because if we go too much into being closed or feeling unsafe, then we're not gonna be able to access connection because the protective mechanisms are so very strong, and that if we're a 10, then we're likely not taking very many risks around what really matters to us. And typically, when we have things that feel super significant, it's very vulnerable because we don't know if it's gonna be received well. And I wonder what you would say. But this also seems to tie in with people who have had previous relational wounds or injuries or even traumas, or they have certain ways in which they've learned to negotiate that. So it's almost like the very desire that's in them. They may feel closed before interacting with their partner. 

So it's not always a ping pong that's creating a sense of closeness, but sometimes just the very nature of the topic feels so vulnerable that we might approach a topic with our loved one with a level of hesitancy or fear. 

Yes. And of course, if you offer that right up front, the conversation gets off to a better start. Yeah. In other words,

And lots of conversations need to start with, you know, this is going to be a tricky conversation for me. And it might be because of your past with your parents, it might be because of your past with your partner, or it might be because it was a bad day for you. So it often helps to start by saying, I want to try this conversation. I just want you to know it might be extra tricky. Let's start very slowly, and let's just keep track,k so you can give both of you a heads up. 

This could be difficult.

So incredibly important. And that in and of itself feels more revealing and a bit more vulnerable, and probably helps cultivate some openness that we're able to gauge because sometimes we miss. I don't know, I imagine. But I think we misread cues. Right. I keep sharing because I just feel like it's such a distilled thing. It was about a year and a half ago. My husband and I were at the dinner table, and I was sharing something. It wasn't incredibly profound, like it didn't mean all that much, but it was something I was sharing and wanted him to hear. And he was looking at it in a different direction. And I was like, I was reading it as closed. I was reading it. Not that I was using that framing at the time. 

Right. 

And I was interpreting it as, oh, he doesn't care. But I had enough resources to say, okay, that might be just a story I'm telling myself. 

Right. 

And so I vocalized it, this concern of like, oh, I'm worried you're not that interested. And he's like, well, I have a cold, I don't want to breathe on you. And I was like, oh, here I go. 

Right. 

Like that was like, that makes sense. And it was super helpful. So this makes it a bit more explicit or even where our numbers are, like, I didn't sleep that well, or I'm super hungry. But this is important. So I feel like I'm about a six or an A seven. That just builds awareness. 

Yes. And of course, what that is, another way of saying what we're talking about is you're making your vulnerability available. Very often, people get upset because they are feeling vulnerable, and their partner is not responding in a caring, considerate way to the vulnerability that they're feeling. What they don't realize is they're not showing the vulnerability, they're hiding it, they're being defensive about it. And that's the thing about our automatic reading of things with our amygdala processing. Our amygdala reads the defense as closed and threatening. 

Yes. 

And therefore, the other person is more likely to go into a closed and threatening state. Right. And so when,

And so starting a conversation instead of saying, well hurry up because dinner's almost ready, which is the defense, and the partner's gonna get all huffy in response. Instead, you say, you know, dinner's almost ready, but let's just take a minute. And I just want you to know that because I'm thinking about dinner on the stove, it might not be the right time for me. I'm also a little tired. 

So you kind offer up the various things that you're vulnerable, even if they're mundane things like I'm a little tired, but especially if they're important things like I'm feeling really vulnerable in this conversation because I think that you're gonna tell me we can't ever go to my parents house again because of what happened last Friday and that I'm just really upset about that. That is a vulnerable offering as opposed to don't you dare say we can't go back to my parents' house. Right. That's the defense. And that it's not going to get a caring, sympathetic response. Yes. 

And this is mapping beautifully on the left, emotionally focused therapy work,k and really helping people access the deeper core feelings or attachment longings, making that more visible. So we're not getting into these really disconnected cycles. Wonderful. Well, just to kind of close the loop as far as the continuum 5 and above. Approaching a topic that may feel sensitive or just noticing. Because I love your book, you have a transcript of almost a couple's conversation, and it's like, as you said, it happens in just milliseconds that somebody said something, and then the other person said something, and then it gets close. So then you associate numbers. So it's not like 10, 1,0 and then all of a sudden it's like a five, it's like it's varying depending on whether we can slow down. 

So, are you really recommending that people speak in these couple of sentences, back and forth as a practice, or is it just an experiment to see what it feels like? But I would imagine you would say slow it down. 

First of all, I recommend that they do that experiment or that exercise several times so that they get the hang of it and get comfortable with it. Because if they do, that does two things. One, it sensitizes them to the pace of the conversation, no matter what the pace is. And secondly, it builds a little easier. If things get difficult, they know how to slow it down. They may actually literally say, hold on, let's do that two-sentence thing, which is great. Or they may do that in a more informal way. Like, they may. Like, if I start talking a little more slowly, it's more likely that you will. Right. And it's like I have a sister who talks a mile a minute. 

And several years ago, I realized that if I just talked a little slower, we would both slow down. And so there you go. So, yes, I recommend that people do the exercise explicitly to learn about it, to become more sensitive to it, and then to be aware that at times they can remind themselves, just slow it down, and that will work. So, yeah, as you said, there are a lot of exercises in the book, and all of them are things that have two purposes. There are things that, if you do them in a conversation, will actually help just in and of themselves. And the second purpose, or maybe the first purpose, really, is that these are things that are going to enable you to be more aware of what's going on. 

And as far as I'm concerned, 

No kidding. And the focus of this openness and closed aperture is such a great analogy of the camera and the aperture. Is that how you came up with it? 

Well, maybe subliminally, because I take a lot of pictures. I wasn't thinking of the camera aperture. So, yes, it's like a camera aperture, but really, biologically, our bodies have all kinds of apertures. The camera aperture is modeled after the aperture in our eyes. Yes. Turns out that physiology, the living world, has all kinds of open and closed mechanisms to regulate things. There's even in cells, there's this little tiny thing called the chloride channel. And what is a little tiny aperture, a molecular aperture in the cell wall that regulates cell salinity? If you can imagine, this is at the microscopic level. So the way life regulates itself is with apertures. And this is pointing to a particular aperture, which is our social, emotional aperture to each other. 

Beautiful. And just to follow up on that, even our breath, the inhale, the exhale, or the expanding and the contracting that closes isn't inherently bad. It's an indication of perhaps feeling some level of threat or unsafe. 

Absolutely. 

And that, in a few bonding sessions, we want to prioritize more safety. But do you want to speak to that? 

We need to feel safe with each other, and we have a natural mechanism. In fact, I would say one of the ways to be not so adroit and even safe in relationships is to be wide open, no matter what. It's actually very sane, sound, and wise to kind of figure out how safe you are with a certain person and to be appropriately open. So we want to have this variable ability to make ourselves available or not. It's just that we don't want to miss out on a connection that's available by being more closed than we need to be. And what I'm talking about is how to become very wise about that. Yes, thank you. 

And when we talk about long-term intimacy, when things really matter, that's where we have a lot of capacity and possibilities to be more revealing or make that more visible and direct versus the protective ways in which we attempt to hide or conceal. This is fabulous. Well, I love again, just coming back to how we are tracking this and have this awareness or the observation of openness and closeness. We're not always consciously focusing on it, and we also don't always know what to do with it. So I love this. Is there anything you want to say about perhaps micro moves or ways in which just attending to the aperture effect that's happening, both individually, for both partners? If we're talking about a monogamous relationship, and also just the closeness, I guess. 

What I would like to emphasize is that this is totally learnable. And in fact, it's not even that hard. It takes some practice. And that goes for mindfulness and aperture awareness, which is kind of a subset of mindfulness. You don't have to spend a million hours on a cushion to develop mindfulness. In fact, you could develop it very quickly in one quick five-minute practice, and then you develop more of it with another five-minute practice. So the things that I'm talking about are not things that are very far away from you. They simply require knowing how these things work and knowing how your system works so that you can start to just remind yourself in a moment of having that feeling in a conversation, just remind yourself, okay, take a minute. You don't have to rush. 

You don't have to answer right away. You don't even have to know what you feel right away. You just have to know you need a minute. And we don't ask often enough for each other to give us a minute to process. Somehow, we think we should instantly know exactly what. So I would say these things are totally learnable. And the trick to learning mindfulness is to be open to going into a place where you don't know. Not knowing is very uncomfortable for us. And I think 

And to truly be mindful, we're talking about entertaining a state where, actually, you're open enough and without any prejudgment of what's going to happen, that you can perceive what's happening freshly. 

And that requires being somewhat comfortable with being in some uncertainty and some not knowing which way, of course, is the state from which you learn things. Right. That's what I would say. 

Oh, thanks so much for giving us this. Katherine, what would you say about where people can get their book? Will you say the book's title again? 

Sure. The book is called The Aperture Effect, and the subtitle is A Radically Simple Approach to finding joy and connection in your relationship. But all you need to remember is it's called The Aperture Effect. And the best place probably to find several different links to it and some more information about it would be on my website. So, kathrynfordmd.com, and at that website, you'll find all kinds of things, including some links for getting the book. 

Excellent. And what else might they find? 

What else they may find is my blog. They will find links to all kinds of media things I like. They will soon find a link to this interview, and they'll probably find a link to the one that I did with you a few years ago, also. So they'll find all kinds of videos of me and short sequences of me giving talks, et cetera. So there'll be some extra materials there. Pretty soon, they'll start to find some guided meditations. Lovely Our Soul, which will go up probably within a couple of weeks. So, various other resources like that, and contact information for me. 

I love it. Wonderful. Thank you so much for all that you've shared, this beautiful piece of work, and what you're doing in the world. I'll make sure to have all those links on Today's Show Notes. 

Thank you. Jessica. It's wonderful to talk to you again. 

Likewise.