The Relationships We Hold Onto

Relationships can be some of the greatest gifts in our lives—and some of our greatest challenges.

In this episode of UNLOADED, Michael and Shannon explore the difficult reality of strained relationships, emotional triggers, and the tough decisions that arise when a connection no longer feels healthy. Through personal stories and honest reflection, they discuss the tension between walking away, working things out, and simply allowing time and perspective to do their work.

The conversation dives into emotional reactions, self-awareness, letting go, forgiveness, personal accountability, and the importance of understanding our own role when relationships become difficult. They also revisit the concept of "stuck points" and how changing the stories we tell ourselves can help us move forward with greater clarity and peace.

Whether you're navigating conflict with a friend, coworker, business partner, or loved one, this episode offers a thoughtful reminder that growth often begins by looking inward before reacting outward.

In this episode:

•  When relationships become emotionally taxing 
•  The difference between reacting and responding 
•  Why difficult conversations matter 
•  Learning to sit with uncomfortable emotions 
•  Letting go without giving up on yourself 
•  Personal accountability and leadership 
•  Understanding and overcoming stuck points 
•  The healing power of self-reflection 

Sometimes the hardest relationship work isn't fixing someone else—it's understanding ourselves.

The weight we carry. The truth we speak.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'd like to welcome everyone back to our podcast Unloaded. This is Michael Seahorn. Shannon Morrow. And we're all very happy that everybody is with us again. Shannon, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm well. Yeah, all of us being the two of you, two of us. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And then all of the people who would be listening to us this week. So uh I appreciate that. All right, man. It's been uh it's been another busy week.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, as usual.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

As usual, man. It's been it's been crazy. Got through Memorial Day weekend a few weeks back, and um those short weeks are nice, man. Those little four day or they they come in handy. Yep. Uh they just put a little fresh air in everybody.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Just that extra day, man. It makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

It makes a lot of difference, man. Uh what else has been going on? It's been pretty busy. Had a malware virus issue at the at the company. That's fun. You know, it's crazy is you know, you know, we've created our own website here at Unloaded. I've created my own website for Raven 8. And uh the company I work at that that's been farmed out. I have a website developer who did that, and she's great. Well, she just happened to be on vacation, or not vacation, rephrase that. Her and her family have moved from north northern Nevada down to southern Nevada down to Vegas. Happened to be gone this week. So we've been getting some weird things going on, and um emails not working and things like that. So it was routed back to that we had a a malware issue on the website. So spent a better part of the entire day Thursday trying to you know get into the code. And long story short, got it all figured out. Took took pretty much the entire day, but it's just funny to me that you know it's like the things that generally someone else helps me with, you know, and I could just make a quick call or a quick text message, man. It's like sorry, man, unavailable. It's on you, it's on me to get it figured out, which is fine, you know, I don't mind, but you know, it's like everything else starts stacking up. But these these relationships that we that we have with people, you know, they're just they're very important at different levels, I guess, depending on what those relationships are, right? And ironically, um, not really ironically, but currently I've I've I have a few relationships that I've been struggling in. Um not not at my family level, so I just want to throw that out there now. It's not with my wife or my kids, it's outside of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Careful they're listening.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Exactly. So um it's not with my family, it's outside of my family circle, but you know, it's it's tough because relationships are you know it's part of us being human beings, right? And um, Shannon, you know more than anybody. I I love my alone time, man. I love being by myself, I love being out in the mountains and in the ocean, wherever. But I do cherish the very few relationships that I that I that I do have. And one of the relationships that I'm I'm struggling in is, you know, it's it's been a you know, oh I don't know, better part of, you know, nine years, maybe eight, nine. It's it's it's been a while. But that relationship has now been stressed to the max. And um, you know, I've been thinking a lot about you know where where do you go when these difficult decisions come upon you when it deals with another human being, right? And I think intuitively we we know, at least not for me sometimes, intuitively, I feel maybe that relationship needs to, you know, it needs to end. And it's okay, you know, if if that's what has to happen. But I w what I find in myself and what I find, you know, talking and listening to other people is it doesn't matter what the reason is sometimes, man, it's still taxing on you, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Well, especially as you just said, the ending of a relationship. You know, I mean relationships inevitably continue to change and evolve and morph, and you know, whether, you know, if one measurement, there's many different ones, and it's kind of hard to generalize. But if it's, you know, begins, you know, getting closer, getting to know each other a little bit better, you know, creating just a good working relationship with one another or whatever, you know, the familiarity state, you know, you're just okay, and it's it can go along pretty decent for a while, and then it inevitably it's gonna keep moving different ways. And uh then when it starts seemingly growing further apart and and a little more challenges or difficulties, and it's like, ooh, you know, um, and it's that that is as you just said, it that's when it starts getting taxing to, you know, okay, ooh, this relationship isn't as easy or comfortable as it was. It's being challenged now, and how we respond to that is very case by case. And you know, and and sometimes the response is all the way as drastic to that one end of the scale, as you say, to end the relationship. Now a lot of other times, you know, you oof, it's it's a growth opportunity, FM growth opportunity, man. You gotta, you know, like, okay, what why am why is this triggering me? What's what I wonder kind of what their experience is. Can I face this or am I going to avoid it? Am I just gonna uh I'm out, you know, or am I, you know, gonna is this worth, is this relationship worth the increased difficulties and efforts now of facing it and working through it?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yeah, it's uh you know, I like I said at the beginning, you know, I I relationships are part of us being human beings and they're important. They're important. But, you know, when I when I when I feel that there's any self-suffering that's becoming attached to uh my decision making, then I I I tend to start to try to dig a little deeper. Right? Because if I'm if I'm having emotional responses or I'm feeling the emotional responses, and I'm I'm having a little bit of self-suffering internally, then I know that I need to sit and really you know think about what like you said, where where's the cause at? Like what what is the trigger system? You know, is it a trigger? In my case, this was something that was uh out of my control, and uh but unfortunately it had a very negative reflect back on me because it was a shared business thing. So it's just it's just difficult because you know, you on one hand I'm like, well, you know, you could you could go down the the repair path, right? You could try to repair it and try to figure it out, and then on the other hand, sometimes I have a tendency just to be like Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Thank you for recognizing your tendency. Yeah, you know that. I'm out. This this is uncomfortable. I'm out.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, yeah. I'm out, you know, good luck. I appreciate the time. So I've just been letting this take its course. Yeah, I didn't want to make a I didn't want to make a very brash decision because I was in an emotional response state, right? And I was I'm gonna be honest with you, I was I was pretty irritated and I was I was I was super frustrated. It happened right before uh the Memorial Day weekend. Uh thank the Lord my my brother and my nephew were down from Memorial Day weekend, so I got to hang out with my brother, and you know, he's really good at recognizing, you know, when things are going on. And you know, he kind of talked to me a little bit about you know what you and I are talking about. And uh he he saw that you know I was just having this very difficult time with it. So I had to put it on the shelf though, because I didn't want to take that away from the time uh you know hanging out with my brother and my nephew for for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. So put it on the shelf and you know, said hey, I'll I'll come back next week and you know, address it and think about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yep, just okay. I I'm gonna table it, I'm aware it's there. I'm not ignoring it or burying it, and just now's not the right time. Yeah, I'll get to it.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

So still haven't really made a decision one way or the other, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

So and there's a big middle path in here as well. I I appreciate the scale we're creating as usual, but you know, on one side of the scale, I'm out, I'm done, it's over, bye-bye. On the other side of the scale, what is this? Let's look at this, let's confront this, let's work through this and putting a lot of effort toward trying to repair, fix, make better, or whatever. Um, though, and those are each kind of the extreme sides of the scale. There's, you know, I think if we then in the middle there, that beautiful neutrality of just like, huh, here it is, okay. Like this, this is what it is currently. It is what it is. And just slowing down, taking a breath, looking at it, uh, maybe a little bit, maybe not, uh, varying degrees of what we even want to try to observe it or figure it out a little, but just kind of being with it and just huh, okay. Boy, this is challenging for me, it's triggering for me. I'm quite frustrated. And as you just described, I'm I'm just gonna sit with it here or shelf it for a little bit. You know, sometimes non-action can be the best course.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah, and and and I am very aware, and I know you you are as well, and I'm sure that our listeners are aware, is obviously depending on the relationship is gonna drastically, drastically drive um where you're at, you know. If if you're talking about your, you know, if you're being uh if you're have intimacy with another human being, right? If it's your uh well, I don't care what the relationship is, wife, girlfriend, whatever, boyfriend, when the intimacy is in there and you're building a relationship that you love somebody, I mean obviously that's gonna be a real different looking path compared to what I'm talking about, you know, with a quote unquote a friendship, right? But I do still believe that even in uh you know my own personal life is anytime I feel that those relationship things are coming up or you're struggling, because we all struggle, man. It's just part of part of life, it's part of being human. I think that for me really has a large impact on the direction I take. Yeah, right. Cause it's I used to be the opposite guy. I used to be the very quick anger guy, right? The very quick eff it, roll out, piece out, leave you in the dust, and I wouldn't turn around for nothing. I'm just heading a different direction. Good luck, right? Now I like I said, I I do realize that you know that relationships are so unique between human beings, and you gotta really think about you know if you're if you're having a lot of self-suffering in a relationship, man, I you you really need to sit maybe think about what's what's driving that self-suffering. Um and I I I'm not one that's gonna sit here and tell you that I'm innocent in any way, shape, or form. I have my own human issues, but I I'm also not afraid to admit things to people. I've I'm over that hump.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, you've developed that through the years to now you you are mostly able to speak clearly, speak straight, like, hey, you know, this is I mean, that's that that that's generally pretty scary. That's generally um something that's avoided. Most of us have um a lot of avoidance or difficulty with um confronting something in a clear, honest, even vulnerable um conversation.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Yeah, and we've talked about them in in uh you know some of our prior episodes, man. Those difficult conversations are difficult for a reason. It's because there's a lot of emotion attached to the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So that's it. And when the emotion starts driving, because that's as we've also talked about, that's our first indicators is when these emotions are coming up for us and getting our attention, or oh, and but then often what happens, those emotions then continue to be the driver all the way through the communication, which ooh, then that communication often comes out quite uh unintended, un not as we really want. And and so you've developed the skill. Um many of us are working at being able to there's the emotion, okay. Slow down, take a breath, let's just pause. And now what what's what's this about within me? What might they be going through? Okay, and and then to proceed forward with the conversation um in not as emotional of a way.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Yeah, and just for our listeners, man, this again, you gotta re rem remember that I've been trying to work on this for 11 straight years, and I still get it wrong a lot of the times. That's how it goes. Right. But what I have found is I feel like I get a lot more out of relationships when I'm not afraid to just have that honest conversation, even if it's in your intimate world, you just have to understand that obviously how I speak to my wife or my daughter or my sons is vastly different from a staff member or uh, you know, a a friend or whatever the relationship is. But in any of the context, when I feel that self-suffering, I feel that emotional charge, I'm trying more and more to remind myself, man, sometimes silence is the best thing for you in the moment. Just as hard as it is, because we we've we've talked, we've talked like three, four, five episodes ago, man, where that didn't work out for me. And I went the opposite direction and a lot of self-suffering, which then drove me to the big island, which in itself was a great story in the in the aircraft and the whole thing. So but if if we can just be honest with ourselves and just remind ourselves, man, if you are filming that emotional charge and you're just you know raring to you know get after somebody, just take one second to maybe go, hey, it's okay if you stay quiet, it's okay to be still for a moment, you know. And sometimes just in that very second, sometimes it's enough to go, you know what? I think this might need to wait. You know, maybe I can come back to this conversation later today or tomorrow or two days or three days, because there's no time limit, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Generally, sometimes time is a little more important than others. Sure. And and this uh thank you. It's when we are having those emotions, it's okay to be experiencing those. We're not trying to, in our pause, in our taking a moment, it's not trying to get those emotions to go away. Uh actually opposite to honor those. Yeah, I am feeling pissed off. Okay, good to know. Let's allow for that, let's recognize that, let's honor the anger I'm experiencing, and once we can allow for just have some acceptance for our experience, our emotion, and then it's much more manageable. Okay, it's okay, I'm feeling this way. There's reasons why I'm feeling this way, not trying to change too much of that, and I don't want to communicate from these feelings.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, no, well said, man. It's it's quite a thing, these relationships. And I hear a lot of uh other podcasters and some people I personally listen to, and obviously I do a lot of reading. You know, it's sometimes we we hold on to things a little too long, you know, and and I think that goes uh for a lot of things in life. You know, we we have a tendency as humans to really just, you know, we we got a hold of that thing, man. We don't want to let it go. And what I have found in my personal life is sometimes there's so much healing in letting go. There's some healing in just letting go of something, or that something is bringing you a lot of suffering. And if you can let it go and just refocus on yourself and refocus on, hey man, let me let me figure out what's going on in here before I really try to put a lot of energy and trying to figure out what's going on with another person or another human being. Generally, I find that you'd be quite surprised what you what you see internally in those opportunity times, you know what I mean? That's it.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

And may, you know, it's such an interesting concept, or even the phrase letting go. Like, whoa, wait, how do we let go? You know, uh it's not letting go of me. How do I let go of it? And how what does that mean? Just let it go. I can't, you know, it's still coming up, and you know, and um, but I think what kind of the direction you were going was refocusing our attention, like it's really coming up for me, it's kind of spinning in my mind. I can't I just keep uh it keeps really getting my attention in there, and um so not we can't just let it go per se, but we can move things that direction a little by okay, instead of continuing to feed this, instead of perpetuating it by giving it so much of my attention, instead I'm going to turn my attention to this. Uh just like not keep feeding it, not keep spinning it, turn my attention away for a little while, give my attention to something that'll that's probably a little more beneficial in this moment that won't get me so wound up.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, it's um you know when I talk about letting go, it's so when I grew up, we didn't have a lot. So and Shannon can chime in on this because I'm sure he's well better suited to speaker on this, but what I have seen is when you don't grow up with a lot or you grow up in in a very difficult place, what I have found in my personal life is I tend to want to hold on to everything. And that includes stuff, right? I don't want to get rid of this, I don't want to get rid of that. You know, I you know, my wife was kind of chuckling the other day. We were looking at some old pictures, and she's like, Good God, she's like, Look at the beanie you're wearing. I'm like, Yeah, I see it. She's like, You still got it. And that was like 20 years ago, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

You haven't worn it in 12 or 14 years. Oh, I wear it every day almost.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

It's kind of my uh I'm a weird cat when it comes to headphones. I know it's kind of off topic, but when I'm at my home office with headphones on, I tend to like my beanie and I like to wear my headphones over the top of it. So I it sits on my desk and I wear it all the time. But for 20 years, not getting rid of that thing, man. I love it, right? But I I did find earlier in my my life is that I was just not wanting to let go of anything, man. It was tools or clothes or I keep it all. Keep it all, yeah. Yeah, and I you know I'd wear a shirt until I have 40 holes in it, you know what I mean, if I let it go. And then through some of this uh self-healing journey that I've been on, I've realized like, man, you need to look at this, man. So now I'm a little bit easier and a little bit better of quote unquote letting go of things and not just having a death grip on things, man, right? And sometimes I have found and I have seen and people have shared with me, is you know, even maybe in a relationship that's I want to be careful on the verbiage. Maybe on a relationship that maybe isn't the healthiest. I think that's fair to say. Sometimes you can see people still want to have just they've got that death hold on it, you know. And and I understand that, I know where that's coming from. I've been there in my past, you know, it's it's difficult to let go of those relationships, you know, even if maybe intuitively we know, you know what, man, I think it's time that it's okay to let this relationship go and I go in a different direction. I know it's not easy, and I'm not saying that that is easy, but what I have seen though is, you know, sometimes and and it's funny too, is it's not funny, but it's it's very ironic to see if you ever see somebody that's in an unhealthy relationship for an expedite period of time, and then they finally do come to the point where they let it go and they move on, it's like a different person six months ago down the road. Like you you you run into them or you you know, you're talking to him, you're just like you can see this whole different aura of this person, you know, and it Uh it's refreshing to see that, you know. And a lot of times they'll just tell you, Oh man, I just I feel good. I you know, I went back to the gym and I'm whatever. You you know what I'm going with, right? So what's your opinion on that, Shannon?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

On what?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

On the thought. What's your thought on this the you know the the difficulty there to sometimes to uh what you were talking about, letting things be. Yeah, maybe not letting go, but maybe letting things be. What I have found too is I've had some relationships where at the time I thought they were ended, that the season has come, and you you take a step back and you go a different direction, then like three months later, it's rekindled, or you're back to talking to that person, you know what I mean. So it's just uh I don't know, man. It's it's such a weird world in the relationship, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yeah, we're we're up here and pretty abstract level, you know. It's hard to because it's so like case by case. It's just it's really depends on each, you know, the individual relationship and all the circumstances, and those a lot of those are always changing. It's a very dynamic thing, and you know, in the actual nuts and bolts of it. Um but kind of toward I think the analogy holds. Um like as you described, growing up without as much, you know, and so a natural tendency to hang on to stuff more even when you don't need it. And I think that comes from, you know, just that general like, oh, what if I might need this down the road? That even kind of rooted in fear, like, oh, I I might regret getting rid of this, I might need it again. I might, you know, fear of loss, or you know, just a avoidance of loss or a just yeah, it's because generally I think that's what's underneath. Uh any if we are letting go that does underneath there apply imply loss, and say that's scary. That's uh if I got rid of this old t-shirt, even though it has 40 holes in it, you know, but what if you know what I don't even know. But um, or change, you know, fear of loss, fear of change, fear of the unknown, you know, most of our stuckness stuff is often originates from fear.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah, and I I think we might I might talk to I might have hit on it briefly when uh back a long time ago in our early episodes. I think I talked about a little bit when I first went through group therapy at the VA uh the program was really driven around stuck points. That's the terminology they used. And what I found very helpful in those 12 weeks was simply writing down on a piece of paper what the stuck point was that I was dealing with at the time. And it could have been anything under the sun. But for obviously for me, a lot of it was anger and just lashing out at people and having no filter or no my hot button was hot all day, it never cooled off. Um but through that exercise of writing down, you're like, I'm stuck on whatever what what they were teaching us to do was to restructure that sentence, restructure that stuck point so we can start to change that thought in our mind. Now, early on, I'll be honest with you, I thought it was a bunch of hocus pocus stuff. I didn't think it was a real a real thing. But what I came to find out real quickly was is when you put some energy into that and you actually try to allow that to work, just that simple process was a huge help. Because what what it was starting to do is to trigger your mind to think differently.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

There it is. Challenging those thoughts, those problematic beliefs, the false beliefs, actually.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, and uh I have now used that as a huge crutch, if you will, in my own personal life across a lot of different things that uh if I'm stuck on something, that's what I still do to this day, is I'll I'll write it out. Okay, why why am I still so stuck on being angry when somebody cuts in front of me in traffic? Right? It sounds simple, but if y'all haven't seen lately, roads are insanity out there, man. It's craziness going on. So I've had to learn to rewrite that thought in my mind is that hey, if the guy that's such a hurry to get in front of me, he's gonna still be in front of me for the next 40 miles. So it's not a big deal. But it used to be a huge deal, you know. So I had to change that thought process and through that writing, that little teeny tiny writing exercise, man, it's just it's helped tremendously to get a lot of tracks in getting over these stuck points. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yep, yeah. A lot of stuck points come from the you know, if, you know, if then type, you know, uh, because when we can back out of that and evaluate, you know, if if I concede that like, oh wait, I I miscalculated that, I made an error in that, but then people will think I'm untrustworthy, or people won't, you know um think I'm capable or competent or whatever, if then, you know, but to be able to challenge those problematic beliefs, you know, like as you just described, that then it it really helps get unstuck.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, it's it's an amazing thing, our relationships with other human beings. And if you have them, you're blessed, man. Just remind yourself that sometimes if you're feeling like you're just having some issues, man, just try to take a moment to look inside and just do a little selfie vow like Shannon was talking about earlier. Uh it helps tremendously. And don't be afraid just to own what you gotta own, man.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

That's hard, man. It it is scary. Thank you. It's difficult, man. To un our own stuff. Ooh, yeah, of course I get angry about this. Of course, that stuff really upsets me. And okay, that's that's okay. It's we're all human, and to have grace for ourselves, to just care for ourselves and allow for our humanness, and um it's okay, man. And acceptance, you know, it it it's quite in time, it takes practice, it's difficult at first, especially, but you just kind of stay with that and just keep practicing, persevere, and uh you you will find it it gets easier and um life in general just gets a little lighter.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Gets a lot lighter, man. It really does. It gets a lot lighter, and to be quite frank with you, I think a lot of people appreciate when you're just being a little bit honest. If you know if you've if you've you know, I I've told like I've told the listeners in the past, you know, there have been times where I've had to open up and apologize in front of my entire staff because of the way I handle something. I I don't do that to uh put on a show, I do that because it has to happen. It needs to happen. I'm the senior leader of the company. And for them to be able to see that, hey, if our if if our senior leader is okay with just saying, hey man, I didn't handle that appropriately, I could have handled it better, and I apologize for that. That's not weakness, man.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

On the contrary.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

It's on the contrary, right? It's showing that you've got enough strength in yourself to to admit that maybe you didn't do something that you thought you could have done better.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

There are a lot of senior leaders that are not capable of doing this. We could do a four-week podcast on that, but not today. Not today. Not today.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Well, Shannon, it's been a good podcast today. I always appreciate your insight, man. Yeah, like that. For the listeners out there, just remember um there's help out there if you need it. Uh the 988 is out there for you if you uh are feeling that you need a little bit of help or maybe there's somebody you need to talk to. It's free. Give them a call. Uh don't don't be afraid to look in your local area. And as for me, Mike Seahorn, Shannon Mora. Um, this will be uh our episode for the week. And I hope everyone has a good week, and we'll catch you on the next episode.