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The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Colleen is a student of Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt who created the Imago Theory and have brought this work to over 50 countries around the world. She is profoundly influenced by this belief shared by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He said, "We are born in relationship, wounded in relationship and healed in relationship."
What are you struggling with today? Colleen believes that almost any problem we have began with a broken or unhealed relationship. The anxiety or deep sadness we feel often began with unresolved issues in our relationships with our parents, partner, family or friends. When we have unmet needs we are programed to get those needs met. When we don't get what we need we protest by protecting ourselves. this often looks like defensive, critical, demanding behaviors. these behaviors are most often ineffective. As a result we may develop unhealthy relationship with food, sex, gambling our or a substance.
Colleen invites world renown relationship specialists from all over the world to help her guests explore their own relationships and see their problems through a relational lens. She will help us explore how to create intimacy to deepen our connections. Her listeners will gain insights to create a more joyful life.
Colleen is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of South Carolina, a certified, Advanced Imago Clinical therapist, a clinical instructor for the Imago International Trading Institute while maintaining her clinical practice in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Thank you for joining Colleen today. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. Join her next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Embracing Anger: Transforming Relationships through Understanding and Connection with Adela Moldovan
Discover how embracing anger can transform your relationships in our latest episode of the Relationship Blueprint. We've invited Adela Moldovan, a distinguished therapist from Romania, to share her profound insights on the complex ways anger is socialized in children and its impact on adult relationships. Have cultural norms led you to suppress your emotions? Adela reveals how societal expectations often discourage girls from expressing anger and pressure boys to hide their fears, contributing to adult challenges in communication and connection.
As we navigate the turbulent seas of anger in relationships, we focus on creating a safe space where emotions can be expressed without escalating into conflict. Recognizing anger as a surface emotion, we explore how it can unveil deeper fears and vulnerabilities. By practicing mirroring and validating feelings, we can enhance understanding and strengthen bonds, especially when dealing with children whose emotional development is still taking shape. We share personal experiences of confronting anger within family dynamics, emphasizing the ongoing journey of healing and the importance of striving to be a 'good enough' partner or parent.
Finally, we tackle the complexities of healing past wounds and repairing disconnections in relationships. Adela underscores the power of taking accountability, not as a fault but as a path to mutual understanding and safety. We discuss how creating a supportive environment transforms accountability into empowerment and leads to healthier communication. Couples therapy emerges as a crucial tool in fostering these healing experiences, highlighting the importance of acknowledging intentions versus impact. Listen as we redefine anger from a destructive force to an opportunity for growth and deeper connection.
Thank you for joining me today on the Relationship Blueprint. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. So join me next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
Welcome back everybody to the Relationship Blueprint. Unlock your Power of Connection. And today we have with us Adela Moldovan. She's from Romania and I want to tell you a little bit about her. I have some things that I've written down.
Speaker 1:Adela is a licensed therapist, accredited by the Romanian College of Psychologists in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She's internationally certified. She's distinguished as a psychologist and a psychotherapist, with over 17 years of experience in the field. She holds a doctorate in psychology and is a principal psychotherapist and supervisor in psychology and is a principal psychotherapist and supervisor. Additionally, she is an Imago couples therapist and supervisor, specializing in relationship therapy, and also serves as a faculty member for Imago International Training Institute. And, and if that's not enough, adela is also the author of a book called Face to Face with Anger, a book that delves into the understanding and managing of anger, more pertinent topic in the world right now, because anger is a misunderstood emotion, and I can't wait to learn all that I can from you today, with our listeners, about what you've learned about anger. Is there anything that you want to tell us that I left out about you? I know you have a beautiful family. Do you want to tell us anything else about you?
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, coco, and for this wonderful introduction. Yes, I also have a beautiful family of a husband and two daughters and of course, they've been both the source of inspiration for my book, the victims of my own anger, to whom I'm very grateful for everything we've learned together as a family. And we keep learning about anger, because, of course, anger is a very relational emotion and I think that maybe this is why we have so much trouble understanding anger, because we try to push it aside, so afraid of anger and of one of its extremes, when it gets to violence, that we constantly sort of send anger away. We don't receive it in the space between send anger away, we don't receive it in the space between and I think that's the main reason why we really don't know what to do with anger, with our own anger when we feel it. We don't know what to do when anger comes towards us from somebody else, and that's also very hard for all of us when it comes to relationships.
Speaker 1:So what's so interesting to me? I mean, some of our listeners are not getting to see your face, but what I'd like to highlight for our listeners is that as you talked about anger, there was excitement in your face like a welcoming of the anger and how much you know. You thank your children and your husband for really this learning laboratory of where you have been able to test your anger and explore it, and I find that really refreshing. I don't know, you live in Romania and you know I'm here in the United States and I think in the United States women especially have an unhealthy relationship with anger. So culturally, how is that the same or different in Romania?
Speaker 2:It's the same. It's the same. Women, little girls, are encouraged from a very young age to not express anger, as opposed to boys. It's okay for boys to be angry, it's not okay for them to be scared, and for little girls it's a little bit upside down. It's okay to be scared as a little girl, but not angry, and I think this is the starting point of a lot of our issues in relationships. Girls are also more inclined to reading the emotions of others and they are more inclined to trying to do something so that your emotion isn't threatening to me. And that puts us on the track of either repressing our anger, and of course, anger itself can't be repressed. What we can successfully repress, so to say, is to put our needs aside and to say it's okay, I'm not mad that she took my toy, it's okay because I let her have my toy.
Speaker 1:And then she smiles back I don't need that toy so, Adela, you've said so many important things already and I just want to highlight them, if we could, because the first thing I heard you say is that as children, we are somewhat socialized in our culture women that being scared is okay but being angry is not, and that for boys, being scared is not okay but anger is okay, and that little girls tend to really pick up on other people's emotions and then try to do something to make them okay and then put aside their needs so that the other person can be okay. Did I get that, so that the other person can be okay? Did I get that? Yes, you got me, Wow. Well, so when we think about that in our own children and we had a podcast last week on parenting with Marcia Furstenfeld and I'm thinking about how this relates to our topic around parenting but I guess what I'm also really aware of is when you're saying in your culture and mine that we're really raised to not know what to do with our anger.
Speaker 2:Yes to not. We are not really welcoming anger, as you said, and I'm so grateful for the mirroring you saw in me earlier, because that's actually my desire, my goal, my dream that we all welcome anger a little bit more. In the space between, we also do that in parenting a lot. Because I don't know what to do with my own anger, I try to avoid the anger of my children. I try to avoid situations where my children's behavior might trigger my own anger, and if I don't know how to sit with my anger, I will have a very hard time to sit with my children's anger. And we as parents generally we try to problem solve anger. You're angry because your toy is broken? I'll replace it. You're angry that your brother has more? I'll perfectly divide that piece of chocolate. So it's even and I will tell you even. There's no reason to be angry.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. So we problem solve anger instead of sitting with it. And then when we, if we, can't sit with ours, how do we help them sit with theirs? Exactly, and then we problem solve exactly we problem solve.
Speaker 2:We can sit with anger and we miss a very important thing there. Because we do this, we miss a very important thing there. Because we do this, we miss what's behind anger. And there's something very valuable behind anger, because if I sit with your anger, if I receive your anger and of course it's not easy to do, it's not pleasant, especially if your anger is very intense but if I sit with your anger, especially in a in a relationship, an adult to adult relationship, behind your anger there's something very valuable for me, a need that's unmet, and that's actually a privilege for me as your partner to know that one of your needs is not met. When I don't sit with your anger, I miss this opportunity to find out about a need of yours that isn't met and maybe how can I support that need to be met.
Speaker 1:Adela, what you're telling us is so rich and also, I imagine, for many people who have not had the opportunity to take Getting the Love you Want workshop or perhaps explore their own anger with a therapist, that this feels like okay. So, adela, dr Moldovan, how the hell am I going to experience your anger? And then not only experience your anger, your energy coming at me, and now you're asking me not only to experience that and to sit with it, but now you also want me to get curious about what's behind your anger, and it's an unmet need that you have, that I have to get excited about helping you with that unmet need.
Speaker 2:Right, Well, not necessarily, and we don't have to do it all at once, thank God, but we actually and we have a wonderful tool in imagotherapy to receive anger, and that is exactly that mirroring, because something we tend to do when somebody comes angry towards us, our instinctive reaction is to put out that fire. Yes, and sometimes we try to put out fire with fire. If you come yelling, my instinct is to yell harder. Of course, I tell you to stop yelling, but I'm yelling, you know that which is, of course, like a comedy, a dark comedy, and we do that so many times with our children and we tell them to calm down by yelling at them. Wow, let's deal with that for a moment and realize how funny and absurd that looks from the outside.
Speaker 2:And, of course, the children feel very unsupported and confused when their anger is met like this. And when we are angry at our children because they didn't do a certain behavior how it's done, we are very, um, we have this feeling of being entitled to express our anger because my anger has a just cause. You hit your brother or your sister, but your anger doesn't have a good cause, because that piece of chocolate was evenly divided. So you shouldn't be angry, but I have the right to be angry, and we start in parenting from this very difficult point and of course, anger only builds up stronger and stronger behind some walls, because the child sees that he or she can't come to the parent with the anger, so it keeps it hidden, walled behind. It births from time to time, and when it births, then you get punished and that's the history with which we then go into adult relationship, where of course we know we play the same game we learned at home.
Speaker 1:The space between. So I think that many of our listeners who follow the podcast may be familiar with that term, but I think it's so critical to keep really bringing this to our attention, about this, really bringing this to our attention about this Right now, you and I, even though we're thousands of miles apart, are sharing a space between us and that that space obviously can feel good, it can feel safe, it can feel scary, but I think until we really help people see that they're always, they're always, they are always in the space between it's just how does that look and feel? And then you talked about mirroring as you didn't say the word superpower, but that it can be such an important tool. And would you say a little bit more about the mirroring and even if we do a little role play, I'm happy to do that, but really just talking a little bit more about why mirroring is so critical to this relationship that we're trying to build with our anger.
Speaker 2:Well, as I said, our tendency if I come at you yelling, you'll try to stop me. Tendency if I come at you yelling, you'll try to stop me.
Speaker 2:And when you try to stop me, I'll fight even harder Because there's a message behind my anger and the pain that I want you to hear. And here comes the superpower of mirroring, because if I mirror you and if I mirror you in a very consciously, instead of yelling, your mirror neurons will mirror mine instead of my mirror neurons copying your anger. If I'm able to contain, after I practice, after I learn and I said okay, this anger just needs to be received, for now, let's make some room for it. And I started. I'm so angry because that happened. You're angry because something happened.
Speaker 2:You'll see the angry person slowly reducing volume and as I start to get your anger, I don't have to agree with it, but I have to welcome it. You will stop and maybe wait for a reaction, but you will not continue to yell. If I try to stop you, we get into a power struggle. The harder I yell, the harder you yell, and at some point, of course, we stop communicating. Maybe I leave the room, I slam a door or I threaten you or you threaten me, and then we stop, we disconnect.
Speaker 2:I go to a place, you go to a place. We both sit with the pain of disconnection. The angry person sits with the pain of not having been heard and understood, and the person that received the anger sits with the pain of I didn't deserve that. Of course you didn't. It's not about this, but the space between can make more room for anger, and if we manage to receive anger and to mirror it slowly, then we will be able to go to the what do you need from me right now, or what would you have needed from that person that hurt you? That your anger and the person that I sit with in anger can see that behind anger there may be a fear, something that worries you, something that was threatened, and that's the valuable part.
Speaker 1:It's so valuable. So really I love this image that you've created of the container. So, as you were sharing your story about the child, you know the child has done something that upsets the parent. The parent typically might yell, and maybe even for good reason. In the end it just causes disconnection and it really is ineffective.
Speaker 1:I love to say in my office I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking you is what you're doing effective?
Speaker 1:You know, are you getting what you want in the relationship? And typically you know the answer is no critical about seeing our bodies almost as a container and so that when this little person or big person is yelling, that you use the term making space for the anger, so that we are the container and we're saying, okay, I'm reminding myself I'm the adult, I can do this. I have to manage my own reactivity, but I can make space for the anger with the mindset then that there's yelling, but underneath the yelling there's so much more and I can't get there if I yell back. So if I can, I might be able to calm myself down, and mirroring in and of itself calms me down. So when I say I hear you really hate me right now, automatically you're talking about their neurons starting to match my neurons, which is not in the high volume destructive energy, and we start to experience calm. And then that question what do you need from me? Right now.
Speaker 1:Wow, adela, I love that. I'm trying to imagine all the children in the world who feel out of control and when they're so lost in their own anger because their brains aren't fully developed till they're 25. I'm imagining them having a good enough parent that does what you've said. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:And let's remember that we don't have to do it all the time and we won't do it all the time. Sometimes we'll get lost in reactivity and we won't be able to fully receive anger, we won't be able to sit with it, but it's enough if we do it from time to time with our children and with our partners. And I loved what you said about a little person or a big person. And of course in Imago we know that anytime you go to the reactivity, we are all children. We are all little children going back to some early wound and we all need an adult that can contain us, that can contain our anger and help us heal the wound. And that's why I'm so grateful to my husband and my children, because that's something that I was able to do with all the Imago training and the Imago journeys. Of course, we constantly go through, but I feel that I healed a part of my anger and that doesn't mean my anger doesn't show up. It showed up last night. So I'm very into the subject and I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:I had a burst of anger last night with my daughter, with my eldest. She's my greatest teacher on anger and I'm grateful for everything I'm learning from her and hopefully everything she's learning in the relationship with me, because our fights look really bad from the outside but we always end up understanding what happened and we don't end the night disconnected because we manage. But when it starts it's bad, it's a lot, it doesn't look good, but we manage somehow to go both and sometimes I don't lose my temper at all and sometimes I do everything right and I'm there. I keep her anger, but sometimes I go with her. I lose it for a moment, but then I'm able to come back and to remind myself that she needs a space and we both need it, and safety is also a very important word that helps me here and it's like an anchor.
Speaker 2:We both need safety when we slipped into this deep hole of reactivity and anger. Now we need safety like a rope that pulls you out of there, and safety means different things in different moments, but safety is the most important need of a person and of the space between the most important need of a person and of the space between. So, lowering my voice, stopping for a minute, taking a break and breathing deeply for five minutes, that can be enough for me to snap out of that fight reaction and to stop seeing my daughter as the enemy I have to fight with. It also gives my daughter, for example, or my husband in another moment time, to see me differently and to remind them that I'm not this horrible aggressor. I just lost it for a moment. I was in pain and we can go back to safety, we can go back to communicating and we can go back to realizing what's behind the anger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thinking of your family. I had an opportunity to meet them in Cape May last year and I'm just imagining how much I wish that I had had this work when my children were younger and how this dance of anger keeps circling like a big old wind that just never really does go away, that the swirling happens and and until we really have the opportunity to really talk about anger in the way that you're talking about in your book, um, and here today on the podcast, that it sort of remains like the scary, the scary feeling that we want to dance around a void and not address. And as I'm thinking about your, I'm just so excited to think about her relationships moving forward, that she gets to practice all this with a safe mom even though you're not perfect, like none of us are that she can push against her own anger and realize that on the other side is still connection.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think we can all discover that. I think that's and it's not only in moments, because from moment to moment when we have like this burst of anger, of course we can see that it's not okay. But in a long term relationship, like in a couple, can see that it's not okay, but in a long-term relationship like in a couple.
Speaker 2:If I keep trying to control my anger, meaning not have it show up at all at any time, every time my anger shows up, if I see that as a flaw, as a failure, if then I feel guilty that I was so hurtful towards my partner when I was angry, I keep trying to bottle up that anger, and then what I unconsciously do is I distance myself from my partner because I don't want to hurt him. He also distances himself from me when I get angry because he doesn't want to get hurt, and that makes a lot of sense. And then at some point anger doesn't show up that often, but we are far away and I want to be closer to you and I want to be closer to you but we don't know how. Sometimes and that's where that need needs take us to a distant relationship where we are together in a relationship. But my needs are not known by you. My needs are not known by you because I try to protect you from my anger.
Speaker 2:And anger shows up as an as really it doesn't look good, especially when it's not trained in childhood to be a constructive anger. But it's an invitation, it's a message, an alarm that goes on and says a need is unmet, a boundary has been broken, safety has disappeared. Broken Safety has disappeared. We really don't want to get rid of our anger, as we wouldn't want to get rid of the alarm on our house. But if that alarm keeps going off all of the times when there's no intruder and we are peacefully sitting inside our house, and then we jump up because the house, the alarm, there's a false alarm, Of course we start hating our alarm system inside. But we don't want to get rid of it. We just want to fine tune it so it doesn't go off falsely and it's still something that protects us from an outsider that might hurt us or take something that we value.
Speaker 1:I love that metaphor that you're using about the alarm, because it's reminding me in Romania do you have the movie Inside Out? Yes, when I saw that movie for the first time, I thought to myself, wow, for kids to have this visual of these core memories, and that all of those feelings seem equal, like joy and anger aren't. One isn't better than the other, which I would have told you as a child. Oh, anger is bad. In my family of origin and I've talked about this before I saw rage as just an awful way to behave, and so I kept a lot of my anger hidden. Okay, I was that person that got quiet, but that it was just as scary to the people I love, and for that I'm forever sorry. But I didn't know, and when we don't know better, we don't do better.
Speaker 1:And that's why this podcast feels so important to me and why it's so important you're here with us today, because I feel like there's so much information that is out there that we can use and harness to help create more loving connections, and they're not intuitive. You know this idea that we first talked about when you came on, which is well. So you get angry with me. I make space for your anger and I get curious about your needs. Not easy to do, no, it's counterintuitive. So it's really the skill building that we're we're learning how to do and that you said it so beautifully that even just last night you know you got angry with your daughter but sounds like there was a repair. Can you talk a little bit about how, when it gets escalated which it does life how do you go to bed without you, don't go to bed with disconnection. Somehow you're able to connect again. Will you talk about that?
Speaker 2:What helps us repair sometimes after this burst of anger is, of course, if sometimes we don't have time to repair and then we go to bed disconnected or we leave in the morning for school and work after bursts of anger and then it's something heavy that we carry. But if we have time to come back to the relationship afterwards. And I think there are two very important things to consider. One is accountability. Okay, if I'm not able to go back to the relationship and take accountability for my yelling, for what happened to me, it's very hard to repair If I get stuck into that. I was right, you shouldn't have done that or you should have done that. And as parents it's sometimes even harder to take accountability because we fear that by telling our child look, I'm sorry, I yelled at you we somehow don't even force that behavior problem that the child had. So sometimes we feel like, of course I was angry, but you didn't do your homework, you didn't clean up. You have to do that. Of course the child has to do that, but I also have to manage my emotions and I have to teach my child to do her homework in time, to clean up after her, to whatever, while being emotionally grounded and being a safe presence for her. But we are afraid to split up the two things and say look, I'm sorry, I yelled. That was my part of the problem. I lost control. This is what happened to me. I got scared because, if you don't do that, my mind started racing and I'm seeing you as an adult with a very messy room and trouble holding on a job, and this catastrophic scenario caught my mind. That's my part of the day, and then we can talk about your part. I think it's important you clean your room. This is an important skill because let's see how we can work through this together and a lot of times you don't even have to tell the child what to do, because children mirror us and if I say I'm sorry for this, the child will naturally say well, I'm also sorry because and that reconnects us but the act of just going back and taking accountability for something that I did that broke that connection that's so valuable and so priceless and that sends the message, especially in very close relationships like parent, husband, wife, very close friends that sends that very important message. Behaviors, problems we can put that aside and the relationship with you is more important than anything else. And first of all, I want to reconnect and I want to repair and I want to see how I've hurt you and then we can go into problem solving together. And it's even more effective because we go into problem solving together as opposed to me coming back a little less angry but still, and telling well, I'm sorry I yelled, but that was your problem. Please do that. One, two, three. This is your assignment, it's what you have to do.
Speaker 2:We are still disconnected, we are not working together and, of course, the child will not do what I told him or my spouse, because we haven't repaired the connection. We are disconnected and it's still me versus you instead of we together. And I think that's truly healing about anger and that's repairing and that also puts us in a different place that maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we are able to say okay, let's not go to that place again, let's protect the relationship, let's take a moment to breathe and not yell, and let's come back in five minutes when everybody has digested the first reaction. Let's take a break, yeah, breathe, and we can practice those skills together as partners in a relationship, as children and parents. And it's very, very healthy. But without a repair, if I go to bed angry and then the next day I come. Let's breathe together to stay calm.
Speaker 1:What? Yeah, I think that it's just to circle back to really and I take responsibility for my part of what went wrong that somehow that will take away the part that you did to hurt me absolutely proven to be true. Is that, no, really, what ends up happening? Is that now, when I can own my part, there's a better chance of you being able to own your part? And for people that are older I mean, I think with children you're so right. I think that they do that more automatically because they have not been socialized to hold on like this with their, their rightness.
Speaker 1:You know, the older people are sometimes it's more difficult or people that have been very wounded. It's very hard for them to say, hey, I, I did it too, I messed up and I I didn't mean to scream at you or the things I said were uncalled for, but for some people their own woundedness gets in the way of that. I was wondering, when you're with clients and this is the pattern that you see that one or both people are really stuck with the inability or the frustration of not feeling like they should own their part because they don't even really see their part. How do you manage that?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's such a difficult point to work around because in my experience that always happens when taking accountability was something that didn't come with repair but came with more punishment, because it wasn't about accountability, it was about blame. And if it's your fault, that means you are a bad person. And if I grew up in such an environment and if what I understood from relationships were that people are good or bad, right or wrong and, um, it's somebody's fault and if it's your fault, then you are punished, excluded, you have to do everything you have changed completely. You have to give up on your needs, on your. Of course I don't take, of course I don't want to listen to what was my part. Of course I defend with everything I've got, because I don't have exactly that experience of repairment.
Speaker 2:I don't have that experience when I say I'm sorry and somebody welcomes my sorry and says I'm also sorry, when we don't share the burden of the disconnection, the fight, the mistake we did, because it's always something that happens in the space between, and whatever wrong you did me, I had part of it.
Speaker 2:And it's not about blame, it's about seeing how can I contribute that between the two of us, in the space between, there's less hurt and more safety. And if we see accountability like this, if we slowly learn to see that taking accountability means being able to switch from putting in the space between something that's threatening and that comes back like a boom, a very pleasant way, then you can slowly start to change those lenses and instead of saying I can't say I'm guilty, I can't say I did something, because that makes me a bad person to, if I realize what I'm doing, I can do something about it. I can do something about it and I can create more safety for me and my partner and that actually makes me not only a good person, but a powerful person.
Speaker 1:It is pretty powerful, right right. I'm powerful in my vulnerability and I think that that's as you said. I think it is a slow process for people who have that kind of wounding to experiment with.
Speaker 2:It's slow because it's not about the words. The words, it's simple, it's five minutes. If we post this online, everybody will say I agree, yeah, but between agreeing and actually feeling it as such, that person needs more experience is where I say, okay, I did a mistake and my partner says thank you for saying that, okay, I also did a mistake. Let's work together instead of saying I did a mistake and the other person reacting how could you do that, are you stupid? We need the repeated experience of a safe connection where I open up and my mess that's inside me is actually welcomed. That's why it's not enough to say it, read it in a book. You need to experience it in that relationship, and I think this is where couples therapy is so healing.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I was, you were, you were also talking about that. I was thinking about the idea of how creating safety in this space between, is an art. You know, it's really something that we need to learn more about and then develop and practice, you know, in a safe way. I had a client once who said the most brilliant thing in a dialogue. She said I just want. He said what do you want from me? And she said I just want to mean more to you than the problem. Beautiful. He said. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1:Because that's really, Adela, what you're talking about, with looking at anger and being able to embrace it in a different way and saying, gosh, we fought about this thing, we always fight about this thing.
Speaker 1:That you never are on time, say and your time's more important than my time, and you're not considerate of me. And they stay, you know, talking about the thing. And then underneath is what you're talking about. Is, you know, really, underneath the frustration is a need, an unmet need, and that we, if we stay up here talking about the thing, whatever the thing is, we really never do get to the pain of what's needed. And behind every complaint is this beautiful wish in disguise, but we don't often know how to. It's almost like we need a language interpreter to help us save. So I want you to be on time, right? Oh, it would mean so much to me to know you're on time, because then I would feel so important to you and in my past I didn't really feel very important in my family. But when a person hears that versus the criticism, you're on time, there's hope right.
Speaker 2:There's hope and I love how you put it that it's a wish in disguise, and we actually need to create enough safety. So the disguise, it's put aside, because that's when anger shows up, when we don't feel safe enough to be vulnerable and to ask. And that lack of safety might be also an unsafetiness that I carry with me from my past. I can already enter into a relationship with you thinking I cannot let you see how I am, because I'm really not worthy, I'm really not lovable, I'm really not. You're in love with me, okay, I don't know why you love me, but I'm going to try and keep this, whatever you see, and I'm going to try to do everything right and to not upset you, because I want you to still be there for me. And that's already a point where unsafetiness begins, because if I don't open up, you cannot really know me. So what happens then is that from time to time, I start to suffer from the unmet needs, but I don't tell them directly to you.
Speaker 2:I don't come to you and tell you look, I need something. I come with the frustration, the disguise, because that disguise doesn't require of myself to be vulnerable, to ask for something, to tell you something. I feel insecure about to tell you something I'm worried about to tell you something. I'm afraid I can just ask for something and be frustrated because you didn't do that thing from behind the disguise. But if we manage as couple therapists and as a couple working in our relationship, to create safety in the space between, I don't need a disguise. I can come to you in time, of course, with my need or I can come to you with I'm feeling so like I'm about to burst. Please, let's have a conversation, let's have a dialogue and help me figure out what's wrong with me, because I can't figure it out and that requires a lot of vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Yes, and in our work we often use the phrase say I want to come to you, adela, and we've had a rupture. And I say in my story you don't want to meet me in the Netherlands because of what happened last week. It's such a softer way to say that I'm stuck in a story. It's not accusing you. You don't want to come to stay with me in the Netherlands because of what happened last week. And I feel really punished by you, like such a different way of really expressing this sort of frustration that I live in. If you were talking about your daughter and she doesn't clean her room, that she's going to be like living in your basement and not be able to keep a job. Like that's how fast our minds go about lots of things, right? So when we share our story, whatever that story is, then our partner or our daughter or a friend can say, oh no, that's really not what's going on. What's really going?
Speaker 2:on is Exactly. No, that's really not what's going on. What's really going on is Exactly, and we come back to the present moment instead of being stuck in all of these scenarios, and then everything starts to make sense, like the story you shared about yourself. It makes so much sense to not let go of your anger If someone hurts you with their anger. As a young child, of course you will want to not do that and of course you will not let your anger show and you will actually have very good intentions in trying to protect your loved ones from your anger. But your loved ones will see you as this distant cold and maybe even think you don't care in a moment when you distance yourself, not knowing that you're actually protecting them from a little beast inside of you.
Speaker 1:You're so right and actually what was said to me from my own children is like I didn't know when you'd come back. It's Like an abandonment of sorts when you get so angry and withdraw. And, as you said, intentions impact. We always come back to that in our work, don't we, adela? It's like my intentions can be pure and yet be big miss, big miss there. Is there anything you want to share with our listeners around this beautiful work you're doing, helping us all sort of dance with anger in a new way? Is there anything you'd like to share we haven't talked about?
Speaker 2:I think that's just the message I would like people to stick with them after hearing our conversation that anger can be welcomed. Anger itself it's not bad. It can present itself in a very scary suit, but anger actually needs safety. Anger needs kindness. It's counterintuitive, but that's what it's needed.
Speaker 2:And behind anger there's actually very valuable information for us in relationships. And by allowing anger to step in the space between us we create, again counterintuitively, more safety and more clumsiness. Because when we don't allow anger, we distance ourselves to protect each other and the space between us gets ruptured. But if we are able to sit with the anger, welcome it, help it, get rid of its costume and see what's really behind it, we begin to feel safer as individuals, more able to sit with anger, we are not afraid of each other's anger. I'm not ashamed of my anger anymore if you receive my anger and we actually create more safety and more closeness in our relationship. And I think that's what we all yearn for closeness in all our relationships, to be known, to be truly known and felt by the other. And there's no way around anger, just through it, to get to that true closeness and true intimacy.
Speaker 1:And, as you're sharing this, I wish that my ears go, oh okay, oh, oh okay, because that is that distancing that you're talking about. And how can you really have the intimacy in sex, or just the feeling of really deep closeness, without working through whatever is underneath that and each of us? I'm picturing two people carrying these big old bags, like Santa Claus you know of anger but they're not unpacking them because they really don't know, if I unpack this bag, what will happen. So I'm just going to keep carrying this heavy load with me and not show you, because if I do, I don't know what to do with it. And so your book, is it in English?
Speaker 2:No, it's in Romanian for now, but who knows what times it will bring? Yeah, in Romanian, but I think there are wonderful books out there everywhere and I think, if we are just willing to read, listen to podcasts and just look a little bit of our anger, just stay face to face with it, as we do in Imago, as we sit across from our partner, just look at our anger and not run away from it. I think there are wonderful things that we can do in our life too and I love how you put it to really live the joy of connection, because that's actually what we lose when we don't receive parts of ourselves or of our loved ones. We lose the joy of true, intimate, deep connection. Thank you for reminding me of that, coco Well of course it's what we're all yearning for, really.
Speaker 1:I guess I wondered if our listeners can find you somewhere if they want to follow up on your work. Are you teaching? Are you doing a workshop For our Romanian friends? I happen to have a few now. Tell us about what you're doing and where people can learn more about you.
Speaker 2:Well, they can find me on Instagram and they can find me on Facebook, of course, and we also have a page for Imago Romania where you can see what we do as events, and we have some English events as well, and some of them are online from time to time, but not too much, because we really love meeting in person and feeling the connection. Yes, I'm training. I'm training together with my colleagues from Imago Romania. Together with my colleagues from Imago Romania, we are hopefully be full faculty soon after. We still have a few more trainings to do, and it's really the calling that inspires me is building this safe and deep, intimate connections, and that's also my mission with anger. Actually, it's not about anger itself, but about creating safe and intimate relationships.
Speaker 1:And how the heck can we have that without looking at our anger? So your work is brilliant, adela, and really important, and I don't know if anybody else, at least in our world, is really diving into this particular topic. So I hope you'll come back again and help us learn more about what you've learned about anger and help us understand our own anger better. Understand our own anger better. Uh, and your instagram and your facebook, what? How you could either? Uh, you can send that to me and I can add it to your.
Speaker 2:I will send you the links. It's basically around my name, but I will send you the exact uh, and and you can post the the link so people can can find both of us. And yes, I'd really like that.
Speaker 1:Learn more about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I do think that many of our listeners are going to want to follow up with you, adela, and learn as much as they can about your work so that they, too, can feel that joy of connection.
Speaker 1:I want to thank everybody for being with us today, with Adela and myself, as we explore this important topic of anger, and reminding you that the name of the podcast, the Relationship Blueprint. This is a design for better relationships and it is unlocking your power of connection, and Adela couldn't have said it more beautifully. It's that by figuring out how to navigate your anger, you actually create, even in your body, more power, because you're not a victim of your anger. You are welcoming the anger and learning from the anger, not just from yourself, but from the people you love, in order to have more intimate connection. So I thank you so much for your time. Everyone, thank you for being our listeners. If you enjoy our episode, please like it, make comments, send it to other friends and hopefully we'll be able to continue this work moving forward. So it's been wonderful having you on the show today, adela, and thank you everybody for listening.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Coco, for having me, and I look forward to talking again to you soon. Thank you.
