Stronger Marriage Connection

The Imago Connection: Transforming Conflict into Growth | Mary Kay Cocharo | #130

• Utah Marriage Comission • Season 3 • Episode 130

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Mary Kay Cocharo shares how Imago therapy helps transform relationship conflicts into opportunities for healing childhood wounds through a structured dialogue process that fosters safety, understanding, and deep connection. 

• Imago theory suggests we're unconsciously attracted to partners who possess both positive and negative traits of our childhood caretakers
• Relationships typically move from a romantic stage (lasting about two years) to a power struggle phase where childhood wounds emerge
• 50% of married couples divorce during the power struggle phase after about six years of conflict
• The Intentional Dialogue process involves mirroring (reflecting what was said), validating (acknowledging the other's perspective makes sense), and empathizing
• Surface conflicts often mask deeper childhood wounds, as illustrated by a couple fighting about a dog that actually connected to grief over a mother's death
• Sitting 18 inches apart with eye contact calms the limbic brain and activates the cortex, creating a neurobiological state conducive to problem-solving
• People typically respond to conflict by either "hyper-arousing" (getting louder/more expressive) or "hypo-arousing" (withdrawing/shutting down)
• Three key elements for a stronger marriage connection: touch/physical affection, safe/respectful communication, and shared activities
• Focus on the dynamic in the space between you rather than blaming your partner
• Simple eye gazing for a few minutes can rebuild connection when words have become triggering

Mary Kay's Resources

https://www.mkcocharo.com/ 

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Dr. Liz Hale:

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Dave Schramm:

Most of us didn't grow up in a perfect family or even have perfect childhoods. Research shows that while we can't change our past, it still can have a profound impact on our lives and our relationships. Today, dr Liz and I welcome Mary Kay Cuccero to the show. She's trained in Imago therapy, which focuses on transforming conflicts into opportunities for healing and growth that often stem from our childhood. Mary Kay shares helpful tips about communication and connection, including the 18-inch gaze into each other's eyes, and so much more.

Dave Schramm:

Mary Kay Cacero has worked as a couples therapist for 35 years in Los Angeles, california. She helps couples through the lenses of a model relationship therapy and encounter centered couples transformation, both proven methods for improving communication and intimacy in relationships. Her brand offers intensive all day or even two day sessions, workshops and weekend retreats for couples, a service not provided by many of her competitors. This allows couples to fully immerse themselves in the therapeutic process. And weekend retreats for couples, a service not provided by many of her competitors. This allows couples to fully immerse themselves in the therapeutic process without the distractions of daily life, in a relaxing setting. We hope you enjoy the show.

Liz Hale:

Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection. I'm psychologist, dr Liz Hale, along with the beloved professor, dr Dave Schramm. Together, we have dedicated our life's work to bringing you the best we have in valid marital research, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. Well, for 35 years, licensed marriage and family therapist, mary Kay Cacero has used her skills and training to help couples of all ages and stages find better ways to reconnect and rekindle, even in the most damaged relationships. That's pretty inspiring, isn't it?

Liz Hale:

Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection, mary Kay. Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. It is an honor to have you. You have specialized advanced training in a field that I have been fascinated with for years but I didn't do a very deep dive into it and that is Imago therapy. I love this idea that the Imago process strengthens your relationship, all while healing childhood wounds. It's kind of a win and a win win here building healthy, happy families. Please explain the Imago process and do you have a favorite tool that you use in your intensive couples counseling?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for saying Imago. I can't tell you all the various ways people pronounce that. Imago is from the Latin, it means image, and it is a theory and a practice that was designed by Drs Harbel Hendricks and his wife, helen Le Kelly Hunt, and I think over 30 years ago they had a bestseller called Getting the Love you Want, and I think it's a bestseller because it speaks to people. They read that book and they find themselves, they find their relationship in that book. They go, oh yeah, this resonates.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And his theory is actually quite complex and I will not do it justice in this small little period of time that we have here, but the idea is that we are drawn to, attracted to and fall in love with someone who feels familiar. You know that feeling. You're going, let's say, now all these couples go on online dating sites and everything lines up, checks all the boxes, and they're very excited and they go to have coffee and they come back and you say, how did it go? And they say, oh, there was no chemistry. Well, what does that mean? What is chemistry? And Drs Hunt and Dr and Hendricks believed that the chemistry is this unconscious drive toward a person who has a lot of the childhood traits. That about the theory is this idea of the stages of romantic relationship, the idea being that at the beginning, in the romantic stage, we get a lot of hormones and a lot of chemicals in our brain that last maybe up to two years, depending on what you're doing, but maybe up to two years, and in those first phases of the relationship we are very romantically attracted. It's called limerence in some theories but we are only seeing what's positive in the other person from our childhood, like oh, you're sweet, like my mom was, or oh, you're really strong and silent, like my dad was.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Yeah, his chemicals begin to wear off after a period of time and he believes that nature gives us that boost to get us to commit and probably to have that first baby. You know, two years, if you're doing it right, should be enough time. Of course, sociologically we don't do that at all. We live together for seven years. We never have babies or we have them before we get. You know, we don't follow the biological rules.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

But when those chemicals wear off we enter another stage of relationship that Dr Hendricks calls the power struggle. In the power chemical because the blinders we are now also seeing those negative characteristics of our early childhood caretakers and sometimes I mean, for example, let's say you did have that calm, quiet, stoic father and initially you see that as strength in your partner. And after all the chemicals wear off, you might suddenly start shaking them by the shoulders, saying why won't you talk to me? Hello, anybody in there? You know it's funny how we try to find the very thing we hired for. You know, the things in the beginning can actually grow to be the things that are really most painful and frustrating in the relationship. So when we've dipped down into the power struggle phase, that's when most couples begin to seek counseling, couples counseling.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

We know that about 50% of the population who are married will just divorce at that phase. The average amount of time that a couple will stay in a power struggle before they divorce is about six years. So that's pretty long suffering. In my mind that's a shocking statistic actually. So they will exit the relationship, but because we are wired for connection, they will go on a dating site and soon find another person to be in connection with and they will get that romantic stage again. So it's like, oh, this is lots better than that person I left.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Then those chemicals wear off and now here we are again in a power struggle, brand new person who doesn't look, on the surface, anything like the last person, and yet the struggle is the same. Why is that? Well, we bring ourselves to everything right. And if you think about the struggle as the tip of an iceberg, all that under the water ice is our history, and wherever we go, there we are, we bring it with Right. So that's part of the Imago theory that I find fascinating, and the idea is that we, as Imago therapists, help couples out of the power struggle into the next phase, which is called mature love, and that's sort of like an earned love. There's no chemicals, no hormones involved, except for the ones that you can create through recommitting, re-romanticizing, understanding the stage that you are in, not blaming your partner for the fact that you're in it, but understanding it in a different way and working together to heal those icebergs so that you can have a more mature kind of love. That isn't ecstasy, it's more like joy. You know, what all couples that I've seen in 35 years really want is they want to be seen, they want to be heard and they want to feel valued. And if you give them a structure where the communication is respectful, it's deep, it's intimate, and you can look back in your past and find out what it is you're trying to heal in this relationship. You grow and you heal and your relationship becomes like a beautiful, safe space. So those are the things I like about the theory.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And then the tool that Harville created is called the intentional dialogue, where couples structure their communication in a way and this is a lot of therapists use this, even if they're not imago therapists, but they've heard about it and it works is when you have the couple talking to each other and one person speaks, the other person listens and the person who's listening is mirroring back what they're hearing for accuracy, because sometimes we respond to what we think we heard, not actually what we said, and so we're checking that out. We're really staying with the speaker. And then there's a three-step process of mirroring back validating, which isn't agreeing. Validating is I hear you and you make sense to me People get stuck there because they well, if they don't agree, then it doesn't make sense. You have to work on that. And then the third step is empathizing really putting yourself in your partner's shoes to feel what it's like to be sitting with that narrative, with that story and the pain that has come from that story, and there's something very healing about that because again, you're being seen, you're being heard and you are being valued, if your partner can really hang on your every word and understand and have empathy for where you are. So in a really tight nutshell, that's a lot of what imago is about, and there has been a lot of research now about how effective imago is and it's um.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

It started as the very first theory I studied. I was probably certified in Imago I have to think about how old my son was, because training was 30 years ago probably and at the time it was one of the very, very first relational paradigms that you could study. Of course, now there are many others, but Imago is still a very tried and true theory and it's spread around the world. I think it's practiced in 22 countries and about 15 languages. You know it's everywhere, which is great because I can go almost anywhere in the world and find colleagues I can stay with. That's funny. So those are some of the high points of a marker yeah, that's, that's really helpful.

Dave Schramm:

Thanks, mary k. I think I'm curious what do you do when you're working with a couple and, let's say, neither of them finds in their partner, um, you know this familiar essence from from childhood. Is it just a matter of time, you know, sometimes you have to help them dig a little bit deeper to find that reflective image you know in their past, or that healing or a trauma or that experience. Or are there some couples for whom it's just, you know, the concept doesn't, doesn't apply. They had pretty good, uh, healthy, childhoods.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

What are they doing in my office, Dave?

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

That's the truth of it. Of course you can have a good enough childhood and you can have very secure attachment, and hopefully we want all people to have that. But the truth is there are no perfect parents and there are no perfect childhoods and almost everybody has something. And if you have anything, the place that's going to come out is in your most intimate relationship, because whatever wasn't perfect is going to get triggered by your partner because you have been attracted to this person, because there is that imago. So in the theory, you're not going to be together if there's not that match. But if you have a very, very disrupted relationship, harville has taught us all to look at that as what an opportunity, because the more dysfunctional the relationship, the more clean there is, the better the among the matches, and so there's a lot to work with there. There's going to be deeper healing and more growth in that relationship if they'll commit to do the work.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Now I did say 50% of couples don't come in to do the work. They just go to divorce support. But I figure if somebody has taken the time to land in my office, they want healing, they want this to be better, they don't want to give up on each other, and so you don't have to dig that deep, which doesn't mean the work isn't difficult. It is difficult. I have to hold a lot of space when I work with these couples for all of the things that are painful. And sometimes the easiest way for a couple to deal with their dysfunction is to go outside the marriage, and so then we get a lot of affair recovery and a lot of sex addiction and a lot of drinking, drugs shopping, you know, over parenting. You know somebody who's married to the children who barely looks at their spouse. So I guess in this theory you would just not end up with a couple that didn't have something that's holding them together and something that isn't the best it could be.

Dave Schramm:

Yeah.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Does that make sense?

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, absolutely, and our listeners they love hearing success stories or examples of real life couples, obviously without names. But can you think of a situation you know and again, you've worked with. You know hundreds, thousands perhaps of couples. Is there any other couple that comes to mind that you can kind of share? You know their story a little bit and how this was helpful.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

I don't know if this is the biggest or deepest example because, as you said, I really have worked with thousands of couples, but I will tell you something that I remember, and it was a number of years ago. I do retreats and I also do workshops for couples, and this was a one-day workshop and I needed a demonstration couple, a couple that was willing to come up because they were really in a struggle about some issue and work with me in a fishbowl with everyone else watching, and there were probably 20 to 25 couples in the audience, so 40, 50 people. So this very young couple, early 30s, raises their hand very quickly and says pick me, pick me. We have this issue and we are about to break up over it. They were premarital, but they had their wedding planned. It was a month away and she are about to break up over it. They were premarital, but they had their wedding planned, it was a month away and she was ready to exit the engagement over this issue. So they come up and I'm thinking, okay, well, this is clearly important. They're very upset about this issue. And when I just asked them before I began, you know what is the issue they were fighting over whether or not to have a dog and whether or not the dog would be allowed to sleep in their bed. And I, you know, I've been doing this a long time. I know in my brain that there are no small issues in a relationship. You know, anything can trigger something big. I also know that the issue is about 10% of the problem and 90% of the problem is what's getting triggered from their past. And I know this intellectually, but I got to tell you in that moment I was doing an internal eye roll. I was really like, oh my God, I got 50 people watching here and these two are bringing up this silly thing. This is never going to be a big demo. Why did I choose that? So we start, you know. But I'm a professional, so I start the dialogue. I'm really working with them.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

The guy goes first. He talks about how dogs are dirty, how he hates dogs, he doesn't want one, he certainly doesn't want a big one and never, ever, ever, ever go into his bed and he would rather not get married than have this dog. So she listens, she mirrors, she validates, she empathizes. It's all going swimmingly, but a little shallow, not the depth I want to demonstrate. And then she gets her turn and she starts with why. It's not why, but just that it's very important for her to have a big dog and she absolutely has to sleep with the dog and she loves him, but there will always be a dog in the space between them in the bed and she really needed this dog and she's crying. So I know there's something important here that has nothing to do with this dog. So I have her say this one simple thing this feeling I have right now reminds me of, reminds me of.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

He goes back into her childhood memories and starts telling the story of when she was seven years old. Her mother died of cancer and no one actually explained it to her, just mother was there, and then mother was gone. She didn't get to go to the funeral. Nobody really sat down and talked to her about the death of her mother or how she was feeling about it. But she had a large dog and the dog slept with her in the bed every night. She held the dog, she cried into the dog's fur and this dog saved her life. Now I'm telling you there's not a dry eye in the 50 people watching this thing. It was so moving and you just can physically see the shift in the partner's face which frequently happens when it clicks, that this is something deep and important for your partner. Now, in all the fights they had had about this dog, nobody had ever said and this reminds me of but that little line, that little lead line, took her back. She looked like a little girl when she was talking and he was very moved.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

So by the time he had empathized with all of this, their follow-up conversation, their follow-up dialogue, was how large should the dog be? How often should the dog get groomed so that the dog can sleep in our bed? How big of a bed should we buy? Right? So a total shift in this dynamic where he now is trying to assist her in getting her needs met. And they are problem problem solving from the cortex. They had been in their limbic, their reactive brain, on this issue for so long, and you cannot solve a problem from your limbic brain. It's all emotion there. They needed their thinking brain and this dialogue pushed them into their limbic brain, out of their limbic brain into their cortex, so that they could begin to be a creative couple, and creative couples can solve their own problems. But they needed the safety of that conversation to get there. So I always remember that because it's a good reminder that there are no small problems. Everything has a meaning to someone and until you understand the meaning you can't move forward.

Dave Schramm:

That's powerful, Mary Kay.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

It's a really interesting little story. I mean, I really learned something from them that day.

Liz Hale:

Or was at least reminded of what I know. Right. That's why I've always been interested in Imago therapy. It's just fascinating to me.

Dave Schramm:

We'll be right back after this brief message.

Liz Hale:

and we're back, let's dive right in okay, let's move on to another specialization you have, please, mary kay, and that is encountered centered techniques. I'm not familiar with this at all. Can you please describe what that is and offer us an example, a a technique?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Yeah this is an offshoot of Imago. It's called Encounter-Centered Couples Transformation, ecct, and it comes from the work of Hedy Schleifer. Hedy Schleifer was a master Imago trainer, really Harbel's right arm for a very long time, really harples right arm for a very long time. When I first trained in Imago, all of my advanced training was with Haiti and then she started kind of adding things to the theory, changing it a little bit, and it started to become its own thing and so at one point she left Imago and started the encounter-centered work and I loved it so much. It really resonated to me it is Imago's theory but the techniques are a little bit different and I think she started integrating a lot of what we were learning at the time from neuroscience and what's actually going on in people's brains when they're interacting. And we didn't always have functional MRIs but we do now so we know these things. So I kind of followed Heidi from Imago to Encounter Centered and I did a three-year masterclass with her in Miami and have been really integrating the two theories since.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

It's probably been 15 years now and couples usually call because they want Imago, because Imago is more well-known Harville Scott, I don't know. Seven or eight books people have read him. They've seen him on Oprah. They know what Imago is. Or eight books. People have read him. They've seen him on Oprah. They know what Imago is. Not that many people know about ECCT unless you're in couples therapy. And then everybody knows ECCT. Katie is a very charismatic person. She's got a beautiful TED talk called the Power of Connection that a lot of my clients go watch and are really moved by. And so I say well, and it really moved by. And so I say well, sure, come in for Imago and we'll do a lot. And unless you have a specialized degree in marriage therapy, you're not going to feel or notice any differences and most clients don't care as long as it works. And it does work. So I will tell you that in Hades work the couples are still turned toward each other, they're still talking to each other in a at an 18-inch eye distance.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

The limbic brain on those functional MRIs relaxes. There's a safety, so I call it a limbic resonance. So that part kind of calms down and what lights up is the cortex. So now they are in the part of the brain where they can be creative and hear each other and really remember that they love each other, are in connection and want to solve problems. Also, at that distance you can hold hands releasing oxytocin, that bonding hormone, and I can help them to regulate their breath so that they're really staying in a rest and digest state and not in that flight state a rest and digest state and not in that flight state. So it makes a big difference just pulling the chairs closer. We call it the uncomfortable proximity, because most couples don't want to do it and they walk in and they go oh, the chairs again, you know, and then they hop into them and at the end they're so grateful because it creates a loving connection.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And then Heidi started talking about the three invisible connectors. She has a lot of metaphors in her work, but the three invisible connectors are the space that exists between any two people, is their relational space, it's where the relationship lives and it's only as sacred as what you put in it. So if you are putting bad habits, eye rolls and looking at your phone when you should be looking into your partner's eyes or raising your voice or five million different things you could put in there that would pollute that space, then you're like magnets that approach the space and go I'll go do my own thing and I work with a lot of couples who are functional but they're not connected because they approach the space and it's just easier to go do their own thing, and especially parents will do that. They get very busy with career and parenting and they're married, parenting and they're married, but they're not experiencing a lot of joy and a lot of intimacy. So when the space is sacred, those same magnets attract. They want to be together and the space is very sacred and the key is that our children live in the space between us as parents. So we want that space to be sacred and if we don't have children, we want it to be sacred for us.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Even the dogs respond to the space. People who've brought their emotional support dogs. When they go into any sort of power struggle kind of dynamic, the dog will go hide under my desk. As soon as I get them into this safe space where they're communicating in this structured way, the dog will come and want to be between them, because dogs have big brains too and they know when it's safe. They know when they want to be part of it. Versus whoa I don't want anything to do with this right. So the space is the first invisible connector. When we're aware of it. We can do good things there.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

The second metaphor is that there is a bridge and that the bridge goes from one person to the next. And when you go on the bridge you take nothing but curiosity and an open heart to hear and feel your partner to be present in their world. You don't take your judgment, you don't take your criticism, you don't take your already knowing what they're going to say or what they should say. You don't take your yeah buts, you take only your curiosity to be fully present. And it can take 15 or 20 minutes to get someone to really cross the bridge intentionally and land in the space of their partner. But when it happens, there's an encounter and that's the third invisible connect. The encounter is that soul to soul meeting. That happens when you create the environment for it to occur and when you are truly in the world of your partner, you begin to know them in ways you never knew them and the narratives that have been stuck unstick. You get new meaning and again, because you're in the right part of the brain, you can be very creative there and it's really beautiful.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And the word transformation is in the title because couples really do transform with this work and when I do it in private intensives where couples will come, like this afternoon, this couple's coming for four hours. That's what I call a mini intensive. The actual intensive is eight-hour sessions and usually we do eight hours two days in a row. It's a similar format as when we do the couple's retreat, when they're there for three days. Only it's private. The private intensive is private. The retreats are with five other couples.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

What I like about that work is some want to go horizontal, week to week to week to week. But if you take that horizontal line and you turn it this way, you've got an intensive. It's a vertical kind of model and what I like about it is for some couples they need deeper healing and they need it quicker because they're in crisis, because there's been an affair discovery, because I live in LA and people go on movie sets and don't come back for six weeks. So it's for people where their schedule works and also for people who need something deeper, quicker. So I do that kind of work as well and Shady's model is really an intensive model. The hard part about her model is chopping it up into weekly sessions, but I've also learned to do that and it's also very effective.

Liz Hale:

It's just different right, right, wonderful, amazing yeah it's powerful.

Dave Schramm:

Now, mary k, you've talked a little bit about um and I've heard you mention you know some of the neuroscience. I'm a big fan of neuroscience, positive psychology, that area and you've said things like the you know the cortex, or the, the limbic system. You've mentioned oxytocin, those types of aspects, and you incorporate this right and you help couples access the right parts of the brain and manage and solve problems and build intimacy. Is this really as complicated as it sounds? Sometimes some of these areas are like oh, my goodness, what's happening? Can you talk us through a little bit about neuroscience and even a few practical tips for couples to help them understand a little bit about what's going on up here?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

You know it does sound complicated really, but couples get it and you know, it's really a relief to have a little bit of information about what's going on in the brain, because it humanizes them. You know, rather than looking at your partner as if this jerk would just stop doing that thing, we'd be a great couple. They go. Oh, the way I'm saying this is triggering his limbic brain and his brain. That part of his brain has just hijacked his essence and the part of the brain that I fell in love with, right. So they can begin to take responsibility for the way that they are triggering one another's neurobiology. One of the things that I learned and I told you it was over 30 years ago from Harville Hendricks' Imago work is that one of the most dysfunctional patterns that we see in couples is when they get upset. Dysfunctional patterns that we see in couples is when they get upset. Their inability to work through it comes frequently from their reactive patterns. So a person in his book will either be a hailstorm, someone whose energy expands when they're upset. You know fighters, the ones that want to talk get louder, slam cabinets. If you walk out of the room, they will follow you. If you hang up on them, they will call you back. You know, these are the people whose energy is very, very expanded when they're upset. I'm one of those, so I can absolutely describe that one. The opposite adaptation is when people are turtles, when they hypo-arouse, they go internal. They don't want to talk, they don't want the fight, they're conflict avoidance. If you continue as the hailstorm hailing on them, they will go deeper and deeper into the shell. Now this creates a very dysfunctional pattern, because one person is upset, they're doing the only thing they know how to do they're pursuing you to get it resolved. But the very pursuit is triggering and scaring the partner. So the partner withdraws, retracts, shuts down just to protect themselves and it becomes the biggest trigger possible to the partner, because now they feel ignored, they feel not seen, not heard, not valued. They feel like they're being abandoned in the relationship. So they do more of the thing they know how to do, they get louder, and the other one now is going out the door and he's getting. You know, I say he because most of the people who shut down are male, but not always. I always say that family of origin, dynamic trumps gender and culture, because that's just what I've seen over the years. So we have to begin to understand what's happening neurobiologically when someone is in that fight or flight mode and the other person is in collapse.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

So I teach them about the vagal nerve, I teach them where they are. Are they in the sympathetic nervous system? Are they in the parasympathetic nervous system when they come into the bridge we call it the bridge position. When they're 18 inches apart and they're going over the bridge, all of that relaxes and we now have the third option. So I say to them when blowing up and shutting down doesn't work, you need the third option. And the third option is where you meet in the middle, without all this reactivity. We work on breath so that they can go into the parasympathetic nervous system and once they're calm we can begin to explore what this issue is. Because at home they're in fight or flight. They are expanding their energy hypo-arousing, hyper-arousing and there's no way to solve anything. And I don't let them ever, ever, ever do that in my office.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

I just don't let that happen, Because I always jokingly say why pay me all this money? You can have that fight at home for free.

Dave Schramm:

That's right.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And they get that. They don't want to pay me to have the same fight they're having at home. So just learning that you know. Oh, and then the work is. Where did you learn to hyper arouse? When in your childhood was it important to get your needs met? And you learned that the way to do that was to stomp and scream, because your partner learned that the way to get his needs met was to get quiet and hide under the bed or in the closet. So let's talk about what happened. What are the experiences of childhood that taught you?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Haiti calls them survival suits. You've pulled on your survival suit and now what we've got is the sound of two suits clanking. Hartle calls them adaptations. I think in almost every theory there's acceptance that these patterns have been learned in childhood. They are the way that we survive and we don't. We don and we're not mad at those survival suits. They were useful, very useful. They helped us to survive, but they're just not working in this current relationship and we need to learn how to take them off and to deal with one another essence to essence, not survival suit to survival suit, and so even that piece of neurobiology is important for them to know, and also the idea that once they are completely flipped out and triggered, they can't sit in the chairs and look into each other's eyes. They don't want to. That's a good time for a time out, and so I teach them how to self-soothe. A good time for a time out, and so I teach them how to self-soothe. If you can't do it with each other right now, go away for 20 minutes, self-soothe. Know how to do that. Get back online so that you're fully able to think and feel at the same time.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

In some theories we would say you're back in your window of tolerance. That's from trauma therapy. And now you pull up two chairs and you do it better and differently. And they can do it with me. It's harder to do at home without a coach, but the longer they do it, it's like going to the gym and working on your muscles. Eventually you don't need the dumbbells anymore, you can pick up the groceries. That's how I think of it. So you're coming to my office like the gym, and when that relational muscle gets strong enough, you won't need to come to my office anymore. You'll have those muscles and you'll use them at home. And what I love about couples therapy is it doesn't take years.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

It takes months.

Liz Hale:

Especially with the intensive therapy that you do, Mary Kay, yeah well with the intensive.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

usually they do one or two follow-ups a month or two later and then they fine-tune periodically. But they really get a lot from those full two days. That's wonderful.

Liz Hale:

A lot of my sessions go to two, three hours, occasionally four hours. I'm a woman after my own heart.

Dave Schramm:

We'll be right back after this brief message. And we're back, let's dive right in um, we're going to jump ahead.

Liz Hale:

Maria k and I'd love to what we ask all of our guests. This next question in honor of the name of our podcast, of course is what do you believe is the key to a stronger marriage connection? What? What do you think If you had to choose one?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

I think. Well, I'm going to say one with three parts. I think connection really comes from touch, affection, sensual, sexual touch. So I think that physical component is very important. I think communication obviously safe, respectful, deep, deep listening is very important. And then I think the third thing is shared activity. I think couples need to spend time together. They need to find things that bring them joy and they need to share in those together. They need to find things that bring them joy and they need to share in those.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And in fact, if I can make a shameless plug for my new card deck that I created for couples, I put those three suits in the deck.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

So the name of the deck is Connect, Communicate, Create, and the 15 Connect cards are about touch and the communication cards are about communication and not what to talk about but how to do it. And then the third suit is create, and that's about creating interesting and fun shared activity. So I really think it's a three-part thing, and I've seen too many couples that communicate really well and don't have sex. They just have sexless marriages even though they seem emotionally close. You have to focus on touch, you have to make that a priority. I see couples that have great sex lives but do absolutely nothing out of the bedroom. They don't cook together, they don't go on walks, they don't go on trips, they just stay home and have sex. So I mean, I feel like you have to have these things working for it to be a really true deep connection and for the space to be nourished to the point where you want to stay.

Liz Hale:

I would love to get another stack of cards like yours. Where can listeners find out where to get? Where do we get those cards? Find out more about what you offer, your services and other rich resources you provide, mary Kay.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Yeah, thank you. I have a very robust website as well as Facebook page. It's wwwmkkacherocom. There's a media page where you will eventually have access to this podcast, but there's a lot of radio talk shows, podcasts, articles. There's a YouTube channel. It's very robust because it's been around for so many years. It's like a two-bedroom house that got extensions and other rooms added on, so there's a lot of information there. The Card Deck OutConnect, communicate, create um, the card deck uh, connect, communicate, create actually has its own website, so it's thatcom. Uh, it's under construction. So when you go there now, it says under construction. The physical deck is in um production right now. It's being printed and it will be sold on amazon. But the virtual deck, the interactive mobile deck, is on deckablecom. Currently you can get the Deckable app for free and you can go to my deck and get a five-day trial and if you like it, then you buy it or you use some of the cards. It's fun, you can shuffle them, you can find your favorite one and send it to your.

Dave Schramm:

Oh, I love it.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

It's a very interactive kind of thing.

Liz Hale:

My husband. He's going to be so excited.

Dave Schramm:

That's right, Liz.

Liz Hale:

I have a few stacks of card decks throughout the house. I want you to know.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

And.

Liz Hale:

I still every now and then. I still try and play this on.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

I've got my colleague's deck on my desk, I kept getting asked to write a book and my thought was we have so many relationship books and ever since COVID, people's brains just want quicker bits. You know, like nobody's focused right now to read a whole nother book and I thought what if I take some of what I would put in a book and make it digestible in little sound bites? Because you can do one card a week and if you practice that thing on that card with your partner, you're going to be building connection. And I think, more importantly, for couples that are in couples therapy, it gives them kind of homework between sessions.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

As a lot of my colleagues will say to me, I created this beautiful connection in my office and it was so lovely and they came back a week later and they were back to square one, because couples don't often know what to do between sessions and so this gives them an idea of how to stay connected. You can shuffle them and just do whatever one comes up. Or, if you know you've got to focus more on communication, we've got touchdown or we've got plenty of activities. You can pick the suit you like. So I'm hoping it'll be a very useful tool for couples.

Liz Hale:

Beautiful, I think it will be. I can't wait to get my hands on it myself.

Dave Schramm:

Oh yeah, and we'll put those resources. Oh, go ahead, Mary Kay.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Oh, I'm sorry, Dave, I was just going to say and for therapists, whether you're a couples therapist or not, but you want to learn how to work with couples. I do have a 12-hour training video that is for sale on my website under courses, but it's nice to teach this 12-hour course and they were very generous in recording it and editing it, so it's now available, as you know, as an online course.

Liz Hale:

Amazing, great Good for you. I love it. Yeah, and we'll put the links for all of us, I should say.

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, and we'll put links to those for our listeners. For the card decks yeah, the information on YouTube, even the resource that she just mentioned about the online course for therapists. So our listeners go to the show notes and you'll find links to all that information. Mary Kay, before we let you go, we like to ask all of our guests another question, and that is the takeaway. Is there a take-home message? We call it a takeaway of the day. Do you hope our listeners will remember from our discussion today?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

the day that you hope our listeners will remember from our discussion today. Yeah, I mean, for me, the thing that's always the most important is to focus on the dynamic in the space between, because if you are convinced that the problem with your relationship is your partner, you're powerless, you don't have any ability to change another person. But if you can say, when this happens, I feel this and I really want you to understand that about me and understand the importance kind of like the woman with the dog the space be healed and the relationship improves. So, rather than blaming each other, remember to look at what's going on between the two of you rather than what's inside your partner.

Dave Schramm:

Love that. Yeah, Liz. What about you? What's your takeaway of the day?

Liz Hale:

I just remember seeing that same thing from Harville Hendricks, mary Kay, about the space between right. And my takeaway, dave and Mary Kay, today is this feeling I have right now reminds me of dot dot dot. I think it's brilliant, I love it, dave. What about you, my friend? What's the richest nugget you're taking away today with our time with Mary Kay Cacharo? I love her name, mary Kay Cacharo.

Dave Schramm:

I love that too, Liz, and I'm not familiar with Imago before this. So all of this, I'm just trying to keep up and soak all of this in. I love some of the practical things that I can start working on right now. Mary Kay, I think you mentioned the 18 inch. Yeah, I think you called it. The bridge right Is there, I don't know if I call it. The time Is that like a 30 seconds or this is three hours or what type of it you?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

know, staring in my wife's. I'm going to see if she'll do it. You mentioned that, dave. First of all, use the word gaze Like think about staring versus gazing. You know gazing is a soft, connected sort of look where I think staring. I remember as children we'd have stare downs. You know that were kind of hard.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

You know there is a lot of research. If you look at 18-inch eye gaze and the brain, it's called a brain bridge or limbic resonance. The research was like with four minutes and there was like people looking into each other's eyes who weren't lovers or sometimes didn't even know each other, but they would have this deep connection through the eye gaze and some percentage of them fell in love with looking at each other. But they would have this deep connection through the eye gaze and some percentage of them fell in love with looking at each other. It's crazy. It's like you know they say the windows are the eyes of the soul. You know, to the soul and I think that's absolutely true. So sometimes when couples can't quite get out of their fight mode at home in between sessions I will have them. I say, just if this happens, forget the words. Words are not your friends. Harville says the most dangerous thing you ever do is talk.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Talking is the most dangerous thing we do, but if you just pull those chairs together and gaze into each other's eyes, you will feel the connection happening and suddenly you feel kind of less angry at your partner and you know the issues there and you will get to it when you can. You maybe have to save it for the therapy office, but the gaze. Just try it with your partners and see how you feel.

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, I love that Very practical, very simple that I can do.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

I'm going to, I'm gonna try that today and you know, dave, we got research came from was research on mothers breastfeeding babies. 18 inches is a distance between the parent's eyes and child's eyes when you feed, whether you're the dad with a bottle or the mom breastfeeding, whatever so that 18 inches develops the baby's brain. Without eye gaze, we have failure to thrive. Children cannot grow without eye gaze. The brain doesn't grow without eye gaze. You know, when you're in the supermarket and the baby in the stroller behind you is going like this, trying to catch your eyes, oh yeah, they neatly now they need eye gaze. They need eye gaze Because we have neuroplasticity, which, for the listeners, means our brains can change until the day we die. Our brains are plastic. We can mold them and change them. When you gaze into your partner's eyes, you're actually changing the neural pathways in each other's brains, so it really is transformational in that way.

Liz Hale:

That is unusually close, isn't it?

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Right, I mean uncomfortable proximity, Liz.

Liz Hale:

That is something I could see how it could be very powerful. All right, Dave, return and report. Okay, you go first.

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go do that. This is interesting. Mary Kate and I had heard about the baby and the parent gaze. I just hadn't translated that over, and that's why I plead with parents please get off your phone and screens and look at your baby's eyes, because it's not just magic happening. There's real, actually brain changes happening, right.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

A hundred percent and I mean we could have a whole another hour talking about the way that technology has really impacted relationships. And I know there are some good things about, you know, staying connected digitally and all of that. But when I get these young couples in and they're having their fights on text, their fights on text I have to say you know, words are 7% of communication. You are missing so much of who your partner is when you're only talking on text. It's a whole new world.

Dave Schramm:

Yeah, it really is. All kinds of distractions. Well, Mary Kay, you've been very generous with your time and the wisdom that you have shared with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mary Kay Cocharo:

Well, thank you, it's just been so fun to be with the two of you. I really appreciate it.

Liz Hale:

Back at you, mary Kay.

Dave Schramm:

Yes, yeah Well, friends, that does it for us. We'll see you next time. Another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection podcast.

Liz Hale:

That's right, and remember it's the small and simple things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Dave Schramm:

Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram at Stronger Marriage Life, and Facebook at Stronger Marriage, so be sure to share with us which topics you loved or which guests we should have on the show.

Dave Schramm:

Next, If you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit StrongerMarriageorg, where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, Rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, Rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University and you, our audience. You make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.