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Therapy, Coaching & Dreams
Therapy, Coaching & Dreams is cohosted by Dr. Jim Shalley and Dr. Selden Dee Kelley III, a therapist and a coach who love talking about how inner work can help you live with more awareness, purpose and freedom.
Therapy, Coaching & Dreams
S1E12 Do You Want To Be Right or Be In Relationship?
This episode considers the importance of integrating the various personality styles. We explore the sobering shift from rescue fantasies to self-responsibility and how flexible thinking builds emotional safety and connection. Along the way, we unpack the minimized feminine voice, creativity as a practice, and why humor often shows up as armor.
• accepting that no one will rescue us
• hearing the feminine voice and giving it space
• nurturing neglected parts through art and creativity
• cognitive flexibility as a pillar of emotional health
• choosing relationship over being right
• inward-outward energy and locus of control
• control strategies, charisma, and safety needs
• humor as protection and its relational cost
• learning to sit with feelings without qualifiers
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You can connect with the cohosts through their respective websites:
AFCCounselors.com (Dr. Shalley) / www.InYourDreams.Coach (Dr. Kelley)
Welcome to Therapy Coaching and Dreams. I'm Dee Kelley, and I'm here with my co-host, Jim Shalley. We're a coach and a therapist who love talking about how inner work can help you with more awareness, purpose, and freedom. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:When you miss that connection with a parent in a in a healthy way, as I say oftentimes, it's it's it's not fair at all to then realize that you can go on a search for someone out here in your life to heal that, but ultimately it's the mirror that you take a look at and go, wait a minute, there's no one coming to rescue me. One of my clients, long long-term client, a couple of years ago finally came to that realization. No one's coming to rescue me, are they? And then they said, Not even you, and I said, Not even me. And that's pretty sobering. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I part of that sobering feeling is it's kind of in a real a realization of being alone. And then being okay with that so that you then can no longer need to be alone. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3:This is a tangent, but are most are most of the things that we do tangents? Yeah, they are.
Speaker 1:I just it which it which just creates more work for me to edit it to get it together. But I was thinking of the masculine, feminine stuff we were talking about the last few weeks, and I came across an old dream in a journal, and I ended up using it as an example in a opening of chapter for what I've been working on. But the dream was I'm in a theater watching a presentation in a theater. I'm in a theater, yeah. Watching a dramatic presentation, and the male is trying to persuade the female to spend a weekend or something like that at the cabin that you can see on a pole in the distance behind them. And her name was Poppy Seed, and she was about the size of a poppy seed. And the recognition that in my life there are times when the feminine voice is so dismissed from my life. And as the ego in the theater, I found it incredibly humorous, and I thought if I was only filming this, this would be an instant classic, which for me implied that this is the classic way that I sometimes deal with the feminine. I just give it no space because I know I'm right. It's back to this thing. You know, you know you're right, and so you dismiss the other voices, not only externally, but in many ways, more importantly, internally. Because it's tough to listen to that externally until you've dealt with that internally. But it was poppy seed was the feminine voice in my lobby.
Speaker 3:Anyway, well, you know, the poppy seed, it's uh it can go the other extreme as a transformer addictions and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Those images are so subjective. Yeah. But I'm pretty certain this was my minimum. Pretty certain at all you do.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So how so uh uh another tangent. So how do you how do you gen generally uh hear the feminine in your life?
Speaker 1:I I don't want to lose what you just said. I I will say that that notion of poppy seed being a uh a a drug of sorts is interesting to view the feminine as that seductive aphrodisiac and that that's what the feminine voice is as opposed to be being a voice that actually has something to say. So yeah, that's okay. Great insight there, Dr. Shalley.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean it it's it it the whole imagery of sex in a sense that the masculine just takes it and the feminine seduces. I mean there's different approaches anyway. So back to the Those are extreme expressions of those energies, I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:Uh for that clarification.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. So what did you ask about the feminine voice of my life?
Speaker 3:Yeah. How how do you hear it, or do you hear it, or just dismiss it all the time? And what what characteristic is it of the feminine voice?
Speaker 1:That's all it's tough to know. It's tough to know when it's shrunk that much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a nurturing one, and then there's a static one that basically tries to integrate a little bit of the masculine by bringing order to things by reminding you of what needs to happen and what you need to bring, what you need to take. It's that's what's so interesting about the feminine energy. It's relationally driven, but it can be interpreted oftentimes in a negative form as opposed to the positive aspects of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I I think one of the things that I hope is true is that was an older journal, and it was like kind of a wake-up call in my life. Okay, good. So clarifying.
Speaker 3:No, okay. Now it's perfect. It's perfectly integrated. Okay, I get it. I get it. No, it's like it's like being reminded of did you remember to lock the door? That's a feminine energy relationally driven. Don't let you know, let's not have anything happen, bad happen, but oftentimes can be irritating to someone who's here. Of course I lock the door. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Um, and I your question's legitimate, though. Uh if that has at times in my life been minimized for any number of reasons. Can be family of origin, can be experiences, can be all kinds of reasons why you minimize a particular expression of yourself. How do you protect yourself from not returning to that old pattern when stress levels go up? Because we tend to, when things get stressful, retreat to that which is most familiar historically in our life. And I think one of those one of the ways by which I do that is to actually put into practice the nurturing of some of those other sides. So uh growing up, music was not a big part of my life. Art was not a part of my life at all. So an example is yesterday I was in San Diego, has an absolutely beautiful downtown public library, and up on the ninth floor is art gallery, and walked through the art gallery and took my time, read some of the descriptions, tried to look at things that I wouldn't normally look at. Well, that is putting into practice, trying to nurture a side of me that's not the way in which I grew up or natural, so that when stress levels go up, there is a context recently in my life of something that is nurturing that side and helping it to grow.
Speaker 3:And that's a great example of uh acknowledging the parts of ourselves that need to be nurtured externally. And that's why people do things all the time, all the time, and they they're not sure why they do them. And from my perspective, it's nurturing an aspect of themselves they're not fully aware of. So to make that that kind of conscious choice to be aware that, okay, I'm going to appreciate art, something I would never do. Okay, what does that symbolize inside of myself? What am I what am I really needing to nurture inside of me? Yeah. And it's the creative, it's the creative energy that we all have, that we all have. Some have it bigger and brighter than others, but we all do.
Speaker 1:I there's a real practical outgrowth in that, and not just this art installation, but ones that I'm attracted to are ones that make you kind of turn your head and go, what was the artist thinking here or feeling here? And it triggers inside of me the motivation to allow my work or my writing or my interactions to take into account things that aren't in my visual perception right now. What is it that I'm not seeing? What is it that that is a possibility that I would have never considered if I was stuck in this organizational framework or spreadsheet framework? And so, yeah, it has some real wonderful advantages, some of which are incredibly practical, and others are just downright enjoyable because you experience something you haven't thought of before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the phrase I use in therapy a lot is uh emotional well-being has flexibility of thinking as a core ingredient. And so what we're talking about really is pushing your thinking style to all different aspects of it. That's back to your original context. That's that's one of the reasons how we become safe emotionally. When we can push ourselves outside of our own comfort and our own thinking styles to embrace others' thinking styles, then we're safe for ourselves, and then oftentimes we then become safe for others to feel comfortable expressing their pain, their traumas, all those things. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm a person who comes to you and you perceive pretty quickly that my thinking's pretty inflexible. Most likely I have no idea that that's true and would push back on you if you brought it up. How do you try and lead somebody to the place of seeing that their thinking is inflexible?
Speaker 3:Obviously, the older we get, the more challenging that is. So if you have someone who's in their 60s that come in and you can pretty much tell right away they are they are so locked into their way of thinking. And if they're in a relationship, I usually ask, describe your partner and their personality style. And it's almost always diametrically opposed to how they think. And I said, Is there any value in how they think? And that can usually, if they still have a favorable feeling towards that person, that can begin to see that, okay, there is a different way of thinking about things. And then of course the classic thing is, do you want to be right or have a relationship? It's you know, it's that sounds very trite and simple, but it it's profound in its in its implications. Uh I had a I did a Zoom session with a couple this week, and they're both very strong-willed and very successful in their own fields, and they clash all the time with that same thing. It's like, and I will repeat, so what am I going to say right now? Uh you'll be right at a relationship. And the guy goes, I know, but I'm right. I go, does that matter? And it so it challenges that. So that's the beginning part, is to see, just trying to find someplace where they value a different way of thinking about some things. But then there are honestly people that are so locked into their personalities that they can't they just can't do it. Even if I'm controversial with the culture today, and I try to if they hate this person, I'll talk about the other person. And they some people will have a really difficult time. And I that then I ask you, I point out that these people you seem to hate, you don't even know. So then it's a part of yourself typically that you're out of touch with. Well, uh that's that can that can hit on lots of people in a good way. People that are pretty rigid, that that's like it goes right over their heads. I can't do the hand motions because we're just doing talk, talk. But anyway.
Speaker 1:But that verbal thing of that comes across well. Yeah, absolutely. You made a comment about uh an individual saying, but I am right. And for me, one of the indicators of flexible thinking is someone who will acknowledge that there may be more than one right about a given situation. And that's hard for some people to take into the fact that, okay, let's say you are right. Is there not another way to look at this that is also right? That sometimes is a pathway to get a person who's hell-bent on being right to start to see that there are other possibilities of what right looks like in this given situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I I've often said too with couples uh specifically that okay, I I'll go with you being right. If you can factually prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're what you're saying is true, then okay, we can we can have that discussion, and perhaps then you prove your partner wrong. Okay, great. Now, and sometimes that's very important. The facts are important to prove someone right or wrong. But ultimately to assess, is this really to use the classic thing, the hill I want to die on when it comes to my relationship?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And there will, you know, in my mind, with couples especially, they're all looking for validation. They're all looking for some trauma to be healed by being agreed with. Because, you know, we know that the older we get, the more of that stuff, it just doesn't matter. And you know, it takes it takes the aging process sometimes to get you to that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're right. You used a story in one of your writings that takes us back to childhood and use the image of a teeter-tonter. Tell us that story and how for you it relates to creating emotional safety. Just space. Could you remind me of the story? I think it was, if I recall correctly, you walking up a teeter totter making that space in the middle that holds it in balance.
Speaker 3:I used to go to the playground by myself a lot, and there was always teeter-totters. And uh that was one of the things I always would do. I'd walk up a teeter-totter and I'd get to the middle place where I could balance it in the middle. Yeah, that's true. I'd forgotten I'd written that. Yeah. And that that that also was interesting because it compensated for not having someone there. So I could actually play back and forth with both legs. So I could I couldn't do the full teeter-totter, but I could do it. And then, you know, it was always fun to try to run off the other end. I mean, it was all and are there still teeter-totters?
Speaker 1:There are still teeter-totters.
Speaker 3:Are there? Oh, that's cool. Anyway.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think they're in small towns that have not been affected by safety rules and regulations.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, that's probably that's probably very true. Because I'm sure what I was doing, there were many times I had failed and I went off the wrong the other side. But yeah, that was always a the challenge was to find that sweet spot where you felt balanced.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the whole reason I brought up that story was your opening line about I used to often go to the playground by myself. So it was really more about that by myself issue that I wanted to bring up and talk about how.
Speaker 3:Oh no, you know, I've I've spent years going to the playground by myself. Thankfully, occasionally you've you've joined me on the playground that becomes the desert. So yeah.
Speaker 1:And I know when it's time to let you be by yourself. So so take us a little bit further about being held hostage by the past, because that's one of the issues that keeps somebody from finding that emotionally balanced life. Is this takes us way back to our opening few episodes about looking back to be able to move forward, being held hostage by events or voices in our life. And sometimes it's difficult to even bring that to the surface. Other times it's so much in the surface that it's hard to see anything else in life because it's still so dominant. But unpacking that is tied into the whole notion of recognizing the judgment that we place on ourselves. Work us through how we try and process our own self-judgment that holds us hostage.
Speaker 3:Well, though the the end of it all is the hostage uh is not external, the hostage is internal. So as long as I ruminate or I entertain the possibility, once again, what I said earlier, that some external force is going to heal that in me, I'm held hostage. And it's so difficult to get to a place where I have to give up the idea that some external force is going to bring. Now, it's not to dis it's not to say that relationships in your life can can ameliorate that or really touch that and begin to really affect a soothingness about it. But it's like it's like happiness and sadness. It's not a constant. It comes and goes. So there are people that will come in and it will feel like this is my soulmate, this is the person that's going to make me better, and they do. Absolutely, they will make you better. But there usually, almost always, there comes an endpoint to where that pattern inside the individual becomes stronger than the effects of the relationship. And that's where people get discouraged in relationships and they'll say, I I can't, I can't help you. And that's where they defeat their partners, oftentimes. And so a lot of times that's when they'll begin therapy and they'll say, I've I've gone through this relationship, my husband, my wife says this, or my partner says this, and it must be me. And that that's that's a really good start, obviously. When they don't come in and say it's it's obviously me, but they come in and say, my wife no longer does this, my partner no longer does that, then it's like, okay, well, why do you think? Well, they say they're just tired. I go, oh, that's interesting. What are they tired of? Well, they're tired of they say that they can't help me anymore. And that's an insight that can spark some kind of awareness. But the hostage part really is about I'm held hostage to the idea that someone else is going to help me. I'm and to to promote my own field, therapy can help. Dream workers can help. So I'm not saying they don't, but that's where I said earlier that lady that said to me, Nobody's coming to rescue me. Yeah. Because a part of us always want to be rescued.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it is that's a breakthrough moment to take ownership for it.
Speaker 3:Um especially in a culture that's really resisting that. I uh listened to uh a little bit of a podcast about the damage the boomers have done to the to the millennials because they they provided such a comfortable life that they they gave the millennials an illusion that life was going to be pretty easy and comfortable. And then when it doesn't turn out, they're they're mad at their parents or they're mad at the boomers because the the boomers set up set this whole thing up in that sense. So Interesting.
Speaker 1:I had a client earlier this week. Part of the discussion was trying to get this person to look inward, but also to be aware of how life happens around him. And the discussion moved toward is the energy flowing from inward to outward or from outward to inward. We often talk about the outward being a projection of the inward, but it's also true that if we have very little self-awareness, all the external stuff is in many ways dictating how we feel, how we move, how we make decisions. And the invitation of others to be in my life as a method to fix me or help me is the movement of that outward in. Sometimes that's good if you've got a healthy person that's engaged in your life, and sometimes it's hard. And it's not just relationships, it can be vocational problems. And the advantage of m living from inward out is that there is less fluctuation of the effect of the environment or other people if you become aware of your own identity, of who you are and who you want to be, you face the external with the filter being those things within that help you live your life. And so that energy flow from the inward to the outward leads to in my experience, individuals who feel far more in control of their destiny, far more in touch with their feelings, far more alive in their relationships, and not dependent on the other person to respond a particular way in order for them to feel happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that that's another challenging aspect of it because uh, you know, the locus of control scale, where people are either internally or externally controlled, uh that's a hard shift to get people to see that if they're extremely externally controlled, that they can actually take charge because they're so aware of their environment and how it affects their moods. And they actually like it, but they also hate it at the same time. So yeah, that's that's a great point. And we can say that the well, that's the maturing process when you realize that that aspect of it. But I also know that when you're externally driven and it you're typically the life of the party, you're fun, you don't you just keep moving forward, all that stuff. It's like it's hard to get their attention to see that, well, did you notice that when that person walked in the room, your energy changed or anything like that? And they'll say, Well, yeah, because I they hate me, or whatever that is. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And uh, but then some people are so strong and so charismatic that they don't pay attention to that at all, and they take over the room. And so they would say extern they create the external forces. Uh, and that's always another dynamic try to get them to see that, okay, you may control the environment, but that's your need, is to control the environment to keep you feeling safe, back to what we do to create emotional safety for ourselves. There's obviously unconscious ways that we form as a kid that that we handle the way we handle it. And then as we become more conscious, we say, okay, do I need to go in and take over a room, or can I go and just be a part of the room? Or if I if I'm a person that wants to just be a part of the room, can I go over and take over the room? It's always interesting to try to play around with the dynamics of that we naturally have.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It seems to me, specifically, the individual who controls their environment a great deal is attracted to and attracts people who are okay with that initially. Yeah. They they feed on the energy that that person provides. And sometimes that person provides a mask for them so they don't have to be fully honest. But there comes a time when that control of the other is is no longer as welcome as it once was.
Speaker 3:I have a couple right now where his wife's a husband wife, so the wife is a tough audience, and he really likes to be funny. And uh I know where this is going. And he said, I I don't, I don't, I don't make her laugh anymore. And I go, well, and she goes, Well, occasionally you do. I said, but you gotta be you gotta be really good to make her laugh, right? And he goes, Yeah. And I don't think she thinks I'm that funny. I go, well, you may not be. And then she goes, no, he's funny to everybody else, but I've heard all that stuff. It's like, but you know, so but sometimes he still makes me laugh. She goes, he goes, I love it when I make her laugh. And I go, Well, you chose someone that makes it difficult to laugh. It's a bigger challenge. So now we're upset by that. And he goes, Well, she used to laugh easier. Well, she probably laughed easier because she was trying to placate you. She when she said, Well, yeah, lots of times I didn't think it was that funny, but I laugh. So it's so interesting how it it's like a little kid wanting, you know, wanting and he said it's so important. Then he finally stopped and he goes, you know, I guess maybe it's not that important. And I go, Well, maybe not. I said, because again, that's that's how you that's how you use yourself to be safe with yourself, to use humor. So I pointed out to him, I said, Yeah, in my own personal life, that if you ask me to say something serious, I'm always gonna say something funny at the end, because it distracts from the seriousness of it, because it hasn't been as comfortable for me to be serious all the time. I said, I worked on that the last 10 years or so, but I said my my default setting is if you ask me to say anything emotional, I'm always gonna I'm gonna be tempted to say something funny at the end of it for my own safety, my own emotional needs. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I love the disclosure there at the end because I sometimes think with emotional safety zones that when I'm interacting with individuals, I get them to say something I don't I present the opportunity and they take it to say something that's emotionally honest and transparent. And the amount of time between that statement and something that is either dismissive, explanatory, logical, explains it away, sometimes is less than a second. Like they get the one phrase out and immediately they have to follow it by some kind of mediating language. And I'll just smile and I say, so once again, is it possible for you to say it without qualifying it? And it that that emotional safety zone only lasts so long for some people It's so true.
Speaker 3:I'm smiling because I had a client this last week who I made an interpretation and it was pretty important. And he he stopped for a second and thought about it, and then he went on with something else, and then he stopped. He goes, Did you want me to sit with that longer? And I said, Well, whatever you're comfortable with. So he he kept he kept going on with what he wanted to shift to. But yeah, exactly your point. It's it's really interesting how quickly we minimize sitting with difficult emotions, or emotions that that are important. We just dismiss easily because we're uncomfortable with it, or whatever our little story in our head is. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that discomfort is typically compounded if we are in the presence of someone else.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And the masculine doesn't want to set with difficult emotions anyway. They want to explain it away. So the quicker I can explain it away, we're good, right? Yes, right.
Speaker 1:I did the assignment, right? Can we go on?
Speaker 3:Exactly. And so I'm feeling it. Now what? What do I okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Good place for us to wrap up. Uh because we completed the assignment and I don't want to sit in there feeling anymore. Great to be with you as always, Jen. We'll come back next week and hit this. Probably continue a little bit further in bringing all of the different parts of ourselves together and living in a way that's balanced and whole and healthy and what that might look like.
Speaker 3:And at the risk of being a little ner nervous, if you if people that have listened to this find it somewhat helpful, they can comment on it. If you didn't find it helpful, okay. You can you can still comment, but uh, you know, we're we're we're we're healthy, but not completely healthy.
Speaker 1:That's right. We'll listen to it, but we won't sit with it too long.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. Negative comment will go, oh, oh, okay. Then we'll move on. Anyway. Great to be with you, buddy.
Speaker 1:That's it for this episode of Therapy, Coaching, and Dreams. If you're enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to follow, rate, or share it with someone who might appreciate it as well. Thanks for being here, and until next time, keep growing, stay curious, and take good care of yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's good stuff.