Why do some struggle so much with their relationship after having kids? Has your relationship changed? Tune in for some marriage advice in today's episode!
As an experienced clinical psychologist and couples therapist, our guest Dr. Tracy Dalgleish shares marriage advice about the complexities of relationships post-parenthood. In her new book "I Didn't Sign Up for This", she uncovers the harsh reality that 67% of couples experience a decrease in relationship satisfaction after having a baby. We dig deep into this topic, exploring the negative cycles that trap partners and the strategies available to break free and foster healthier relationships.
Drawing from the research of Drs John and Julie Gottman and Dr Sue Johnson, we identify four destructive communication patterns often seen in strained relationships. But knowing is only half the battle. How do we turn this knowledge into actionable steps? Dr. Dalgleish provides invaluable insights into recognizing our own attachment styles, understanding how our past experiences shape our coping mechanisms, and how to navigate the delicate balance of intimacy and autonomy in relationships.
Finally, we tackle the tricky world of relationship labels, emotional regulation and the impact of parental disagreements on children. Dr. Dalgleish emphasizes the importance of respectful communication and the valuable role of repairing connections.
Get her book I Didn't Sign Up for This (out on September 12th, 2023!):
Amazon Canada
Amazon US
Visit her website and follow her on Instagram
https://www.drtracyd.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drtracyd/
Please leave a rating for our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Email me at info@curiousneuron.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/curious_neuron/
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theemotionallyawareparent/
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Get some discounts using the links below
Thank you to our main supporters the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute at The Neuro and the McConnell Foundation.
Discounts for our community!
Why do some struggle so much with their relationship after having kids? Has your relationship changed? Tune in for some marriage advice in today's episode!
As an experienced clinical psychologist and couples therapist, our guest Dr. Tracy Dalgleish shares marriage advice about the complexities of relationships post-parenthood. In her new book "I Didn't Sign Up for This", she uncovers the harsh reality that 67% of couples experience a decrease in relationship satisfaction after having a baby. We dig deep into this topic, exploring the negative cycles that trap partners and the strategies available to break free and foster healthier relationships.
Drawing from the research of Drs John and Julie Gottman and Dr Sue Johnson, we identify four destructive communication patterns often seen in strained relationships. But knowing is only half the battle. How do we turn this knowledge into actionable steps? Dr. Dalgleish provides invaluable insights into recognizing our own attachment styles, understanding how our past experiences shape our coping mechanisms, and how to navigate the delicate balance of intimacy and autonomy in relationships.
Finally, we tackle the tricky world of relationship labels, emotional regulation and the impact of parental disagreements on children. Dr. Dalgleish emphasizes the importance of respectful communication and the valuable role of repairing connections.
Get her book I Didn't Sign Up for This (out on September 12th, 2023!):
Amazon Canada
Amazon US
Visit her website and follow her on Instagram
https://www.drtracyd.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drtracyd/
Please leave a rating for our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Email me at info@curiousneuron.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/curious_neuron/
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theemotionallyawareparent/
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Get some discounts using the links below
Thank you to our main supporters the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute at The Neuro and the McConnell Foundation.
Discounts for our community!
The research shows 67% of couples experience a significant decrease in their relationship satisfaction after having a baby.
Speaker 2:Hello, dear friend, welcome back to another episode of the curious neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. I'm a mom of three and I have a PhD in neuroscience, and my goal here is to bring you the science behind emotional learning, for both you and your child. And today is a very special day because I'm speaking with a friend of mine that I've met online on Instagram. I have so much respect for the work that she does and I'm so excited for her because she has a book coming out called.
Speaker 2:I Didn't Sign Up for this. Her name is Dr Tracey Daglish, and if you are not following her on Instagram, I encourage you to do so. The links are in the show notes and the link to her book is in the show notes as well. But before I share the interview and a little part of her book, I'd like to thank the sponsors of the curious neuron podcast. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Ten and Bomb Open Science Institute for supporting and sponsoring the curious neuron podcast. Without them, this podcast literally would not be possible. So thank you. They support open science and that is what I do here at curious neuron. I want to make sure that you have all the science available at your fingertips so that you can make the decisions that make sense for you and your child, and they see that sharing the science is really important, and that's why they support the podcast. So thank you. I would also like to thank BetterHelp for sponsoring the curious neuron podcast.
Speaker 2:Mental health and well-being of both the parent and the child are important to the brands we work with, which is why we were so happy to get the support and to get sponsored by BetterHelp for this podcast. Betterhelp is the world's largest therapy service and it's 100% online. With BetterHelp, you can get the same professionalism and quality you expect from in-office therapy, but with access to a huge network of therapists, more scheduling flexibility and a more affordable price. Click the link below to get 15% off the first month of therapy. Secondly, I would like to thank PocPoc Playroom for supporting the curious neuron podcast as well. We have been friends with PocPoc for a long time now, and they are giving you 50% off a one-year subscription for this app. Pocpoc is a collection of digital toys that spark creativity and learning through open-ended play. This was, in fact, the first app that my kids ever played with that I felt comfortable introducing to them because it is open-ended, there aren't loud sounds, it's not over-stimulating, so it's great for neurotypical kids. For neurodivergent kids, it's okay for a calming activity, even if it's screen time. So I really do encourage you to try it out for seven days for free and to click on the link in the show notes to download the app and get 50% off your first year.
Speaker 2:And, as always, if you haven't done so yet, please take a moment to rate the podcast, to review it. I hope you are subscribed to it so then you'll see the notification every Monday when there's a new episode. And when you do rate it and review it, either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please send me an email at info at curious neuroncom. Not only will I send you a free PDF that we have at curious neuron academy on our website at curious neuroncom, which is called Meltdown Mountain. It gives you a visual that you can print and show your child to help them understand their emotions, but it is also a PDF that will help you understand emotion regulation skills in your child. I'll also give you a coupon code so that you can apply it to our parenting bundle at the curious neuron academy. So send me an email, let me know. And if you are online and use Instagram, come and visit us at curious underscore neuron on Instagram. We also have a parenting Facebook page. You can search curious neuron there. There's the emotionally aware parent, which is a private page. You can join there. And lastly, as always, you can visit curious neuroncom. We have lots of articles written by graduate students. We have the curious neuron academy. You can search the podcast episodes perhaps a little bit more easily there.
Speaker 2:All right, so I do want to share the interview with you, but before I do, I have a few parts, or there's a few parts in her book that I wanted to share with you. So the book again is called I didn't sign up for this and at the end of each chapter there's a sort of activity or activities that you can do with your partner. I started doing them with my partner and it's been really helping us understand certain things that we do or we say. When I started reading her book, it was page one where I felt a little bit emotional, because it's not easy when you're in a relationship and you have kids, or if you have kids very quickly or you have many kids very quickly, which was our case three kids in under four years. So here's what she writes on her first page. She says as a psychologist and couples therapist, I have been struck by the number of clients who show up in my office saying the same thing. I didn't sign up for this.
Speaker 2:The couple arguing about invisible labor and searching for the solution to a more even division of labor. The mother of three children desperate to have her husband see her overwhelming reality and get on the same team for parenting. The remarried couple doing the best to blend families while navigating the interference of toxic ex partners. The man who ended his 25 year marriage because he never felt like he could show up as his authentic self. As different as these clients are, they have in common a longing for their old relationship, the one that felt easy, connected and fulfilling. The reason why I think this made me feel really emotional when I was reading it the first time is because of that last sentence. It felt easy, connected and fulfilling before kids and it's easy to kind of put that on our kids and say, well, the kids cause this, but it's because we need to find ways to reconnect, we need to find new ways to fulfill each other and we need to find ways to make it easy for each other as partners, and you need to reevaluate that and that is what this book is helping me understand.
Speaker 2:On page 167. Of this book, chapter 17, she talks about herself. So, dr Tracy, she beautifully talks about her own journey and experience in her marriage and shares her personal stories, and I think it is so brave and so beautiful and empowering to see somebody do that, to share their story as one of the people, or the stories that they share in this book. And this chapter opens up with a little paragraph that I wanted to share with you. So she writes the anger you experience in your relationship may arise from your attempts to create closeness and connection through an over functioning, under functioning dynamic.
Speaker 2:It's important to recognize that both partners contribute to this tricky cycle. However, when one partner shifts their role, it can sometimes spark a change that eventually stops the cycle altogether. The reason why I want to highlight this is because this is something that I've learned past three years. When I started my own therapy and I started my journey To kind of do that self work that I, or that inner work or deep work that I had ignored for so many years, it was only after giving birth to my third child that I realized that I couldn't ignore that anymore and had been easy before to ignore the work that I needed to do. But it was no longer possible. And the more I have been working on myself and understanding how I interpret things people say to me how I respond to them, what boundaries are important to me, what my values are the more I can set the right boundaries with my partner, but the more I can also communicate.
Speaker 2:And that communication piece, by the way, is not just about speaking, it's about learning how to listen. I'm still working on that. If you were here you would tell you, but I'm still working on that. But it's important at least have the insight to that communication piece that people tell you on the day you get married. It's all about communication, sure, but it's about listening. And listening is hard because as you're listening to somebody, you're often thinking about what you want to say, or thinking about your own, you're thinking about your point, but that listening piece means you're silent in your head and you're actually listening with compassion and curiosity. So that's all I wanted to share with you today. I hope you enjoy my interview with Dr Tracey. It was a fascinating one and will help your relationship. You can start the work today, but it's I highly recommend that you buy her book. I didn't sign up for this and start the activities in each chapter. I'll see you on the other side, hi Tracey.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast, hi Cindy. Thank you so much for inviting me here. I am excited to be sitting with you and finally having this conversation. I know.
Speaker 2:We've been in touch for a little while now and I've been so excited to bring you on to the podcast and I'm glad that we're doing it now, not only to have this conversation but to talk about your book. I didn't sign up for this. I'm so excited, by the way, my husband said I love that title.
Speaker 1:We did. Yes, oh, I love that.
Speaker 2:That was his first reaction, because he got it in the mail and then he opened and said this is a great title. So I'm excited to share this with everybody today and I have so many questions for you. So let's get started. When we were chatting about this conversation, there are so many angles that we can take, because I think there's so many struggles that we're having, as you know, partners and even with kids.
Speaker 2:Obviously, from a curious neuron perspective, there's a lot of there's kids involved and it changes a lot. And I think something that I've experienced and and also heard from my friends is sometimes there's a moment or a phase or a very long period of disconnect and you feel stuck in these cycles. You brought this up in your book these cycles, these negative cycles, and also what was funny to me is you were mentioning like the dishes and you get stuck on these tiny little arguments that we do, but it's not really about that. So let's begin our conversation there Maybe, like on these little arguments and what are these negative cycles and how can we identify them?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love this place to start and just really want to say that again how much I love that your husband like the title, because it was something that kept showing up in my sessions, because, truly, we come into our relationships with expectations, with our own understandings of what a relationship means, and, for many of us, well intentioned, we believe our relationships should be easy and seamless and effortless, and our media teaches that. Our books show it, our films right. So we think it should just be easy, and in those early days it is easy because you have more time to explore and be curious and to get to know each other. In addition to that time, you also tend to be more open and flexible, and you maybe don't have any beliefs or assumptions built about your partner. In those early days, it's true.
Speaker 1:And then what then starts to happen, though, is that the stressors pile on, and we know specifically thinking of who's here with us, for curious neurons and for the parents of children is that when you have children, it can often feel like you are two ships passing in the night, and this kind of gap, this disconnection, can really make it more difficult to solve the everyday problems that you maybe either had more time in space before kids to solve, so sometimes, if something was frustrating you, maybe you were able to work through it on your own and it didn't urge you as much, or maybe even you were able to have that time to resolve it. We also know you weren't as sleep deprived perhaps right, you weren't sleep deprived. There's not the hormones, there's not this huge identity shift that parents go through after having a child. So what tends to happen and I really want listeners to know this is that the research shows 67% of couples experience a significant decrease in their relationship satisfaction after having a baby. That's really high.
Speaker 2:Most couples. It's important for us to hear that, because we do feel sometimes that it's only us or that we're alone, but it's nice to know you're not the only one going through this, absolutely you're not the only one.
Speaker 1:And so what then tends to happen is we start to have these patterns of more negative emotions, things like anger and frustration, and then we start to do to that disconnection, the demands on us as new parents. They're not having time. Then we stop expressing our feelings and needs or, over time, we don't know how to do that in a way that's going to work for us in those harder moments. And so then what we tend to see show up is we get to these really tricky communication patterns that become self-reinforcing cycles. We'll go from Drs John and Julie Gottman and then also Dr Sue Johnson's research. So the Gottmans found that there are these four negative communication patterns criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, shutting down and contempt and their research found that these patterns are predictive of divorce.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, if anyone is like, oh, we get stuck in these patterns, yes, and recognizing them is a really first important step, you can make those changes and move through that.
Speaker 1:So it's important to see how we're communicating. But then what we know what comes out of that is that it sounds like I blame you, I criticize you because you're defensive and you shut down all the time, and the other partner says I shut down all the time and I'm so defensive because you're so angry and critical towards me and that creates the negative cycles that couples get stuck in, which is talked about by Dr Sue Johnson, those three common cycles, which is find the bad guy that's like you're blaming each other. It's you know, it's you If you only well, you should. Or we have the polka dance, which is one person is pursuing for connection and the other one shuts down. And then that last one is the freeze and flee, where partners don't bring up their difficult issues. So we see then that over time, with more disconnection, more distrust, these cycles become more entrenched, and that's when we really start to get to this place of. This isn't what I signed up for.
Speaker 2:Right and I find that with children it's easy to get into those cycles and ignore them because you're so busy with kids around you and activities and school and whatever it is that you can have those arguments that are part of those cycles and instead of addressing it you're just kind of like sweeping under the rug and the next day happens in the next week and month and you haven't addressed it yet. So it builds a lot of that disconnects sometimes. You know, within the couple. You have these three sections in your book aware, acknowledge and align. And I find it really interesting because when it comes to emotions and kids and parents, I always talk about awareness being first and you brought that up as well in your book. So if you are at least noticing that these cycles are happening, what's the awareness part? How does that fit within this?
Speaker 1:That awareness piece is recognizing what is just happening in front of you. And we know from the work of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy that the first order of change is about being able to stop the cycle. We can't change anything if there isn't that level of awareness of what's happening between you two, and that often can even be that shift from well, hang on, we're doing this back and forth thing right here and that's not going to move us forward. So let's be shoulder to shoulder and put that problem in front of us, and by doing that we're going to get curious about how we each see it.
Speaker 1:Here's my experience internally my thoughts, my feelings, my own opinions and values, and then tell me yours. Okay, now we can see both of these and now let's find the solution in front of us. But that takes that awareness of what's actually happening. So stopping the cycle is really that first piece of change that we want to be able to do and that awareness of okay, so what's the pattern that we're in? What communication patterns am I using? What are some of the feelings that I'm having inside that I haven't necessarily brought to the forefront? What's actually happening in front of us?
Speaker 2:So I love that you've connected that to the work that you're doing with children as well, and another aspect of this is kind of going backwards a little bit and trying to see what we're bringing into this relationship. You talk about attachment and you bring an important point in terms of what is our attachment style? Do we really need to look back? And I've had this discussion with my friends and we talk with our partners who feel that going back into the past and kind of identifying certain things is kind of justifying certain behaviors you're doing or patterns, but that you don't need to look back. You can just move forward while I look back. So if somebody is listening to this and struggling to have this conversation with a partner or with themselves in terms of having to look back and identifying certain things of their past, why is it important and where do we begin?
Speaker 1:We form our brains based on those early experiences and you can speak to that working with children much better than I can, but we know that we learn what it means to be an individual, to be the I, to be a we, to be in relationship with other persons and then to also be out in the world and how we view others. And based on those early experiences, we develop strategies as ways of coping and we can think of attachment and I know social media and kind of more of the pop psychology likes to really define the styles where people will use language like oh, that's just my anxious attachment showing up.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so void in the attached. And then we get into the comparisons of like well, it's better to be avoided than anxious because I don't need anybody right? So I like to step out of that and really coming back to the research which is around attachment being dimensional and we each have levels of anxiety, we each have levels of avoidance, and really what that means is about strategies to cope in distressing moments. Can I turn to you and can I also? Well, the dimensions specifically are do I believe I'm good and do I believe that you are trustworthy and I can lean on you? And those are those two dimensions from the attachment perspective. And we develop those internal beliefs, these working models inside of our mind from those early childhood experiences. Was my caregiver there for me? Did they respond to my needs with warmth, consistency not perfect all the time, but relative consistency or did they reject me? Did they neglect? Did they make fun of me? Did they belittle me? And those become this roadmap inside of us where, in distressing moments when our brains go offline, we're going to default to those strategies.
Speaker 1:I like to remind people that insight into the past is important.
Speaker 1:Insight into why we do the things we do today is one piece of it but to not get stuck there. So it's kind of the both end when you start saying you and your friends, or sometimes our partners, are like, ah, the past is not important, it matters to understand what we default to, but then to also then say, well, what are we going to do today? Because what so often happens, cindy, is that two partners will be standing in front of each other and if I'm looking at my partner and they say something, it's coming into my brain through all of my previous experiences and my beliefs and perceptions, and sometimes what happens is that it's almost like all of my past experiences are standing behind him. And so when he says something like what's for dinner, a normal, benign question that it could maybe be like well, what's for dinner If I maybe grew up in a hostile, critical family, or if it's like, you get the point. But it's so important to understand what those internalized perceptions and assumptions are, and so let's not get stuck on that, but rather how does our past today influence what we do with our partners?
Speaker 2:It changes how we take in that information right, that interpretation of what they're saying. I guess, in a sense and it's, like you said, such a simple question of what's for dinner. But again, I think, for me, I look at it from a dysregulation standpoint as well, where you might not take it in the same way one day versus the other because of the day you've had, or I call them sometimes like these micro-emotional moments where you don't even realize and you don't have the awareness of what's going on. So it's so important to be able to recognize that, whether it's your far past or immediate past of that morning and something happened, you know there's a lot that affects how you're interpreting it. So it's so important.
Speaker 2:You brought up this term or this idea and interdependence at the beginning of your book and I thought that was really interesting, because we do want to make sure that we continue to be our own person. I've heard this too in terms of conversations with friends. You know you continue that growth, but then you don't want to be dependent on your partner, but then you are sometimes. How do we navigate that sort of relationship?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's this misbelief that dependency is bad, and yet what we know biologically is we need to depend on others. We are hardwired for connection, for soothing, safety, security. That is that attachment piece, and so interdependence recognizes, though, that we're trying to hold both between the intimacy and the connection piece, and also the autonomy and independence piece, and it sounds almost easy for me to say, yes, here we are trying to hold both. I am me, you are you, and we are both okay, and now we're going to co-create our worlds together. And yet there's so much tension that exists between those two parts in our relationship, and that also is where our past experiences can impact us.
Speaker 1:If our parents rejected our needs or said things like that's your grandma, go hug grandma, that's what we do, stop being silly, go hug her right. That, in that moment, that says you and your autonomous self, who says I don't feel comfortable right now giving a hug, I'm good, I just want to leave. You know, that's me. In that moment, a caregiver, your attachment figure, is saying ignore your need, go do that thing. And so then, today, we might have this unconscious or subconscious map that says don't share your need, don't share your need, you'll get in trouble, people will be mad at you, they're going to be upset, and that, again, is wherever that tension is, because we need you to express what you feel and need in order to co-create that world. So interdependence really comes back to this experience where I have my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, desires, wishes and values and my partner has their own. They are separate. Then we are responsible for how we communicate them to each other and then also how we come to a space of building our worlds as a united front.
Speaker 2:I love that, I love that sort of framework and keeping that in mind, you know, as we're building relationships together because it's so much work and we never you know you, you go into this, you get married, you think back of the first day and then you have kids and you realize that everything shifted and everything changed and you kind of have to reassess and reevaluate your relationship, not ignore it, because it's so easy to do that, it's easy for weeks to pass and, yeah, I love having this concept of the independence and using that as a framework. You mentioned social media before. Now want to touch back on that, because social media paints a picture of perfection, whether it's parenting relationships, having a clean home, having everything you know, the best meals on the table, at the table every single night. It's.
Speaker 2:It's so hard to manage that and I know sometimes I have conversations with my family members my mom and my mother-in-law and they're like we didn't want, we didn't have that, so we didn't have to worry about. Like, is this perfect or not? Or you know. So this comes back to how it impacts, perhaps, a relationship sometimes where I feel that there you mentioned attachment, but there's also a lot of terms out there that we might not have heard before. For example, gaslighting right that's a word that I've been hearing Every single day from friends, from you know, online people just bringing it up and wrong most of the time and I feel that there's that term and narcissism being used a lot now, so we have lots of Terms that we didn't before that we can use to diagnose our partner.
Speaker 1:And to label your partner, right.
Speaker 2:But that's exactly what. So how do we In relationships now step back from that, step back from labeling our partners attachment style and who they are and whether or not they're a narcissist, or how do we kind of navigate all this stuff?
Speaker 1:Let's put this into the framework of the cycle, in the sense that if you bring in labels, you are throwing a grenade into your relationship, into the conversation that you're having, and it will backfire on you because Nobody wants to be labeled, and we know this from the research. It's called psychological reactants. Right, you tell someone to go do something, they're gonna fight up against it and do the opposite. And so if you're saying to someone, you're still a boy and the attached go to therapy, they're not gonna Right there and no, we are going to react against that, oh goodness. So I and I have seen this happen and I actually really love sharing the story, because I think it is so important Is that in 2016, a colleague in Ottawa here had actually said gaslighting. What's that? I've never heard of it, and this is someone that was in in the field for quite some time. And now today, I can think of sessions where a partner has yelled at their partner in session see, see, they're gaslighting me, do you see, dr Tracy? And it's right. Okay, wow, this is really intense, and what I would encourage people to do in those moments is that, when that urge to label comes up, I think we need to understand two things. One is that you are feeling something really uncomfortable inside of you and labeling is your way to discharge that discomfort that's happening and that blame. That discharging makes complete sense, especially when we think of the developmental perspective where a child Blames. They go through that developmental period where they point outwards and they don't have that the mind site or the ability to see self and other Developmentally. That makes sense, right, their brains aren't fully formed and so then if we don't learn those skills and tools to be able to internal and external self and other, then how easy it is to then project our discomfort outward. So if you notice yourself going to those labels and saying, gosh, you're always this, you never that. You're such a notice the discomfort within you, first Pausing I know you talk a lot about this in your community as well as pausing.
Speaker 1:We don't have to do anything right away, but that self regulation in that moment can change how everything is going to unfold. Sounds so easy and it's yet the most hardest thing and most important thing that we can do. So pausing and asking yourself what's happening. For me in this moment, there's something really big here. I want to put this out. I'm going to choose not to and maybe take some space to understand this, and then what we can do instead is go to the behavior. What are the facts? What is your partner doing or not doing that you can talk about? And it's not the. I feel like you're never listening to me. I feel like you don't care about me. Those aren't behaviors. A behavior is when I'm coming to you and sharing about my day. When I'm coming to you and sharing about my day, you're on your phone. And when you're on your phone, I feel dismissed, I feel small, I feel like it don't matter. Right Like that. That's part of that. So it's describing behavior.
Speaker 2:I love that you brought that in. Yeah, because we often hear about the feeling I feel this and then feel in the blank. But there's the behavior, too that we don't bring in, and it's important to bring that in. I love that. I think parents who are listening. One question that I've been receiving as well is arguments in front of a child, Like sometimes things get really heated and sometimes there's a boundary crossed in terms of respecting the person that you're having the argument with. If you are in this sort of relationship, my perspective with parents is like the child is listening and watching and it doesn't matter how old they are. Even when they're very young, there is a tone or certain level of arguing that can impact the child's heart rate and breathing rate, and we've seen that in the research. But from your perspective, what are some things like? How do we put breaks to it? But you're still always with the child. So if you're in a really heated moment, what can a parent do in those moments?
Speaker 1:That would be a hey, we're getting heated, let's pause this and come back to it. And you have to make sure you're going to come back to it. That's important. It's not bad to disagree in front of your children. It's important that children see that I'm thinking of a conversation of like oh, I viewed it this way, and you can be like, oh, that's hard for me, I didn't view it that way and I viewed it differently. I'm having a reaction to that, like you're processing it in a very kind of a meta way that your children can see that.
Speaker 1:It's also important that our children see the repair. So if you were sharp, as we all are, or if you were defensive and dismissive, as we all are at times when we're dysregulated, we go back in front of the children and we say to our partner I did this recently, actually and I said to my husband oh, this morning I got really sharp and I raised my voice and that couldn't have felt good for you, and that's something that I need to make sure. When I'm in that moment, I need to take some breaths. So I just want you to hear me say I'm really sorry, I did that in front of the kids and I think showing them.
Speaker 1:The repair is just as important as saying let's not fight in front of the kids. And I ask adults in my therapy room what did you learn about fighting? Did your parents fight in front of you? And many of them will say no, no, we didn't fight, they didn't fight. And what did you learn about that in terms of relationships? Well, I learned that you shouldn't fight in relationships, but that also doesn't model what we want them to learn, because disagreeing and arguing is normal.
Speaker 1:What we don't want and this is where I want to define those edges is that there needs to be an agreement between both partners, and this comes from your values, the values of wanting to model to your children what it means to be in a healthy relationship, to be in a loving, respectful relationship. The boundaries around that are things like we don't name call each other, we don't raise voices, we don't attack the other person, and so if that is showing up in front of the children, then you've got to just stop that. And many members inside my community will say well, they just kept going, and so we talk about. If it's at the dinner table, you get up and excuse yourself calmly. We're not getting anywhere right now. I'm just going to go to the bathroom and splash my face and we'll be done with this conversation. Or sometimes it's about picking up the kids and saying this isn't OK. We're going to the park. We'll be back in 20 minutes, Right.
Speaker 2:That boundary which you also talk about in your book. Those boundaries are so important to have. We talk a lot about different types of abuse sometimes and we might not realize a bit of that emotional or psychological or verbal abuse. Where should somebody look out for in terms of having that line has been crossed?
Speaker 1:That's such a tricky one and I think it's so important that if someone is not there in your relationship to assess it, it's really hard for anyone to label it as such, especially when it's those microaggressions, the smaller moments. But you have to find those boundaries for you and what that looks like. What we can say is not OK, is belittling you, putting you down, neglect in any sense. I have a blog post that's around how to prevent emotional neglect in your relationship. That neglect piece is where someone says things like you're fine, you're always anxious about these things, move on.
Speaker 1:And I think the reason this is such a tricky boundary piece in terms of where's the line is that some partners lack the awareness of how they were raised and then how they're showing up in the relationship with you. That doesn't mean it's okay, but I think the piece that's important is is your partner willing to hear you, to take feedback and then to move forward, versus when you say to someone this is a name calling and it doesn't feel good and I can't let you name call me, particularly in front of kids. But in general, no name calling. And if they repeatedly name call you, then you've got to ask yourself what am I doing here and and that's that's a really tough piece to go down. It's a hard road.
Speaker 2:Right, but thank you for you know, for giving us that sort of those, that way to look at it and sort of question it. And yeah, I want to go back to those three categories that you had in your book, so the aware, acknowledge and align piece, just as we're closing our conversation soon, but so that somebody has that sort of framework again to go back into the relationship now after this conversation and encourage everyone to get the book because it will help you. I've put on, I've put on all the little tabs and I was just telling Tracy, my husband and I are going to sit together and go through it because I think it's important to kind of go back and reassess certain things, and you've given us questions that we hadn't thought about before. That will allow us to understand each other a lot more. So thank you for that. But what do you mean by? So? We spoke about the awareness piece. What is acknowledge and align, acknowledging?
Speaker 1:is looking within ourselves, seeing our own patterns, seeing what we can do differently. Aligning is actually making the different choices. It is one thing to offer ourselves compassion it's so important empathy and understanding, and what we actually need to be doing differently in our relationship is making different choices. And so I wanted that last piece to really show that you have to do something different in your relationship. Whether that is for some people of holding that boundary and continuing to hold it, for others it might be saying okay, in this moment I need to stop hiding my own feelings and needs, and I'm actually going to now assert them and say to my partner here is what I wish, here is what I need. So I divide it that way.
Speaker 1:And also, too, when we think about the process of therapy, it's never linear. So people going through this, please know that therapy is not you start down low and then it's straight line up, but rather you're waxing and waning, just like our life, those hard moments we have in flow, and we like to think of beginning, middle and end. And actually the research in psychotherapy talks about the Rs in terms of the phases of therapy and there are more phases and at the same time, to remember that it goes up and down and ebbs and flows.
Speaker 2:I guess, similarly to you know, similarly to parenting, we you know, if we were trying to work on our kids behaviors or their their emotion regulation skills it's never a perfect thing. We're going to have, you know, moments where everything is going really well and then there's a huge meltdown and we're like sometimes it's easy to think that we're messing up, and I guess it's the same thing in the relationship, like if you're working on this and feel like everything is perfect, and then that you have a big blowout as a like a couple, and then you're like I thought we were progressing, but it's not necessarily that you're not progressing because of that big argument, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, I just had that conversation recently around where we're allowed to make mistakes and because of the old wiring we have in our brain in stress, we're going to default back to that and it's kind of the am I still making those steps forward to be different, to try different things? Am I frequently going back to those old patterns that are not feeling good? What's my level of being able to change and move forward? So our relationships are not meant to be perfect, but if you can take one thing away, take this piece, which is learn how to really repair with your partner.
Speaker 2:I was thank you for saying that. I was going to ask you if there was one thing you wish all couples knew. Maybe from the get go right Like you get married, things are easy, you know everything is lovely, and then you things get a little bit more complicated sometimes as years go by. But what's one thing you wish all those new couples knew, and is it the repair piece? You would say that's the most important. Yeah, it's the repair.
Speaker 1:It's one of the chapters that I have in there, too, around for a to get a really good repair in there. People aren't taught how to do this in their relationship, and that's you know, of course, right, we were learning watching our parents, and we don't take courses in school on how to be in relationship, and so this is just one of those pieces where, if you and your partner can really learn how to do that, you'll be able to tackle many more of those distressing and hard moments together as a team.
Speaker 2:I love that. Before we go, I do want to thank you for opening up in the book and talking about your life, because this is something it meant so much to me because even from my own work, as you know, in neuroscience and specializing in emotions, parents think that I never yell and that I never lose it and I never have bad days and my kids never have bad days. But I try to be honest about that because I want people to feel like they're normal and we're normal too and we're human, and you've opened up to that and I think it was one of the most beautiful pieces of this book and put everything together. So thank you for opening up and being vulnerable and sharing that with us. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Cindy, I deeply appreciate that it is quite a process to put yourself into a book so vulnerably, and also I could not have imagined writing this story about the everyday struggles that couples have without including us. We are, yes, I have all the skills and tools. Yes, I know what those look like from the objective outsider and at the same time, I'm human and relationships are the most important thing to us and also they are one of the hardest parts. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. Anybody who's listening, I will put all the links in the show notes to Tracy's book. I will also put your social media, your website. Do you still have courses on your?
Speaker 1:website yes, okay.
Speaker 2:Amazing content that I really highly recommend Everybody click on and visit. Thank you, tracy, for the work that you have done and for everything you share with us on social media. I'm so happy that we got to chat finally and I hope we get to chat again soon. Thank you, cindy, and thanks everyone for listening. Thanks, I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr Tracy as much as I did the information and the book and resources and ways to contact her all in the show notes. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast. I hope you subscribe to the podcast and take a moment to rate it and review it and, if you do, send me an email at info at CuresNeurOncom. Come join us on Instagram at Curious underscore neuron. Visit our website, curesneuroncom, and I will see you next Monday. Before then, I hope you remember that you are so important. You matter to your child, so take that time for self care. Bye.