281: Consciousness: The 4 Cs 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 dives into Consciousness as part of his mini-series, The 4 Cs 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.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 281: Consciousness: The 4 Cs 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 

In this solo episode, Shane dives into Consciousness as part of his mini-series, The 4 Cs in Relationships. Hear what consciousness really is, the different types of awareness to explore with your clients, what to do when a client breaks down from their emotions, the role of a partner when it comes to consciousness, and how to navigate emotions from childhood. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

• The moment of breakthrough: connecting present reactions to past wounds
• How family of origin shapes the beliefs we carry into relationships
• The stories we tell ourselves about what's happening
• How your current behavior may be keeping you from what you truly want
• Carried emotions vs. present day emotions: knowing which one is driving you

Show Notes

• 281: Consciousness: The 4 Cs 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
• [1:26] What inspired Shane to explore the "4 Cs" framework
• [2:23] How couples get stuck: blame, defensiveness, and the fight-or-flight cycle
• [4:19] Introducing the three aspects of Consciousness
• [5:18] Awareness of the cycle: seeing the relational pattern instead of blaming your partner
• [5:46] Awareness of self: understanding your own wiring, protective parts, and survival strategies
• [6:15] Awareness of meaning: the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening
• [7:42] How family of origin shapes the beliefs we carry into relationships
• [10:38] Client example: unpacking defensiveness rooted in childhood fear
• [13:35] The moment of breakthrough: connecting present reactions to past wounds
• [16:19] Inner child work: how to begin healing those younger parts of yourself
• [19:07] 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
• [21:57] Asking the key question: what do you really want from your relationship?
• [23:48] How your current behavior may be keeping you from what you truly want
• [26:57] Carried emotions vs. present day emotions: knowing which one is driving you
• [31:26] Practical tools: how therapists help couples slow down and become more conscious
• [33:26] When awareness grows, new possibilities open up introducing Curiosity
• [34:00] Wrapping up: the arc from blame to consciousness, and what's coming next
• 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
This is deep. This is heavy. And when you're a child, you feel completely helpless in a situation like that.

00:11
Welcome to 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.

00:27
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist's 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. everyone. 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 I talk all about concepts related to helping people have a better relationship. And last week I was talking about

01:26
this concept that I've been coming up with and thinking a lot about called the 4 Cs of a healthy relationship. And the four C's are consciousness, curiosity, compassion, and connection. I recommend if you didn't listen to the last episode, that would be a really good place to start. This week I'm going to go into consciousness. I'm going to get deep with it. But you know, last week I really explained

01:54
all four of the whole idea with all four of those connected. And so for the next four episodes, I'm going to go into each one. And consciousness in my mind is really about awakening to the truth. It's really about having an awareness of what's going on in reality. Because a lot of times, partner A will come in and say,

02:23
I try to talk about my feelings and you get defensive and partner be able to say, well, that's not true. You're just criticizing me. And then we're off to the races. You know, couples think that the problem is what's being said or the tone or who started it or who's right. And, you know, it's understandable. Sometimes the other person isn't being very respectful and that's something we need to address and work on. But it's really disempowering for people.

02:52
when they feel like they're waiting for the other person to do something different in order for them to feel okay in their life. And uh what the therapist often sees just sitting back or observing, or what anyone might see on the outside, by the way, I wanna be kind of humble about this. Like I get wrapped up in these things in my own life, in my own relationship.

03:20
It's much easier to see it happening when you're not in it, when you're not emotionally in the heat of the moment. So, you when I say, you know, a therapist can sit back and observe, like, I'm not saying that as though therapists are, you know, better than other people and can avoid these things in their life because they can't. But when you have that ability to not be wrapped up in it and to see what's happening, you know, you can often see the pattern unfolding.

03:51
And it's very difficult when your nervous system and your brain are caught up in what's going on. And so moving into consciousness is sort of figuring out how to step away from that nervous system activation or triggering. You know, a lot of people call it. How do we slow that down? How do we become conscious of what's happening? And there are three aspects of the awareness that I want to talk about.

04:19
And I'm just going to name them all right at the beginning because I might kind of flow from one to the other. But one is the awareness of the cycle, right? To help couples see the relational pattern. The common cycles are pursue, withdraw, criticize, defend, escalate, shut down. There might be ones that you can identify for you and your partner that come up a lot. You know, it could be more than one.

04:48
But these are ways that couples feel really stuck. They're doing the blaming thing. They feel like their partner is the problem. And consciousness starts when they begin to see that it's a system that they're part of. There's that old metaphor, fish swim and water their entire lives, but don't notice the water because it's always been there. And couples are often swimming in a relational pattern they don't even see. uh They're caught up in it.

05:18
And the therapist's job is often to help them see the water that they're swimming in. The second awareness is the awareness of self. And this is understanding your own belief system, your own ego protection, your own protective parts, childhood survival strategies, fight or flight, that kind of stuff, like getting to know intricately your wiring system.

05:46
is really helpful. And then the awareness of meaning. The third one is the awareness of meaning. So, you we often get caught up in the meaning that we're bringing to a situation. For example, if your partner forgets to take out the trash, you know, you might feel like I'm not important. They don't care about me. Or uh if I forgot to take the trash out, I might feel like I'm failing as a partner.

06:15
Consciousness involves recognizing the story we're telling ourselves about what is happening. And once people see the story, they gain freedom to respond differently. know, a lot of times I'll be working with clients and they'll say something and I'll say, oh, so that's the meaning you're making up about what's happening. And they'll get really annoyed with me because they're describing it as though it's true.

06:44
as though it's reality. You know, like my partner said this to me, can you believe they don't even care about my feelings? And I'll say, your partner didn't say they don't care about your feelings. That's meaning that you're making up about it. And I'll look at their partner and I'll say, do you care about their feelings? And they'll say, yes. And then I'll look back at them and say, well, they say that they care about your feelings. So what is it that makes you feel like they don't care about your feelings? Right. And this again,

07:13
That's just a small example of moving into that consciousness where we have the ability to take a step back and see the meaning that we're making up about the world. We all do this. And a lot of the ways in which we make up meaning come from the environment that we grew up in, the society that we grew up in, the school we went to, and primarily the people we grew up with, if that's our parents or your family.

07:42
or people who raised you, it's really important to see or to understand that when you are a child, from the time you're born, even before that, that you're being influenced by the world around you. And you're developing beliefs about what's true and what's not true in the world. And I'll give you some examples. This is a really simple example. Let's say that

08:12
your mom would make you mac and cheese when you were growing up and she told you you have to finish your your bowl of food right so you have this big bowl of mac and cheese she's trying to be a good mom she's trying to make sure you're healthy and she says you can't leave the table until you finish all your dinner and you're a little kid and you eat half of it and you feel full and

08:41
At that moment, there's a choice to be made. ah I can be a good little child and finish my dinner, which is not really my authentic truth. My authentic truth is that I'm full. My authentic truth is that I want to stop eating. My feeling reality feels like I'm full and it would be hard for me to eat more.

09:11
But in order to get some sort of love and approval from my mom, I have to keep eating. So I have to disregard my own authentic feeling reality. And I have to continue eating in order to get love and approval and connection. And so, you know, what happens, that person grows up and becomes 40 years old or something. And now they're wondering why they're struggling with eating issues or eating too much or not, you know,

09:42
not knowing when to stop eating or whatever it is, right? This was uh a belief that impacted that person psychologically growing up in that situation. It's not that their mom was a bad person. It's not that they had bad intentions. They could have been a really lovely person. And that's where I tell people, it's not about blaming your parents, but it's about seeing the truth.

10:08
of what happened to you as a child so that you can have more consciousness around what's going on in your present day life and relationships so that you can begin to heal and grow and feel better in your life. And that's the purpose of of this consciousness. Now, you know, there are lot of ways that a lot of other examples in the way this happens. And maybe I'll maybe I'll give another example.

10:38
uh I was working with a couple. There is a husband and wife and the husband was really get got really defensive all the time and he and he would get really kind of. Mean and harsh in the way that he was defensive and it was it was like you know his partner was really trying to explain some things that she was upset about and that she wanted to change and wanted to be better and she's trying to say it in a respectful way.

11:07
And he would get so caught up in the defensiveness and snapping back and feeling like uh his reality didn't matter, feeling misunderstood. And so I said, who did you have to be defensive with growing up? And he looked shocked. There was nothing that came to mind at that moment. This is the lack of consciousness that many of us live with going through our life.

11:36
around most topics. ah He didn't have any idea what I was talking about. And he, you know, was very cooperative and he thought about it for a minute. And he said, well, I had to protect myself from from my dad. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he was he could be really abusive with me at times. And I said, tell me more. And he said, well, I remember that when he would come in

12:06
Everything had to be perfect. My mom had a lot of anxiety about my dad coming home. She would always, you know, start yelling at all of us kids to make sure the house was clean, to make sure the table was set perfectly, to make sure that uh he wouldn't be upset when he walked in the door. And it was really, really sad. And that's what I would say as a therapist. I start focusing on the child's experience. I start saying, oh my gosh.

12:36
You had to live through that kind of stress. And a lot of people are really minimizing of their own reality. You know, they'll say, well, it wasn't that big a deal. It wasn't that bad. And then, you know, I say, well, you know, you were just a little kid growing up in this household where you were really afraid. What were you so afraid of? What would happen when he would actually come home? And then the guy kept going into the story.

13:06
of, sometimes if, you know, I got a bad grade or if I had left my toys out, you know, my dad would come in and and react like his emotional reaction. There was always yelling and anger and putting me down and making me feel small. And sometimes he would haul off and hit me. And I said, oh, my

13:35
Gosh, your own father would hit you. This is off. That is awful. I'm so sorry. And that's the moment oftentimes where you you start seeing the tears flooding in. There's this connection to that younger part of themselves that we, you know, all of us have this younger, those younger parts of ourself that we kind of keep at a distance, right? Because there's a lot of fear. If you go into the emotions,

14:05
of some of the situations that happen to you, it's going to feel overwhelming. And the overwhelming feeling, in fact, is a younger part of yourself that feels like they're stuck and they can't handle the situation. Right. Because when you were a child and you were growing up in that environment, you couldn't get out of it. You couldn't set boundaries for yourself. Your parents are the very people who are supposed to protect you from being violated.

14:34
and from being harmed and in this guy's case, those are the people that were harming him. And it's incredibly sad and it's obviously physically abusive, but also extremely psychologically and emotionally abusive that people begin to take on these beliefs, right? That I have to get perfect grades in order to get approval from my mom and dad.

15:04
Or I have to make sure that, you know, I don't uh make dad upset or I could be harmed. And, you know, this this guy at this point, he's he's crying, he's he's breaking down. He's starting to think about the truth of the situation uh for him as a kid. And he said, you know, I remember, you know, even if oh

15:33
I didn't get abused every day. He said, you never knew when it was going to happen. And that was part of the fear and the terror. He was like, I always had to be on the defense, like making sure I got good grades, making sure my toys were put away, making sure the table was set. That felt like a defensive strategy because as soon as I heard that garage door opening, my nervous system just went into fear.

16:02
like a heightened state of fear, like how am I going to protect myself? And I think for him, it was his siblings as well. How am going to protect myself and my siblings from this person who could be really harmful to us?

16:19
We talked about the fear and we talked about, know, and I think we ended up doing some inner child work with which I won't go into depth right now. Inner child work is where you have the opportunity to bring out that younger part of yourself, to imagine the younger part of yourself who lived through that experience and to begin to move into love and compassion just to hold that part of yourself.

16:46
to tell them the things that they need to hear, that they're a good kid, that it wasn't their fault, that you love them. And I'm doing a really brief overview. This is not something I recommend implementing necessarily unless you get a little bit of training around that. And I think I have some other episodes where I talk about this a little bit more.

17:09
But again, this can be a really emotional process for people to experience. And when you read these self-help books, nowadays a lot of people talk about moving into self-esteem or moving into self-love. You just need to love yourself. I agree with that, and that's really important. But when you talk about imagining a little six-year-old version of yourself and you're telling them,

17:37
that you love them and imagining holding them and taking care of them. That to me is one of the best ways that I've found to help people really move into their own connection with themselves and um give themselves that love uh and acceptance that they needed. And part of that is the emotional acceptance, which was missing. When I gave that example of eating your mac and cheese,

18:05
Right? There's a lack of acceptance of that child's emotional experience. That child's emotional experience was, I'm full and I don't want to eat anymore. And the parent is either unconscious or unaware and or simply doesn't care. Depends on what we're talking about. But certainly when we're talking about the abuse of dad coming home, that, you know, there's definitely

18:34
a lack of consciousness of what is the impact on the children in the situation. And when that's missing, there's a lot of beliefs that end up coming up, right? So for this particular client, after we did the inner child work, we got his nervous system regulated again. I said something like, it makes complete sense that you become so defensive with your partner. Of course you become defensive with your partner.

19:03
You had to protect yourself your whole life.

19:09
I'd be surprised if this wasn't what was happening for you.

19:15
And so because we develop that awareness of the self, we develop that awareness of why his nervous system was reacting the way it did in his relationship.

19:32
We developed the awareness of his childhood survival strategies and his protective parts.

19:41
then we can bring it to the awareness of the cycle in the way that relational pattern is unfolding for he and his partner.

19:53
And we can do the exact same thing for the partner as well.

19:59
And it starts with, this is a different category. You know, I'm going to talk about compassion in a different episode, but this enables people to move into compassion. They have to do the consciousness piece first.

20:16
But then, can you imagine after I have that conversation with that guy I was talking to, his partner was also sitting there in tears, just feeling the love and connection for the experience that he went through.

20:32
So it's not me as a therapist telling this guy, hey, you're acting like a jerk. You need to stop talking like that to your partner. Although I may have said that to my clients before, I'll admit, but no, it's me taking the time to sort of understand why does it make sense that you're showing up in the way that you are? Building a private practice can be challenging.

20:58
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. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment.

21:27
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. The other part of consciousness is moving into the idea, how is this working for you?

21:57
But like getting to the heart of what do you really want?

22:02
And that's the first question I ask people when they come into therapy. And I ask each person individually, because they might have a different answer. But if I understand, I'll just stick with that couple with the guy that I was talking about. If I understand, if the first question I would have asked him before I even got into all that other stuff is, do you really want?

22:28
You know, and obviously he might say something like, I want to feel more connected to my partner. I want to feel more accepted by my partner. I want to feel more loved. I want to feel more compassion. I want to feel more understood.

22:44
It's important for people to move into the consciousness of the way that you are talking to your partner is leading to the opposite of what you really want. So I'm not here to tell you the right way of being in a relationship. And this is important. And I'll talk, can talk a little bit about the therapist level of consciousness.

23:06
But I don't want to be an expert who's sort of giving a prescription for here's what you need to have a healthy relationship. I want people to figure that out for themselves because they're the experts in their own life.

23:24
So when I'm sitting here with this guy and I'll ask him, what do you really want? And he's telling me all these things. And then my job in my mind, my job as a therapist is to help him see how the way that he's showing up is keeping him from getting what he really wants.

23:48
The only way that he gets what he really wants is to change how he's showing up in the relationship. And I would say the same thing to his partner. The only way, in this case, it was his wife, the only way that she really gets what she really wants is to change the way she's showing up. I'm not blaming one side or the other. We have to help each person have their own awareness of self. And a lot of times,

24:17
understanding what they grew up with in their family of origin and understanding, you know, what their nervous system reactions look like, their survival strategies is really important and really helpful to take responsibility for and accountability. Right. So once we went through this with this couple, it's a much more sophisticated understanding for that guy to see

24:47
to be conscious of when my, let's say when my wife is complaining about not me not taking the trash out, what is really happening inside of me? Right? And what can I do for myself before I approach the conversation? And I'm going to talk more about that in the next episode. mean, part of this is moving into Kyria. Like once you begin to see, once you begin to become conscious,

25:17
of these things that are inside of you and that are part of you and that are driving your decision making and that are getting in the way of what you really want.

25:27
then we can begin to become curious about them. Then we can begin to live in a way where we are not blaming or judging or criticizing, but we're living in curiosity.

25:43
Like, huh, that's interesting. My wife just got mad and just criticized me for not taking the trash out. That's interesting. You know, I wonder what's going on in her day today. Right? That's the curiosity I'll talk more about, but there's not the emotional charge to it. There's not the survival feeling to it. is part of when people grow up to use that guy's

26:12
experience as an example. He was growing up in this household where his survival was really at stake. If he didn't perform in a certain way, he was going to be physically abused.

26:29
He was going to be made to feel like he wasn't loved or worthy or enough.

26:38
that you don't even have the right to protect yourself from these big strong adults. You don't even have control of your own body.

26:47
This is deep. This is heavy. And when you're a child, you feel completely helpless in a situation like that.

26:57
And when you start, if you are an adult who is in a relationship and you start feeling that helpless feeling or the overwhelmed feeling or overcome with fear, it's likely that there's a child part of you that's coming into the situation. Cause that's not the truth in your present day reality. Unless, unless someone ties you up literally or there are situations, but

27:26
I'm just talking about, most people who would be listening to this podcast, when you get completely overwhelmed in your relationship, the truth is that you are still entirely empowered. The consciousness is about there's a healthy, wise adult part of me, mature, that knows that I can deal with whatever comes up in life.

27:51
I've always been able to figure out what to do. I've always been able to survive.

27:58
And actually, this would be a good episode to talk about carried emotions versus present day emotions.

28:09
uh When you experience present day emotions, it's a really healthy thing. Like if you, you know, if you think about our evolution, right, if you're facing a really dangerous situation, like a saber tooth tiger or something like that, you, you know, your body moves into fear and it responds to the situation and it helps you, you know, fight or flight helps you run away or you can, you can

28:37
fight to protect yourself in the situation. It's a really healthy thing that happens. And even in the present day, I mean, let's say you have a deadline at work that you have to meet and you feel worried about that and it motivates you to take action. I often talk about if there are things that I have said or done that are hurtful to my wife. When I really

29:06
move into consciousness about that and move into understanding and I really think about that and take a step back, it makes me really sad. Because I really don't want to hurt another person, particularly her. And that sadness is a huge motivating force. That's a present day emotion that helps me be accountable. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. All of us make mistakes, but...

29:33
Those emotions really guide our decision making and our behavior in a healthy way. Right? When we're talking about carried emotions, these are emotions that you carry from childhood. I'll stick with the same example because I think it keeps it more simple. Let's say that that kid growing up with an abusive father, let's say also the his mom had a lot of anxiety.

30:00
and she was always stressing and worried about making sure that dad wasn't gonna blow up. And so she was constantly anxious and trying to manage the kids and manage the situation. So if you grow up in that environment, a lot of times kids either model what they see or they react in the opposite way. So if my client saw his mom being anxious all the time, let's say he models that in his present day life.

30:27
He's living with a lot of anxiety all the time that he's carrying from his childhood. So that anxiety isn't helping him meet the deadline at work. It's not helping him accomplish whatever he thinks he's stressed about. It's just spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. That's carried anxiety that's not necessarily helping him in his life. His brain may be attaching it to present day things like, you know, I'm worried about money all the time.

30:57
But he just worries about money for five hours a day, but he's not actually using it to motivate him and take action on what might be helpful to that situation. And this is something, you know, please let me know if you have specific questions. I could go into more detail about this specific topic, but the more we move into consciousness, the more we can see the truth of those carried emotions.

31:26
You know, so let's say that I get caught up in the moment with my wife. Let's say we're getting into an argument in the heat of the moment. I want to take a deep breath. And a lot of times it's helpful to separate yourself from the situation. And I want to begin to try to move into consciousness and understand what's coming up for me. What is the meaning that I'm making up about what's happening in this situation? What are my feelings?

31:55
What does the meet, you know, and I'm just moving into consciousness of what's happening to me. I'm trying to be curious about it and non-judgmental about it. And, you know, as a therapist, I think we can help people slow the conversation down, name the pattern, ask reflective questions, know, questions like, what happens inside you when your partner says that? There are all kinds of questions we can use to help people move into consciousness. You know, what meaning are you making of that in the moment?

32:27
What do you imagine your partner might be feeling when they're saying that? Right, so we're helping people move away from that fight or flight. The fight or flight energy is a survival energy. And again, I think it's often connected to childhood experiences. And we're helping them move into their empowered adult self to become more conscious and aware of what's happening in the moment. And I'll be I'll talk more about.

32:57
the curiosity in the next episode and some strategies with that. But when couples begin to develop this type of awareness, something important starts to change. Instead of reacting automatically, they begin to see the pattern they're caught up in together. They start to understand more about what is happening inside themselves and why certain moments feel so intense. And once that awareness begins to grow, a lot of times there's like a snowball effect.

33:26
there's new possibility opens up. It can be a practice. It's something that, you know, the more you do, the better you get at it. And instead of immediately defending themselves or blaming their partner, they can start to become curious about what's happening. Curious about their own reactions, curious about their partner's experience. So in the next episode, I want to talk a lot more about that next step of curiosity and how curiosity can begin to shift.

33:55
the conversation between partners in a really, really powerful way.

34:00
Thank you so much, everybody. Definitely tune in to the next episode about curiosity. And as I said before, if you missed the last episode, you should definitely check that out. That sort of introduces this series about the four C's, consciousness, curiosity, compassion, and connection. Thanks everybody. 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.

34:30
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!