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Are you stuck in the painful loop of blame, shame, or resentment after a breakup or conflict? “Forgive and forget” sounds simple, but the reality of moving forward—especially when trust or boundaries have been violated—often feels like an impossible task. The baggage we carry from past relationships can quietly dictate our choices and limit our possibilities for genuine connection and growth.

In this episode, listeners are guided through the often-misunderstood concept of forgiveness, exploring why it is a vital process for both personal growth and deeper intimacy. The conversation delves into actionable steps for self-forgiveness, reframing painful experiences into opportunities for learning, and examining how releasing emotional burdens can pave the way for new, healthier connections. With practical insights for embracing boundaries, processing emotions, and nurturing gratitude, this episode serves as a roadmap for anyone seeking freedom from the past and the courage to open up to authentic relationships.

Dr. Margaret Cochran is a transpersonal psychologist, LCSW, educator, and media personality with over 25 years of clinical experience. She blends ego, transpersonal, and energy psychology to help clients truly heal—not just manage symptoms. Featured on BBC, ABC, FOX, and HuffPost, she's also known on TikTok as “The Relationship Doctor.” She makes mental health accessible, practical, and disruptive enough to inspire real, lasting change.

Episode Highlights

03:34 Forgiveness as a foundation for healing and growth in relationships.

07:16 Self-forgiveness and personal accountability after toxic relationships.

10:37 The role of boundaries in building intimacy and navigating change.

15:28 Facing uncertainty and embracing growth in relationship transitions.

16:46 Breaking through limiting beliefs and habituated patterns.

21:59 Taking inspired action toward change and possibility.

23:25 Visualization and quantum jumping: tools for transformation and forgiveness.

29:28 Understanding how the body holds emotion in forgiveness work.

30:50 Rewiring the brain with gratitude and somatic techniques.

34:38 Moving beyond victimhood: Conscious change and self-agency.

38:49 Managing internal resistance and self-sabotage with compassion.

42:32 Celebrating possibility: Cultivating trust and courage.

44:31 Practical forgiveness in everyday relationships and seeking qualified support.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

• Begin with Self-Forgiveness: Reflect on your role in past relationships and allow yourself grace for mistakes, focusing on learning rather than blame.
• Acknowledge and Process Emotions: Give yourself permission to fully feel and express emotions after a relationship injury or betrayal before moving into reflection.
• Embrace the Learning: Ask yourself what lessons you can take from difficult experiences and how you can use them for personal growth.
• Practice Gratitude Daily: Each morning and evening, list things you’re grateful for—even small ones—to start shifting your mindset and emotional state.
• Set and Maintain Healthy Boundaries: Clarify what you will and will not participate in, and openly communicate agreements and limits in relationships.
• Use Visualization Techniques: Imagine or visualize a future version of yourself who has grown, healed, and responded differently—let this guide your present choices.
• Pause and Ask Questions in Conflict: Instead of defending yourself, ask your partner open-ended questions to better understand their feelings and experiences.
• Challenge Limiting Beliefs: Notice and question any “shoulds,” “musts,” or impossibility statements (from yourself or others), and remain open to possibilities previously believed unattainable.

Mentioned

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication (free guide)

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Episode Transcript

Doctor Cochran, thank you for joining us. 

Well, thank you for having me. 

Yeah, we share some things in common with our, some of our education. We were just chatting, so I love hearing about your research. And today we're going to talk about forgiveness and how it impacts intimate space and relationships. And I can already feel my wheels spinning around. Typically, people live their lives and enter into an intimate relationship with some injuries or having experienced betrayal or something difficult. But sometimes we experience it in relationships. So, where would you like to start for people who are just getting to connect with you here? 

Well, I think, talking about forgiveness and intimate relationships, it's key. I mean, it's like one of the fundamental pieces. Whether you are 

You have to do it because stuff's gonna happen. It does, right? If you have left a relationship, forgiveness is key because if you're carrying drama, if you're carrying hatred, if you're carrying all that, ugh, then what you're gonna do is attract another partner who's full of luck. And then you're gonna say, ” Why do these people keep showing up in my life? Well, we're putting out that energy that this is who I am. And we tend to attract friends, coworkers, whatever, people that are like-minded and have like energy. So forgiveness is so powerful and changes the game completely. 

Thank you. I wanna dive into this. I also would add, and I imagine you would agree, that sometimes not only will we attract like, but we also will unconsciously choose people to work out unresolved issues. 

Oh yeah, absolutely. I love that you said that. I often say to people, when you draw your partner to you've both got the same stuff. You may be expressing it on opposite ends of a continuum. For example, let's say your energy is. You're not so good. Energy is about money. One of you is a spendthrift, one of you is a miser. Same energy, two ends of the continuum. So when those people come together, you either heal together or you make a big pathological soup. 

Yeah, well, and I'm sure you've, I haven't studied Orlean a ton, but I do remember one of the things he was saying in long-term intimacy is we start to integrate when we partner with someone different, like an extrovert, introvert. They start to really appreciate and learn the qualities of one another and come more to the middle. And so it's, it sounds like this is an opportunity for healing and growth. If we turn towards it and that. 

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's that old phrase, and the two become as one because you stop being so polarized, and you come to the middle, which is a much healthier integrated space. 

And it's not. Seems like we're the same person.

Yeah, okay, not at all. So it's definitely, it's definitely individuated. You're definitely your own person, but you stop carrying the energy in the relationship in such dichotomous ways. 

Yes, thank you. I love it. Okay, so when you talk about forgiveness being necessary, I appreciate that people's association with forgiveness might be moral or even spiritual, and it tends to feel a little bit nebulous, like how to actually put it into practice. And also, people feel that non-forgiveness might support their dignity, their self-worth, and their boundaries. Help us orient how you see forgiveness in this way. 

Okay, well, I got good news, bad news about that. And as you well know, Dr. Higgins, good news and bad news are often the same thing. But in this situation, 

Because if we haven't forgiven ourselves, we have no bandwidth to forgive anyone else. So here's how that plays out behaviorally. Frequently, someone will get into a relationship, and it's toxic, and they stay too long, and that sort of thing. And then when they finally get out, it's usually in some traumatic kind of way, and they just start to beat themselves up. What's wrong with me? What was I doing? Why did I stay so long? What does this say about me? He was a monster. Am I a monster? 

And from that space, you can't forgive anybody because you haven't been able to say, ” Yep, well, that was a relationship I had. What did I learn? Who did I become? Will I allow that to inspire me or define me? And that's one of the most important questions anyone can ask. Is this relationship going to say, yeah, you're this XYZ person, or is this relationship going to say, this is the person I am becoming, and I'm excited about that? So if I can forgive myself for the learning experience I obviously needed because I was in this relationship, then I begin to see that other person, however toxic they might be, as a teacher to me. And I actually have gratitude to them for what they taught me. 

And also just to kind of round this out, I do think, of course, there are examples where perhaps one partner is behaving in more toxic ways, and also, people tend to perpetuate a toxic dynamic. Right. Relationally. And there's some ownership that I'm hearing, whether or not it's saying, ” Oh, how did I participate? Or how did I, how was I, yes to this? For what reason did I show up that was reactive, unregulated, and not very skillful? So you're saying forgiveness in this context is less about focusing on what is wrong and the blame and shame about it, but more about looking at accountability and what the growth and learning are. 

Yes, absolutely. And recognizing that it's an important part of life. I mean, life is a series of wonderful things punctuated by a series of icky things followed by a series of wonderful things. And it will always be so. And if you recognize that's just the ebb and flow of life, when those things come that you perceive to be not so good, it doesn't freak you out. It doesn't say, ” Oh my gosh, my life is over, what's wrong with me? It's, oh, this is one of those things. Back to our friend Dr. Jung, he talked about the pearl of great price. He talked about pearl, of course, it is a beautiful thing that is created around an irritant, right? So we open up the shell, and we say, ” Oh, yeah, there it is. Okay, I got it. 

I've learned that I was not the person I thought I was, or I learned I need more patience, or I learned I need better boundaries, or I learned I need to improve my self-esteem, or I need to work myself up. But sometimes the most wonderful gifts come wrapped in the worst kind of paper, and we get all distracted by the paper, forget to open the box, and see what's really in the gift. 

Do you feel that there's a timing for more acute pain and emotional process, and then where this reflective looking at lessons and maybe some self-ownership becomes more available, or do you feel like at any point, because sometimes people feel I gotta forgive or the pressure, or like maybe even want to bypass the emotional pain? Like, do you feel like, how do you encourage people if they're in real acute pain, versus I don't know if that fits in your model. 

No, it makes perfect sense. You've gotta give yourself some grace. It's like me and chocolate. I'm looking at the chocolate, and I'm thinking, yeah, I need a little grace right now. I'm going to have some of that chocolate. But I'm not going to binge on chocolate or eat chocolate forever. I just need to have that experience. So when you end a relationship, especially if it's done in some kind of traumatic way, you need to jump up and down and flush like a toilet and cry and spit and do all that stuff. And then as you improve your self-regulation, you come back to, okay, I got all that gook out. Now let's look at what really happened. Let's lay it out in the light of day so we can really see what I just went through and how I benefit from this. 

It's like there's a bit of orientation once we can calibrate and look at, okay, who am I now? 

Yes. 

And as you look at this forward trajectory of feeling inspired versus held by like, there's like a heavy weight to perhaps a betrayal or trauma or injury that we might carry with us. 

Okay. 

And this is where, when people I asked initially about boundaries, that when we can transition and orient to the lesson, there can be a tremendous amount of boundaries, a part of that learning and accountability. Is that right? 

Oh, absolutely. And boundaries create intimacy. Most people think the opposite. Especially if you've been raised in a more shame-based versus a more love-based kind of family, you know, in a family that's less healthy, the message is no, there are no boundaries. You're responsible for my feelings and my behavior, and you're not entitled to a self. Okay, so there you can't have real intimacy. There's no safe space. There's no place to be yourself. In a healthier relationship, you have boundaries, and you're able to have your own feelings, needs, and position. And from that place and the grace we talked about earlier, you can come together and pretty much work out anything. 

I hear this as like an evolving. Like in its language, it might sound very finite, but in its practice, I experience it to be very developmental. Right. That I, I am always learning about myself in relationships, especially as it relates to boundaries. Like, I don't, if I think back way, I don't know that I had as much clarity as I do now. And the subtleties of boundaries, what I'm going to participate in, what I'm not going to participate in, what I actually make explicit and have agreements around, and various. And you're nodding. 

Absolutely. Again, it's that question of grace. We're all a work in progress. And 

for good or frail. I mean, we get to decide that. But the point is that we are constantly, if we're doing our job, we're constantly learning and growing and changing, and that's really one of the keys to intimate relationships, is sometimes one partner is going in a direction that the other partner isn't. That causes a lot of friction and angst. And sometimes, instead of being able to talk that through, one partner gets mad at the other. Well, don't do that. I don't want you to do that. I want you to stay with the old agreement and be who you were 10 years ago. And so there's a lot of sniping back and forth about that. Now. 

If we're doing our work, we recognize, okay, this is a change point. This is a developmental shift. 

And so if we're doing our work, then we're gonna be able to negotiate through that. If one partner is absolutely determined to call the dance tune and say, no, it has to be only this way, then the relationship isn't going to last. Either that or you will live. You may live together, but you will do so in misery and without intimacy. 

Right. Cause that's so constricted and limited and, like, operating in this very narrow, safe zone that. That's not very supportive for everyone. 

Yeah. It's an emotional corset, is what it is. Yeah. 

Very well said. 

And 

I'm having trouble breathing just thinking about that. You don't want to be in that kind of situation, and you don't want to do that to your children. And sometimes people inadvertently do the same, because children, no matter what your relationship is to them, are a very intimate kind of relationship. It is where they're learning about boundaries and safety and all that kind of stuff. And that's why when adults fail them in that way, it's such a tremendous betrayal. 

Absolutely. So before we go into just kind of what you're pointing to here, you're acknowledging the terrain of intimacy will involve upset, will involve injury, sometimes to some level. And when you talk about grace, both offered to self and offered to others, there's a bit of. Especially when we talk about the other. In this example, you just said, ” Oh, I'm growing and changing. Maybe I want my partner to come with me, or perhaps my partner wants me to stay the same. That there's tolerating some uncertainty or the discomfort of uncertainty that we typically, as humans. I mean, it's a natural tendency to want to control or keep things in a place that we deem good, parentheses that it could perhaps be better. Right. And so if we're holding so tight to a certain idea. 

We're not giving room and space for the unknown, the uncertainty, which could be vastly better. And that's difficult and scary often. 

Yes. And for some, more so than others. 

Yes. 

But basically, my sort of joke is that ambiguity is not my friend. If I want to know what's coming next, I want to know how, I want to know when, I want to know why. I want to know where this is going to take me, what's going to happen? And what are the most exciting places you can be in life is to allow yourself to go to a place of unknowing and say, ” Whoa, I wonder what's coming next. What's that better thing that's coming to me? Something good will come of this, especially after something that you perceive to be not that great happens to you. Go to, and what good will come of this? And then hold open and let it come to you. 

Because if we're in that course that we alluded to earlier, not only can we not breathe, we can't think, we can't see our posture, we can't move, our posture's messed up. So we're tending to look down like this. And these amazing miracles can come by, and we'll miss the whole thing. And a lot of that corset is, I can't have this. It won't work for me. I can't be safe, I can't be loved. I'm not loving and lovable, I'm not deserving. All those kinds of things make up the laces where bad things will happen. 

Like, this is my safety mechanism too. 

Just be right here in this little bubble. And what's really awful about that is when something amazing does happen, it's interpreted as an omen for the next disaster. Like this lovely woman I worked with years ago, she was extremely anxious, and she had OCD and some other things. And she was in her 70s, 75, I think. And her granddaughter said, ” If you don't go get some help, I'm not coming over to your house anymore because I can't do it. When she was ducking under microwaves, it took her two hours to mail a letter because she'd be afraid she forgot what she wrote in the letter, and there might be bad words in there. So she put it in, took it out, put it in, like that. So I said to her in one of our initial sessions, so what if you won the lottery? 

What if you won $2 million? She said, ” Well, I know if I won $2 million. That would be the last kind thing God did for me before I was damned to the fires of hell forever. And that's how she looked at life. There was no happiness, there was no joy. So when you get in that awful thundercloud of anything good portends something bad, and anything bad is just normal. That's a pretty awful way to live. 

And compassionately, I can appreciate that there's perhaps a part of. I'm just imagining, obviously, I've never met this person, but that there's a way in which that narrative is trying to mitigate the pain or the risk. And like, I'm preparing, like, oh, if I open up my heart or if I get, if I believe good things, like the devastation of having something horrible happen, it's too much to bear. And so for people who have less experience with things will work out for good. There's a lesson that I can apply here and be confident that will contribute to goodness. How do you help people? Because it's, I would imagine, both acknowledging pain and trauma, but also giving them an opportunity to practice experiencing and living into some of these new patterns. 

Yes, very well said. I often encourage people to do what they think is ridiculous. 

Okay. 

For example, a woman I was working with in a clinic some years ago, and this woman came in, and she was. Oh, she was in such bad shape. And she said, I just want to die. I don't know what to do. I have two kids. She was working at McDonald's. Her husband had left her and gone to Mexico. And since she had no child support, McDonald's wages are not great, and she was living in this little postage stamp place, and she just felt her life was over. So I said, ” Wow, I mean, that just sounds awful. What would your life look like if you had what you wanted? And she looked at me with death eyes, like, how could you ask me that? Can't you see that this is all I can have? 

And so she said, ” Are you trying to make me feel bad? I said, no, not at all. I'm just curious about what your dream would look like. So she told me about this little house with a little pick fence and a place for a dog and da, da. But I can't have that. And I said, well, just. I know I'm crazy, I know. But just on the off chance you could have that, how might you get it? And again, death rays. I mean, I'd be dead now if that were true. And basically went through this series of ridiculous behaviors that she couldn't possibly do or have. And what she ended up doing was first, she started looking around for fixer-uppers for rent. And then her brothers, who were construction, got her rent reduced because her brothers did the fixing up for the landlord. And then the house looked so good that the landlord decided to sell it. And then she was really mad at me because she said, I have my house now, they're taking it away. And so I said, well, if it was going to work out, what would you do? And she said, ” Well, I guess. I guess I'd ask him if he'd hold the paper for me, if he would let me do the loan through him instead of a bank, which he did. And she bought the house. And then we. I asked her, well, what would you do for a living? Because I don't think you're happy at McDonald's, right? She said, no, I've always wanted to be a seamstress, a couturier. 

And I said, so if you were going to do that, how would you do it? And she looked at me again, like, well, because she's kind of used to me now doing this. And she said, well, I guess I'd go around some of the bridal shops and do some free stuff and show them what I could do. She now designs costumes for the San Francisco Opera and the San Jose Opera. She does a lot of very high-end couturier work in the area. And she also does a lot of stuff for high-end bridal salons. And she's making probably 10 times what she made at McDonald's. And she has her house. All those things she couldn't have, but she had to be willing to try the ridiculous. 

So a lot of it is 

kicking and screaming often, but pushing past that place where this won't work for me. I can't have this. This is impossible to. Well, if it were, what would my behavior look like? 

Thank you for that story. I so appreciate just what's possible and the re-patterning that can occur, and what's the next step, and really getting the mind to entertain this ridiculous vision, perhaps. It's like all you need to do is have just some part of her be open to the possibility, and what that could then lead to. And if we apply this to forgiveness and also to relationships, how would you make that more like? Not that we need steps, but just actionable around turning towards. Because I'm hearing themes of acceptance, right. Perhaps not needing things to be so rigid and working with what is, looking at some level of ownership around how I participate or what I'm. What, my learning or the learning and growth? So, can you frame this for us, for the forgiveness with intimacy? 

Well, in that particular case I just cited, she basically transmuted her despair into anger with me, and she used that anger to go to an unsafe place. She was going to spite me. She was going to show me I was so wrong. And that's what she used to propel her forward. So what we look for when we're in a process. 

Okay, what am I going to use for rocket fuel here? What's going to motivate me, inspire me to. To move forward? Maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your dog, maybe it's your health, maybe it's your family. It could be a myriad of things, but you find something that you say, yeah, this is scary and uncomfortable, and I'm not exactly sure. Ambiguity, again, about how this is going to work. But 

“Somehow, I'm going to figure out a way to do this. And again, it comes back to the willingness to hold open to all possibilities, even if they seem beyond you or unacceptable or that just can't possibly work.” 

And some belief of overcoming hardship. 

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

And you are like a partner in believing in her. If I can use that language. 

No, I love what you said. Sometimes I use a technique called quantum jumping. 

Mm. 

And what I do is I help people go to a place of deep relaxation, hypnosis, if you will. And I have them go to a place where there are many doors, and their name is on all those doors, and they step out into this universe where they know which door to go to that has the version of them that they need to be to do whatever they're doing. And they go into the room, and it's beautiful. It's just the way they would want it to be. And then the other one steps out, and they observe. “How does she dress, how does she talk, how does she smell, how does she move? 

What does she say? What does she think? 

Exactly. What would she do with this or that? How would she react? And in the end, ultimately, there is a powerful hug, and she's gone because she's you.” And then you come back with that. And at the beginning of this exercise, I have. Every person walked in a long hallway, like an art gallery, on either side of the walkway are images of their life, some happy, some not. Photographs, charcoals, anything that represents their life. And when they come back down the hall after that experience, pictures don't look quite the same because they're not the same. And the way they hold those memories is not the same. 

So this is a visualization. But as you're mapping this out, I'm resonating in lived experience over many years. Have you experienced a betrayal or trauma, as I experienced, not intimately, but in family? And it took many years. And I'm remembering an example or experience where I was with the person, and I just felt a completely different relationship. And I. It was very organic how I. I didn't. I wasn't holding on to, like, resentment or I wasn't wishing ill, but I. I find. I find the relationship dynamic complicated and was very clear about some boundaries and what have you. But I felt very open, but also like it had changed. And so it seems very similar to what you're describing. I'm not being very specific. 

No, I think that's a framework for your wonderfulness. It is. We all have that in us, but sometimes we're missing the framework because we need to be able to corral it so we can use that energy going forward. So, in your example, that's really what the experience is like. Again, walking back down that hallway, you may go buy a betrayal picture or some kind of anger picture or something, and suddenly you realize, oh, that person was behaving that way because of this. I see. It wasn't really mine to carry. And then the picture changes. 

Yes. And talk to us, because I think for me personally, I could logically and relationally hold that, but somatically, my body wasn't there yet. So, can you talk about the body, maybe the nervous system, the thoughts, the emotions, like how that fits with forgiveness in the process here? 

Dr. Higgins, you're my new best friend. Let me just say, because now we're talking about energy psychology, we're talking about the body and how it holds things for us. Again, for good or for ill. Right. It's often our buffer against all the nonsense of the outside world. And it can. We tend to think of it as just. We sort of take it for granted a lot of the time. For many years, Allopathic medicine, which is what we practice here in the West, has really poo-pooed the idea that, you know, oh, acupuncture. Oh, yoga. That's just you. Well, we finally got off our butts and did some research and found out, oh, my goodness, all those traditions really had validity. 

So there are techniques that you can use to access those subtle meridians of the body so that you can calm down your nervous system, get your vagal nerve back in. Tone basically runs the body up or down to get our amygdala to behave properly. Those two little almond-shaped things in the back of our brain, very primitive, very powerful. And the trick is that, well, the human brain hasn't evolved in about the last 10,000 years. Let's think about that now. We got 21st-century problems, ancient technology. What could possibly go wrong? So what happens is our amygdala, which is the most primitive part of our brain, is always looking for danger, danger. How do we stay safe? How do we stay alive? But this prefrontal cortex part here in the front, behind our forehead, can't catch up. 

So this part back here says, red light, red light. And the prefrontal cortex says, ” Oh, no, it's fine. No, it isn't. Keep panicking. So you. When somebody says to someone anxious or in the midst of trauma, just calm down. That's the worst thing you can possibly. You might get punched because you know the person's thinking, don't you think I would calm down if I could calm down? So these kinds of exercises and techniques slow the process down so the prefrontal cortex can catch up and regain control, which changes all the neurotransmitters in our body. 

And one of them, the most powerful technique I know, is taking vitamin G. And G stands for gratitude. And literally, if you do this and you do it faithfully, you can rewire your brain in about 30 days to have a very different outlook, very different perspective. And it's not hard to do. 

I'm so happy and grateful that I have a roof over my head. I'm so happy and grateful that I get to be on Dr. Higgins show today. I'm so happy and grateful that I have my four wonderful dogs, my children, and all those things. 

Now, initially, when you're not feeling good, it may be hard to come up with stuff for your list and to feel it. But that's okay. That's just the beginning. “Don't you make your soup with one ingredient, right? It takes time.” So maybe you start with, I'm so happy and grateful I have my purple dinosaur socks, whatever. And then before you go to sleep, as you're going down into sleep, it's a very hypnagogic state, a very state where you're very accessible. And you again, repeat that list of things that you're grateful for. And then. And here's the corker: you begin to be happy and grateful for things that haven't happened yet. Like, let's say you're not the most patient person in the world. Let's pretend. And so you might say, I'm so happy and grateful that I am patient, calm, and accepted. 

And here's what'll begin to happen. About 10 days in, you'll start to notice, huh, that used to really bother me. It didn't bother me so much today. Or, oh, you know, I noticed I kind of had fun doing XYZ that I used to just hate to do. And when the bumps and lumps of life come at you're able to say, yep, that happened. And now what am I going to do with it? Versus, oh, my gosh, that happened. And I don't know what to do. And I'm just devastated, and et cetera. And when you get into that mindset of I'm just devastated, and everything's awful, that affects your heart, your blood pressure, your liver, and goodness knows, your GI tract, your gastrointestinal tract, people getting GERD and diarrhea and ulcers and just all kinds of not fun things. And those are all representational of. 

You're just wearing me out. There's no. I can't continue to carry this. So changing that energy with your vitamin D, changing your energy with some other techniques, like the emotional freedom technique. A lot of people refer to that as tapping. That's a popular one. Certain kinds of breathing things. Box breathing, 4, 7, 8 breathing. Often accompanied by certain statements.

This is all. I mean, I know there's so much we need. 

The whole show up. 

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking of the Polyvagal. I've actually had Stephen Porges and  Deb Dana on the show, and just helping understand the power of the nervous system. Like, there are a lot of people. I keep seeing apps now for vagal toning or just ways in which we can work with somatically calming the nervous system. It's huge. 

It's not just your abs anymore. You gotta tone your vagus too. 

And the health benefits of that. And as we kind of bring this back to Forgiveness. And I was commenting on the nervous system, feeling the somatic state with this person. I had done a tremendous amount of work that wasn't specific to that, but I was just a different person than when I didn't want to get into the details. It was way too long a trauma, but then it got noted anyway. It was. But it was different from when I was conscious of this trauma, and I could feel the growth in me. And it sounds like this visualization or the guided imagery. When people are in this very much more like hypnotic. 

Available state. 

Available state. You're giving a direction, you're helping guide based on what would be meaningful and their dream, and giving them some scaffolding of how to access that. And even with the story that you mentioned with your client working at McDonald's and being the couture, like so, helping with the garments and the. She's not a seamstress, she's an actual, like, designer now. 

Yes, she is. 

Okay. 

Okay. So you've probably seen her work. I mean, she's a man, I'm sure. 

Yes. Not that I. I'm not super in touch with all the celebrities, but she had to live into it. So you helped give her scaffolding, helped her have access. She still needed to do the work and live into it. So as you help people orient, the pain is real, especially when it's acute. There's a level of processing that's helpful to just try to metabolize the intensity of whatever that pain is. “Then, when we regulate a bit and orient, this is when it's critical. Time to look at what the learning is? What can I do? What are my boundaries? What's the vision? How do I live into this? With gratitude. Some equanimity, some grace, some acceptance. Am I hearing this? 

Oh, yeah. Once again, another brilliant point to you because the rule is, unfortunately, in psychology, there's such a thing as toxic psychology. Yeah, yeah, we won't go into that right now. 

And toxic positivity, too. 

Yes, but often what happens is people have gone through something difficult, and the first thing they get is, don't think about that. Think about this. But here's the problem. You can't clean the kitchen if you don't see the dirt.” You've got to be willing to lay it out and move into it and say, yes, this is what was true for me. But when we do all the amazing things that we were just talking about, and we retrain the brain, and you're living gratitude, those things, your body relaxes, and you're comfortable. And people will often talk about how she or he likes another self, oh, she had cancer. Oh, he had an autoimmune disease. I don't have that. So you're literally saying, I'm done with that Persona of mine. I've decided that's not what I want to keep in my kitchen. 

I thank them for their service. I said goodbye. Not with anger or acrimony of any kind, just. I see that's the tool I was using, the version of myself I was using to get through this. But that's not who I am anymore. And that's what you're describing beautifully. One of the things that sometimes gets people frustrated is the so-called unconscious mind, which is a compilation of systems in the brain, and it basically functions like a thermostat. So there's this sort of homeostatic point, let's call it 68 out of 100. And that's where you're used to hanging out. And you say, I'm done with 68. I'm going up to 95. I'm going to do it this time. And you're all excited, and parts of your brain are lighting up that don't usually light up. And you got dopamine going on. Yeah. 

And then about 72 hours in, all of a sudden, this little voice in your head, the one that says, you know, you don't have to do that today, or it's kind of hard, or, you sure you really want to do that? And that's just your unconscious mind saying, “Okay, I need to take you back to where you taught me was safe.” And that's where gratitude and the other processes we've been discussing come in. Because they reprogram our thermostat and give us permission to, yeah, I can do 95, I can do a hundred if I want. I can do whatever it is I want to do, versus, no, this is the only little corridor I'm allowed to travel in. 

So we're in a habituated state. I'm so grateful that you're bringing this up. I mean, I know many people, it's like not quite common knowledge, but often referenced around how so many of our thoughts in a given day are like repeat thoughts. We're not really having all that many new thoughts. A large portion of them tend to be negative, and we tend to have a negative bias. And as humans, as you mentioned, are very survival mechanisms as animals to be safe and all that we've brought with us from our evolution, that we. It's almost this consciousness, this agency of deciding versus just going with what has been or doing what our circumstances would say are very valid to feel. But that's just not being a victim, but it is. 

We're being stuck. 

Stuck, okay? 

It's just being stuck. And when you're in your car, and you've got a backseat driver who's saying, ” No, you can't turn left. We always turn right. You can't do that. And if you fight that voice and you start putting all your emotional energy into, oh, wait, leave me alone, don't talk to me anymore. You're going to crash your car. Is that going to work? Or either that or you'll just stop because you don't need more juju left to go. But if you recognize that voice and say, “Oh, there you are, hi, you're here to protect me. I know, but remember, we have a new deal now. And the new deal is I'm going to turn left. Okay, so you turn left one time, you think, yeah, that was pretty good. I turned left. 

And then the next day you get in your car, and there's that voice again. Don't you think about turning left? I know I let you do it yesterday, but I'm not going to. So it takes time. And you've got to recognize that unconscious conscious process will come roaring back to try to protect you. So all you have to do is 

I know. 

Right, it's like with a little one. If you're working with children, their job is to push boundaries. That's how they're wired. That's how they explore the world. So when you say, no, you can't do that right now. This is what we need to do. And they have big temper tantrums and da, da. If you are kind, calm, and accepting, they eventually self-regulate, and then you move on to whatever you're going to do. And that's the same as that voice in your head. If you're kind to her, I know you're here to protect me. I know you're trying to keep me in a good place. But left turns are kind of what we're into right now. But we're going to do that again today. And what begins to happen over time? 

That voice gets softer. 

Softer and trust starts to trust that you're in the driver's seat. You're going to keep us safe. And I love what you said, Dr. Cochrane, about being able to name so that part feels seen or the child feels seen. Oh, I so know you want to play that game, and you're right in the middle of it. And I appreciate. Yes. And we'll come back, like just being able to acknowledge the validity and the value or the intention and what that need is, and then also be able to direct and lead. 

Yeah, I'll sometimes encourage people to give that voice a name, like Frank or Sadie or whatever. Oh, hi, Sadie. Boy, you're loud today. You're really being loud today. But we're still turning left. But then pretty soon, as I said, the voice gets softer and softer. And this new voice, as you wisely say, of trust, comes and says, you know what, we can turn right or left. You can decide based on how you're feeling, what the circumstances are, and where you really want to go today. And wow, vistas open up. 

” Isn't it amazing? Something fabulous is happening for me today. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know where it is. I don't know how it will show up. 

I just know unequivocally that it's there waiting for me. Sometimes I'll talk to folks about how, here's your courage. It's in my hand right here. Come and take it whenever you're ready. But if you're not, I'll just hold it here so you remember it's there and you can access it when the moment comes. And it's basically a representation of you having everything you need. All that good stuff is in there. Again, coming back to cooking, your cupboards are full of good stuff. It's just finding the recipe and recognizing that you can change it and make new things whenever you want to. 

I love it. I know we're winding down, and I am aware that for people who are in a relationship, perhaps didn't have something super intense or aren't in a crisis, but there's a subtlety here that's also available. Is there anything you want to say about practicing forgiveness, as you started to say early on, that this is a part of cultivating long-lasting, authentic, alive relationships? Is there anything you want to say about how to access some of the subtleties of this practice? 

Well, yeah, two things, actually. One is not to trust consensual reality. And I say that sounds like, oh, that sounds kind of woo and mystical. But what it means is in our consensual reality, we have a lot of stupid things like you can't have your cake and eat it too. Now, who in the world would have cake? I mean, I'm a frosting girl myself, but you 

gotta have something to hold up the frosting, right? So of course, you're gonna eat your cake. But it's basically a phrase. You can't have it all. You can't have what you want. It's limiting. So be careful of those people out there with shoulds and musts and supposed to’s, people that you trust. 

Often in a relationship, when people get into a tough spot, they'll go to their best friend, or they'll go to their parents, or something for advice, and they don't know beans from apple butter about how to fix the problem they have. 

Especially if there's something very taboo, like if there was an affair or something that happened, or divorce is happening, there are some maybe archaic notions that somehow I'm now flawed, or I'm damaged goods. Talking about these statements that we don't want to buy into, that we could somehow start to identify with. 

Don't go to a greengrocer. If you have a problem with your car, go to a mechanic. So that's as clear as I can make it. If you have something going on in your intimate relationship, please go to a qualified helper. And the other is fear is a very powerful teacher or horrible master. And you must decide for yourself which is going to be. And one of the. In a relationship, in particular, the last point is to make fewer statements and ask more questions. Listen, listen, listen. So if your partner comes to you and they're all grouchy pants, instead of choosing to defend, don't defend yourself. 

Help me, help me understand more about how I hurt you. 

I didn't intend to, but help me understand more about that, and you will see things shift on a dime. 

Likely, we'll be able to see things differently in ourselves, and an opportunity for learning. Even the story is not exactly how you would articulate it, but the nugget around what you're saying, what has real meaning, and what's significant. 

Well, and let me also give a caveat there. 

And back to the corset thing again. But if you remember to ask questions and then to listen. A lot of us spend our time when we're conversing formulating our answer instead of really listening to what the other person is saying. 

Yes. 

And again, it changes the dynamic very quickly. Actually, people are often shocked by how quickly it changes. And that walk down that hallway we talked about earlier, the pictures start to change.

Thank you, Dr. Cochran, for people who are connecting with you or want to hear more about what you have to say or what you're offering. Where would you direct people? 

To two places. One is my podcast, The Relationship Doctor, and the other one is just my website drcochran.com 

Excellent. I'll make sure to have both of those links on today's show Notes. What might they find on your website? 

Information about how, if you decide you want to work with me, if you want to do some coaching or something like that, how to do that, what kinds of things I can do, a little bit about who I am, that kind of stuff. 

Excellent. Wonderful. Well, thank you again for joining us here today. 

 Thank you for having me. So much fun.