ERP 060: How To Step Up To A Healthy, Authentic Relationship With Monika Hoyt
Welcome to The Empowered Relationship Podcast, helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success. Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach who shares valuable tips, tools and resources for you to dramatically improve your relationship.
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Jessica: Hi, thank you for joining me today and sharing this time with me. I have an interview to share with you today, and I love this interview. I just this she’s got so much to share, and if you’ve listened to my podcast for a while you will hear, there just seems to be so much congruency with her perspective and my perspective, as well as her philosophies in general. We have very similar ways of describing things and I just feel like her story and the keys that she’s offering are just incredibly insightful.
Monika is a licensed therapist and relationship coach promoting healthy, authentic relationships from the inside-out. She specializes in helping people change their limiting beliefs at the subconscious level, creating much deeper change than in traditional coaching methods. She works mostly with women who are in long-term relationships in crisis, to help them create their desired relationship by first changing their own default modes. Her coaching programs guide individuals through four stages of change that are required for truly authentic, empowered relationships.
Monika, thank you so much for joining us today.
Monika: My pleasure, thanks for having me.
Jessica: Yes, I’ve actually been on your list for a while; I think my husband introduced me to your work and I’ve read a few of your articles of the years and I just feel like we have a similar voice and perspective, so I’m just grateful for you spending some time with us today. Just even reading your bio, I guess I have a couple questions. When you say default modes, what do you mean there?
Monika: What I mean when I say default modes is really just our knee-jerk reaction to things, our patterning that will kick in without us consciously interfering. It’s sort of like how a computer has a default mode, we also have a hardwiring default mode. It’s like old programs, it’s our habitual ways of responding to things. So sometimes when we want to make changes in our lives, we have to work against those default modes and make a conscious decision to do things differently, and then create new habits. That’s what the default modes are, really – the thing that we work against when we try to make positive change.
Jessica: Nice, so well said. I’m often talking to people about a new program, like how to install the new program. So for the clients that you work with, do you have any common default modes? Just so listeners can find an example to maybe relate to, that you might see a lot.
Monika: Sure. For some people shutting down is the default mode if they’re presented with conflict, or if there is a disagreement some people might just feel like it’s safer to not go there, so the default mode would be to shut down. For some people the default mode would be to fight, or to argue, or to never show the vulnerable side. It could be to control the situation as a way of feeling safe, so some people have like a controller-default. It really depends on the person, but usually we get these defaults by – really they’re like survival skills that we develop growing up. They’re what has worked for us in the past, but then they can kind of bite us in the butt later on so to speak, because they don’t work for us as we try to evolve and change.
Jessica: Totally, I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s helpful, thank you.
Monika: Sure.
Jessica: I’m also curious about the four stages of change that you work with your clients about to really create the more authentic, empowered relationships.
Monika: Yes, so the stages of change are really a point of emphasis of where you’re focusing your attention as you try to make changes in your life, and it starts with the self-awareness piece; where you’re focusing your attention in the beginning, in the first phase, is your relationship with yourself. Getting honest with yourself, owning what your limits are, owning what your needs are, what your desires are, what your boundaries are, what are your challenges, really getting to know yourself and getting real with yourself is what I call it.
Then the second stage is expressing that. Once you know who you are, once you know what you want and all of that, you can more easily express yourself authentically, and that whole stage is really about getting the tools to be able to express who you are to another person in a relationship. The next level is then being able to hold the space for them to express themselves to you, so the shift is now not just on inside-out expression, but then just receiving the other person. I call that receiving your partner. And that’s really advanced stuff, because you have to kind of get your own filters out of the way, and really just hear who they are as a separate person; separate from the past, separate from what’s already happened in your relationship, just staying present in the moment.
Then you move to the fourth phase, which is what I call getting into unity, or getting on the same team. That’s when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You move out of that “me versus you”, and you’re looking at things as a “we”. So if you want X, I want Y, how can we navigate this and each get what we want? You’re problem-solving on a higher-level, you’re able to pan out of the micro level and kind of see it from a distance and work together as a team. It’s not exactly a linear process, it’s not like you can’t circle back through phase one or phase two as you’re evolving your relationship, but in general they sort of go in that order. Because I think you have to have a certain measure of self-awareness before you can express yourself, you have to be able to express yourself before you can really receive the other, so I do feel like they kind of go in order, but I always tell people it’s not a hard line either. You can spiral through these things.
Jessica: Yes, this is so great. People who have listened to my podcast have heard me talk about the stages in a relationship development. It seems you incorporate that a little bit, where you’re talking about the power struggle and getting to more of the synergistic… That’s so great, and I think you’re really articulate in saying just how it can be easy to get intellectually, but the practice of it and what it’s requiring is advanced, super advanced.
Monika: It really is. Yes, it’s hard.
Jessica: Yes, so what are you really passionate about in your work? How long have you been working with relationship topics?
Monika: That’s a good question. It’s really something I’ve always been passionate about ever since I was younger. Talking with girlfriends about relationships was always something I loved doing, still love doing, kind of getting into the dynamics of things. SO really trying to understand why people do what they do, why do they say what they say, that’s been an interest of mine since like fifth grade, but I didn’t really choose that as a specialty. When I went into mental health, when I went into study to become a therapist I wasn’t clear that relationships was going to be my focus, until about maybe seven, eight years ago, because I went through some true challenges in my marriage, and I had to do a lot of deep belief work around my own default modes and my own limiting beliefs, that were really sabotaging my marriage, in the early years of my marriage. So as I recovered from that and as I grew from that, I felt like this is something that I can help people with, I felt like I had insight around it personally, not just as a therapist and understanding the theories, but really personally having gone through the challenges of that and having come out the other side.
I don’t know, I just felt passionate about being able to… That became my niche, it was something that I started just attracting into my practice more and more, and that just evolved organically. So now I work mostly with people who are in relationships that are in somewhat of a crisis. There’s a commitment there, but there’s just some real challenges and it’s hard to see past it.
Jessica: Yes. I think it’s so key that you have your own personal journey; that brings the knowing of what you’re teaching and guiding people through to such a deeper level. Is there more that you’d like to share about that story?
Monika: Sure, absolutely.
Jessica: We’d love to hear.
Monika: It’s hard to distill it in just a few minutes because there was a lot going on, but essentially when I think back upon my marriage, I was really in pain every day. I felt alone, I felt resentful. I wanted to feel close, but I felt really unable to feel close. I had anger and I wasn’t able to express it in the right way, and I knew that I wasn’t communicating things the right way and then I really hated myself because I thought, “Well, I’m a therapist and I should know better, and I should be holding myself to a higher standard.” But really I had this deep belief that a great, healthy relationship wasn’t for me. I didn’t see myself in that equation, so I kind of operated from that expectation. I had this expectation that I wasn’t going to get my needs met, and I operated almost in a self-fulfilling way. The way that I approached conflict – I was pretty controlling, looking back; I was very controlling, but I didn’t see that. I felt like the hurt and victimized one, but I kind of set it up so that I wouldn’t get what I wanted, by the way that I communicated. I didn’t set things up to succeed, and I wasn’t really conscious of how I was doing that. So we had really big arguments, I used to fantasize about breaking up and leaving, and I remember thinking “Well, if only it wouldn’t impact the kids I would just leave”.
Then it was really ironic. The turning point for me was really once in my research, and as I was doing a lot of research on relationships and trying to apply it in my own, I had to kind of take this idea that you can really only control yourself and you can’t control the other person, which intellectually I already knew, but I really had to take it to the next level of truly letting go of what I couldn’t control, and having that experiential knowing of how much power then you do have.
Once you stop trying to control the things you can’t control, you all of a sudden recognize how much power you have that you weren’t even using. So I really just started to focus on the things I could change. So instead of trying to get my husband to see how he was wrong, or trying to get him to change the way he looked at things and constantly focusing on him, I was like “Okay, I’m just going to clean up my side of the street, and then I can always leave in a year from now. But I want to feel like I did my part. I want to at least feel like my conscience is clear when I do walk away, if I do walk away. I have to clean up my side of the street first.” So that was my effort, and then I found that as I started making changes there was a little bit of a gap between my changes and his changes. It took time for his psyche to update to my changes.
Jessica: Sure, yes…
Monika: But then he did shift, because I had disturbed the equilibrium. As I held myself to higher standards, then he kind of followed suit. I ended up ironically getting what I had wanted all along, but I got it differently than I thought I would, if that makes sense. I got it my changing myself, and then he changes.
Jessica: Yes, I was going to say….
Monika: He changed of his own volition, he got to be who he wanted to be, who he chose to be. He could choose who he wanted to be, as opposed to reacting to what I was trying to create, if that makes sense.
Jessica: It makes perfect sense. Monika, I can see why I wanted to interview you. Everything you’re saying I feel completely like I… I mean, people have heard me say a version of what you’re saying. I say it ‘side of the fence’ instead of ‘side of the street’.
Monika: Same idea, though.
Jessica: Yes, same idea. So did you and your husband really talk about this explicitly? A lot of times I think I’m encouraging people to do somewhat what you are describing – really do you own work, so you can feel your own integrity and your own personal transformation. Then you’re going to have more information to work with, like is he going to shift or is he not? That’s a different conversation, it’s less reactivity. But were you guys explicit or did he just, by you… Because I think you’re right though, you changed the equilibrium; you can’t do the same song and dance if you’re shifting.
Monika: Yes, exactly. Yes, we did have conversations about it. I didn’t say to him what I was thinking, which was “I’m gonna just try this for a certain period of time, and if nothing changes after I’ve changed my side then I’ll have enough information to decide this isn’t going to work.” I kind of had a little trial in my mind. And I didn’t actually say that to him, but I knew it for myself. But what I did tell him was the changes that I was going to make.
Jessica: Nice.
Monika: I told him, “Here’s what I’m going to do differently. You can do whatever you want to do, I know I can’t control that, but here’s what I’m trying to do.” And then every time I fell short, I would own it and apologize. No matter what part he did wrong, I would always still just own my part. What would happen over time is there were times where he tried to talk to me as if there was still the old dynamic happening, and then I would have to say “No, actually that’s not what’s happening now.”
Jessica: Nice.
Monika: Like, “This is not what I’m doing any more. See? I didn’t say that this time, or I did it differently this time.” And then he started to realize “Yeah, actually…” He was still responding from the past, it just took a little while. So I do encourage people to be patient. I think especially if you’re in a long-term relationship, it takes a while for these patterns to be built up, and it’s going to take time for them to disassemble too. We can’t have it overnight, there’s a shifting that occurs.
Jessica: Absolutely. So you said you gave it about a year in your mind?
Monika: I gave it a year in my mind, but within about six to seven months there was already changes happening that made me feel really encouraged. I just felt better about myself, I was more empowered, we just had more positive interactions, the fighting was less, and I just had more peace of mind, I felt less catastrophic because I just knew I was in it for a while; I was like “I’m hunkering down for a year, and I’m just going to do the best I can for a year”, so I wasn’t in this push/pull in my mind all the time, which helped a lot.
Jessica: Can you share if there were any motivators for you to stay the course? Because we’re talking about these concepts and I think people get them, but the emotional work is difficult. I tell people I practice everything I teach, and sometimes my knees are shaking and my heart is clenched; I’m hurting, and I still have to walk the talk, and it’s hard sometimes. But I think for me, it sounds like for you too, that you trust the process; you’ve done the work and you know what’s on the other side, and it’s worth it. So having that vantage point I feel like keeps me really motivated, knowing the other ways don’t work either. But were there things that really helped you? Because in this trial period it’s kind of an experimental phase and you’re not really sure.
Monika: Yes, what had me fighting for it was that my husband was committed and I felt there was enough good, there was enough good there that I felt like it was worth fighting for. He’s not an abusive partner, we were good co-parents – there was enough there that I was like “If we could get this figured out, it would be great”, so that guided me. Also, I just knew that there was growth I had to experience, there was stuff I had to do on my own anyway. I also kind of figured there’s no hurry, I don’t have to leave now; I just took that off the table, of trying to get some kind of sense of relief if I think about just leaving the relationship. I took that off the table to say, “I can have that later, there’s nothing really urgent about having to leave right now. If I discover that this isn’t going to work, well at least I know that I did…” I wanted to give myself the opportunity to say “I did my part.” That helped me, too.
Jessica: Yes, yes. Okay, and how long ago was this? Did you say seven years ago?
Monika: Seven years ago was when it started, and then I would say five years ago was when we really felt like the worst was behind us.
Jessica: Was your husband ever like “Thank you so much?”
Monika: He did after about… I can’t remember when it was, but he was like “Looking back on this last year, I see this was the year that you just really stepped up and you kind of guided us to a new level in our relationship”, and he was really grateful. He could see all of the effort that I had put in and it was great, because it took a long time to get to that point. I was kind of only just patting myself on the back for some time, but then eventually it was like “Oh, wow…”, he was able to really step back and go “You know, I think you spearheaded this and I’m so glad you did.”
Jessica: Good, so good… Because I do have people – I know you get this too, where it seems like one partner is very interested in the growth mindset, or really stepping into some of this and they’re not sure their partner is.
Monika: It is a risk, you know? You don’t get the rewards right away, and it is a risk that you may not get that acknowledgment or recognition. But if the relationship is meant to be then you’ll end up with that, you’ll be able to get to that place.
Jessica: Yes, so I’m also thinking, sadly there are some people that are really feeling like “I don’t know that I have a relationship worth fighting for” and kind of that in-between state. Do you have anything that you tell people or work with people around if they’re really feeling like they don’t know if it’s worth…?
Monika: Yes, that’s hard. I think then you’re looking “Well, what are my deal-breakers? Do I have my deal-breakers in this relationship?” and if not, then I would say you can still go through this growth with another person, where it is more worth fighting for. It’s such a personal decision too, when to leave and how do you know when the time is right to leave, and I think if somebody really has done their very best and they can’t make any headway, they’re not getting any support from their partner in making changes… Some people really are able to make the changes that they need to make, but then the other person does not follow suit and in fact it gets worse because the other person is really threatened by the changes, then that would be a sign that it’s not working out, and that your growth is only showing you how you’ve outgrown the relationship. Because that can work that way too – you give yourself that opportunity to change in the relationship, but then the relationship doesn’t evolve to match you, and then you outgrow it and you move on.
Jessica: Right, so that six to a year experimental period of really doing the inner work and shifting your own practices…
Monika: It may lead to that, yes. But at least, because you’ve done the work, you’re so much stronger than you were before and you’re just much better equipped to be able to step into a new relationship and have that start off on a healthy foot, and you’re also in a much better position to just be able to navigate a breakup because you feel better about yourself. So that relationship with yourself, that first phase is there with you; that helps you so much in the next level. Nothing’s ever in vain in our relationships. Even if the relationship doesn’t work out, there’s always so much that we learn, that we take with us to the next relationship.
Jessica: That’s such a good reminder, because I feel like it’s easy to get caught in the thought that I’m doing this for my partner, and so that if it can be the reminder of who I’m becoming and who I’m growing in this relationship it’s such fertile ground; for my own, becoming my own growth – it’s not in vain.
Monika: Yes, it’s hard to remember.
Jessica: I know. So kind of on the other side, and one of the things that seems like you write a lot about is just the keys of having a healthy, authentic relationship. How would you describe some of those keys?
Monika: Well, the key really is embedded in the stages of change that I had laid out – the relationship with yourself, the building blocks for expressing yourself, having some basic tools for communication in a healthy way, and then of course being able to receive your partner and getting into the [unintelligible 00:24:18] place. So there is definitely something to be said about those four stages of change as you imagine what is a healthy relationship look like – it has to have these things, but I also think that there’s a really big component of… Well, emotional connection is a really big deal, because if we can’t feel connected to our partner then it’s hard to problem-solve. Because we’re going to be different, we’re going to have a conflict, we’re going to have different opinions, but if we can stay connected on a deeper emotional level, we can really approach any of those conflicts together on the same team. When I talk about emotional connection I really draw from the work of Dr. Sue Johnson, where she talks about emotional connection is that sense that you have that your partner is a safe person to turn toward when you’re in distress. Like, if you’re in distress they’ll turn toward you, they’ll hold your hand, you feel like they’ve got your back. It’s that kind of primal sense of safety that even when you’re not in your finest moments, or when you’re feeling weak or vulnerable, that you can turn toward them and vice versa. So that’s really what it is that I mean when I say emotional connection. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily agree on everything. But I think if you have that and if you have healthy boundaries, those two things together is like this wonderful balancing act, because boundaries are the things that separate us. But actually if we have solid boundaries we can connect better. If we really know where we end and where the other person beings, we are in a stronger position to connect with somebody in a way where we don’t just completely merge into the other person.
Jessica: Right, and lose ourselves.
Monika: Exactly. So I feel like that is such an important balancing act, that if you can have good boundaries and have emotional connection you pretty much can tackle anything together.
Jessica: Absolutely. I’m also thinking about what you were describing about the default mode, or even your own story, where back seven years ago you feeling that you had that ability to feel connected to your husband and turn to him when you were distressed…
Monika: No, I think for me – I didn’t feel like I had that emotional connection, but it was really because I didn’t have the clear boundaries either. I reacted to so much that wasn’t about me, that wasn’t mine. I always say, “If it’s not yours, don’t pick it up.” I picked up a lot of things that weren’t mine, and kind of became incriminated in that. So if my husband was having a mood, or if he was struggling with something, or the way he was living his life became about me somehow; I wasn’t able to just see that as “That’s him, and I’m separate and I’m okay. Whatever’s going on with him doesn’t have to become my problem necessarily”, do you know what I mean?
Jessica: I know what you mean, yes.
Monika: So I started to draw that line and then it became much easier to have the safety of the emotional connection. It’s just so hard to put into words how that happens, but I feel like as I became stronger in my boundaries I was able to be more generous toward him, and that just allowed him to be more generous toward me.
Jessica: Absolutely, absolutely. And you were describing a moment ago about boundaries allowing yourself or myself or anyone to feel like they have their own back; it’s like they have the ability to trust themselves, that they can take care of themselves in an experience where their boundary is being crossed; they know that they’re going to be able to do something. That also allows for… I think I lost my train of thought.
Monika: That’s okay.
Jessica: It allows for a deeper level of vulnerability, too. Because if I trust myself that I can take care of myself when my boundary is getting crossed, I can also trust myself to open and drop into a deeper, more vulnerable place.
Monika: Right, that’s a really good point. Having good boundaries is connected to trusting your own self – trusting who you are, trusting the decisions that you make, knowing that you can be vulnerable and still be intact, and that’s so important in being able to withstand the challenges when there are conflicts or when our partner is going through something, for us to kind of stay strong on our own two feet.
Jessica: Absolutely, and I think that the vulnerability is key for being able to turn towards your partner, saying “I’m hurting, can you hold my hand?”
Monika: Exactly, right. That was something I had to learn. It was really hard for me to be vulnerable. I thought I appeared much more vulnerable than I was. To be it seemed really obvious, “Clearly I’m vulnerable here”, and that’s not at all what it looked like to my husband. So he wasn’t responding to me as though I had been vulnerable with him. Because I wasn’t really, I really wasn’t, but I thought that I was. So as I became stronger I was able to go deeper into that and just be like “Well, I don’t have that much to lose, because even if he responds to me in a not ideal way, I’m still going to be okay.”
Jessica: Right, that’s the key too, knowing that you can self-soothe and self-validate even when your partner is…
Monika: If they’re limited.
Jessica: Yes, if they’re limited, precisely. This is so fantastic. Do you feel like there’s anything else that you want to just add or underscore based on some of the things that we talked about here?
Monika: Yes, I guess I just want to give people a sense of hope that if you are in a relationship that’s really on the brink and you feel like you’re looking at disaster, but you still are questioning, that there is always hope, and that it’s always worth fighting for unless it’s not a safe relationship – if you’re in an abusive relationship, I qualify that. But there’s always hope that you can at least make the changes that you need to make, whether or not you stay in the relationship that you’re in. It’s always a worthy, noble cause to go through that growth process and evolve, and to look at relationships as a higher calling in some ways. It’s almost like our spiritual path is what kind of relationship we’re meant to have or able to have. So I think it’s really important, I don’t think it’s just a hedonistic pursuit to try to have a healthy relationship. I feel like a healthy, authentic relationship is the foundation for so much in life, but there’s nothing really more worth fighting for, and that said, even if you’re letting go of a particular relationship, you’re not letting go of healthy, authentic relationships for you in the world – it’s more just like what form will that find, what person you will find that will meet that. But I always want people to hang on to that vision and never to give up on that.
Jessica: So beautiful. So if people are wanting to learn more about what you offer and your work, how can people get connected to you?
Monika: Well, people can just find me on my website, which is monikahoyt.com. I also have a free gift if you go to monikahoyt.com/freegift – you can sign up for a relationship breakthrough session. It’s essentially to help people gain clarity in where they’re going and identify the blind spots that might be getting in the way, and helping people come up with a plan of action.
Jessica: Nice, excellent. I will encourage people to do that and find those links too, I will have those on the show notes. Well, thank you so much.
Monika: Thank you, this was a pleasure.
Jessica: Thank you for listening to today’s episode, episode 60 – How to Step Up to a Healthy, Authentic Relationship with Monika Hoyt. If you would like to access the show notes for this podcast episode you can find the show notes of my website, which is drjessicahiggins.com. You can click on Podcast, find the most recent episode there at the top. Again, today’s episode is episode 60. And if you have a question or wondering about a relationship concern, please feel free to reach out to me. I will create a podcast or an article about your topic. You can reach me on my website, which is drjessicahiggins.com, click on Contact and you’ll find the ways to reach me there. Thank you again for listening. Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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