274: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past with Katherine Woodward Thomas
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 episode, Shane talks with Katherine Woodward Thomas about What's True About You: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. 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.
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The Couples Therapist Couch 274: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past with Katherine Woodward Thomas
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
In this episode, Shane talks with Katherine Woodward Thomas about What's True About You: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. Katherine is a licensed therapist, recognized pioneer in transformational psychology, and The New York Times bestselling author of Calling in “The One” and Conscious Uncoupling. Hear how consciousness plays into couples therapy, what to do when your clients feel stuck, how to prevent them from losing out on love, what you can learn from imagining yourself as a child, and where healing happens.
Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:
- How childhood attachment wounding shapes adult relationships
- Understanding pseudo safety strategies and self-sabotage
- The unconscious patterns driving our relationship choices
- How projections onto partners create self-fulfilling prophecies
- Taking responsibility as an adult for our choices
To learn more about Katherine Woodward Thomas, Conscious Uncoupling, and What's True About You: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future, visit:
You can also listen to Katherine Woodward Thomas on Episode 269 of The Couples Therapist Couch
Show Notes
- 274: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past with Katherine Woodward Thomas
- 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
- [0:10] Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch
- [0:57] Welcome, Katherine Woodward Thomas, to the show!
- [1:27] Introduction to What's True About You? - 20 years in the making
- [2:19] How this book relates to Conscious Uncoupling and Calling in "The One"
- [2:49] Moving beyond the pain of the past in relationships
- [4:11] The concept of "source fracture stories" and identity-based wounds
- [5:09] Understanding pseudo safety strategies and self-sabotage
- [6:32] How childhood attachment wounding shapes adult relationships
- [8:32] The 22 main source fracture stories explored in the book
- [10:26] Why therapy can save lives but doesn't necessarily change them
- [11:24] The unconscious patterns driving our relationship choices
- [13:15] Healing vs. transformation: working with the past vs. future
- [15:14] Why repeating painful patterns isn't actually healing
- [17:14] How projections onto partners create self-fulfilling prophecies
- [19:27] The danger of trying to explain your way out of patterns
- [20:53] Katherine's personal example: "Michael's gonna be mad at me"
- [22:20] What healthy relationships actually look like
- [23:40] 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
- [25:08] Why people feel stuck in relationships
- [26:02] The difference between truth and trauma
- [28:01] Taking responsibility as an adult for our choices
- [28:59] "What is it costing you to never express your feelings and needs?"
- [31:19] The "I'm unlovable" belief and how it creates relationship dynamics
- [32:18] Identity structures: choosing partners who mirror our wounds
- [34:10] How our relationship with ourselves limits our relationships with others
- [35:03] The practice of speaking to yourself in the third person
- [37:28] Learning to validate your own needs and feelings
- [38:23] The power statement: "I came here to be visible"
- [39:44] How personal growth can transform or end relationships
- [40:14] The seven-step process for creating your future
- [42:25] The wrong way vs. the right way to start changing relationship dynamics
- [45:01] Having fidelity to your future over your current connection
- [46:27] Katherine's membership community and training programs
- [47:25] Where to find "What's True About You?" and closing thoughts
- 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
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: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
Well, what is it costing you to never express your feelings and your needs? Well, it's costing me love.
00:12
The podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.
00:28
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.
00:57
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. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel. And today I'm speaking with Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of the new book, What's True About You? Seven Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. Hey Katherine, welcome to the show. Hi, great to be with you, Shane. Thank you.
01:27
Yes, I'm so excited to talk with you again. know most people know of you through your other books, Conscious Uncoupling and Calling in the One. And you've been on the podcast before talking about those. But I'm really excited about your new book. Boy, so am I. I mean, truthfully, this book is about 20 years in the making.
01:50
And it is the core transformational technologies that have calling in the one and conscious uncoupling be so powerful and transformative for people. And for years, my coaches who've been training with me have been saying, please write a book just about this because you can apply it to all areas of your life. And certainly it makes a profound difference in the couples work that we're doing with people to really have an away
02:19
to uh move beyond the pain of the past and not have it keep showing up in your relationship. And to be able to source the creation of the dynamic between yourself and the person you love from the highest and the best of who you are. And to be able to realize the higher dimensions of love in that connection. Because we all know that relationships are kind of a spectrum. It's not just about meeting the right person.
02:49
but it's about navigating it well. And it's about bringing the best of who we are into that relationship. And frankly, I think most of us want to do that, but not all of us are capable of doing that in the moment when we get captivated by an old trigger or an old wound that kind of takes over and is looking to be healed and brought to the light of day. But if we don't have a way to do that in that moment, we can create a lot of problems in the connection.
03:18
and really lower the possibilities of what can actually happen in that relationship. I think that a lot of us are just kind of heartbroken at the end of a relationship because we saw the potentials of that connection, but we never were able to realize them. You know, or the other person, they just couldn't get out of their old story enough.
03:42
whatever they were projecting onto us, we couldn't get through. So I think this book, um while it's not written particularly for couples, is really the foundational teaching that would allow people to realize the higher potentials of love. Well, it sounds like from the way you're talking about it, when you wrote conscious uncoupling and calling in the one, you know, those are specific
04:11
things that people are trying to accomplish. it sounds like this book is really an explanation of, you know, kind of turning it inward into whatever thing that you're trying to accomplish in your life or in your relationships or just for yourself as a human being. know, you have to start with that idea of what's true about you. You have to learn how to explore better. You know, what do I truly authentically want for myself?
04:40
Apart from the things you were talking about, like those childhood things that might drive decision making that may or may not be helpful sometimes. Well, it's very pervasive, these childhood wounds that landed at the level of identity. And I'm really working with the transformation of identity. So the areas that we tend to struggle with the most are the areas where we had early wounding, very often attachment wounding,
05:09
around our core sense of self. So we might be, you know, highly functional in certain areas where we got a lot of positive sponsorship in our youth. People told us we did that well, or we always got good grades, or we got picked first for the team, or whatever that was for us. So we got a lot of relational sponsorship that told us we were good at that. So we developed a core sense of self that said we were good at that, we were safe to do that, we were...
05:38
we were gonna excel and get a lot of positive feedback in that direction. The areas where we tend to struggle the most is where we didn't get that sponsorship and may have even gotten negative sponsorship. Who do you think you are? Or, know, just be quiet. Children should be seen and not heard or whatever that message was. Or just, you know, if you were too vibrant, you got kind of squished down or it hurt your older sibling or.
06:07
You know, these are early attachment woundings that then became an integral part of our personality, our defense system, and our projections onto others. So when we get scared, when we get threatened, when we feel disappointed by someone, we will tend to project that old story onto our partner, onto other people. So if you have, for example, an I'm not wanted,
06:37
you're gonna have a lot of rejection sensitivity. Somebody doesn't give you the right eye contact. Somebody doesn't answer your question with the right tone of voice. know, we're high sensitivity around that. That's because there's a projection that other people don't really want me. So I'm always like covertly pulling on that person to want me. So I find that even those of us who've done a tremendous amount of work on ourselves, who know ourselves quite well,
07:06
will still be prone towards these automatic knee-jerk projections onto the person who matters most. Because whenever our dependency needs get involved, that's when we can become a bit hyperactive and geared towards safety at all costs. I call these strategies of people pleasing or
07:33
disappearing our feelings and needs or treating ourselves as so we don't matter and they matter more than us. All of these ways of kind of compensating or even in the I'm not wanted might be, you know, rejecting other people before they have a chance to reject you. These are all obviously what we call safety strategies, but I call them pseudo safety strategies. They're actually fake because what they end up doing is creating more evidence
08:03
for that cluster of false beliefs, that identity based false belief of I'm not wanted, know, go back to that one. If you reject somebody as a preemptive strike against being rejected, other people will tend to reject you back. I mean, that's just human nature. We don't tend to like people who don't like us, right? So we end up, you know, being the source of our own experience in a way that I make quite transparent in this book.
08:32
I explore 22 uh main source fracture stories, I call them, which is the original break in our heart, the original disconnect, what the meaning basically that we made about ourselves in response to the deficits of the caregiving that we were receiving. um So it might be, you you were in the crib and...
08:58
your mother is well-meaning and loving as she was, was adhering to the wisdom of the day, which is just let babies cry it out. So from the baby's perspective, that's a panic because I have a need and nobody's coming to help me. And that then becomes a vulnerability that we might have later on in life to project that other people will not show up for me.
09:26
And that becomes what I call then a pseudo safety strategy, because then I'm not going to need anybody to show up for me, which is not really human. So it always keeps us actually, if you're walking around like I don't need anything from anybody, I'm never going to be vulnerable with people. Then you're kind of alone in life. And that would lead to a bit of a, you know, low grade fever of depression, because we're not really built to be alone. So it's a compensation that we keep recreating by not needing anybody.
09:55
by not giving people access to our inner world by never being vulnerable. So we really are the source of our own experience and what I have discovered. I mean, I've had such a privilege, in working. I've had the opportunity because I've been online since 2007 teaching people in my courses. And so live, I've had the opportunity to work with tens of thousands of people in the last 17, 18 years.
10:26
which is a very privileged position. So I had my years in private practice, but then I had all of those years also of teaching people and getting into the trenches of really getting how this works. So, you know, we can know about our beliefs, we can know where they come from, we can know the imprinting of our unconscious, but it doesn't necessarily give us access to change.
10:55
like to say that therapy can save our lives, but it doesn't necessarily change our lives. Okay, that's a loaded statement to make. Before we talk about the change, yes, because that made me really interested in that. But I am interested, you know, because I feel like a lot of us, including myself, are walking around feeling like I'm a conscious adult.
11:24
who's making decisions for myself. But I feel like there's a lot of unconscious stuff that's coming into the reality all the time. Like you said, I imagine a lot of people aren't even aware that maybe they have some people pleasing tendencies that come from something that happened to them growing up in their family as a child or whatever. And they walk through the world believing that people are responding to them.
11:50
or if people would just change, then they could be happy or whatever it is. And would you say it's like the more we uh move into consciousness about those aspects of ourself, the more we can make authentic decisions that feel more in alignment with our true self? Well, that's the ideal, right? For sure. I think the knee-jerk reaction is when you see yourself behaving automatically in a way
12:18
that is reflective of one of those pseudo safety strategies, giving your power away, for example, or not speaking up or somehow under-presenting yourself so as not to be a threat to other people. All these ways that we kind of betray our true selves or authentic selves. I think that the first knee-jerk for most of us is to kind of go back and say within ourselves, like, what is wrong with me that I keep doing this? And we wanna go back and analyze it more.
12:48
I think there is a myth that if we understand something and if we understand the origins of something enough, if we grieve the past enough and what we didn't get, that somehow we're gonna stumble upon our way to a more liberated future. And it doesn't quite work that way. And the wonderful thing about being uh older and I'm older than you, I'm 68. So I started therapy when I was...
13:15
Oh my gosh, early twenties, right? So I have my, I'm my own guinea pig. So I saw what happens after 20 years is you're still kind of trying to figure yourself out inside of fixing what you think is wrong with you. So that's where I uh really transformed my own life after uh all these years of doing a lot of good work and work that certainly did save my life in many ways, work that was.
13:41
you know, made slow and steady improvement. I think it's very important actually to go back and connect the dots and grieve what you didn't get. I think the first time I ever really started to do that in my early twenties, I cried for what felt like years, you know, every single day. I had to go through the grief of that early childhood wounding and what I didn't receive and face that. And that was a form of reclamation for myself. So it's not an either or world.
14:08
But I like to say that healing is the domain of the past and transformation is the domain of the future.
14:18
So what it means is that life didn't really change for me, and I see it over in my students over and over again, until we have the courage to articulate the future that's literally outside of our current identity to have, that we might not have any evidence for, to go for a future in an area that's been really difficult for us, and to just claim that future, to start with the future, and then to begin to vision
14:48
what it will feel like, look like, smell like, sound like, as though that future's already fulfilled and to begin to expand our sense of self to match that future. So we're following the gumdrops in the forest, kind of looking at the desires we have in our heart. Now for this tribe here that you've gathered, that's gonna be to have a great relationship.
15:14
to have a loving relationship, a healthy relationship, or to help people have a great relationship. So lot of couples are getting stuck because they keep going back and they try and sort through their problems by explaining where they came from, by explaining why they are the way they are and hoping that their partner understands them. And then there's also this idea that we somehow have collectively that if that pattern is duplicating in the relationship,
15:43
that it's our opportunity, it's our desire to heal that pattern. It's only coming up so we can heal it. But I have to tell you that for myself, I have never seen anyone duplicate abandonment, abuse, betrayal, and have that be a healing experience. That is a re-wounding experience. What do you mean by duplicate it?
16:08
If you, if you, if you repeat that pattern, your father was a philanderer and now you've married somebody who's a philanderer, right? You've married your father. How did that happen? As if you need that experience again, in order to heal. That's what I think the common wisdom is, but I'm not a big fan of that. I think it's a rewounding experience. And I think that that's what many of us are suffering with is that we keep
16:34
You know, that's a pretty dramatic thing that you're married to somebody who's cheating on you all the time, but somebody who's not there for you, somebody who doesn't listen to you, somebody who criticizes you all the time, somebody who puts you down, somebody who's a workaholic, know, somebody you feel inferior to or invisible when you stand next to them. These are these are the kind of the silent suffering that many of us have in our intimate relationships. So I'm not going to call that a desire to heal that wound.
17:04
I'm gonna call that a rewounding. And what I'm gonna say is that the freedom from that is not about getting the other person to do anything differently.
17:14
Even if it's 97 % the other person, you really want to be interested in your 3%. How is that happening through you and not just to you? So when we go back to these source fracture stories, for example, an I am alone source fracture story, the projection onto the other person is either someone's going to leave me or they're never going to be there for me to begin with.
17:45
Inside of that assumption, and these assumptions occur like truth. They occur like just, you know, as quick as an in-breath. Somebody is disappointed in me, doesn't agree with me, doesn't like what I'm wearing, doesn't like the dinner I just cooked, whatever it is, it happens in an instant. Oh my gosh, they're gonna leave. Or, oh my gosh, they're not gonna be there for me. Inside of that,
18:12
I won't really engage. I won't be free to engage conflict.
18:17
I won't be free to engage it because I'm afraid they're going to leave. have to people please. I have to not vent them too much. I'm always on that treadmill to make sure they don't leave me.
18:28
How that person then is the source of being left is that if you never engage conflict, you don't really bond the relationship deeply and you become very easy to leave. So out of all the 22 beliefs, I'm not wanted, I'm not safe, I'm not good enough, I'm too much, I'm crazy. All of these kind of core beliefs that we
18:58
have about ourselves in the area of relationship will cause certain ways of relating organic that are organic to that center that literally generate that pattern that enroll the other person into their role. That's set the other person up. Some of us are struggling because we feel like I'm being set up by my person history. And I'm powerless over here. Can't they see it?
19:27
can't they get it, that's not what's happening. And we try and explain it and explain it, but we don't really have the language to help them to see it clearly. So a lot of us are in relationships where we are rewounding each other and we're trying desperately to explain our way out of that paper bag. What I'm actually looking at when I see that we are repeating patterns is that we're missing
19:55
the development to do it any differently. So for example, inside of never engaging conflict or avoiding it like the play because my parents were constantly in conflict and it was toxic, I never actually really learned how to bring things up in a way that might be an opportunity for the relationship to deepen through the differences as opposed to do harm.
20:26
to the connection. And inside of that missing development, I don't have an opportunity to do it any differently. And the future is then predictable. So it's inside of these source fracture stories that get triggered. That story is a very fixed sense of self. And it is a self we will default to over and over again, we all have our own flavor of it.
20:53
one of the ones that I have in my relationship today. I'm the creator of this work. I've been teaching for over 20 years. I've had thousands of students and I still will go to, my gosh, Michael's gonna be mad at me. Now it is so unfair to Michael because he's not really an angry guy. It has nothing to do with Michael. I mean, sometimes Michael does get mad at me, which is probably a really healthy thing. That probably is a good reason to get mad at me, but it's not.
21:21
You know, my projection, I would say that nine times out of 10, he's not. So now I know, oh, that's just the story that comes up. And it comes up not just as a thought, it comes up in my belly, like a feeling like, oh, I'm in trouble. Right. You know, which was my mom, because my mom was always mad at me as a kid, but it's not Michael. So we do have this kind of, you know, somatic memory and we need to work with that self. So it's not just about ignoring that self. And it's about
21:51
me saying to that cell, sweetheart, you're okay. Look, Michael might be mad at you, but that's, that's healthy. That's okay. He's not going to leave you. He gets to be mad at you, but I don't actually think he is mad at you. Let's ask him. Yeah. Right. Right. So I'm containing myself. I'm not asking Michael to never be mad at me because I have a wound here and you can't get mad at me. I mean, that's where relationships get really gnarly and confused.
22:20
Right, so health is the North Star. We want to know what health looks like. Health looks like it's safe to be mad at each other. It's safe to say no. It's safe to set boundaries. Nobody's going to punish the other person. Nobody's going to leave. You're not going to leave. You're not going to punish. We're going to be big, grown-up people and tolerate the disappointment and cultivate respect.
22:47
So, you know, in order to do that, it really, it is our task to notice the consciousness we drop down into and to form a relationship with that part of ourselves. It's always a younger wounded self that is tender, kind, compassionate, but also kind of rigorous, like, no, you don't get to bring that here because that's not healthy.
23:15
And that's an unreasonable expectation, but I've got you, honey. I've got you sweetheart. Mama can handle this. You know, you've got to talk to yourself. And then you have an opportunity to come in as an adult and do something like, you know, ask Michael, are you mad about that? You know, are you upset about that? What's upsetting you? Is there something I'm not seeing? And then we can talk about it.
23:40
You know, usually Michael will laugh and say, no, I'm not mad at you. I'm actually glad you're doing that. that's what actually now we're liberated to realize the higher potentials. 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.
24:10
When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. 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
24:38
and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about how many people come into therapy and just feel so stuck, right? They feel like, and it makes sense as you're talking because the story is coming from within them, right? And they're thinking to themselves, you know, Oh, my partner's going to be angry at me. And there's
25:08
if they, especially if they don't talk about it or bring it up, there's this stuck feeling of there's no way I can ever work with this or, or I'm waiting for my partner to change in order for me to be okay. And then, you know, there's a lack of empowerment feeling with that. Well, I have to, think we have to be very careful of that. You know, the idea that if the other person changes, then I'll be okay. But cause you know, our 3 % is a pretty potent 3%. Right.
25:37
Right? Like you see, oh, I'm projecting onto my partner that they don't care about my feelings and needs. That I'm inside of this feeling of invisibility. I just assume they don't care. And by the way, when we're assuming something, we actually are relating to that idea as though it's true.
26:02
We're, you know, and one of the things that the book does is really helps you to distinguish between truth and old trauma. Is that truth or is it trauma? Yeah. And so this, this idea that, know, nobody cares about my feelings and needs is trauma. But inside of that, oh that, that projection, I don't share my feelings and needs. Why would I, if somebody's not going to care? I already know they're not going to care. Why would I?
26:31
share my feelings and needs to take the risk to have that, you know, reinforced one more time. It's painful, but inside of not sharing it, I don't give the other person the opportunity to demonstrate that they might actually care, that they might listen and adjust their behavior. So that's in that 3%. You start to see yourself as the source of the dynamic that's painful in the relationship
27:01
That's a superpower. The stumbling block that we all have, and this is a good group to say this to because we're so psychologically sophisticated, is that people think that when I say, how are you the source of that experience? They think that means that they want to, that they're gonna explain, well, my mother was narcissistic and so.
27:26
I learned early on that I can never speak up for myself or else I'm going to get punished.
27:33
Well, is that that's an accurate description of what happened. And that's worthy of, you know, extension of compassion that, you know, that you went through that. But it's not the answer to the question, because you're not three anymore, or you're not seven anymore, you're actually 27 or 37 or 47 or 57. So once you become an adult, you know, we're responsible for our choices and our actions. And it's the
28:01
only thing that will liberate us to grow. I'm going to say that again, because this is really important. I'm not responsible for what happened in my youth, but I am responsible for the choices I'm making and the actions I'm taking as an adult, even if they're outside of conscious awareness, even if they're just habits. I need to make it conscious and see it from a volitional perspective, a choice that I'm making to disappear myself.
28:30
because I'm unwilling to risk the possibility of being shut down and shamed by someone else. I just made that choice again. And what the therapist can really help people to do is to see it as a choice, because once you name it as a choice that you're making, then the possibility of making a different choice opens up because the therapist could say, well, what is it costing you?
28:59
to never express your feelings and your needs. Well, it's costing me love. It's costing me relationship because eventually I have to get out of here because I'm just dying in here. I'm losing myself. I don't even know what I feel in need anymore. I've got to go be alone and try and find myself again. You know, that's the cost of never expressing your feelings and needs. It's a pretty big cost. then the adult in you,
29:27
can say to the seven-year-old, sweetheart, I'm unwilling to go through life not being loved. Okay, and we're grown now and I can handle a disappointment and maybe this person is not gonna care about my feelings and needs, but I think I need to know that. Because if that's actually true, then I need to question this relationship. Because I might've made a bad deal here.
29:56
I might have misrepresented myself getting into this relationship, pretending I had no needs that were inconvenient to that person. And now I'm faced with the consequences of that. Right. So you want to actually really be interested in your 3 % because that's where freedom lies. And sometimes that truth is a difficult one to own and to take responsibility for. But the truth
30:24
is what sets us free. Yeah, I could be living with a belief that I'm unlovable and I could think that that's actually a truth in the world, in the relationship, that I'm sort of letting those parts of me drive decisions and behaviors that I'm making that will
30:50
cause behaviors in the other person perhaps that reinforces the idea that I am unlovable or unworthy of love. And unless I recognize the truth, the truth is probably, hopefully that the other person does care about me or love me. And I can share like, this is a belief I have, or this is a fear I have. And maybe they don't, but that doesn't matter. I need to at least figure out what the truth is before.
31:19
I can even navigate the conversation in a healthy way. Absolutely. Beautifully said. I love that example. And I'll give you one more piece of it is that if you're in a relationship with someone who does have a very low capacity to love someone. And by the way, that's a developmental, you know, deficit that people sometimes have. They're very self-absorbed or they're in so much pain themselves or for whatever reason, they just have a very
31:48
small and underdeveloped capacity to love. And so a person who feels unlovable, you know, might choose that. In the beginning of uh distinguishing these 22 source fracture stories, I used to call it an identity structure, because very often from that sense of self, we will lock in life structures that relationally mirror that story back to us.
32:18
Right? So in the invisibility, you might marry a narcissist, right? So then you have somebody who, doesn't really see anyone other, you know, because they're not developmentally developed enough to recognize that there's actually two people here as opposed to one person here. So, so we do lock in professions that way a lot of therapists, by the way, have an I'm invisible. a great structure for I'm invisible.
32:47
You have x-ray vision into other people, but it's not part of the game that they see you back. Right. Right. I'm not telling you what they're presenting. Right, right. Right, because we all have these kinds of vulnerabilities. Even those of us who grew up in relatively safe and secure homes, consciousness is always being developed at the level of identity. So it could happen with a teacher. It could happen with a group of friends when you're young.
33:16
Identities form, I think, up through the age of maybe 21. There's different identities for different aspects of life. Very often in relationship, we're talking about that really early, you know, attachment figure. But we're also talking about your teenager social self, you know, how people feel about you and, you know, whether boys like you or they don't like you, or maybe you're gay. And so, you know, will people accept you or not accept you or, you know, all of those vulnerabilities.
33:46
So the other piece about that is inside of the I'm not lovable story, there tends to be a deficit in knowing how to love yourself. So you'll always kind of put other people first. You'll be very good at loving other people, but you'll have patterns of self-neglect that are kind of an internalization.
34:10
of the experience you had as a child. tend to parent ourselves the way we were parented. Most of us are kind of hip to that idea now. So if you look at it in terms of our relationships with others can never be any better than our relationship with ourselves. This is also not about trying to get the other person to love us. It's about saying, hey, wait a minute, I'm gonna learn how to love myself. We have actually a practice for that.
34:37
which actually is a practice for all of us, not just those of us who have that I'm not loved tendency to, you know, collapse into that story when we get disappointed or threatened, but, when our dependency needs kick in. That's enough. That's a big one. Right. So you start to need somebody, which is kind of how the universe designed us all, but is to just say to yourself,
35:03
In the third person studies are coming out that show that if we speak to ourselves in the third person, we can regulate ourselves more. We begin to differentiate between our adult selves and our younger selves much more quickly and easily. So you can call yourself sweetheart or you can call yourself by your name or maybe the name you were called when you were a kid. So I might say, Kathy, honey, you know, what are you feeling right now? What are you feeling? Not how imagining like yourself as a child.
35:32
Sometimes if you know the age of that self and you have a relationship, you can do things like, you know, imagine that that child is sitting on your lap or you're holding that baby and you're rubbing that baby's back, or you've got your arm around your teenage self. You know, some people have a hard time doing this and I do externalize it that way. Do you have a niece or a nephew or any child that you care about? Can you imagine them there? Now we'll see if you can put your face when you were young there.
36:02
Just put your hand on your shoulder and say kindly, know, Cathy, sweetheart, what are you feeling right now? Right? That does help. And it begins to access a certain capacity for regulation. But it's also a way of learning to prioritize yourself, to get to know yourself. What are you feeling? And not how are you feeling? What are you feeling? I'm feeling a little lost right now.
36:30
And you and then you might say, okay, well, I'm really I'm right here. And I see you're feeling really lost right now. You know, try and fix it. You just be with yourself. It's a certain mindfulness, you know, and then you say, and what else are you feeling? I'm feeling disappointed. Wow, yeah, of course you are, I can see that you're feeling disappointed. Right? And then what else are you feeling? You just stay with yourself.
36:58
Then you get to the next question, which is, well, sweetie, what do you need? I need an apology. You need an apology. Okay. Well, I see you need an apology. You don't have to give yourself what you need. What you're giving yourself is the gift of your own attention and validation that your needs matter. They're important. Whether or not you can fulfill them is another thing. Sometimes it's enough just to say, I get it. You need an apology. That makes so much sense.
37:28
You say, what else do you need? I need to just regroup. I need to get centered again. Okay, good. You need to, you know, get centered again. I got that. Good for you. Right? that's, so that's, this is the remedy for not loving yourself. You have to do it in yourself. It's not going to shift in your relationship with others. Others are taking their cue from us. Looks like it's happening to us.
37:57
Even if you're in a relationship with someone who's very narcissistic, you you're the co-narcissist. That's the, that's where your interest wants to be. How am I feeding into, how am I training this person to be self-absorbed? How am I somehow training them that they matter more than I matter? And that, right. And then you have to stop doing that in your relationship with yourself and you have to take the risk to show up in new ways. Well,
38:23
You're gonna just assume that I don't have a preference here, but guess what? I do. So I'm going to um ask if we can go to this restaurant tonight instead of this one. Presencing yourself. So the power statement is, I came here to be visible. It's my job to presence myself.
38:45
Yeah. And would you say if, if someone can learn how to do a good job taking care of that child part of themselves, the healing is about giving themselves what they needed at the time so that they're not continuing to expect it from their partner to think I need my partner to give me this love in order for me to feel okay. And then there's this stuck feeling because it never feels quite right or something. But if I can learn how to give that love and compassion to myself,
39:14
then I can show up with my partner as my authentic self and have a voice and take up space in the world. Which is going to change the dynamic, hopefully. If it doesn't, then you have to deal with that. Yes. Right. And get a realistic... But it's the only way to have a foundation of a healthy relationship. And it could also lead to the end of the relationship, if I understand. I'm
39:44
You know, I think we all should wear t shirts. Those of us who are professionals warning warning. This could really imbalance the life you were hoping for. But I promise you'll get the life that you really deserve to be living if you stick with it, know, but destruction before creation sometimes. So if you if you do start out with, you know, some people are so stuck in a relationship and they don't really know they're in this, you know, is it going to
40:14
work or is it not going to work? It's too good to leave, but it's too bad to stay in that stuck place. And I always say, well, start with a future where you're happy in love, either in this relationship or not. Start with that future and take full responsibility for showing up in a way that would be consistent with the self of that future. Right? So there's a seven step process that I lead people through in the book.
40:42
that will lead them to any future that they're willing to stand for. One of the things that, one of the premises of the book is to recognize that we really are the creators of our lives and to get us out of constant reactivity to life.
40:59
Right? And we're talking about initiating, activating our creativity, our co-creativity with the universe. So we're standing to have healthy, happy love. And that's going to be a process, but it is a process that will push on us to outgrow who we've known ourselves to be or the possibility of who we might become. And very often when people do this, the whole relationship transforms.
41:28
I've seen that time and time again. Yeah, I think there's so many people always have the question. Let's say that there's someone in a relationship with a person with narcissistic tendencies, like the example you were talking about, and that person begins doing their own work and getting healthy and having a voice and saying what restaurant they want to go to. And I think people start to get
41:57
there's that feeling of like, this could lead to the end of the relationship. I'm no longer playing the game by the rules that we were once playing by. Now I'm feeling better. I'm feeling healthier. I'm having a voice. But if the other partner doesn't, and I agree with what you said, a lot of times the other, what will happen is both people will transform and it'll be really healthy for the relationship and it'll be great. But sometimes,
42:25
people end up feeling, well, what am I supposed to do if my partner doesn't change? Yeah. Let me just give a tip on this. I love what you're saying. You're pointing people in the right direction. What is a typical way to start to change things or to try and change things might be, you know what? I'm sick and tired of you never asking me which restaurant we want to go to. I want to go to this restaurant.
42:55
Now, why I don't like that or recommend that is because if you blame and shame another person, you're going to take, bring out the worst in them. You're not enrolling them into being your friend and ally on the journey of you waking up to your authentic self. So whatever your projection is, we want to put that aside and you want to be able to take responsibility. And how it might be, you might say it is, honey, I know
43:24
that I never actually speak up and tell you which restaurant I would prefer because truthfully, I source my safety in the relationship by giving you everything you want. And I think that's really unfair, not just to me, but to you, that I would not give you a chance to know what I want. And I'm really doing some inner work and I'm gathering the courage to tell you what I want and
43:53
I'd actually like to choose the restaurant tonight. Are you good with that? It's much more enrolling. And ultimately what we want to do is instead of being in a relationship where we are rewounding or power struggling about who's going to get their way, we want to befriend each other. And that's right. That's where you begin to be allies. And who knows that person might say, well, thank God. Right. Right. Like
44:22
I'm so glad you're finally telling me what you want. Yes, and I'm so glad you're saying this because I feel like I talk to people a lot of like You being your authentic self and having a voice and feeling empowered All of that can exist at the same time while you're staying like making a commitment to be respectful Not to be shaming not to be critical not to be blaming of the other person. You're trying you're just trying to do this in a way that's
44:49
bringing yourself into the world in a compassionate, respectful way. Absolutely. And in terms of the risk that you're talking about,
45:01
I really invite people to have fidelity to that future that they're standing for over the current connection, right? To really recognize that it will take a certain strength and conviction and commitment and even ferocity to get us from where we are to where we're committed to going. So there's courage.
45:29
in taking those risks, there's always going to be risks when we're going for the gold and we're going for the highest and the best. You know, I think that we only get to live one life and you want to live a great life. Yeah. Yeah. So that's we're going for. Yeah. And I think situations where that feels challenging, you know, those might be times for people to seek out help from a therapist or, you know, like one of your
45:58
programs that you teach where you help people get some sort of support to help you through that. Absolutely. Do you want to say a little bit more about, let's mention the book again for sure and any other things that you wanted to mention at your website? you. We've got a lot going on in our community. have a really vibrant membership community of people who are committed to living the seven steps.
46:27
living their most authentic life and really going for the golden life. um And we also are training therapists and coaches in these methods. And I'm launching uh Future Forward Therapy into the world, which is a credential that I'm creating, which has to do with uh really including uh the deeper calling that people feel in their heart of who they're called to become as a very vibrant
46:57
vital part of the healing transformative process that we're doing with people. And I also train coaches, TruU coaches in these methods. So we've got a lot going on here. And also a TruU awakening course that we're doing in April, starting in April. Oh, that's great. And I'll put links to all these things so people can easily find them. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations on the book. Oh yeah. And I want to say
47:25
when this is being released. So whenever you're listening to this, uh the book is newly available probably this week. And so go get your copy, What's True About You. Check the show notes for all the information about the things that Katherine just mentioned. But thank you so much for coming on. really appreciate it. This is such a great conversation. Thank you, Shane. It's really an honor and joy to be with you again. Thank you.
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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 podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!