The Happiest Lives Podcast
The Happiest Lives was designed for Christian women who want to stop being disappointed in their relationships and feel more loved and loving. Here you will learn to think better, feel better, and love better.
This podcast is hosted by Jill M. Lillard, MA LPC, a licensed counselor and Gottman Certified Couples Therapist. Jill has been helping people manage their minds, process their feelings, and have better relationships for over 25 years.
For application exercises and support in applying the concepts learned on the podcasts, get your FREE podcast guide www.myhappyvault.com/podcast
Learn more at www.thehappiestlives.com
Discover tools at www.myhappyvault.com.
Contact Jill at jill@thehappiestlives.com.
The Happiest Lives Podcast
E162: The Story You’re Telling
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Why do you keep reacting the same way in conflict — even when you’re trying not to?
Most of the time, the fight isn’t really about what it looks like on the surface. It’s about the meaning you’re making. When your husband says something that lands wrong, your brain moves fast — it takes his words and turns them into a story. About him. About you. About whether you’re loved, seen, or alone. And that story drives everything that happens next.
In this episode, Jill teaches a tool called "sitting far" — the CTFAR model — that helps you slow down and separate what actually happened from the meaning you assigned to it. You’ll learn to identify the one thought underneath your reaction, trace how it created a feeling, drove your actions, and produced a result that confirmed the story you started with. Then you’ll build a new, intentional model — one that opens the door to a different conversation entirely.
This is part three of the series Why You Keep Having the Same Fight and sits inside the regulation phase of the Flood Plan. It’s the inside work that makes going back into the hard conversation actually possible.
In This Episode
•How to use journaling to process what happened before you try to analyze it
•What the CTFAR model is and how to walk through it step by step
•Why the result of your unintentional model always loops back to prove your original thought
•How to identify one thought — not five — and examine it honestly
•Two directions for building an intentional model when you’re not ready to think generously about your spouse
•Why feeling seen by God is often the bridge between where you are and where you want to be
Key Takeaways
•The circumstance doesn’t create your feelings — your thought about the circumstance does
•You can enter the CTFAR model from the feeling, the action, or the thought — wherever you have the most clarity
•Sometimes the generous thought toward your spouse is too far to reach right now, and that’s okay
•You can have a thought that helps you feel settled in yourself before you can have a thought that opens curiosity toward him
•Regulation isn’t just calming your body — it’s also understanding the story you were telling when you flooded
Series Note
This is Episode 3 of 4 in the series Why You Keep Having the Same Fight. Start with Episode 160 if you’re new to the series.
Keywords
relationship conflict, recurring arguments in marriage, emotional flooding, thought work for women, Christian marriage help, how to stop fighting with your spouse
FREE: The 4 Mindset Shifts for a Happier Marriage
Ready to stop waiting for your husband to change and start focusing on how you want to show up in your marriage? Get the free mini-course + workbook and Scripture study here:
myhappyvault.com
Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com