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265: Consciousness in Relationships with Shane Birkel

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this solo episode, Shane talks consciousness in relationships. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

        • Episode Summary & Player
        • Show Notes
        • The Couples Therapist Couch Summary
        • Transcript

The Couples Therapist Couch 265: Consciousness in Relationships with Shane Birkel

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

Get the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Join the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new 

Join The Couples Therapist Couch Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/295562197518469/

In this solo episode, Shane talks consciousness in relationships. Hear why we’re all pure love at our core, why we question ourselves in relationships, why every relationship is a paradox, how to find conscious love, and how to speak from a place of awareness. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

    • Recognizing reactions as they happen
    • 3 practices for conscious love
    • The paradox of connection and freedom in relationships
    • We are all pure love at our core
    • Your partners needs are protection, not rejection

 

Show Notes

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note, transcript not 100% accurate

00:00
It's a difference between saying, you're making me feel worthless versus I notice that when you're upset with me, I start to feel worthless.

00:13
The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.

00:29
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

00:59
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. I want to start today with a simple but profound truth. At our core, we are all pure love. That might sound abstract or spiritual, but I think it's one of the most practical truths in the world of relationships. Before we were hurt,

01:28
Before we were taught how to behave, before we learned the rules of belonging, we were just love. If you've ever held a newborn baby, you can feel that truth. There's no earning, no performing, no proving, just presence, connection, and being. But over time, something happens. I've been reading books by Don Miguel Ruiz, and he talks about how we become domesticated.

01:58
The domestication is something that happens just by living on the planet. We become shaped by our families, our schools, our cultures, all of which tell us who we need to be in order to be loved. We internalize messages like, be good or you'll lose approval. Don't be too much. Don't be too needy. Don't make anyone uncomfortable.

02:23
That domestication helps us survive, but it also makes us forget who we really are. Instead of remembering that we are love, we start trying to get love, which we use other people's approval or love in order to feel like we are enough. We trade authenticity for acceptance and we begin to believe that our own worth depends on how others see us. Then we grow up.

02:53
fall in love and wonder why it feels so complicated. Because when we experience love from another person, it touches that original truth.

03:04
the pure love that is still inside of us. For a moment, we remember who we are.

03:12
But then that person pulls away or feels disappointed in us and all our old conditioning floods back in. We start to question ourselves. If they're unhappy with me, does that mean that I'm not enough? And from that moment, the dance of control begins. We try to manage how others feel about us so that we can feel okay inside. And that's what I wanna explore today, how love and freedom, control, consciousness, all weave together.

03:42
Our domestication teaches us to forget that we are love and how awakening is really about remembering it again. I'll start with a story, a couple, I'll just call them Ben and Erica, and it's kind of a compilation of a lot of people I've worked with. But Ben grew up in a home where he wasn't allowed to be angry. His anger wasn't allowed. His dad was angry all the time, unpredictable.

04:11
explosive and his mom's strategy for keeping the peace was to smooth things over, stay positive, keep everybody calm. Ben learned early on that love and safety meant being agreeable. If people were happy with him, he could feel safe, he could relax. Fast forward 30 years, he's married to Erica who grew up in almost the opposite type of household or a very different type of household.

04:39
where her parents yelled, cried, made up with each other all the time. And to her love meant emotional expression. So when Ben shuts down, she feels abandoned. It's foreign to her. When she gets emotional, he feels unsafe. So this is the dance that so many of us find ourselves in, in one way or another. There are many ways that this could play out.

05:06
where one person is reaching for connection and the other is reaching for air.

05:12
In therapy, I said to them one day, it's not that either of you is doing anything wrong. It's that both of you are trying to protect something very, very important, your sense of love and safety. You just learn different ways of doing it, right? And so when we become conscious, when we talk about awakening, it's about becoming conscious that there are reasons why we are behaving the way we behave in relationships. It's because of our domestication.

05:41
It's the way we were trained to protect love. It could be by pleasing, by withdrawing, by staying busy, by managing everybody else's feelings. There are all kinds of ways that we do this. Here's where it gets tricky. When someone loves us, when they really see us and accept us, it feels incredible. It touches something deep inside that says, yes, I'm lovable, I am enough.

06:10
But because we learn to depend on others to feel that way, it's easy to confuse receiving love with needing love to prove our worth. So the moment our partner seems unhappy with us, something inside panics. We think, wait, if you're disappointed in me, does that mean that I'm not enough anymore? Does that mean fundamentally I'm not uh lovable perhaps? And that's when the control starts to sneak in.

06:41
We might try to fix things really quickly or over explain or we might shut down and punish with silence. For some people control can look like caretaking. If I make you happy, then I'll be safe again. For others, it could look like withdrawal. If I can pull away first, you can't reject me. All of this is just a nervous system saying, I can't feel okay unless you see me as okay.

07:11
It's not about manipulation. don't think anybody has bad intentions in these situations. It's about survival. But that's where we lose freedom in love. We start trying to manage our partner's emotions so that we can manage our own fear. If you think about it, every relationship lives inside a paradox. We deeply want connection and we also want to feel free. Connection says, see me, hold me, stay with me.

07:42
Freedom says, let me be, even when you don't agree. Accept me for who I am. Give me my space and still know that I love you. When either of those gets threatened, old patterns rush in. Like in this example, Erica, the pursuer, reaches for connection to feel safe. Ben, the withdraw, reaches for space to feel safe. And this can, you know, many of you know that these dynamics can,

08:11
can play off each other. The more the pursuer pursues, the more the withdraw doesn't feel safe and reaches for space. The more the withdraw withdraws, the more the pursuer doesn't feel safe and continues to pursue. They're both right, and they're both coming from a place of fear. When you think about this couple, they're not opposites. They're two sides of the same longing.

08:39
to love without losing themselves. And that's what consciousness invites us into. Seeing that our partners need for space isn't rejection, it's protection. Seeing that our partners need for closeness isn't control, it's a reach for safety. When couples start to see this, something shifts, the dance slows down. There's less blame and more curiosity. You know, we can take a step back and realize

09:07
This isn't something that's happening to us, right? It's something we can become conscious of, we can observe, bring more of that curiosity to. They can say things like, I see how my fear of losing you makes me chase harder, right? It's like that ability to observe the pattern and not be wrapped up in it. Another example would be, I see how my fear of being controlled makes me shut down.

09:35
That awareness, that moment of watching yourself instead of reacting, that is the consciousness. Building a private practice can be challenging. Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients. That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers.

10:05
They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment. Plus, when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform. Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more.

10:35
Conscious love doesn't mean we never react. mean, you're still human. It means we recognize the reaction as it's happening and remember who we really are underneath it. Remember the truth of who we are. It's a difference between saying, you're making me feel worthless versus I noticed that when you're upset with me, I start to feel worthless. You know, and sometimes I say it's owning your shit.

11:02
You you own your own reality. You have the right to say what's going on for you, speaking from the first person. And that small shift turns blame into awareness. Here's another story. A man I worked with, let's call him David, came into therapy after a breakup. He said, I just need to understand what I did wrong. As we talked, he realized that every relationship followed the same pattern.

11:29
He'd start out giving everything, attention, affection, constant reassurance, and then somewhere along the way, he'd start to feel trapped. He'd pull away and his partner would panic. He told me, I don't get it. I love them, but I also feel suffocated. We explored that and what came up was that as a kid, love always came with expectations. Be a good boy, don't cause any trouble, and that's how you can make your mom happy.

11:59
So in adulthood, the moment love started feeling demanding, his nervous system equated that with danger. Becoming conscious for David meant realizing that freedom and love weren't enemies. They could exist at the same time. He could be loved and still belong to himself. And I know we've talked about that. I've talked about boundaries a lot before. could talk about this. This is part of having healthy boundaries. How do I maintain my autonomy and my feeling of being?

12:28
of myself at the same time being in a relationship that requires connection. So he started to say to his partners, I love being close to you and I also need quiet time. It doesn't mean I'm pulling away. It doesn't mean I don't care, but this is just something I need sometimes. And in that awareness, love became something freer and lighter. And I would say it's moving into the truth.

12:56
That's what happens when love meets, meets consciousness. It stops being a transaction and starts becoming a truth that we live from. If you're listening and wondering, how do I bring this into my own life or into your work as a therapist? Here are a few ways to practice conscious love. Number one is pause before fixing. When someone's upset with you, notice the impulse to fix or defend and just take a deep breath.

13:25
Just pause and ask yourself, what part of me is afraid right now? Number two, speak from awareness, not defensiveness. Instead of saying, you always shut down, try something like, I notice I feel anxious when you pull away. Number three, reclaim your inner freedom. Spend time doing things that reconnect you to yourself. Take walks, take time in nature, journaling.

13:55
creative work, listening to music. The more you remember your own center, the less you need someone else's approval to feel safe. You can always take responsibility for your own safety. So that's what I've been reflecting on lately. Love, freedom, and consciousness. We all want to be loved. That's not wrong. It's human. All of us have this desire, this deep desire to be loved. But the more we wake up, the more we realize

14:25
that love isn't something we get from someone else, it's something that we remember within ourselves and share. You can probably imagine times in your life where you were single and you were perfectly happy, right? You existed in the world and you felt contentment and peace. And when we forget that, we move into control. When we remember it, we move into more connection. You your ability to not need your partner

14:54
actually sets you up for a much healthier relationship. So remember where we began today. You are pure love. Your domestication might have made you forget, but consciousness is the process of remembering again and again that love is not something you earn. It's something that you are. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it or leave a review wherever you listen and

15:24
That really helps other therapists and couples find the show. Couples and therapists who might really need some of this information. So I really appreciate any time you do that. Also, if you're a therapist and you want to go deeper into this kind of work, bringing consciousness and structure into how you help couples, you might want to check out my Couples Therapist Inner Circle. You can find everything, also some free resources at CouplesTherapistCouch.com.

15:52
Thank you so much for listening. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast. all about the practice of couples therapy.

16:22
I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!

 

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