Communication for Connection Part 1: The Imago Intentional Dialogue Process

What if the way you’ve been trying to communicate is actually preventing the connection you long for, even when your intentions are loving?

In this episode, I introduce the Imago Intentional Dialogue process, a structured communication tool that helped transform my own marriage from separation to recommitment. Rather than focusing on winning arguments or fixing problems, this model creates safety, understanding, and genuine connection, even during difficult conversations.

Through an attachment and nervous system informed lens, I walk you step-by-step through the core components of the Dialogue: mirroring, validation, and empathy, along with the opening step, known as the appointment. Together, these tools help partners slow down, reduce dysregulation, and replace defensive communication patterns with conscious connection.

I also explore why conflict often feels so urgent, how nervous system dysregulation shapes communication, and why many arguments are actually about deeper unmet needs rather than surface issues. You’ll hear how even simple shifts, like asking for consent before a difficult conversation, can dramatically change relational dynamics.

This episode serves as preparation for Part 2 of this series, where I share the moment I first used these tools to transform my own relationship, followed by Part 3, where my husband and I will demonstrate the Dialogue live in an unscripted real-life conversation.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in repeating arguments, unheard, misunderstood, or unsure how to repair disconnection, this episode offers a practical starting point for communicating in a way that builds safety rather than eroding it.

In this episode, we explore:

• What the Imago Intentional Dialogue process is and why it works
• The three core steps: mirroring, validation, and empathy
• The power of the “appointment” in creating conversational safety
• Why urgency in conflict can trigger defensive reactions
• How nervous system states shape communication patterns
• The concept of “simultaneous monologuing” and why it blocks connection
• How validation differs from agreement
• Why empathy is about imagination, not mind-reading
• The role of consent and timing in productive conversations
• How structured dialogue can heal attachment wounds
• Why many conflicts reflect deeper unmet needs
• How communication can shift from self-protection to connection

This episode is Part 1 of a three-part series:

➡️ Part 2 (next week): The personal story of the moment this process transformed Trish’s own relationship and how you can apply these tools even if your partner isn’t quite ready
➡️ Part 3 (March 4):  A real, unscripted demonstration of the Imago Dialogue between Trish and her husband Ben

If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat! 

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Transcript

Why Dialogue Changed Our Marriage

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in Your Bed podcast. Today's episode is a setup for next week when my husband Ben and I will share a totally unscripted, real life demonstration of the Imago Intentional Dialogue, which is a communication tool that literally changed our lives. Today I want to briefly walk you through the three steps that make it so powerful: mirroring, validation, and empathy. They may sound simple, but learning them created a turning point in my marriage. For the first time, my husband and I were able to use communication to heal our relationship instead of continuing to unintentionally hurt each other. It's just the tool that we needed that helped us move from our separation to recommitment. The dialogue was the beginning of everything changing for us for the better. And that is exactly why I'm sharing it with you today. I hope that making this tool more accessible to more people will support more partners in being able to co-create the relationship that they truly want and deserve. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. In next week's episode, my husband Ben will be joining me for the second time as co-host. And at his suggestion from his first time with me, we will be hosting live on air an Imago Intentional Dialogue. And I wanted to share a little bit today in preparation for that about what that really means. So I'll relatively briefly share the steps and the structure of the dialogue process so you have an understanding in listening to it. But I firmly believe that the best way to really understand not only the procedural steps of the dialogue, but also the incredible transformative power of the dialogue is actually to hear one, which is, of course, why we will be having a dialogue live on air next week. I also want to share the moment when I was able to use the steps in the dialogue process in a bit of an unstructured way, actually. You'll hear more about that later, in which I was able to see the true power of my words and start using them in a whole new way. So stay tuned for all that. I do want to begin by talking about the dialogue process. As I already mentioned in the intro, the three steps in the Imago intentional dialogue process are mirroring, validation, and empathy. There's also something that we call the appointment, which is the way we open up the dialogue process. And it's not officially one of the three steps, but it is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful tools and parts of the dialogue. And it's actually something that you can use in any conversation with anyone, whether or not you're using the rest of the dialogue steps, which I recommend using, but this is a great tip. And so I want to just spend a moment talking about the appointment. Oftentimes, when there's a conflict in a relationship where one or both partners might feel upset, frustrated, angry, hurt, sad, bothered, annoyed, the list can go on and on. There is usually one person who really is the initiator of the conversation, the person who really wants to address whatever has just happened. I myself have been that person many, many, many times in our relationship. Although at this point in our relationship, Ben has really stepped into the role of initiating many dialogues for us. But that one person who really wants to initiate a conversation often has a sense of urgency around that. And they really want to talk about it right now. And if they come to their partner, they might launch into the conversation and start talking about it because it's so important and because they want repair or they want to be heard or they want to be understood so incredibly much. And that is why they have all this intensity behind them. There's so much urgency and there's so much intensity. It's usually really in the name of I want to fix this because I want us to feel better. I want us to have a better relationship. I want things to feel better, not just for me, but for you too. But that's usually not the energy that comes along with let's talk now. And the person who is not initiating the conversation may or may not be ready to dive into this big talk. And this is where the power of the appointment comes in. Because if the person who's not initiating the conversation is not quite ready to have the talk, and so they say they don't want to talk about it right now, or they minimize it and say, Oh gosh, it was no big deal. I didn't really mean that. Don't worry about it. Or if an argument ensues and things escalate, and then someone gets upset, walks out of a room, leaves, says something hurtful, does something hurtful, that kind of thing, things can blow up really big, really fast. And a lot of narratives can start to be spun in both partners' heads, as a matter of fact. But thinking about the person who initiated the conversation, when the conversation doesn't happen, it is so incredibly easy to start thinking they don't care about me, they never want to talk, they don't really ever see my perspective, I don't really matter to them, the relationship doesn't matter to them, they don't really ever want to do the work, all of these things. And I can go on and on and on. And I certainly myself have experienced many of those thoughts at different times when I tried to address something with Ben and he wasn't in a place where he was ready. So enter the appointment. The person who wants to initiate the conversation can come up to their partner or again, any person in their life. This is a wonderful thing to use with kids, especially teenage kids or adult children, as well as co-workers, friends, anybody in your life. So an appointment might sound something like me coming to Ben and saying, Hey, I'd really like to talk about what happened on my birthday and what I was hoping to receive or what would have felt really good for me to receive and what actually happened. Are you open to having a dialogue about it? And is now a good time? Now I will add here that this is actually not a made-up example. This is a real life example of what just happened last week. And it is also going to be the topic of the dialogue that we have next week on air. So if you're interested to hear more, please tune in next week. So that was actually what I asked Ben. And his response was super lovely, as a matter of fact. This has been, mind you, a decade of using the dialogue process. So he's very familiar with it. He knows what it is. We're at a very different place in our life than we were a decade ago. But his answer actually was, yeah, I would love to talk about that and have a dialogue about it. Do you think it's a good dialogue for us to record for the podcast? And I was like blown away because that sounded super awesome to me. And so we decided to schedule the dialogue a little further out than you maybe normally would have. And we decided to just schedule it for when we record. So again, stay tuned. The dialogue hasn't happened for us yet, but you'll be able to hear it next week if you want to tune in. In a case where we were not going to be recording for the dialogue, the general rule of thumb is that the person who the dialogue is being requested of, so not the person initiating it, would say, Hey, either yes, now's a good time, and then you both have consent to start the conversation. And please notice I did mention to Ben what I wanted to talk about. It wasn't just like, hey, I want to talk to you, because that can be very, very scary and can be a cue of danger to our nervous system. And the Imago dialogue structure is intended and designed very intentionally, hence it being called the intentional dialogue as well, to create safety for both partners because you can't be vulnerable and share of yourself and you can't connect when you're not feeling safe. So the dialogue structure is intended to create that safe space for a really connecting, conscious conversation to occur. So if you both agree, great, you're ready to start the dialogue process. If the other partner says, uh, actually, I'm still upset about what happened earlier, I'm not quite ready yet, I'd like to come down more. Can we talk tomorrow? Or they say I had a really stressful day at work, or I have some emails I need to send out, or I'm feeling really hungry, or I'm feeling really tired. Can I take care of that stuff before we talk and we talk later after dinner or tomorrow afternoon or what have you? And again, the typical guideline is once the initiating person asks for an appointment, it is the other person's responsibility to come back within 24 hours. However, while that is a guideline and if that's available to both partners, I highly recommend having that dialogue within 24 hours. But I just want to share, and I'm belaboring this point because of my own experience with Ben, that in truth, there were so many dialogues that we never had about a specific event, a specific conflict. And what I mean is like one of us would ask for the dialogue, but then we wouldn't actually get to have the dialogue. And I have found through my own personal experience, and I've seen this echoed in people that I work with as well, that sometimes we just weren't ready to have that conversation. It was too dysregulating for one or both of us. And it was something that we just weren't ready to dive into yet. But the more we dialogued and the more practice we got, I kind of think about it as growing our dialogue muscles. We were able to talk about it or the underlying themes, the unmet needs, the hurts, the real meat under what the actual surface problem was. So even though the conflict on the surface might not be the same kind of thing, that unmet need or the lost part, our unconscious was trying to help us reclaim whatever the real underlying motivation for whatever the conflict was, it always came back around. And I think about it as a merry-go-round. And if you imagine you're taking a look at one of the horses and it starts to go out of sight and you might get nervous, and that's like the talk that you wanted to have, and it's been days or weeks and now months, and it's going out of sight, which of course is connected to why the initiating person might have a lot of urgency. If we don't talk about this now, then we might never talk about it and it might go out of sight. And then what does that mean for our relationship? So I get the urgency and I get the fear that can be awakened and why that can be a cue of danger. I certainly, again, personally know that perspective. However, in reality, that horse is always gonna come back around as long as you stay in the relationship. And odds are if you leave the relationship, you might find yourself seeing that very same horse come back around anyway, because the conflict on the surface is in fact connected to deeper unmet needs and hurts from our earlier life, off in our earlier childhood. And so the conflict is coming back around, so to speak, so that you have a chance to resolve it, to address it, to have your needs met, to reclaim that lost part. Things you'll hear me talk much more about as I continue to talk more about Imago with Ben. And so I talk about this so much because it's so incredibly valuable to know that if you keep communication open and you think about the need for safety, and it is an actual biological need that we all have, you may not have the specific conversation that you want to have, or you might not have it in the specific timeline or the time frame you want to have it in. But what's underlying it is still there and there will very likely be future opportunities where it can be healed and addressed. And so I present that it's a little bit tough in this particular arena because you're not sitting in my office with me working with me, and we're not all kind of holding this and looking at the situation. Cause of course, some certain situations do need to be addressed in a more timely manner. So I am kind of making this very general statement about appointments and I'm spending a lot of time talking about them because using an appointment is something you can do today, even if you, like I said earlier, don't use the dialogue structure or it's new to you, or as I talk about it with you, like if you're listening to the podcast and you want to talk with your partner who's not listening to the podcast, an appointment is such a phenomenal communication skill, and you will see a shift in your communication just by using that alone. So I will move on from the appointment to talk about mirroring, validation, and empathy, the three main steps of the Imago intentional dialogue. Mirroring is an incredible process, and in Imago, we often say that we are mirrored into existence. And what we mean by that is that we know who we are by how other people see us. And often that refers to our early caregivers. And I talk about mirroring quite a bit in my Getting the Love You Want Couples workshops that I offer, and of course, in my office. And I'm sure I'll talk more about it in other podcast episodes, but I do want to keep it brief for today. But just to know that how we are seen by others and how we are reflected back helps us to feel heard, seen, and valued or not. And very unintentionally, a lot of our early caregivers may have reflected back to us in an inaccurate way. They may have mismirrored us, not knowing, not on purpose, not consciously, not with the intention of harming us. But that is often what actually happened. And so the Imago dialogue process uses mirroring as a way for partners who have a very different dynamic than parents and children or whoever your caregiver was in you. But in this conscious partnership of two adults who are much more developed emotionally, cognitively, verbally than you were as a child, to come to this process and use mirroring to reflect back what you heard your partner say. And this process alone is so beautifully transformative because yes, it allows the listener, who we call the receiver, and I'll talk about that in a moment as well, to gain some understanding of what the sender or the speaker is saying. But even more importantly, the actual experience of being mirrored helps people to feel heard, seen, and valued. So enough on that for now. But just to know mirroring takes up usually a bulk of the dialogue process. And as you'll see next week, that is, I'm sure what will happen. Again, we haven't recorded it yet, but mirroring is really the biggest chunk. And you'll hear and see how that goes next time. The next step in the dialogue process is called validation. And validation is not agreement, but it's rather really understanding. And mind you, this happens after mirroring. So you're gonna hear a lot about your partner's upset, hurt reactions, and you'll really have a lot more clarity on what they were reacting to and what was really happening for them. And you'll be able to say, hmm, that really makes sense that you felt that way when I said that or did that or when that happened. Not because you're in agreement, like, yes, that's what I meant, and that's true, or that's right, but actually, like, ah, from your perspective, seeing the world through your eyes, that makes sense. And in truth, parents do this to kids and partners do this to their partners. And, you know, parents, caregivers, partners, they love their kids or their partners respectively, but we often have a skill of invalidating the most important people that we love so much in our life. And we don't do this on purpose, but we often have this gift. And I know that I myself, and I can certainly own this about my role and my relationship with Ben, I used to be, and and maybe even still occasionally, but I used to be incredibly good by accident, not intentionally, at invalidating Ben's experience in a hundred million ways. And a lot of the things that I would do and say to him would really make him feel crazy or feel not good enough, or make him question himself, or make him wonder if I was questioning him. And I really contributed to a very hurtful dynamic that I had no idea I was doing. And as a matter of fact, oftentimes thought I was helping. And that probably is worth its own episode. But just to know that a lot of the time, one partner, even coming from a place of love, may accidentally be making their partner feel crazy. And if you think about just like really simple examples of seeing the world a different way, that it becomes this while I'm right and you're wrong. Whatever it is, if you think about my workshop co-presenter Emily, often talks about loading the dishwasher. How many of us think there's a right way to load the dishwasher and a wrong way? And that little teeny example, and I definitely do this to Ben, and I don't think he receives it as a hurt anymore. I could ask him, but I will absolutely switch things up in the dishwasher to load not necessarily the right way, but I want to put more in. And that act of changing how he has loaded the dishwasher could certainly land as invalidating for him. And it could create an ouch or a hurt or a conflict that needs repair. And so that, like I said, that's a tiny, tiny example of how we can make our partners feel crazy or wrong or not good enough because we are asserting our perspective over theirs. And this happens, like I said, in probably an infinite number of ways. And so the dialogue process allows partners to be able to connect even when they see the world very differently. And it allows both of their perspectives to make sense. As a matter of fact, in Imago, we say everything that everyone does makes sense all the time. Now I remember the first time I heard that statement, I was like, whoa, that's bold. And I can tell you a lot of things that Ben does that makes absolutely no sense. Luckily, a decade plus later, I feel very, very differently. And it doesn't mean that everything that everyone does is right or okay or healthy or good or should continue being done for that matter. It just means that why we do what we do is related to so many different things. The information that we have, the narratives our brain is automatically constructing without our awareness, our body response to what's happening, certainly our history, that which includes our history with our present partner, but also the relationship history we've had with everyone in our life going all the way back and including our parents and caregivers and more going into that experience. And so when we react to something, we are reacting in a particular moment for a particular reason. And the dialogue process helps us really understand what's actually going on. And it may be that both partners say, okay, you know, what we both experienced makes sense. And this was just kind of a thing where, you know, we might agree to disagree in a way that doesn't feel like a compromise or resentment building, but actually, like, I get your perspective and I still share mine. Cool. End of story. Thank you for having this dialogue. Other possibilities may happen where you're like, oh my gosh, now that I understand where you were coming from, that knowledge, that awareness shifts my perspective in some particular way or makes me think about how I behaved and think about maybe that wasn't really helpful to get where I really wanted to get to. So I'll kind of cut myself off there, even though I can give so many examples of the power of validation. But like I said earlier, I think the best way to really experience the dialogue is to actually experience the dialogue and not just be told about it. So I will leave off on validation for now. The last step in the Imago dialogue process is called empathy. And this is usually a pretty short step, but it's imagining how your partner feels. And again, in the dialogue process, you will have mirrored and heard a lot of your partner's experience. You'll have been able to validate them. And then you'll be able to take all that information again, that new awareness that you have potentially, and be able to say, hmm, in that part of what you talked about, I imagine that you felt blank and blank and just offer a feeling word or two, not a thought, which we often do. Like, I imagine that you felt like I didn't care about your birthday, might be an example of an attempt at an empathy statement, which maybe there is some empathy in there, but that's a thought, not a feeling. So you might say, instead, I imagine when I didn't bring the kids in to sing happy birthday to you in the morning, that you felt unimportant. And then you'll check in, and every step in the dialogue process, we also check in about and you'll hear that too. But you'll say, is that how you felt? And this is not a test. You can't get any of these steps wrong, by the way. Just showing up and trying your best is really all that's needed for the dialogue process. Perfection is absolutely not required, but it's just a way to connect and really convey on this deep emotional level, I heard you and I got you. And I'm trying to imagine what that experience was really like for you. And oftentimes your empathy will not be accurate. You'll say, I imagine you felt this way. Is that how you feel? And your partner will say, No, that's not how I felt. Again, you didn't get it wrong. We tend to empathize and imagine that other people feel how we would have felt in that situation. And so when you say, Is that how you felt? And your partner says, No, that's not how I felt, that's a fantastic opportunity because now they get to tell you how they did feel and now you understand them better. So again, not a test. You can't fail the dialogue process as long as you show up. So those are the three steps, with of course the appointment as the opener. And then once you go through one whole side of the dialogue, the partners switch. So I didn't tell you yet, although I referenced this idea that in any dialogue, we have what we call a sender and a receiver. Essentially, this is the speaker and the listener, but part of why we use different language in a Mago is because we're trying to create a new experience. You probably have had lots of unhelpful conversations in your life with your partner or your kids or your parents or your coworkers or your siblings or your friends, whoever else in your life. And we want to help you create new neural pathways that when you're having a dialogue, you show up differently. You show up more present. When you're the sender or the speaker, you talk more about your own experience, your own reactions. You share when you're making an interpretation of a statement like the story I told myself was. So, for example, the story I told myself when you didn't bring the kids in to sing happy birthday in the morning was probably you were trying to let me sleep, but also it made me wonder if you were more focused on getting ready for work than celebrating on my birthday morning. So that doesn't mean that I'm saying that that's actually what happened for Ben, but it's the narrative or the wondering, the thoughts, the interpretation that my brain made to that experience. And I share it that way, right? So I start to shift how I talk to my partner. And as the receiver or the listener, I have a very clear role, which is very, very nice because oftentimes when you're listening, first of all, we often refer to this in a Mago as simultaneous monologuing, where two partners are having a conversation, but no one's really listening to each other. They're just each talking about their own hurt need, experience, upset, whatever, frustration. And no one's the information is not landing in the other partner. So there's not really communication happening. There's just a lot of chaotic talking. Or there could be one person talking and one person shut down, still not receiving any information. Or you may be listening to a part of what your partner's saying and getting ready to respond or give a rebuttal or an explanation or some sort of insult back or some sort of self-protective kind of like, you think I did that. What about what you did to me? That kind of thing. Or you might be as a receiver trying to fix your partner's problem. Or I know as a mom, I do this as well. I do this as a partner, I do this as a parent. I'm very well aware of this pattern in myself, but I will often jump into fix it mode when I'm listening. And all of those are often unhelpful. I won't say always, well, some of them probably insulting your partner or fighting them is probably unhelpful almost all the time. But a lot of those things are really conversational bad habits that we've picked up over our life, either because that's what we witnessed in our families oftentimes, and what we think of as how it goes, how communication goes, how talking and listening goes. And there's probably a lot of overlap in this second one with what we observe in our families. Our conversation skills are often tied to our nervous system and our dysregulation and our need to protect ourselves. And so our communication skills are rooted in trying to keep ourselves safe rather than helping us to connect. Because when we're feeling safe, we're able to connect, we're able to be curious, which is key when we are feeling attacked or insulted or offended or dysregulated in any way for any reason. We can't be curious anymore. And so the dialogue process takes all of these conversational bad habits, all of this self-protective stuff. We put it on the side and we say, here's your role as the receiver. Of course, you might have thoughts going on, you might feel reactive, you might get dysregulated. And in that case, you would have to communicate that so that we can restore a sense of regulation and a sense of safety for both partners. But when you are the receiver, you know your job. You're going to be mirroring and you know what you're gonna say. And it's an operationalized model of communication. So there are clear steps, which can feel awkward at first, but eventually we call it being dialogical in the Imago. Community of being able to talk in a way that conveys I hear, see, and value you, you make sense to me, and I can imagine how you're feeling and I can check in about that in conversations that are less structured. And as a matter of fact, the story that I'm going to share with you is using the dialogue process in a less structured way. So hang on, and I'll give you a really clear example of how this could work in your life, even if you're not using the really structured process, which I'm choosing to share that. One, because it was literally the moment when I was like, oh my gosh, there's really something to this. I have to dive into this more and use this more because it was so transformational so quickly. So that felt pretty important, but also because your partner might not be listening to this podcast, might not be in therapy in couples therapy, might not be willing to go to couples therapy, might not be willing to come to a getting the love you want workshop weekend yet. And if your partner doesn't know the steps, the dialogue, and you try to bring it to them, they may or may not be open to it. And that's okay. You can start using this process, these steps in a less structured way. And you can empower yourself and run an experiment and see how, if you are communicating in a new way, how it impacts your partner and the relationship and the communication that happens. So that is why I'll be sharing that. And so the receiver knows their job. They're gonna know how to mirror and what that sounds like. And simply that is going to sound like, I heard you say dot dot dot. Did I get you? Is there more? You'll see this process in action next week. So I won't say too much more about that. When the receiver's at the validation process, they're gonna know to say, you make sense. And what makes sense to me is dot dot dot. Does that feel validating? And when it's time to empathize, they know that they're gonna be able to say, I imagine that situation, you felt this and this. Is that how you felt? And when you know what to do when you're listening, it's incredibly empowering because you could feel really helpless. And again, I have had this experience as a partner and as a parent. You don't always know what to do when you're listening. And if you say to your partner, Well, what do you want from me right now? Your partner may not always know what they want either. And so the dialogue process helps in an incredible number of ways. And this is also probably worthy of another episode. But the Imago dialogue process also is designed to support early childhood developmental milestones being met and healed. So, very, very quickly, if you think about early attachment development, we talk about attachment phase and exploration phase, identity and competence stages in the first five years of childhood. The Imago dialogue process, when you're using it and staying in it in a regulated, connected way, actually serves to heal childhood hurts that have occurred in the context of early development. So I won't say more about that now. But if you're someone who is into attachment theory or knows about it or curious about it, even Imago is an attachment-based model. And so it's really incredibly powerful in so many different ways, way more than I'm gonna go into today. But just to know that there's a sender and a receiver in every Imago dialogue. And after you have one half the dialogue complete, as I mentioned before, you'll switch. So the sender becomes the receiver and the receiver becomes the sender. And so, in the example that we will be using next week, I'm not exactly sure what Ben will say yet, but after I talk about my experience from my birthday, we will switch and then he will get to share in response to all he has heard, and he'll either be able to talk about what his thoughts and feelings were on my birthday or in preparation for my birthday, as well as his reaction and thoughts about anything that I said in my earlier half the dialogue. And in this way, we get to hear both partners' experience. And in truth, any one conflict usually has at least two conflicts wound up in it because what each person is upset about or hurt about, frustrated about, annoyed by is usually different. It might be wrapped up in the same big experience, but what one person had a reaction to is different to what the other partner had a reaction to. And again, this would apply with you and your kids, you and your coworkers, you and your friends. There's at least two unmet needs or hurts in the process. And we need to uncover what is actually the place where repair is needed. Where did the hurt hurt? And what do we have to do to help make it better? And what does this connect back to? And there's a lot of different beautiful, multi-layered, very deep processes that are all addressed in the context of using the Imago intentional dialogue. So when you switch in any one complete dialogue process, each partner or each person involved, because this process could be used outside of intimate partner relationships as well, as I've mentioned, but each person will have had the chance to be both sender and receiver, but not at the same time. And that clarity, again, really helps because simultaneous monologuing is not effective communication, but a dialogue process where both people are being heard and truly understood and valued can transform relationships. And that certainly has been my experience. Before we end, I want you to know that this story continues, but I'm intentionally splitting it so you have some time to really take in all the information I shared today about the steps and structure about the Imago intentional dialogue and what makes each of them so powerful. In next week's episode, Bet and I will do a real life demo of the Imago dialogue process so you can see how it works live in action. Then the continuation of today's episode will be released in two weeks on March 4th. And in that episode, I will share the details of my real life experience of the day when I started using the steps in the Imago dialogue process to transform my own relationship. And of course, I will share how you and your partner may be able to use the very same tools to transform your relationship as well. Even if you think you've already tried everything that's out there to improve your relationship, and even if your partner doesn't seem to quite be ready, able, or willing to do the work of relationship. I will also highlight how to use the steps of the dialogue process in a less structured way that can still provide true transformation through communication. Thank you for being here with me. And until next time, I'm wishing you more regulated nervous systems, kinder, more conscious communication, and more moments of real connection. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments because I want to thank you for showing up today. And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey. In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown. And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride. And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one. Any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.