302: Guilt & Relationships with Dr. Jennifer Reid

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 Dr. Jennifer Reid about guilt & 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 302: Guilt & Relationships with Dr. Jennifer Reid

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

Sign up for Shane’s free live training “Beyond the 50-Minute Session: How to Start Offering Couples Therapy Intensives” on October 2, 2026 at Noon ET here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WPzz0aBYTlObz31MdlDpKg 

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 Dr. Jennifer Reid about guilt & relationships. Jennifer is a board-certified psychiatrist, award-winning educator, creator and host of A Mind of Her Own podcast and Substack, and the author of Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations. Hear how women & men tend to experience guilt differently, what to do when there’s seemingly no way to satisfy your guilt, how guilt often shows up in relationships, how to avoid losing your voice in your relationship, and how boundaries relate to guilt. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

• What if having a voice means losing the relationship?
• When our sense of responsibility expands far beyond our actual control 
• The difference between caring and feeling guilty 
• What adaptive guilt actually looks like and when it stops being useful 
• Why guilt can feel sticky 

To learn more about Dr. Jennifer Reid and Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations, visit:

JenniferReidMD.com

 

Show Notes

• 302: Guilt & Relationships with Dr. Jennifer Reid
• 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
• [0:23] Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch 
• [0:53] Welcome Dr. Jennifer Reid to the show!
• [1:00] Free webinar this Friday, October 2nd — Beyond the 50-Minute Session: How To Start Offering Couples Therapy Intensives
• [2:47] From internal medicine to psychiatry to couples and sex therapy
• [5:59] About her podcast, A Mind of Her Own, and why she built it to reach people therapy can't
• [7:22] How a surge of guilt in her patients during COVID inspired the book
• [9:14] How women are socialized from a young age to feel responsible for everyone else's feelings
• [9:42] The guilt equation is the gap between expectations of ourselves and our perceived reality
• [10:40] The four categories of unreasonable expectations: constant caretaking, hyper accountability, seeking perfection, and having it all
• [13:21] Where does caretaking end and guilt begin?
• [15:11] What adaptive guilt actually looks like and when it stops being useful
• [16:38] When the expectation itself is unreachable, falling short isn't failure
• [18:33] Why guilt can feel sticky 
• [19:58] How guilt operates in day-to-day relationship dynamics
• [20:26] What modern life and social media have done to our expectations of romantic relationships
• [22:05] 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
• [22:50] You can feel compassion without absorbing responsibility for your partner's feelings
• [23:50] The difference between caring and feeling guilty 
• [25:15] What it looks like when meta-guilt piles on top of the original emotion
• [26:40] Hyperaccountability is when our sense of responsibility expands far beyond our actual control
• [29:01] How losing your voice to manage someone else's feelings erodes intimacy
• [29:30] Why avoiding boundaries pushes you away from the people you're trying to protect
• [30:52] The wife who makes dinner every night and never says what she wants
• [32:22] When someone finally speaks up, the system resists
• [33:46] Doing hard things in a relationship by choice is different from doing them out of guilt
• [35:09] Why self-compassion is a better motivator than guilt
• [35:39] What if having a voice means losing the relationship?
• [38:55] Boundaries don't put up walls, they put a safe door in them
• [40:46] Boundaries need to evolve as people and relationships change
• [41:44] The SPEAK framework for working through guilt
• [45:29] Shifting from "should" to what you actually believe in
• [45:54] Why working through guilt is better done in community than alone
• [47:59] The moment in therapy when someone realizes they're allowed to say what they want
• [48:55] Find the book at https://www.jenniferreidmd.com/ or amindofherown.com and start a guilt-free group
• [49:23] Register here for the free webinar this Friday, October 2nd — Beyond the 50-Minute Session: How to Start Offering Couples Therapy Intensives
• 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

self-compassion, other motivating factors are better for us, are more motivating and less demoralizing.

 

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.

 

00:28

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. I also want to remind you that this Friday I'm doing a free webinar on how to start offering couples therapy intensives. I think a lot of therapists are interested in working this way and, but they have a lot of practical questions. I've heard a lot of them that come up.

 

01:24

such as, you know, what would I actually do with a couple for that long? How would I structure it? What if they become highly activated? How do I price it? How do I explain this to clients?  So this Friday, October 2nd at 12 PM Eastern time, I'm going to spend an hour, you know, doing a free webinar to answer a lot of these questions for you. can ask questions when you get on the webinar as well.

 

01:49

It's beyond the 30 minute session, how to start offering couples therapy intensives. And if you can't make it this Friday, you should register anyway. And I'll send you the recording. Hey everyone, welcome back to the couple's therapist couch. This is Shane Birkel. And today I'm speaking with Dr. Jennifer Reed,  psychiatrist and author of the book, guilt free, reclaiming your life from unreasonable expectations. Hey Jennifer, welcome to the show.

 

02:18

Hi, Shane. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really looking forward to talking about this. I mean, I think it's such an important topic, but why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself? Sure.  So as a psychiatrist, I did my training in New York and then worked in a number of different settings,  did my residency at UCLA and really got interested then in family therapy, couples therapy, sex therapy, worked with some providers.

 

02:47

to really learn about some of those different topics, which was a little off the beaten path for our training program. Not everyone was interested in couples or sex therapy, but I really saw, especially for women, it could be such important work. And working with couples and individuals,  when I was in residency, it kind of got me hooked on that kind of work. So I've always been interested in that. And also teaching, been, I was at Penn.

 

03:11

clinically until 2019. And then since then, I've just been teaching residents and soon we'll be teaching some medical students.  So it's that combination, which I think is why your, you know, your podcast is such an interesting space for us to talk because this is work you're doing every day and you're training therapists, which I'd really like to help do as well.  Yeah, that's great. This is probably off topic, but I'm curious because, you know, when you think about psychiatry, especially these days,

 

03:40

It feels very much like someone who wants to do that is motivated. You know, they're probably imagining that they'll have a practice where they're focusing on medication management for the most part. At least that's my assumption. But it's cool to think that you, you know, you have this, you know, focus on couples and sex therapy and things like that. Even from the beginning, you were thinking about those things. What did, what did you imagine? Did you always know that you wanted to teach or what did you imagine you would?

 

04:10

Uh, your path would look like. Yeah. I mean, my family, I grew up in North Dakota. So we were talking about before this and my father was a physician and my mother's father was a physician, her small town docs with the black medicine bag. And so I think I just always knew that was going to be a path for me.  my paternal grandmother was 111 and they all became teachers. She was also a librarian, which I thought was, I still think is super rad.  So I think that teaching and medicine just.

 

04:39

part of my my DNA.  And so I've always enjoyed that I did start by matching into internal medicine in residency, I thought I'd maybe do women's health that way. But I just was drawn to psychiatry, because as you know, as a therapist, really understanding the way people think the way they interact in the world around them was just endlessly fascinating. And I didn't get to spend enough time with that in internal medicine. It was more

 

05:04

What are the labs? And what are we going to do for this illness, which is very, important but wasn't as interesting to me. So that's sort of how I ended up in psychiatry. And the therapy piece, even when I was working for LA County, where it's really more med management and support, maybe people that were unstably housed or just didn't have any financial support,  I sort of convinced them to let me take on a few therapy clients just so I could kind of have that.

 

05:31

richness in work. So I think just prescribing medications, though they can be very helpful,  was I was missing something there, you know, the storytelling. I've always loved to read. And so I was missing the stories of people's lives. And so that's how it all kind of came together, I guess, in working in a clinical setting, but also in writing and having my own podcast and getting to teach, you know, future therapists. Yeah, that's great. So

 

05:59

And tell me about your podcast. it about the topic of your book as well?  So it's, you know, I'm doing sort of a series now on guilt free because I just want people to understand it even if they don't have, you know, don't want to buy the book or can't afford to buy the book. But it's called a mind of her own. It's had a few names where I was evolving, aren't we?  But really the focus I recognized was really trying to help women, you know, remove the overlay burden of things like guilt and anxiety and burnout.

 

06:29

and kind of live their best lives.  So it's really fun. I mean, it's mostly for me as well as the audience, because I get to speak with really remarkable people that are clinicians, researchers,  authors, and really hear how they view the world, how are they helping people, like have some practical take home points at the end. Because again, in my private practice, I just never had the space to bring in everybody that could use some support. So how do I sort of

 

06:57

broaden that reach of those conversations that you have over and over again in therapy sessions as you're teaching your clients about a subject. It's like, can I put this information out there so it's free and accessible?  Because there really is such a shortage of providers for individuals. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So can you tell me what inspired you to write the book? When did you start thinking about that?

 

07:22

I started writing like a blog, which I don't know, I never liked that word, but started writing during COVID because I had been in private practice in Philadelphia and basically came home and this is my home office here and was just dealing with all the things that everyone else was during that time. Children being home from school, trying to see patients over a video, people really struggling, fearful,  understandably confused, uncertain.  And again, I couldn't see everyone that needed.

 

07:50

help or support. again, the writing similar to the podcast was how do I put some of these ideas down and just share them for free.  And I was writing about guilt because it was coming up in all of my sessions, especially with women this sense of, I'm just not I'm not getting everything right or really anything right. I'm overwhelmed all the time. I keep adding more and more and yet I just never feel like I can catch up or like I'm succeeding.  And so I wanted to understand how to help.

 

08:18

Right? I mean, we as therapists, it's like, what are some tools I can give you? What is a modality that we could kind of dive into? And I just, I didn't have a lot of great strategies to target guilt. It just felt like it was, if you ask, you know, what did you do wrong? They would say, well, I don't really know maybe everything or maybe nothing, but I just feel like I just am not getting it right. And so I didn't know how to address it really. And when I went looking for resources for books and things, I didn't find any that I thought were really.

 

08:47

goal and applicable. I thought, well, let me, let me explore writing that, see if I could find a way to publish that. And that's been, it's really cool to have,  it out there. Cause again, it's another accessible place for people to learn how to cope with the guilt.  Obviously there are exceptions, but I feel like there's a very male female dynamic to the way we experience.

 

09:14

Well, the way we experience, the way we're socialized to experience reality, um, in that, you know, I think that women are socialized from a young age to feel responsible for everybody else. And I imagine that's part of, know, what comes into the feeling of guilt. Like this, this feeling like I'm constantly not living up to what my kids need or my partner needs or my parents or whoever else in the world.

 

09:42

Definitely. mean, when I really tried to look at, how do I define guilt first and foremost across contexts? Because I think people have different guilt triggers, obviously, and guilt that's maybe higher in their parenting life than in their work life, for example, or higher when they're engaging with their parents than it might be with their partner. So trying to understand guilt broadly first. And the guilt equation that I created is really that guilt is just the difference between our expectations of ourselves, which socialization comes into play. We can talk about that for sure.

 

10:12

our expectations of ourselves minus our perceived reality, meaning minus what are we noticing that we're doing well or the ways that we're showing up? Because you and I both know perceived is really important. It's what do we believe we're doing, not like what are we actually doing? And those can be really far apart.  So guilt lives in between what we think we should be doing and how well we think we are meeting that expectation.  So,  oh yeah, I want it to break down.

 

10:40

What is guilt specifically? So there's the equation. I use this every day in my own life because guilt pops up into my head all the time. We are swimming in a sea of guilt as parents, as healthcare providers, you name it. But then I wanted, you know, specifically for women to think about the expectations they were facing. And there were sort of four key categories that I came up with, not because I made them up, but because I was hearing them over and over and over again from hundreds of women.  It was constant caretaking.

 

11:08

So from a very young age socialized that we're supposed to take care of everyone around us often at our own expense or, know, if necessary at our own expense,  hyper accountability, as you just referenced, which is this belief that somehow other people's experiences, feelings, emotions, you know, thoughts are our responsibility and that we can control them, which you and I both know as therapists, we cannot control someone else's emotions, but

 

11:33

There's that belief that our job is to say the right thing or not say the wrong thing. Or if someone's feeling a certain way, we need to try and help them fix it. And I think that creates a lot of guilt seeking perfection.  So certainly around appearances,  around self-control, our appetites in all different ways, our desires, how we express our moods, right? So how we demonstrate that to other people.

 

12:00

Certainly in the relationship realm and sexual realm, this idea of being the perfect partner, the perfect sexual being, all these things get caught up in that expectation. And then finally having it all that we,  especially as women, now that we have more career opportunities, we should still do everything that sort of the more traditional woman does or did in addition to sort of crushing it in the work environment. And I think these four categories are keeping so many women stuck in guilt.

 

12:30

Yeah, that's great. I don't know if there are other things you want to talk about, but I'd love to get, you know, take some time going into each of these if you want. Yeah, absolutely. You can start whichever,  whichever interests. Yeah, because part of the, part of the reality, I think, and we're talking about guilt, you know, particularly in reference to the way women are socialized.

 

12:56

I think men feel guilt for different reasons, but I also think men experience stress in other ways, unrelated to guilt.  everyone's a unique individual. But when we're talking about these things, a lot of times I think about how the caretaking, for example,  obviously,

 

13:21

It's a wonderful thing if someone's caring and loving and considerate of other people and tries to do nice things for other people. And so I think part of the confusing thing for people in the world is like, where's the line between like, I, like, I want to be a nice person, but we're like, why am I feeling so guilty? Like, where's the line between that? Yeah, maybe it fits in your equation. I'm not sure. Um, the, what's the expectation I'm putting on myself versus the

 

13:50

how much I should be doing or something like that. Right, sort of elusive enough that so many people are chasing, right? That there is no clear answer to that.  So yeah, so constant caretaking, mean, gosh, this comes up. It's not just as a parent. It's not just as a friend. It's as a grown daughter maybe whose parents are aging or son, right? You're right. I men and women.

 

14:14

maybe have different emotional challenges, they each have their own set of expectations about what they think makes them a good version of whatever that role is.  So to be a good dad and be a good mother, those are maybe different expectations, but they can each create guilt.  But I think when we talk about constant caretaking for women,  we are expected to be the ones that if there's an aging family or a family member to step in or to plan birthday parties or remember birthdays for that matter, anniversaries.

 

14:42

And so I think there can be, this is a narrative I hear a lot in women whose parents are aging and are ill, maybe are struggling with early or sort of middle stages of dementia in a nursing home, for example, and the daughter is unsure, and son obviously,  of how often should I be visiting?  How often should I answer their phone calls? Maybe they're trying to call me 15, 20 times a day because they forget that we just spoke, right? So what is enough?

 

15:11

And I think we can always be chasing enough. That's what guilt, guilt that it's most adaptive is saying to us, okay, you've done something wrong, you see that it's hurt someone or caused a problem. Let's move toward that and try and repair, apologize, learn from it, make up for it, whatever those things might be in a specific situation, right? That's adaptive guilt. That's kept us as communities thriving and socially intact for centuries.

 

15:39

But where it goes beyond that, where it's just kind of everything, where it's not a particular issue or particular misdeed, it's kind of everything we do, we feel like needs to be more. That's where we get into this kind of guilt. So people are, they feel guilty, that pushes them to do more, they do more, they still feel guilty and exhausted. And they just become demoralized because it's like, there's no way for me to get rid of this awful feeling. Guilt feels bad because it's of supposed to, it pushes us to do something about

 

16:09

So in the constant caretaking, we really do look at those expectations and where they're coming from.  Who told me, who convinced me, what role model do I have for what makes a good daughter, for example? What story, we are all storytellers as humans, what story am I telling myself about what a good daughter would do in this situation?  And is it anywhere reachable?  Is it fair at all?

 

16:38

Because I think when you can't reach unreachable expectations, that's not a failure, right? That's just bad from the start.  It's a failed sort of idea of what I can possibly do.  So what we can work on is, what expectations do we actually want to hang on to in that situation? So here's an example. My parents are in North Dakota,  fortunately, knock on wood, both healthy,  doing really well. But I still feel guilty in living.

 

17:07

so far from them. And I think if the narrative in my mind is a good daughter is only one who chooses to live close to her parents so she can visit them every day and be involved in their lives that grandkids can see them every day, if that's the only way to be a good daughter, well, then I'm failing.  But how can I work to adjust as I have worked to adjust my expectations about what does it mean to show them that I love them and because underneath that's what this is about. It's calling them

 

17:36

Regularly in my case, it's sending them little notes when I can it's making trips to North Dakota, you know and all the flights that entails Regularly and bringing my kids with to be able to engage with their grandparents. It's telling them what's going on in our life Great. So it's finding ways to connect but not in this idealized or perfect version of what a daughter should Be doing because I know that keeps me trapped in guilt

 

18:03

And also that perceived reality side of the equation, that variable can be adjusted sometimes just by shifting our attention to the things that we're already doing. All those things I mentioned with my family, if I just ignore all of those and like, well, I'm doing those, but I don't live right next door, so I'm terrible. You can see how guilt is going to be sort of the answer. Yeah. There's no way to satisfy it if that's the meaning that you're making up about it.  You'll always feel guilty, right? As long as you live away from them.

 

18:33

You'll always feel guilty.  And I think one of the reasons that guilt can be so sticky is it does give us some sense of control in a situation. for example, let's say we had a loss in our lives, not even a loss that's, know, some, say our children have left home to go to college. We're getting close to that with my own children. So I'm trying to prepare and we feel this sense of sadness or loss, but

 

19:00

feel like we're not supposed to feel that way. So we cover it up with guilt, right? We're guilt's like, no, I shouldn't feel that way. I should only be happy and excited because they're off doing what they're supposed to do. So I'm a good mother would only be excited for them. So we cover that up. The trouble is, though, we don't actually feel the grief underneath.  guilt gives us some sense of control because,  oh, I'm feeling guilty that I didn't play with them enough, right? I didn't plan the right vacation for when they were home for the summer.

 

19:29

guilt tells us it's something we can do about it, because we're the ones who are failing here, right? So as opposed to like, there's nothing I can do. This is the march of time. This is the loss that inherently comes with parenting and loving your children are these losses. But we tell ourselves, no, no, no, I need to be better. And then it won't hurt so much in those circumstances. So I think that's where guilt sometimes can be so sticky.  And sometimes it's like, I'm thinking of relationships now.

 

19:58

It's like steeped in the day to day where it's like, Oh, I got to get home in time for my part. So I don't make my partner upset. Or I feel guilty that, you know, they're going to be upset if I work too late today. Or like this, it's like, there's this constant sort of cloud hanging over someone's head about like, Oh, I'm feeling guilty. Like my partner's not going to be happy. And maybe the partners co-create the reality of, uh, you know, they're

 

20:26

a relational dynamic emerges based on how each person shows up to that. Right, I mean, and you think about socialization in relationships, the idea of what a marriage partner is has changed dramatically over the past 100, 200 years, right? That the ideas we have now have been shaped by modern life, by social media depictions of finding the one, right? By like,

 

20:53

all the Nora Ephron movies where you find the one and you beautifully and perfectly complement each other and give each other everything that the other needs. That's what a good marriage is.  any of us that are in a good marriage, knock on wood, mine is a very good marriage, but that doesn't mean that I don't have any needs that he can meet every single need. I like having my group of friends. I like to call my sister and complain about something randomly. I like to be able to connect with

 

21:23

My parents like to do things that he doesn't enjoy. So I think we also have to think about what are the expectations around romantic relationships today?  What's shaping them? Where are those shoulds coming from? And decide, okay, what actually is important to me in a loving romantic relationship? And can I find someone who is kind of on that same page?  Not that we agree on the entire book.

 

21:52

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.

 

22:20

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. This is the way I would say it. You can tell me how you would say it. Like I feel, let's say that my partner is hurt because

 

22:50

I don't want to do the same activities that she does or something like that. There has to be permission for me to say,  I feel guilty about that. I'm so sorry that you're upset. And I still don't want to do that with you.  Where it's OK for me to have a voice about what I want. And the guilt can move me to be compassionate and understanding about how she's feeling. But it doesn't mean that we're chained. It would be like if your parents in North Dakota said,

 

23:20

You have to visit us 10 times a year. That's the only way you can show us you love us, right? Then you feel like there's this thing I have to do in the world in order to appeal.  Like I can only be enough if I do that, do it in that equation. Yeah.  Well, I think in, those kinds of relationships, say that you are feeling hurt, that she doesn't want to spend time with you or this person's feeling hurt.  There's a difference between being able to express those emotions.

 

23:50

And the other person absorbing them as their responsibility. Right? So how can you be compassionate, but maybe not guilty? Cause what guilty again, what guilt says is that I've done something wrong. So I think we can sometimes conflate guilt with care. If I really care about them, I'm going to feel guilty when they're feeling upset or frustrated, or if I've disappointed them, I should feel guilty. Cause that's, that means I care.

 

24:15

But I think what I try to really communicate working with with therapists and clients is that the idea that you can create disappointment in other people, that doesn't mean you're uncaring or unloving. That doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. And it doesn't mean that you have to immediately work really hard to take that feeling away. Because for one, you're telling that other person, oh, this this disappointment is really dangerous. I'm going to try and fix it right away. I do not want you to feel that. Right?  Like, well, we all

 

24:44

feel disappointment. So how do we get to a situation where we can express compassion where I can hear you say that really hurt my feelings when you said that. And I can say I'm sorry to hear that I'm sorry and let's let's talk through it. But to feel guilty for feeling hurt, for example, if that person says I shouldn't feel so hurt, I should just that he's going through a tough time and I just need to swallow that and not feel that way.  I'm a bad way for expecting him to know.

 

25:15

that that would hurt my feelings. These kinds of like meta emotions of guilt we stack on top of those true emotions, it interferes with understanding them, processing them and certainly communicating them. But if you have a partnership where you can communicate things that are happening and you can be there for that person, not accept responsibility for what they're experiencing, but expressing compassion and support for what they're experiencing.

 

25:42

That's really important. I'm sorry that it was disappointing to you that I didn't want to go camping. My husband's sort of given up on me on camping. But let's say that was our first conversation. And I said, I'm sorry it was disappointing that I don't want to go camping with you and the boys. I can disappoint him. But it doesn't mean I've done something wrong. I have expressed that sleeping in a tent without a bathroom nearby is not my idea of a relaxing overnight.  He does think that, right?

 

26:10

I can express something that disappoints him without immediately trying to fix it or feeling guilty because I've done something wrong by expressing my own true feelings. Yeah. Because that's where guilt can get so stuck. Yeah, that's great.  I was wondering what hyper accountability was. I'm wondering if that's part of what you're speaking about a little bit as we're talking this. can you give more of an explanation of that?

 

26:40

Yeah. And as you said earlier, I do think this is something that women carry more often than men.  expectation from a very young age that we should do the right thing, say the right thing, engage with people the right way to help them feel a certain way or to protect them from feeling a certain way, to protect our partner from disappointment or sadness or even loneliness so that if they're going to feel lonely, let's say when we go on a trip with our friends,

 

27:10

Well, then we shouldn't do it because we don't want them to feel that way. Right. It would just be right.  So I think hyper accountability,  if you think about it, I mean, there are aspects of it that are adaptive for women to feel, because if we're in a situation where there's someone where it's something threatening, we want to try and not provoke. We don't want to upset someone who might be threatening to us. So there are adaptive aspects of this, but I think it's become so broad that our idea of what our responsibility is.

 

27:39

has expanded far beyond what our control is.  If my responsibility today is like, okay, I need to make sure that Shane feels happy the entire time that we're talking. Well, I can't actually control that,  Or I should feel sad because my friend feels sad. Maybe we do experience that, but I don't actually.

 

28:03

feel sad that day, but I need to make sure that I don't come across as too happy because that might make them feel like they shouldn't be sad. And then, you know, you can see how we twist ourselves in knots, trying to fix how someone else is feeling. And the flip side, the dark side of that is that we take responsibility when someone's having a difficult feeling and we say, Oh, I should be able to do what we can notice it. We can express compassion for that difficult feeling. But when we feel guilt, saying,

 

28:32

I need to fix this. And often we just, we simply can't. And we know what happens when the partner just launches into advice mode when you know, their loved one's had a tough day. It doesn't often go well because they want to feel heard. They want to feel cared for, but not you trying to fix it or saying, Oh my gosh, I feel so guilty. I can't fix this for you. Yeah. Well, then you're asking them to comfort you, right? By saying that. Right.

 

29:01

Well, yeah, and I feel like a lot of times people lose their own voice. You know, it becomes all about managing the other person feeling OK, and they're not saying what they truly want.  Right, exactly. Oh, I couldn't tell my parents they need to stop asking me when I'm going to have a baby. Right. Because that would make them feel like they were upsetting me, and I shouldn't upset them that way. But it's hurting me, right? I'm swallowing that.

 

29:30

And what can happen, one of the risks there is that it pushes you away from that person. So if it's a valuable relationship, but you don't feel it's reasonable to set any boundaries, which I see as sort of safe scaffolding to help bridge and bring a relationship together. If I don't try and set any boundaries and I just tell myself every feeling I have when they hurt me is my problem to swallow. I actually will start to pull away because you know, being around that person feels

 

29:58

bad. feels like I don't have any room to protect myself from some of these difficult feelings or defend myself to help them learn.  You asking about that may not sound bad to you, but to me, it makes me feel really awful. And so it means a lot to me if you would make that shift, but setting boundaries can create a ton of guilt for people because they're saying,

 

30:22

I'm being selfish or that other person might be really offended by my boundary or disappointed in me that I'm suddenly setting boundaries because I was always the one that would do anything when they asked.  Right. And I feel like there's a more subtle way that that plays out to where like if you think about like a traditional gendered male female dynamic like old school relationship where

 

30:52

the wife is making dinner for the husband every night. And she realizes that she doesn't want to be making dinner for her husband every night.  like,  there's this sort of underlying,  like, if she's not having a voice about what she really wants her relationship to look like, you know, she's being motivated by that guilt, like, oh, as long as I do this, everything will be okay. I have to keep making sure he's happy and making dinner and whatever.

 

31:22

And I feel like it's, there's a lack of intimacy in that relationship. There's a lack of truth, which is required for that connection and intimacy in the relationship. Cause he's, he doesn't have the opportunity to know what she truly wants or what is going on for her. Right. And not having a voice that are not approaching it as equals. Right. But there may be a sense, she may carry this expectation that this is what a good wife does. And if I don't live up to that expectation perfectly by cooking dinner every single night.

 

31:52

that I'm failing this sort of black and white, this dichotomy of perfection or failure. I think we can get so caught up in that. Challenging thing though, as I do a lot of interpersonal therapy with individuals and you know, in couples and family therapy that that system resists change. So when you're working with someone and they're starting to try and set some boundaries or try and share their voice where previously they didn't, that system or that partner is going to resist that change.

 

32:22

If we feel guilty for doing it in the first place, we just are going to shut down even faster. I shouldn't have said, I don't want to cook dinner. That's terrible. I could tell he was disappointed in me. I'm just going to go back and do it. And that's, think, the we disappoint ourselves to protect the disappointment or frustration of others. But again, if she decides me cooking dinner for us is not something that I want to do anymore and that is making me feel like I'm, it's a real partnership.

 

32:50

him caring about her means he has to consider it and listen to it. He may have his own feelings about it. But I think simply both of you setting these expectations that cannot shift creates a dynamic in that relationship, like you said, that does move against intimacy. Because it's suggesting like, you're I'm just supposed to do what you want, even though it makes me unhappy. Now, of course, we do those things here and there with relationships. But I think when there's a pattern,

 

33:18

of a voice being silenced or someone self-silencing because guilt tells them they shouldn't have those feelings.  That's where they're making decisions based on guilt. And that's what I'm trying to shift. Not evaporate any and all guilty thoughts, because that's not going to happen. But how do we not let guilt drive the bus, so to speak? Right. Right. Yeah. I appreciate it. I'm glad you mentioned that. We can do things that we don't want to do in a relationship. Like if you

 

33:46

decided to agree to go camping with your husband.  You know, you could say, you know, I really don't want to, but I'll try to, you know, I'll make the best of it. I'll try to be positive. I want to be with the family and I know it's important to you.  So, but that's different. That's not being driven by guilt at that point. That's like an empowered choice that you can make because, you know, we should all be, we should all do some hard things in relationships sometimes.

 

34:15

And that, you know, it feels really badly if that instead was because of guilt, right? our partner and my husband to his credit doesn't do this, try to manipulate us with guilt. Or if a parent tried to manipulate us, this idea of,  I do wish you would come with us to the go camping because the boys really say how much they really miss you there and how it's just not as much fun without you. know, just that can create guilt in you. But I think we can also

 

34:42

use guilt manipulatively against ourselves, we can sort of use it as motivation, like,  oh, I should, I should go with them, because otherwise I am a bad mom. So I'm using guilt in that situation to motivate me to go camping.  But maybe that builds resentment, or maybe I'm not actually there authentically. Right? Yeah. So I think we all have to be careful about using guilt as motivation, which you'll hear from people, well, if I don't feel guilty, if I don't exercise or eat right, I will just

 

35:09

crawl into bed with a bag of Cheetos and never come out. Well, these are the threats we're telling ourselves, but that's not the reality, right? Self-compassion, other motivating factors are better for us, are more motivating and less demoralizing than can be. Well, and I think there's a fear of the relational break that could happen.  camping is a small example.

 

35:39

But when someone starts to have a voice that's different than what the other person wants in their relationship,  there's a lot of fear. Like it could legitimately lead to the end of that relationship. I do think it's a legitimate fear. I still think it's important and worthwhile because to me it's like you have to have a voice and boundaries for yourself about what works for you. Otherwise it can't be a healthy relationship.

 

36:09

Right. mean, in interpersonal therapy, the sort of interpersonal conflict part where it's really about you in a relationship with someone else has you're trying to figure out where the relationship is, right? Is it an impasse? Is it kind of everything's cooled off, but you're just not even talking anymore?  Is it kind of in this very heated state where there's a lot of argument? Or is it at the point potentially where a dissolution actually

 

36:34

does make sense. And that that's part of the therapeutic stance is how do we help dissolve a relationship in a fair and sort of loving way, right? People conscious uncoupling or whatever you want to call it. But I think you're right. I think when we live in fear of if I have my true self, and ask for what I want and need, I will lose this person I love. Of course, that's really frightening and really threatening.

 

37:01

But I think it's how do we become the strongest we are ourselves to go forward and say, it's still is worth it, right? If I don't want to live in guilt all the time, if I don't want to live doing things that are just not how I want to live my life, there is a risk in speaking up about it. But you're also giving your partner the potential to change as well. And to maybe accept this version of you. Maybe they already knew that that was the case. Yeah. You know? So I think it's,

 

37:31

It is really scary. I don't want to minimize that.  But I think that communication allows you at least to explore,  is this something that we could grow together in, or are we coming to a really impasse? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Because it could make the relationship better than it's ever been before. Because there's more truth, more understanding on both sides. Right. And I think that that might then

 

37:58

change things in a sort of more sexual realm, right? The idea of sometimes sex therapy is about,  we're just not communicating about anything.  because we're afraid to fight, because we think it's not good to fight in relationship. And so we don't fight, but then we both are kind of in our separate corners. Again, that's the opposite of intimacy. So sometimes some conflict coming together, sort of warming up the relationship again, if it's in this cold impasse place, can actually help to build

 

38:28

that energy or that intimacy because we're coming together, we're working on this. It's not that conflict itself is damaging to relationships is when we don't resolve that conflict, when we don't talk about it, when we don't work to repair and try to understand each other.  But you know, when people are totally avoiding conflict and relationships, there's, it's hard to have a closeness.

 

38:55

Um, I want to go back a little bit to you were talking about boundaries, cause I think that's such an important part of what makes people feel guilty or, what, what feels confusing sometimes. Like where's the, where's the line between my boundary versus being hurtful to another person or something like that? Yeah. Well, I do think, I mean, some people see boundaries understandably in the word as kind of

 

39:22

putting up walls or sort of protective barriers between you and someone else. And I do think that that healthy boundaries sort of do the opposite, that it's almost like putting like a safe door in between, you know, within the wall, but a safe door to be able to cross over those thresholds, knowing what to expect on the other side, knowing that I'm going to be safe on the other side. So I'm coming towards you, maybe sharing that something you did was hurtful to me.

 

39:51

boundaries mean that I know you're not going to turn that back on me in a way that's really aggressive or violent or defensive potentially, but that's saying this boundary is that I want to be able to talk to you about how I'm feeling without you getting defensive or being really harsh or calling me names, right? It's how, what are the kind of rules of this dynamic that we can both agree upon so that we can have safe conflict and we can resolve that conflict.

 

40:20

Whereas I think when people see boundaries as you just stay over there and unless you meet all of these criteria, we can't spend any time together, right? It's very sort of off putting boundaries allow you to become closer because there's safety.  Yeah, it's creating safety.  Yeah, for the interaction. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that they have to be consistent, but they also have to be edited.

 

40:46

as needed because things may change, right? There might be things that are really important to us before we have a baby, for example. And then after that, as a new parent, there might be very different boundaries that we're trying to set and expectations. So there has to be an ongoing discussion or communication of that because otherwise as we grow and change, those boundaries can be a little bit outdated. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well,

 

41:15

I'm wondering if there's someone who's listening who is a therapist who's working with someone who feels like they experience a lot of guilt or if they're listening and they are a person who sees themselves in a lot of what you're talking about. What are some of the things that they, just as some final thoughts that they can begin to work on or begin to sort of how to think about things differently? Yeah.  So

 

41:44

The sort of process I've wrote about is I just called it speak. That's the mnemonic because I wanted to try and illustrate what do we do in therapy? Because sometimes it can be very like, do I just lie down on a couch and I just free associate and tell you about my dreams?  So speak is these five letters stand for speak, S is showing up. And that really is showing up for ourselves, being willing to take time and attention to put it on ourselves because we believe we can change this relationship with guilt.

 

42:12

So that's a big deal. wanted to make sure include that because it's saying I'm important enough to take time. So that's showing up.  Then the P is paying attention. And as you know, we all, many of us have this running kind of monologue or dialogue in our head that is saying things to us, maybe self-critical thoughts, guilty thoughts.  It's being able to turn inward and start to notice them. And we're in this attention economy. So this can be really hard because everything wants our attention.

 

42:39

people in real life, social media, work, emails, what have you. So it's turning that attention inward and really starting to notice the thoughts and feelings that show up in different environments, different contexts, right?  And then the E is for examining those thoughts, really understanding where do I seem to have the most guilt? Maybe at work I can set boundaries. I can allow people to be disappointed because I'm like, no, that's not going to work for me. I don't feel that much guilt. I get home, I walk in the door.  It's just a weight of guilt on me.

 

43:09

So it's understanding, examining where those thoughts and feelings, where are they coming up? Because that's how we can use that guilt equation, right? What are the expectations at play in this guilty thought? And what's my perceived reality? What could I be overlooking that I'm already doing in this role? And then the A is take action. And there are a couple different things I write about. One is sort of working on those cognitive distortions borrowed from CBT about how do we

 

43:38

shift a really negative, a really guilty thought, right? If I don't visit my parents 10 times a year, I am a terrible daughter. That's a pretty negative thought. Could we shift it to more neutral? Like I would like to be able to visit my parents 10 times a year, it might be difficult, right? Or even a positive thought, like I call my parents many more times than 10 a year. We connect often and we're really close, right? So how do we start to shift those really critical

 

44:07

thoughts to something a bit more neutral and fair. And then these actions, interpersonally, we talked about, you know, boundaries. We talk about allowing disappointment, that you can say something that's going to disappoint someone else and still be a caring, loving person and not have done anything wrong. So disappointment, allowing disappointment is really big. And then learning to delegate.

 

44:32

in a way that doesn't get so bogged down in the response. If I ask my teenage son to unload the dishwasher and he's like,  fine. I'll just say, great.  Not listening to the tone or saying, oh, I've made him upset, so I better, I'll just do it myself because don't want him to be upset. Well, he's going to have to deal with it.  So that's some of those take actions,  learning to use self-compassion, especially with teenagers.

 

45:00

You're allowed to have your feelings and because you're a teenager, they are big,  loud, powerful feelings. You're still allowed to have them. That doesn't mean I've done something wrong. And then the K is just for keep going. It's for continuing this, attention, this examination,  doing these actions over and over again so that we're making decisions based on expectations that we really believe in. We're noticing the things that we're already doing well, and we're making decisions that are not based on what I should.

 

45:29

be doing in this role because that's sort of outsourcing. Should is someone else is telling us what the right thing to do is, and I want us to be telling ourselves.  Yeah, that's great. I love that. And what else?  Any other final thoughts for people or anything that we missed in the conversation from the book or from your work?

 

45:54

Well, I think it's so important because we are socialized to feel this way that it's not something we're doing to ourselves. And I think the way out of it is going to be together. It's going to be in a community of others who also are experiencing this constant guilt or these expectations because talking to each other about this doesn't have to be like a group therapy setting. It can just be

 

46:17

I have a guide on my website, just a guilt-free guide that groups can create themselves and use to talk through the book with each other.  And I think it's great when there are different generations of women, let's say, in the room, because they can talk about their own time and place and how that affected their guilt and affects their guilt. So I think the best way to go through this book and to learn is in a group.

 

46:42

And my next goal and was looking at some of the amazing work you're doing teaching therapists is to try and teach therapists how to apply the guilt equation, how to use the four furies, have like a women's guilt inventory I'm working on so that we can, you know, kind of help individuals examine their own guilt,  see what fury comes up the most for them. Are they always looking to try and be perfect at everything? Are they getting really bogged down in caretaking? Like,  what is it all for?  So that's really what my goals are for the next step.

 

47:12

Yeah, I love that. mean, I think that's so important to like reality check ourselves because a lot of times we're making up all kinds of meaning in our own head. And so to have a group like that, you know, some people who are going through your book and going through your materials and like being able to bounce stuff off each other and make sure, you know, I think that's so helpful and important.

 

47:34

Yeah, I mean, it's been so fun to be in a room of women discussing the book and sharing and one person saying, oh, I never would have thought you'd feel guilty about that. Right. I thought you were really, you know, very boundary here. And again, it's, it's let's put that out there so we can learn from each other.  strategies that help each other. Right. I think it's a really powerful effect. Yeah. And I'm amazed sometimes in therapy, you probably are too, like

 

47:59

where someone will say like, what do you mean? I'm allowed to like say what I want in this situation or something. And I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, of course. Like, like people have, depending on what they grew up with or what, you know, what they, their beliefs are in the world. Like sometimes people have just, this is like a new idea for them, you know? Right. To be able to say like, no, that's not something I really enjoy. I love that you enjoy it. You should go for it. Go camping.

 

48:25

You know what I mean? Everyone, tell your partner to go camping.  Or maybe you like to and then go with them.  yeah, like really try and show up and it's who you are in your own life. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Well, this is this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I really appreciate it.  What's what's the website where people can find you and say the name of the book again, too, so everybody can can go get a copy. Yeah, so the book is called Guilt Free.

 

48:55

reclaiming your life from unreasonable expectations. It's available anywhere broadly online. I recorded the audio book, which was fun. There's an ebook version. Bookshop.org connects you to local independent booksellers, which is very cool.  And my website is just my name, jenniferreedmd.com or amindofherown.com will also get you there if you want to start your own guilt-free group or learn a little bit more about some of the trainings for therapists. Great. Great.

 

49:23

Well, thank you so much. Hopefully we can catch up again at some point in the future. I love that. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I also want to remind you that this Friday I'm doing a free webinar on how to start offering couples therapy intensives. I think a lot of therapists are interested in working this way and,  they have a lot of practical questions. I've heard a lot of them that come up such as, you know, what would I actually do with a couple for that long?

 

49:52

How would I structure it? What if they become highly activated? How do I price it? How do I explain this to clients?  So this Friday, October 2nd at 12 PM Eastern time, I'm gonna spend an hour doing a free webinar to answer a lot of these questions for you. can ask questions when you get on the webinar as well.  It's beyond the 30 minute session, how to start offering couples therapy intensives.

 

50:19

And if you can't make it this Friday, you should register anyway. And I'll send you the recording. 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.

 

50:47

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!