ERP 066: How To Move Out Of Criticism Into Love & Appreciation

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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 so much for joining today’s episode. I am so excited to share this guest with you in just a moment, but before we get started I want to remind you of the special offering that I have right now. If you’re feeling challenged with criticism, blame, defensiveness in your relationship, I want to invite you to enter into an experience with me. It’s a mini-program designed to be really affordable financially, affordable in the sense of the time-commitment, and ultimately really shift you into feeling confident about your communication, knowing that it’s going to lead towards positive change and that your partner is going to be set up to respond to you more favorably so you’ll feel more harmony, and really strengthening your love connection, your bond; you can feel that being fostered.

It’s titled How To Turn Criticism Into Loving Communication. Some of you have reached out to me wanting to know the details and the cost, so I have created a page for you to get all that information, and you can find that on today’s episode. Today’s episode is episode 66, and you can find that on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find the most recent episode there at the top, and you can click to get the show notes on that graphic, or where it says Read More. So you can find the link for this mini-course there. I look forward to hearing from you.

This is really going to be a VIP experience, where you can get your burning questions answered, you’re going to get my customized focus and get real attention from me personally, to really help shift this dynamic. I hope you’ll reach out to me, I look forward to it, and if you have any questions let me know.

Let’s get started with today’s interview, and this is titled How To Move Out Of Criticism Into Love And Appreciation.

Kathlyn Hendricks, PhD, BC-DMT, is an evolutionary catalyst and contextual disruptor. She has been a pioneer in the field of body intelligence and conscious loving for over forty years. Katie has an international reputation as a seminar leader, training professionals from many fields in the core skills of conscious loving: authenticity, response-ability and appreciation. She is the co-author of twelve books, including the best-selling Conscious Loving, At The Speed of Life and the new Conscious Loving Ever After: How to Create Thriving Relationships at Midlife and Beyond.

Katie has been a successful entrepreneur for over forty years and has developed a unique coaching and leadership program that has trained hundreds of coaches in the U.S. and Europe. She is the co-founder of the Spiritual Cinema Circle and the virtual Body Intelligence Summit, which will move into its third year in 2016. She has appeared on over 500 radio and television programs and traveled well over a million air miles as the ambassador for the work that she and her husband Gay Hendricks have developed.

I’m sure even that’s expanded since this was written, but Katie thank you so much for joining us today.

Katie: It’s my pleasure, thanks Jessica.

Jessica: Yes, and just for listeners, I am particularly honored to have Katie on the show. If you’ve listened to my podcast you know that I love Katie and Hay Hendricks’ work and I’ve referenced it several times, and particularly because Conscious Loving – one of her best-seller books with Gay – is one of the books that personally propelled me into a deep exploration of relationship and ultimately led to my professional research and work in the world. So I am so grateful Katie for your contribution to the field of relationship and the work you continue to do. It’s wonderful.

Katie: Thank you. Well, I appreciate how you’ve used that as a springboard to let your own genius ripple into the world, so thank you!

Jessica: Yes, yes. And one of the reasons why I think that book, Conscious Loving, resonated so strongly with me is at the time I was in a relationship where I had the experience of feeling so criticized. I think that was one of my bigger issues. I know that that’s something you talk about, how blame and criticism really get in the way of intimacy, and would love for you to talk a little bit about that from your vantage point.

Katie: Certainly, thank you. Well, we know from research that blame and criticism are the number one relationship killers, that they are the number one reason that people leave their close relationships. We have an interesting relationship with criticism, because most people really do think that criticism helps. For example, saying “I’m only telling you this for your own good”, I’m sure that’s familiar to those of us who have been children and with parents, which is all of us; the sense that without criticism people would simply just run amok, and what criticism does to people though is to create a sense of shrinking away of distance, and it really erodes any kind of connection between you. It literally frays the bond that allows you to see your partner as an ally, because criticism is almost always accompanied by and usually comes from fear. The experience of “I’m scared of something and I look over and I think it’s you that’s making me scared, so I criticize you, out of my own fear” and what that does is just keep the fear and adrenaline cycle moving between us, it keeps us from actually establishing any intimacy.

So what Gay and I decided to do early on in our relationship – we spotted this when we both came from extremely critical backgrounds, so that was kind of the water we swam in. When we woke up to that, we realized that really the only thing to do with criticism is to stop it. We made a commitment to end blame and criticism, and that was really a doozy because we realized how much blame and criticism were really a defensive move. Then we started looking at what was underneath that, but it’s just like with any addiction – the addiction to criticism gives you a burst of adrenaline, and adrenaline is incredibly addictive, it’s the most addictive substance on the planet, and so when we fuel our relationships from that, since it has a short shelf life, it disappears pretty quickly, you have to escalate then the experience of criticism to get that same physical ‘ha-ha-ha!’, and so people then tend to get more and more critical with each other, and then wonder why they don’t experience any sense of safety, being able to be themselves around another person. So we committed to end criticism, and that’s what we recommend for people.

For us, it took actually several years to really end criticism, but it’s now been at least 15 years. I know for sure we’ve had no blame or criticism in our current house that we’ve lived in for 16 years now. So what happens when you end blame and criticism is that you get to then open up to “What can I do instead? What am I going to do with all my free time?” and it allows you to move into, for example, appreciating – to genuinely appreciate yourself, appreciate your partner, to be open to sharing what is going on, what is going on underneath the fear; what do I want, what do I need to share with you, what do I want to ask for? It allows you to give and receive more kinds of attention, which human beings require, rather than the blame and criticism that most people think just comes with relationship, but I want you to know it’s totally optional.

Jessica: Right, and I think what you’re talking about Katie, at least in my experience, is that underneath the critical approach or the lead with criticism is really a desire of what you’re describing – the tension, the connection, the bond, but what you’re describing is almost a roundabout, circular… Because people get into these loops, right?

Katie: Yes, they get into these loops where they don’t realize… I call it “You’ve gotten under the roller coaster and you’ve gotten strapped in”, and once you’ve gotten strapped in, you’re on the ride. But when you make a commitment… We talk about this, we have a chapter about this in our new book, Conscious Loving Ever After, about how to create a blame-free zone in your relationship, and what we noticed is that it allowed us to open up to fueling our relating with each other on a whole new basis, which was appreciation, looking at how we could support each other, what each of us really wanted, to be able to really savor… You know, appreciation – there’s several different definitions of it, but the one I really like is to not just focus on primarily the positive, but it’s to be sensitively aware of, and there’s something really delicious about another human being giving you that kind of sensitive awareness.

We’ve found that people really blossom in the presence of that kind of attention and they find themselves opening up and expanding, which is really I think our big choice in our relationships, both with ourselves and others, that in each moment we’re either going to be expanding by choosing to learn, by choosing to share authentically, or we’re going to be closing up and protecting ourselves. We’re either going to be growing or protecting, but as we know from research, we can’t do both. So the choice that we have really in every interaction is “Am I going to open up and see you as my ally and see what is there to learn, or to experience, or to expand from in this moment?” so our lives then can become a continual adventure of discovery, rather than building your fort even more and more strongly, and building more doors that say “Don’t come in!”

Jessica: No kidding, no kidding. And I think it’s so beautiful to have you on the show, that can show an example of this expression of this bond in this way of relating that is allowing you both individually to blossom, as well as your relationship to blossom, and the richness of that.

Katie: Yes, the richness of that is more juicy than blame and criticism, and I think people just don’t know that until they have a direct experience of it, because it’s so common to be surrounded by blame and criticism, and the culture supports that too, and movies support that, too. “Have your fun now, because once you get into a relationship it’s going to all be about putting up with your partner, making demands, and more and more demands, and you’re not going to have any freedom” and all those mythologies.

Jessica: Yes, the very thing that is counter to what I think we all ideally want, which is what you’re describing. Again, I think that largely people are not setting out to relate in a protective, constrictive way. I think people have the intention of wanting to be loving, and maybe like you’re saying, just on past experiences, don’t have a lot of familiarity with that terrain.

Katie: They don’t have much familiarity, but when people start really experiencing someone being really present with them, that’s the big benefit of not only dropping blame and criticism, but substituting for that, the taking of genuine responsibility, which I really think of as reclaiming your creativity. Because we all are creating, choice by choice, what we are experiencing. It’s that most of that is unconscious. The way that we’re using our creativity are in patterns that we learned from families, from communities, from the culture, from Facebook, from social media, from the movies, which is really all “I’m either the victim of you, or I’m gonna try to control you”, that whole victim/villain interchange. And when people realize “Oh, I’ve been creating this. This is how I’ve been choosing to use my own impulses to express to you, to make requests or to keep silent about things, to reveal to you or to conceal and hope that you’re gonna be able to read my mind.” When people start genuinely going “Oh, I could choose something new” – that begins a whole new journey that people can make by committing to what they really want and then by recommitting. Those skills gradually begin to create a new kind of juiciness where you feel open to the other, you feel open to yourself.

You are literally living more in learning and discovering and sharing than you are in recycling. Because recycling is ultimately boring, and then people will do something that is more based on adrenaline to get some excitement into their relationship. We think that one of the most exciting things that you can do is to really share something authentic, to share what’s going on for you right now, what you’re feeling, what you’re excited about, what you’re discovering, rather than using your energy to be in these endless power struggles, just because that’s what you’ve known.

Jessica: No kidding… And I think this is probably what you’re describing, where you’re having the same argument over and over and over again, and thinking that it’s more – and I hate to say ‘passive’ because it sounds like a judgment, but it’s whether or not it’s just a learned, unconscious way of relating, but it’s almost expecting “Okay, I’ll keep showing up and hope that it just changes, or hope that time will heal, or it will just get better” and keep cycling.

Katie: Yes, you keep throwing things into the bonfire and hoping the fire will go out.

Jessica: Yes, no kidding!

Katie: It just doesn’t seem to work that way, but I think that what we encourage people to do is to let yourself step into something new, to take that first step by opening up to “What is it that I really want? What kind of a relationship do I really want and am I willing to step into that with whole heart, whole body, whole mind, that I’m going to take responsibility for beginning to create what it is I really want”, because most of the time… You know, one of the questions that we get all the time is “Well, what if I do but my partner doesn’t?” or “What if I do but my partner’s not quite as interested?” What we found is that almost no couples are moving through life at the same rhythm. Somebody is usually opening up and is kind of out ahead, or has gotten interested in living in a new way, but the other person maybe just hasn’t experienced that yet. But if you’ll step in and you’ll demonstrate rather than trying to control your partner, that’s a lot more effective.

Jessica: Yes, yes. So you’re essentially saying it’s not a requirement to… Because I love how beautifully you’re talking about you and Gay being able to really explicitly in your relationship and in your home have a decree of real lack of criticism. So there’s this joint agreement and awareness and commitment to that, and some people might not have that same ability to share that in the exact timeframe.

Katie: Right. And all of our books, but particularly Conscious Loving and then Conscious Loving Ever After are reliable maps to creating that journey for yourself. Our work – I really call it the technology of consciousness, because it’s how to translate those awarenesses into actual practices that will move you from where you are to where you want to be in your relationship. All of our books have practices in them, and I also wanted to let know that for our new book – Conscious Loving Ever After – I created videos of the central practices that people can find on our website. If they go to hendricks.com to the Relationship page which you’ll see at the top and you click through, on the bottom of that page you’ll see a little sign that says “Click through to our relationship videos” and you’ll see a whole page of five videos that will really show you how to, for example, move from fear to flow, so that you can become resourceful with each other, and it will show you what you can do with your energy when you’re not blaming and criticizing; it will show you how to create something we call ‘the love catalyst’ so that you deepen your presence with each other and you get the juiciness of that kind of open awareness that really creates a new fuel source that’s renewable, not draining. Because blame and criticism will just suck the life out of your relationship and not really give you any open space to create something new.

So I wanted to let people know that everything that we share, we have discovered and used in our own relationship, day after day, and that we’ve shared with thousands of people, so we know that it’s reliable. But it’s not something that you’re going to, you know, just drink a cup of coffee and then get the juice from the caffeine; this is something that you practice just like you go to the gym. My husband right now is at the gym, where he goes three days a week, and he has completely changed his body from a kind of an ectomorph to a total mesomorph over the last few years… I’m not kidding, he looks terrific, he feels strong and he really feels like a new person. But it was from the practice of committing and recommitting and doing the practices.

The practices will sustain you and they’re actually fun to do. What I really want to encourage people is to start and then to support each other in continuing to practice, because you’ll get the benefit of that day by day as you grow a different kind of sense of seeing each other as allies and playmates, rather than enemies and people that you’ve got to conquer.

Jessica: Yes, and I am one of those thousand people. People have heard my story a little bit, but for the people listening I will also post the link to that page that you’re talking about, Katie, so people can quickly access those five videos. But I also want to personally share that the practices and the map that you’re describing have been very much on the path, and for me were game-changers. Even though the relationship that I started practicing is no longer, I continued my individual work and I could feel the tremendous shift, and then also set me on course to a relationship that I feel is exactly what I’m wanting, and allowed me to create that. It was a little awkward at times, because there were the same things  in the beginning of our dating… It was more revealing than I think most people would do, but it really felt authentic and it was perfect. I just want to give a little testimony that even if you’re individually practicing this and your partner doesn’t seem to be interested, I know that it has a profound shift and that it’s going to change the dynamic – one person shifts, you don’t have the same dance.

Katie: You don’t have the same dance, and if one person shifts something will shift. For each of us, I think at the heart of really taking responsibility is that I move from being reactive and thinking that I’m at the effect of the relationship or what the other person wants, or that there isn’t anybody for me, or that I’m too much or not enough, and I actually move into “What choices can I make now that are going to begin moving me toward what I really want?” and that committing and then taking action is really the key. I recognize I don’t like what’s going on right now, I want to do something different and I genuinely look at it, I move into wonder and curiosity rather than blaming myself as well. You don’t substitute blaming the other person for blaming yourself, but really moving into “Okay, how can I do something different that is going to create a different result for me?” and you start experimenting and keep recommitting. The actual act of being an adventurer, of moving into “Okay, what is it that I can do? I’m actually in charge of my own life”, and there’s something that’s very dynamic and also really attractive about a person who’s taking responsibility.

Jessica: Yes, yes. So Katie, I’m listening to you and I want to go to this responsibility [unintelligible 00:25:29.03] I would love to hear more and I’m just listening to you and I’m thinking “There might be people that are stuck in the criticism and the blame in themselves”, is there anything you would recommend that might come before being able to say… Or do you think anybody at any point can say “What am I wanting?”

Katie: Yes, that’s such a great thing to bring up, Jessica, because from our critical brain creativity is not really possible. When I’m in my critical brain, I shut off wonder and curiosity and creativity because that’s really using a different part of my brain. We have a couple of different things that people could do to help shift them from critical brain to wonder brain, and one of them is very simple but very powerful, which is to create a “Hmmmmm” sound, which is different than the “Hm!” of criticism, snorting, but it’s really a “Hmmmmm…”, you’re creating a delicious, humming sound inside yourself through a  whole outbreath. Why we recommend that is – and listeners can try this out – when you’re hmmm-ing you cannot criticize. Hmmmm shifts you into your wonder brain. You can actually try it out. You can try criticizing yourself while you are hmmmm-ing and you’ll find you can’t do it. What that does is give you an opening, it gives you a doorway into wonder. From there what I like to do is to construct a wonder question right after the hmmmm. For example, “Hmmmm, I wonder how I can open up to what I really want? Hmmmm… What is it that I do really want in this relationship? Hmmmm… What’s the first action that I could take right now that would begin moving me towards something different?” The move that I find to be most effective is to shift from criticism right away into appreciation. If I recognize I’m criticizing, I’d go “Hmmmmm, okay, I can feel myself criticizing, so hmmmmm, I’m going to appreciate myself right now for recognizing that I was criticizing. Hmmmm, yeah, thank you for recognizing that. I appreciate that I’ve recognized now. Hmmmm, what else can I appreciate?” Because we know that thriving relationships require at least a 5 to 1 ratio of appreciations to criticizing myself or another person. So I would move into as many appreciations of myself as I can generate right then. To assist people with that, on one of our websites FoundationForConsciousLiving.com which is all about appreciation, responsibility and authenticity, if you go to that website and you sign up for the newsletter, you will receive 66 e-mails day after day to allow you to create a new appreciation habit. Because we know now that it takes not 21 days, but an average of 66 days to create a new habit, and we want to support people in creating an appreciation habit, because that’s the best doorway to create a new kind of relationship with yourself and others. Those e-mails will arrive in your inbox to support you in starting with you, appreciating you, and from that genuine appreciation of you it’s much easier to create that appreciation habit with another.

Jessica: No kidding, these are golden nuggets, so just the entry point of that hmmmm…. I invite listeners – even if you’re driving, just try it out, feel it in your body, right?

Katie: Yes, you feel it in your body and then that gives you a doorway to creating. It gives you a doorway rather than to criticizing, you can create something new. For example, you can create a new appreciation habit with someone else, you could actually create. So instead of criticizing, you could move into “Okay, what is it I could create today that is going to be juicier for me than that old criticism habit?”

Jessica: No kidding… And I also can feel the body respond. In the beginning of our talk, you were talking about we have this fear of constriction, tightness, and then we have this more blossoming and opening, and that appreciation, that wondering starts to get on that track, open that door to be able to nurture that opening, and I can feel inside myself how much more likely I will be able to respond to any type of prompts around what do I want, or even the willingness to take action, right? If I think about taking action when I’m in protective/constricted mode, I just feel a little paralyzed.

Katie: Well you can’t, actually. The only thing you can do is kind of close up more into your snail cave, but from opening the hmmmmm and wondering, another thing that people can add to that is easy breathing and actually opening their physical position. Because presence, which is really what you can open up to when you’re not in blame and criticism, the steps to presence are to literally fully turn toward your experience, or turn toward the other person. Open your body – I’m sure you have seen it, but I’m sure most people don’t realize that when I’m constricted, when you’re constricted, your body is, too. Your body will be closed up literally, and you could have your arms crossed, your legs crossed or you’re turning away. When you open up, you turn towards your partner and you uncross your legs, you open your body and then you take a few relaxed breaths. Those are really reliable ways to build your open presence. You’re turning toward, opening your body and breathing easily. If you forget all of that, we just call it “New choice” – just do something different with your body. Shake it up, take a different posture, move in a different way, stand up if you’re sitting, take a few breaths. That’s a kind of restart for your system, and it moves you out of that recycle mode and moves you into new creative possibilities, moment to moment.

Jessica: That’s so great, and I’m just feeling the direction of this present scene and this opening. It’s almost like I would be holding my hands… My own hands are nurturing myself – I know it sounds silly – as I’m trying to take these new steps into new patterns, new way of relating, maybe opening to more vulnerability. It’s the resourcing to provide those…

Katie: Yes, exactly. It’s really like having my arm around myself and being my own best friend. Because part of our culture too is “Don’t be too full of yourself, don’t be conceited, don’t be selfish. It’s better to give than receive”, and we don’t give ourselves that appreciative, loving attention that all human beings require just as much as food and water throughout life. So I want to encourage everybody to realize that loving attention to yourself, appreciative attention to yourself is filling your own reservoir, and if you fill your own reservoir, that can then be share so much more easily with others. Rather than draining yourself and then wondering why you don’t have anything to share with anybody. So loving yourself is really a gateway to really genuinely being able to give and receive love with others. I really want people to know that being your own best friend and loving yourself is essential to creating a thriving, conscious, loving relationship.

Jessica: Katie, this is so touching and so important. I know we’re getting close to the end of our time, I just want to ask you if there’s anything you want to add or underscore…?

Katie: Well, I’m really so passionate – having seen for so many decades now that human beings can move now, and it’s essential that we move now from this closed-up, back-behind-each-of-us, back-behind-our-walls, lobbing-grenades-at-each-other. When we really open up to genuinely loving ourselves and taking on a new task of “How much can I open my capacity to enjoy more giving and receiving of love with others?”, that’s our big task on the planet. It is to every day open up our nervous systems to be able to actually enjoy more giving and receiving of love, because that’s where our creativity, our co-creativity and our new solutions, not only for ourselves but for our communities and for the planet, that’s where it’s going to come from.

Jessica: Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Great! Katie, please tell people how they can connect with your and Gay’s work. What would you like to share?

Katie: There are two main places that people can connect with us. One is our website Hendricks.com where we have lots of videos and what we call ‘free stuff’ for people to really come into and start on this pathway, or continue on the pathway with support of how to create conscious relationships and how to open up to “What is it that I most love to do that I can contribute to the planet?” and all of those things. We have the dates of our trainings, our upcoming in-person trainings, which we love to share with people. We have some coming up this summer where we’re going to be sharing what we call essentials, which is really everything you need to create a really thriving relationship with yourself and with others. Then we have a five-day advanced training on Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After. Then people can also go to our Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, go to Hearts and Harmony where we have relationship tips every day, we have videos that people can look at, we have online programs, we have newsletters… We’re really committed to supporting anybody who’s interested in knowing that you can create the relationship that you want, both with yourself and with the people that you most care about.

Jessica: Wonderful. Well, I will post all of these links on the show notes. Again, Katie, it’s been an honor, a privilege to have you on the show, and I hope that people will be inspired by your message.

Katie: Thank you.

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I hope you have enjoyed this episode. This episode again is How To Move Out Of Criticism Into Love And Appreciation – episode 66. You can find the show notes on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com. You can click on Podcast, find the most recent episode there at the top and see show notes, or just click on the graphic and you’ll see the show notes there. You’ll also have access to the link of the mini-program How To Turn Criticism Into Loving Communication.

If you have any questions or you want to hop on a call with me to learn more, you can find all the ways to reach me on my contact page, or e-mail me directly, [email protected]. As always, if you have any questions or feedback for me, I would love to hear from you. Thank you for listening and until next time, take great care.

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