November 17, 2021 • 10 mins
Couch talks is the special bonus episode of You Need Therapy where kat answers questions that you send to kathryn@youneedtheraoy.com.. This week Kat talks about what to do when two people you love don’t get along.
Follow Kat on Instagram: @Kat.Defatta
Follow the podcast Instagram: @YouNeedTherapyPodcast
Have a question, concern, guest idea, something else? Reach Kat at: Kathryn@youneedtherapyodcast.com
Heard about Three Cords Therapy but don’t know what it is? Click here!
Produced by: @HoustonTilley
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
couch Talks. My name is Kat and I'm the host
and catch Talks is the special bonus episode of You
Need Therapy where I answer questions that listeners you guys
send into me and you can send those to Catherine
at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. So if you
(00:29):
have a question, send it my way. Catherine is spelled
k A t h r y N the fun way
to spell Catherine. Also, if you have larger questions or
ideas or I guess desires for ideas for me to
cover in a regular Monday episode, you are more than
welcome to send those into UM my email as well.
You can also d m them to me. You can
(00:51):
d m them to cat dot de fata my page
or the podcast page You Need Therapy Podcast. You can
also follow those pages if you feel called to do so. Also,
while we're chatting, before we get into um this episode,
I want to kindly remind slash Ask that you guys,
if you haven't yet rate the podcast, uh, it means
(01:12):
a lot and it's very helpful for us. And if
you have constructive feedback, you can email that to me.
I'd rather you email that than post on the podcast page.
Although I guess you're welcome to do whatever you please.
I would just rather get it in an email. But
if you could rate and review the podcast, and you
haven't yet, that would be so awesome. I would be
so grateful for you doing that. Now, each week, I
(01:32):
read one email and then I talked through my thoughts
and quick reminder before I get into my thoughts that
this is not therapy. This is just me giving you
some thoughts. And I happened to be a therapist. It's
not therapy and it's not a replacement. So here is
our email. We keep them all anonymous. So here it is.
I'm going to read it and then we'll chat. To
(01:53):
make a long story short, my boyfriend moved to my
area and started a new job, carrying his own stressors
and anxiety, and it started to take a toll. This
led to a large blowout anxiety attack for him, which
triggered my friend, who is really more of a sister
to me, to a point where it's now straining our relationship.
I ended up leaving and going back home for a
month out of nowhere, and I just left everyone. This
(02:15):
is very out of character for me and also made
me hurt those close to me. The time away was
good and allowed me to process, but I regret the
choice and still don't understand why I went in that direction.
I guess it was me allowing myself to have the day,
well month, I needed to have. While we are now
starting to get better in both relationships, it's still a
struggle to even bring up his name to her or
(02:36):
her to him. It's a battle slash mix of having
your family not liking who you're with, and a point
of can we ever get back to a place where
we can all be together. I'm hopeful it can get
back semi to what it was, but I'm fully aware
it's a long shot due to the damages in the
past for others. I guess what I'm getting at is
I know it's not my job or placed to fix it,
(02:57):
but I also don't know how to really go about
Ryan to facilitate or bridge conversations in the right time
to help them heal. Okay, so this is a great conversation,
and I think that a lot of us have probably
had similar experiences because relationships are hard, and when someone
very close to you does not like your partner, things
can get weird, and whether it's a friend or a
(03:18):
family member, whoever, it just can get really weird and tough. Now,
I'm missing a lot of important pieces from this story,
so I can't really speak to the exact experience, but
I still think that it would be valuable to talk
about this generally, because, like I said, I think a
lot of us have had some kind of experience like this.
So what do we do when two people we love
and are close to don't get along, don't like each other,
(03:40):
have some kind of conflict. Questions that come up as
I'm thinking about this are like, are we just take sides?
And if we don't take sides or we betray somebody,
is it our job to fix it? Is that our
job to encourage healing? Like? Where is our role? Do
we just sit there? Do we ignore it? Like? What
do we do? And I think most of these answers
are relative, But what I do know for certain is
(04:00):
that the responsibility of healing in relationships lies within the relationship.
So we can't make other people authentically change, which can
be a hard pill to swallow sometimes because that feels
kind of like we have no power in that instance.
We don't like we don't have the ability to force
people to authentically change. What you do have control over, though,
(04:22):
is how you set your own boundaries and how you
approach those relationships. So maybe it's hard or awkward when
you bring that person up to the other person, so
maybe you create an internal boundary for yourself not to
do that. Or maybe it's hard for you to hear
each of those people talk about the other, So maybe
there's a boundary of like, we don't talk about that person,
and that's hard because it feels like you have to
(04:42):
cut part of your life out. But also that might
be what you need in this interim where there's conflict
in order to keep those relationships as healthy as you
can within each of them. Now, what we also know
when it comes to conflict is that there are always
three versions. Right, we have person one person to and
then we have the truth. However, with that, each person's
(05:03):
version is their truth and their perspective, and we have
to we have to remember that I don't mean that
in a cheesy like it's my truth, like that is
their truth, that is what they see. And a lot
of times what happens when we have conflict is we
think that to resolve it. We must get the other
person to understand our truth and agree. So understand and
agree rather than gain an understanding of theirs. When this happens,
(05:26):
instead of repair, often each person's story just starts contending
against the other. One of the issues of trying to
get the other person to hear you rather than you
hear them is that we are bringing all our stuff
into the quote unquote ring. Okay, So if they are
looking through their screen and you're looking through yours, trying
to convince each other that your screen is reality, then
(05:47):
you will just literally be sitting there trying to do
this dance until someone has a meltdown or explodes or
an eruption, or you just give up. So when our
motive is to get the other person to understand us,
there's initial me versus you comes one sided, and therefore
someone has to win and someone has to lose. And
then what about the relationship where the most healthy experience
(06:09):
is there's person one person too, and there's relationship. We
want the relationship to win. That's we were trying to
get on the same team rather than playing against each other.
The relationship is the team. So if you look at
the situation, an attempt to understand the other person's experience.
You don't have to agree with it, Okay, Understanding doesn't
mean we agree. I can understand something that makes sense.
(06:33):
I don't agree with it, but it makes sense. We
can understand something without agreeing with it. So that's what
I want to encourage people to move towards in these situations,
an attempt to understand the other person rather than attempt
to convince the other person I'm right. It may not
be your experience, right, it probably won't be like when
you understand their's it may not be yours. But if
(06:55):
you can gain a deeper understanding of the other person's experience,
some of your pain may be alleviated just from that,
just from being like, oh, I guess I made some
assumptions here, and they made some assumptions here. Now that
I know their experience, I know my assumptions might be
a little off. So that's within the conflict right now.
(07:16):
In this in this conversation and this email, we're kind
of talking about like what do I do if I'm
outside of it? So I've already said, well, you can't
control it, you can't fix it, you can't do the
healing and when you're on the outside, there's also an
element of patients. You might be ready for resolve and
repair before the actual players in the conflict are right,
so they might need some more cooling off. You may
(07:36):
have done that, or maybe you didn't need any cooling off,
but they might need a little bit of space. And
so there's an element of patients first, and then the
solution to figuring out when the right time is for
you to support them right, So like when is enough patients?
When do I when do I bring this up or
any of that very simple, it's very simple to figure
that out. There's not one answer, but it's very simple
to help you find the answer to figure out. I
(07:58):
believe it's completely fair to express how the conflict affects
you as the third person. I think it's completely fair
to express that and to express how you feel and
what may resemble like this triangle situation. It's also fair
to ask what they may need in order to eventually
repair the relationship. So this is what I'm talking about,
This is what it might look like. So you're talking
(08:19):
to one of these people. Hey, oftentimes it feels like
I'm in the middle of a conflict that I don't
have any control over. It's really painful and it's really
scary to watch two very important people in my life
carry the beliefs about each other that I have heard
both of you express. Now. I know I cannot fix
or do the repairing of this relationship myself, but it
is something that I hope can happen. So when you
(08:41):
are ready to work towards healing, can you please let
me know how I can support you in doing so?
So very very simple, right, So you're just saying, hey,
this is hard for me. Hey, I really want I
would really want you guys to work this out, and
I know that it's not my decision, but I do
want you to know that I hope this is something
that can happen. And then I do want you to
know that I'm here for you when that time is.
I would like to know how I can support you.
(09:03):
Now there's a difference between how how can I support
you and how can I fix this? What can I
do to fix it? Versus what can I do to
support you? Because I know I can't fix it, but
I can support you as somebody that loves you and
loves this other person. So that's what we can do,
and then that person can respond and say like, hey,
I hear you. I don't know how they're gonna respond,
but like, I will let you know when that time
(09:25):
is Thank you so much, I'll let you know. You're saying, hey,
I'm here, whenever you're ready. You tell me when the
time is right. They say, hey, okay, I'll let you know.
That's how you know, and that's how you figure out
when the best time for you to help bridge or
facilitate some kind of conversation or healing environment. You put
that back in their hands because we can't do that.
(09:45):
We can't force it, and when we force it, it's manufactured.
Bill's resentment. Lots of stuff can happen. So tough situations, right,
These are tough situations, and there's not an easy way
out of it at all. There's not an easy way
to fix it. And so in all of that, I
would also say, find something that helps you kind of
cope with a discomfort of it all. Whether that is
(10:06):
journaline or whether that is going to therapy, or whether
that is I don't know, taking a bubble bath, or
maybe you need to scream into your pillow. I think
that with all the toughness. It's okay to also need
some copy and something to help alleviate some of the
anxiety and pain and discomfort that you're feeling. So I
hope that's helpful. Again, If you guys have questions, send
(10:26):
them to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com
and then I will be back with you guys on
Monday for another full episode. In the meantime, I hope
you guys have the day you need to have and uh,
I'll talk to you guys later
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
couch Talks. My name is Kat and I'm the host
and catch Talks is the special bonus episode of You
Need Therapy where I answer questions that listeners you guys
send into me and you can send those to Catherine
at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. So if you
(00:29):
have a question, send it my way. Catherine is spelled
k A t h r y N the fun way
to spell Catherine. Also, if you have larger questions or
ideas or I guess desires for ideas for me to
cover in a regular Monday episode, you are more than
welcome to send those into UM my email as well.
You can also d m them to me. You can
(00:51):
d m them to cat dot de fata my page
or the podcast page You Need Therapy Podcast. You can
also follow those pages if you feel called to do so. Also,
while we're chatting, before we get into um this episode,
I want to kindly remind slash Ask that you guys,
if you haven't yet rate the podcast, uh, it means
(01:12):
a lot and it's very helpful for us. And if
you have constructive feedback, you can email that to me.
I'd rather you email that than post on the podcast page.
Although I guess you're welcome to do whatever you please.
I would just rather get it in an email. But
if you could rate and review the podcast, and you
haven't yet, that would be so awesome. I would be
so grateful for you doing that. Now, each week, I
(01:32):
read one email and then I talked through my thoughts
and quick reminder before I get into my thoughts that
this is not therapy. This is just me giving you
some thoughts. And I happened to be a therapist. It's
not therapy and it's not a replacement. So here is
our email. We keep them all anonymous. So here it is.
I'm going to read it and then we'll chat. To
(01:53):
make a long story short, my boyfriend moved to my
area and started a new job, carrying his own stressors
and anxiety, and it started to take a toll. This
led to a large blowout anxiety attack for him, which
triggered my friend, who is really more of a sister
to me, to a point where it's now straining our relationship.
I ended up leaving and going back home for a
month out of nowhere, and I just left everyone. This
(02:15):
is very out of character for me and also made
me hurt those close to me. The time away was
good and allowed me to process, but I regret the
choice and still don't understand why I went in that direction.
I guess it was me allowing myself to have the day,
well month, I needed to have. While we are now
starting to get better in both relationships, it's still a
struggle to even bring up his name to her or
(02:36):
her to him. It's a battle slash mix of having
your family not liking who you're with, and a point
of can we ever get back to a place where
we can all be together. I'm hopeful it can get
back semi to what it was, but I'm fully aware
it's a long shot due to the damages in the
past for others. I guess what I'm getting at is
I know it's not my job or placed to fix it,
(02:57):
but I also don't know how to really go about
Ryan to facilitate or bridge conversations in the right time
to help them heal. Okay, so this is a great conversation,
and I think that a lot of us have probably
had similar experiences because relationships are hard, and when someone
very close to you does not like your partner, things
can get weird, and whether it's a friend or a
(03:18):
family member, whoever, it just can get really weird and tough. Now,
I'm missing a lot of important pieces from this story,
so I can't really speak to the exact experience, but
I still think that it would be valuable to talk
about this generally, because, like I said, I think a
lot of us have had some kind of experience like this.
So what do we do when two people we love
and are close to don't get along, don't like each other,
(03:40):
have some kind of conflict. Questions that come up as
I'm thinking about this are like, are we just take sides?
And if we don't take sides or we betray somebody,
is it our job to fix it? Is that our
job to encourage healing? Like? Where is our role? Do
we just sit there? Do we ignore it? Like? What
do we do? And I think most of these answers
are relative, But what I do know for certain is
(04:00):
that the responsibility of healing in relationships lies within the relationship.
So we can't make other people authentically change, which can
be a hard pill to swallow sometimes because that feels
kind of like we have no power in that instance.
We don't like we don't have the ability to force
people to authentically change. What you do have control over, though,
(04:22):
is how you set your own boundaries and how you
approach those relationships. So maybe it's hard or awkward when
you bring that person up to the other person, so
maybe you create an internal boundary for yourself not to
do that. Or maybe it's hard for you to hear
each of those people talk about the other, So maybe
there's a boundary of like, we don't talk about that person,
and that's hard because it feels like you have to
(04:42):
cut part of your life out. But also that might
be what you need in this interim where there's conflict
in order to keep those relationships as healthy as you
can within each of them. Now, what we also know
when it comes to conflict is that there are always
three versions. Right, we have person one person to and
then we have the truth. However, with that, each person's
(05:03):
version is their truth and their perspective, and we have
to we have to remember that I don't mean that
in a cheesy like it's my truth, like that is
their truth, that is what they see. And a lot
of times what happens when we have conflict is we
think that to resolve it. We must get the other
person to understand our truth and agree. So understand and
agree rather than gain an understanding of theirs. When this happens,
(05:26):
instead of repair, often each person's story just starts contending
against the other. One of the issues of trying to
get the other person to hear you rather than you
hear them is that we are bringing all our stuff
into the quote unquote ring. Okay, So if they are
looking through their screen and you're looking through yours, trying
to convince each other that your screen is reality, then
(05:47):
you will just literally be sitting there trying to do
this dance until someone has a meltdown or explodes or
an eruption, or you just give up. So when our
motive is to get the other person to understand us,
there's initial me versus you comes one sided, and therefore
someone has to win and someone has to lose. And
then what about the relationship where the most healthy experience
(06:09):
is there's person one person too, and there's relationship. We
want the relationship to win. That's we were trying to
get on the same team rather than playing against each other.
The relationship is the team. So if you look at
the situation, an attempt to understand the other person's experience.
You don't have to agree with it, Okay, Understanding doesn't
mean we agree. I can understand something that makes sense.
(06:33):
I don't agree with it, but it makes sense. We
can understand something without agreeing with it. So that's what
I want to encourage people to move towards in these situations,
an attempt to understand the other person rather than attempt
to convince the other person I'm right. It may not
be your experience, right, it probably won't be like when
you understand their's it may not be yours. But if
(06:55):
you can gain a deeper understanding of the other person's experience,
some of your pain may be alleviated just from that,
just from being like, oh, I guess I made some
assumptions here, and they made some assumptions here. Now that
I know their experience, I know my assumptions might be
a little off. So that's within the conflict right now.
(07:16):
In this in this conversation and this email, we're kind
of talking about like what do I do if I'm
outside of it? So I've already said, well, you can't
control it, you can't fix it, you can't do the
healing and when you're on the outside, there's also an
element of patients. You might be ready for resolve and
repair before the actual players in the conflict are right,
so they might need some more cooling off. You may
(07:36):
have done that, or maybe you didn't need any cooling off,
but they might need a little bit of space. And
so there's an element of patients first, and then the
solution to figuring out when the right time is for
you to support them right, So like when is enough patients?
When do I when do I bring this up or
any of that very simple, it's very simple to figure
that out. There's not one answer, but it's very simple
to help you find the answer to figure out. I
(07:58):
believe it's completely fair to express how the conflict affects
you as the third person. I think it's completely fair
to express that and to express how you feel and
what may resemble like this triangle situation. It's also fair
to ask what they may need in order to eventually
repair the relationship. So this is what I'm talking about,
This is what it might look like. So you're talking
(08:19):
to one of these people. Hey, oftentimes it feels like
I'm in the middle of a conflict that I don't
have any control over. It's really painful and it's really
scary to watch two very important people in my life
carry the beliefs about each other that I have heard
both of you express. Now. I know I cannot fix
or do the repairing of this relationship myself, but it
is something that I hope can happen. So when you
(08:41):
are ready to work towards healing, can you please let
me know how I can support you in doing so?
So very very simple, right, So you're just saying, hey,
this is hard for me. Hey, I really want I
would really want you guys to work this out, and
I know that it's not my decision, but I do
want you to know that I hope this is something
that can happen. And then I do want you to
know that I'm here for you when that time is.
I would like to know how I can support you.
(09:03):
Now there's a difference between how how can I support
you and how can I fix this? What can I
do to fix it? Versus what can I do to
support you? Because I know I can't fix it, but
I can support you as somebody that loves you and
loves this other person. So that's what we can do,
and then that person can respond and say like, hey,
I hear you. I don't know how they're gonna respond,
but like, I will let you know when that time
(09:25):
is Thank you so much, I'll let you know. You're saying, hey,
I'm here, whenever you're ready. You tell me when the
time is right. They say, hey, okay, I'll let you know.
That's how you know, and that's how you figure out
when the best time for you to help bridge or
facilitate some kind of conversation or healing environment. You put
that back in their hands because we can't do that.
(09:45):
We can't force it, and when we force it, it's manufactured.
Bill's resentment. Lots of stuff can happen. So tough situations, right,
These are tough situations, and there's not an easy way
out of it at all. There's not an easy way
to fix it. And so in all of that, I
would also say, find something that helps you kind of
cope with a discomfort of it all. Whether that is
(10:06):
journaline or whether that is going to therapy, or whether
that is I don't know, taking a bubble bath, or
maybe you need to scream into your pillow. I think
that with all the toughness. It's okay to also need
some copy and something to help alleviate some of the
anxiety and pain and discomfort that you're feeling. So I
hope that's helpful. Again, If you guys have questions, send
(10:26):
them to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com
and then I will be back with you guys on
Monday for another full episode. In the meantime, I hope
you guys have the day you need to have and uh,
I'll talk to you guys later
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.