November 15, 2024 • 43 mins
In therapy, process talk occurs when the therapist and client stop conversational back and forth, and move into a posture of evaluation -- specifically, they might examine what's happening in that back and forth between them. They notice how things are feeling, what emotions are coming up and when, what reactions they have to the contents of the conversation. In so doing, it is very common that the observations made in process talk end up having a transformative and illuminating power about the contents -- whatever the client came in to talk about, process talk ends up being as important or more important, because it reveals things about the presenting problem that are not obvious by staring at it so directly. Taking a cue from that, Ryan & Nicole engage in process talk of their own about how things are going between them as it relates to the podcast, and also reveal that immediately before doing so, they encountered a fight in their relationship which shaped the conversation.
Discussed: content and process in therapy, process talk, vulnerability, self-criticism, shame, judgment, tension, harshness in communication, process talk as central in understanding broader relationship implications, and more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is Ryan Thomas Neace. And this is Nicole Neace. And this is the Closer Podcast.
(00:13):
Hi everyone. Welcome to the intro for Episode 3, which is called Process Talk.
So, in therapy, there are essentially two things going on all the time. At least this is how I slice it up.
I've never heard anyone else describe it this way. Others may. Or may have some permutation of it.
(00:39):
But it's content and there is process. Two things happening all the time.
Content, as I define it, is simply whatever we happen to be talking about in therapy on any given day.
It might be family of origin. It might be what's going on at work. It might be a romantic partnership.
(01:00):
It might be conversations with children. It might be something from your past, something from your present.
But it's just the contents. It's whatever you bring. It is also at the level of the contents that people bring in a problem.
Hey, this thing is going on in my life. And so in some large or small way, we may be talking about that on any given day.
(01:24):
And all these other things I've just mentioned as sort of adjuncts to that.
Okay, so that's content. Process, as I define it, is largely about what is transpiring between the therapist and the client.
So in other words, if you go into a coffee shop with someone and you're having a conversation and it's just a regular old conversation,
(01:49):
you're thinking some things and I'm thinking some things and we're sitting across from one another.
But we're, generally speaking, unless we're particularly intimate and even then this is a particular kind of intimacy,
we probably don't say a lot of those things, the things that we're thinking that you're talking and I'm looking at you and I'm noticing some things about you.
(02:13):
I'm noticing your hair or I'm noticing the kind of force with which you speak about a particular subject.
Or I'm thinking about something that you told me six months ago, how this story connects to that.
And I'm wondering whether you see that connection. A lot of times we don't say this stuff.
In therapy, we do. And that's process talk.
(02:37):
So another way of thinking about it is that you and I are having a conversation and we say pause on that conversation. Pause on the contents.
And we're going to climb up on a ladder together and we're going to look down at the two of us talking and we're going to say,
Hey, I noticed that you're doing this. Talk to me about that. I noticed that while you're talking about your relationship with your partner, you are doing some other things.
(03:04):
Your volume goes up. Your rate of speech goes up. Right.
Or you might say to me, Hey, Ryan, you were asking me a question about this. And I'm not really sure why you're asking me that.
And sometimes when you ask me questions that I'm unfamiliar with the purpose, I get nervous and that triggers this thing.
Right. And so we're talking about all these little relational pieces and the real magic in therapy actually happens at the level of the process.
(03:35):
People come in thinking that it's about the content, which is to say you come in saying to yourself,
I have problem X and therapist Ryan is going to help me with problem X by providing resolution X.
And it almost never works that way. And as a matter of fact, instead, most of the magic comes from this talk.
(03:57):
Why? Because we are typically wounded and have problems in relationships and we are also find healing and sort of resolution in relationship.
So, in other words, what you come to talk about, you know, again, let's say you're having anxiety in your life is every what's every bit as important about what's every bit as important as that is, in fact, what happens when we try to talk about it.
(04:31):
Imagine this. You come in to talk with me about your anxiety and somewhere in just trying to get to know you and help you.
And you run into a bunch of interesting data about what's happening between us.
And guess what? A lot of times that data actually holds keys to what's going on with your anxiety.
Keys that we wouldn't get to if we stay over here all the time in the land of I need coping mechanisms to help me with my anxiety.
(05:00):
So I hope I hope this is making sense. It's sort of this idea that like most people come in with a definition or way of relating to their problems that from that perspective, they are stuck.
They're at a dead end. As a matter of fact, that's why they're talking to me because they've talked with their mom and their dad or their teacher or their their pastor or their boss and or their partner.
(05:27):
And they've heard, oh, if I could I could I could do if I could just move past this, if I could just do this, everything would get better.
So a lot of people know. But the problem is they can't do that thing.
And so it's really no longer about the thing. It's about what's preventing the thing from from resolving.
And you discover what's preventing the thing from resolving as much or more in what's transpiring between you and your therapist and talking about that.
(05:56):
As you do like brainstorming five ways to resolve my anxiety, you know, before bed each night, which, by the way, you can get from Chad GPT.
By the way, parentheses, most many or most therapists don't know anything I just told you.
And so if you've never had I would say a conservatively about 70 percent of the therapists that I meet only do the first kind of work, which is this sort of problem resolution mode.
(06:25):
If you've never met a therapist that works the other way, I encourage you to haunt from one.
Maybe some somewhere down the road we'll do an episode about that.
Here's the thing. And I'm going to shut up now after this.
Nikki and I wanted to kind of stop and have process talk about how we're doing so far with this podcast.
(06:46):
And like we want to stop, climb up on the ladder and look down at the two of us doing our first two podcasts and kind of ask ourselves.
And each other, like what are we noticing?
And is there anything we need to talk about?
And is there anything that that reveals?
When we tried to do that, we actually got in a fight.
(07:14):
And we did not record the fight, though I'm not sure it would have been for public consumption.
And that's the weird thing that maybe why I'm doing this preemptive intro anyways is like we are trying to figure out what closer means.
Does it mean you like listening in like a fly on the wall when we fight?
(07:37):
I think we're willing to do that if it seems like a thing.
We're willing to give you some of that.
But mostly, I guess I wanted to point out that seemed like we kind of needed to fight to be able to talk about what we did end up talking about in process talk.
(07:58):
And maybe that's the important part for you to know.
And simply that, oh, yeah, we fight.
We're typically a higher conflict couple, meaning simply if there isn't occasional conflict, it's sort of bizarre to us.
Though we work as hard as anybody I know at sort of mitigating that.
(08:21):
So that's the content and process talk.
That's the backdrop that you'll sort of need to know going in is that we have also just had a fight right before we recorded this.
And so what you're hearing here is kind of a freshly plowed field.
(08:47):
So how's this going?
Like, you know, we've listened to the first couple, we know what we experienced during them, and then we know what we experienced listening to them.
Yeah.
(09:08):
What are you noticing about yourself, about us?
I think what I'm noticing the most about myself, or at least the most after listening to the second podcast, was there is this part of me that has I mean, I arguably have never had an opportunity to listen to myself or watch myself with enough time or frequency to even gain this knowledge.
(09:38):
But we were driving during or I was driving during the last episode, and I was focusing on three or four things outside of what we were talking about.
And I, in the moment until they got too distracting, thought I was doing it really well.
And I was like, Oh, I'm, yeah, I can I can answer these questions.
(10:01):
I can drive the car.
I can whatever.
And I'll be just fine.
And then I had to go to the bathroom and that started getting really distracting how badly I had to go to the bathroom.
And I still thought that I was present in the conversation, but listening back to myself.
(10:26):
I can see the ways in which I was sort of only half present, because the pace of my voice or the way that I was saying something or even just trying to get out a sentence was so jumbled at times that it was like, Oh, and I know we've talked about this in the past that I can have this tendency to like, leave a conversation.
(10:55):
And I had never experienced myself that way.
And so listening to it, I'm like, Oh, is that what that sounds like?
And then it was like getting insight into what you were talking about.
And I started to have a lot of shame about that, like, at certain parts.
So what you noticed is that for a variety of reasons, you can hear that you are not present intermittently in a way that you're connecting to larger, like, this is a thing.
(11:30):
This is stuff that we've run into, like, on our own, you mean?
Yeah.
And then correspondingly, when you recognize that your sort of second reaction is shame, like in real time.
And shame in a new way, like a felt in a new way.
(11:52):
It's a new kind of shame.
Yeah, awesome.
Like in a way that like, I don't know how to describe it other than to use reality television when people talk about going back and watching themselves on TV and learning a lot about themselves.
Because when else do you get an insight into yourself, other than in something like that.
(12:20):
Or at least in that kind of way.
This feels like that.
I'm seeing myself through a different lens than I have historically had opportunity to see myself.
And part of that is exciting and there's a lot of curiosity there and I'm happy to be learning.
(12:43):
And then in ways that it touches on the things that I feel insecure about from time to time, it creates the shame.
At least as I'm currently understanding it because I feel like I'm still processing through like what I'm learning about myself.
Because I think I use the words I felt stupid.
(13:07):
Like listening to.
Yeah.
Like even now, saying that out loud again is painful to think about talking about myself like that.
(13:30):
But that is that was one of the first thoughts that I had.
So the feeling of shame and you think you're thinking is that you, you heard yourself when you think I sound stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah. In a way that.
(13:55):
If we talk about sort of like the core ways we interact with people and those sorts of things like I hold a lot of things close to the chest and I don't.
I don't reveal certain parts of myself to a ton of people, only a certain few.
And this is a very vulnerable thing to be doing to be opening myself up to any number of like people I'll probably never meet.
(14:21):
And all three people that.
And thinking like.
They're going to hear the areas that I need to work on.
And that's embarrassing.
Like I want to present myself as more competent than I felt I sounded in that podcast.
(14:45):
Yeah, I certainly understand that.
And then I think subsequently and then having a reaction to you because I'm feeling that way.
(15:09):
Right now, if we talk about what happened when I'm looking at you and I'm trying to assess what your face is saying, I'm going, Oh, am I doing it?
Am I am I being stupid?
Am I do I sound dumb? What am I doing? Should I fix something?
(15:30):
Yeah, I'm sort of hesitant to interact with it too much, but I definitely have.
Correct me if I'm wrong. This is all as a result of listening to during the podcast itself.
Yeah.
What can you say about that?
What can you say about now knowing that this is what you think and feel after you listen again.
(15:53):
They have time to react and then interact with me about it and which didn't go well.
And which wasn't all you by a large margin.
But what was your awareness of it in the moment while doing the podcast?
Well, what are you aware of in real time when we're interacting?
I think that's the thing that sort of feels eye opening to me is I was aware that like, for instance, I really have to go to the bathroom and it's distracting.
(16:22):
And I'm driving a car in LA traffic and I don't know where the exit for the bathroom is.
Like I was aware of all of those things.
I was also aware of the conversation we were having and what we were talking about.
It very much interested me, but I thought that I was carrying both of those things pretty well.
(16:43):
Like I was like, oh, no, I mean, I'm as present as one can be when you have to go to the bathroom and you're driving a car and having a conversation, which I don't have a lot of like that's not good enough or it is good enough.
Like there's no like strong value judgment on it.
The value judgment came afterwards.
Which was what again?
You sound stupid.
(17:06):
Because I was realizing I would post it that I wasn't actually carrying it all so well.
Yeah, which, which, by the way, those are, of course, two different things.
You weren't carrying this as well as you thought you were.
Yeah, you sound stupid.
Yes.
It's almost like you feel stupid and that's the shame.
It's like you feel stupid or you feel shame.
And you think that you're stupid because you're like, oh my God, you sound like a moron and you don't even realize it.
(17:33):
It's like a combination of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that certainly fits my experience of trying to interact with you around the subject matter, which is to say that like, and this is what happens with June is a lot like.
I am actually not thinking that you sound stupid.
(17:58):
I am occasionally thinking that you're may not be carrying this as well as you think.
Like I'm aware of your, that you're just distracted.
And for the variety of reasons that you have, some of them like needing to go to the bathroom.
I'm like, can you just say you need to go to the bathroom and we just stop and go to the bathroom?
(18:19):
But in the absence of that, I am in kind of like feeling like at times.
Because I know you so well, and I know what it's like when you are more, when you are less intermittently interrupted.
I am kind of aware like, hey, yeah, we're not like, and it's okay.
Like a lot of other people won't, you know, people listening or whatever might not even know.
(18:43):
The point is sometimes I will, and this is like thematic for us, right? It's like I go to bring your attention to that.
And then it's either kind of like, no, I'm not doing that or fuck you or yeah, I am doing that.
(19:05):
No problem. I'm going to work on that.
And then it kind of, I am often unaware of whether or not there is any track work being done there.
Or yeah, I am, you're right, there is something going on there. Huh. I'm going to look at it. And you do.
So it's like one of four possibilities in that way.
(19:28):
But the point is that when I go to try to interact with you about it,
particularly if you have one of the first two, which is no, that's not happening or you're angry with me very immediately.
Or in time enough, like, yeah, I'm going to work on that.
And then, you know, two years later, we're like, oh my gosh, we're going around the same bend again.
(19:53):
I am then upset with you.
And then I think what happens where I and I end up feeling a great deal of shame around this myself is that I get pissed.
And then before long, I am kind of feeling the way that you're describing you feeling.
(20:17):
And that I do like as God, as my witness, man, I feel super confused.
Like, wait a minute. And this is what we end up discovering a lot of times on the back end of a fight.
It's like, I'm like, no, but babe, I wasn't actually thinking any of those things at first.
It's like in the one therapy office that we used to work in, there's, you know,
I had the clients sitting in front of the big ceiling to floor glass windows and sometimes birds would fly by behind their head.
(20:43):
And I'm like, oh, like trying to like the glass. Yeah, yeah.
Right. Yeah, right. Gosh, that's tragic. But yes, like and one eye is tracking the bird and I'm all no, no, focus on.
And so it's like one of those situations where I'm watching and I'm like, hey, babe, don't focus on the bird.
Just don't forget we're here.
And then I'm like, whoa, how did I become the thing that you are feeling? Yeah.
(21:07):
And we know that this happens for us going the other direction as well.
That like you end up feeling sometimes drawn in in a way, I think.
I don't know if you if you experience that or not, actually, do you you sometimes feel drawn into my projection?
(21:29):
No, I mean, I do think that does happen.
I think probably on the times where I'm either angry about it or I don't think it's happening on one of the denial sides, it is it's more I get stuck on.
What is he saying? Where is that coming from that? I'm not experiencing that.
(21:52):
And then like the second layer of the frustration is and he's saying something to me.
And I read it as not care and support or interest or intrigue or whatever.
I read it as like critique, which goes back to the things we've talked about already in the other podcasts that I I have some sort of narratives that it feeds.
(22:17):
Well, it isn't care and support exactly. But neither is it critique. It's supposed to be like just data.
Yeah, it's like you're driving down the road and you start to drift and you start hear the whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop.
Yeah. Which to hear you tell it, I'm more prone to do than you, although I disagree.
(22:38):
But like it's like, oh, you're not a bad guy because you're going whoop whoop whoop whoop.
You just need to move the wheel over again, which when I hear it, I feel sad for you.
Because it's like you don't have a neutral evaluation space within you.
(23:04):
Yeah, you don't have a space to like take in data. And there's this is a no judgment zone sort of thing.
Yeah. It's like and by no judgment, we mean we're not making appraisals at all.
We're not saying you started to get outside the safety lane demarcations and therefore you are.
(23:26):
That statement is not in there. Yeah.
But I do. I think sometimes I experience that so resolutely with you that again, then I find that I am upset with you that that is the case.
And then I am angry with you. And I'm like sort of like a why are you like this sort of thing?
Which I think you experience when I get mad. Yeah, I was just thinking as you were saying that that.
(23:54):
I do experience myself being able to receive that from people I maybe give less.
Of myself or I care less necessarily about their appraisal.
I can take some sort of feedback and be like, OK, and like move on with it.
(24:20):
I think I hold and it's twisted the way that I see it.
Like I hold your view and experience of me so closely that it's it's hard to not read it in this whatever this twisted version is sometimes.
(24:42):
Like sometimes I really can hear it because one of I mean if we talk about one of the very first things that ever attracted me to you was when we were writing each other back and forth online.
And you would write these really beautiful long emails and ask all kinds of great questions and I would respond with mine right.
I can remember saying to my mom one of the very first things that I liked about you the most was that I felt understood.
(25:12):
And that like when I would say a word wrong or if I didn't have a clear understanding on something instead of treating me like I was stupid, you were trying to help me better understand it.
And I never felt judged or critiqued in that way. And that was really, really important to me.
And it still is really, really important to me. But somewhere I have lost the plot and I have started at times taking that and turning it as that is what you're doing.
(25:45):
Even when later I can come back and very clearly see that that's not what you're doing.
Yeah.
Well and in between month three of our long distance before the short distance courtship and however far we're in now, which is how far 16 and a half years.
(26:14):
A lot of shit's gone down.
Some stuff has happened.
And you know obviously it's a lot of times past and there's like we're at such core inner layers of one another by this point.
This is what I was saying last time about things about us that are true.
(26:36):
That are kind of hard to not be true when you're at this this many concentric circles inward of intimacy. I don't know how we interact with each other and that isn't present, except that we keep calling for healing from ourselves or like of ourselves.
(26:57):
Because, as we're aware you calling it for me and me calling for you. I don't know.
I don't have the experience that me always calling for it from you, even with with good intention or stomping my foot because it's obstructed to some need of mine.
It just does not seem to remit and it's, it's what probably a lot of it is like trauma stuff dude when you get that buried.
(27:19):
Yeah, that that deep in as deep in as we are as intimate as we are.
It's like going to the hospital and somebody's got cancer and you thinking that you ask in real nice or real mean can talk them out of it.
It's like well it just kind of doesn't work that way. It's a similar principle. I'm not saying this is a cancer. I'm saying me asking for something to be true about you in the realm of healing that isn't.
(27:44):
And also, as confusing as it gets in there, and we sort of talked about this is where I like trauma centers meet one another.
We are genuinely confused about the details a lot of times. Yeah.
You know, so, so, can you say it again succinctly or what you noticed.
(28:14):
So far, what I've noticed so far.
Yeah, I mean I think it is it is that I, I'm learning things about myself that I just simply didn't have an opportunity to see before, and it's eye opening.
(28:36):
And it's a little hard.
And there's some hope in there.
It was sort of what I expected might happen, doing this together, which is whenever we do something and we do it.
(29:02):
There is always a little bit of pain and a little bit of growth and a little bit of good and ultimately change in there, and, and if we can stick with it, it ends up being successful.
And something we want to do again. And that is how I feel. So far, about this.
(29:32):
I think I'm also curious like what's happening for you.
So far in this process.
I'm mostly the things that I noticed.
(29:57):
Both in real time.
In real time I noticed tension between us.
Like, therapists often accused of being pathology focused, so perhaps that's something that's transpiring here, but like I noticed tension and actually though I'm not calling that tension, negative or bad.
(30:23):
I just noticed that when we talk.
And you kind of said this in our fight the other day, and at least in this way I agree with you.
When we talk. We are reading each other the whole time. And sometimes we don't like what's transpiring between us. Right. And we work hard to keep that subdued.
(30:46):
And I notice it when we're around anybody, any, any, any, I certainly noticed it with just us but maybe I'm arguably less tuned into it when it's just us.
Like when we hang out with groups of friends, it's the same way. And so the thing that the podcast does is gives you at least an imaginary audience.
And so in front of an audience, I am like aware of how much I want my best foot to be forward.
(31:12):
And how important it is to me, not in the sense of like, I don't think of putting on an act, more like no, I want to show what I'm really, really capable of.
Yeah, when I dial it in, like, which is something that I think that I do well in therapy. Yeah, I
(31:36):
know, dude, it's really me. It is the best version of me, no doubt. If you were coming and paying somebody, wouldn't you want their best version or would you want their mediocre version?
Totally. You want the version that they, with their rear ends hanging out, you know, or you want the one where they've gotten it, you know, everything's put together and. Right.
I don't mean, again, even really, I don't think of the things, the tension between us as negative per se. I'm just aware it is present.
(32:06):
And maybe I do.
I have some sort of baseline
frustration.
And that's probably not an accident why I spent a better portion of the last podcast, saying, this isn't resolvable. This isn't resolvable. Why aren't you saying it's not resolvable? It's not resolvable.
(32:34):
That's what I sort of notice in person. And then I also notice that
through that, in spite of that, whatever, that we also work well together in some ways.
I think what I notice listening
(33:00):
is that
the way that I sound is harsher than I feel.
And I think I do have some yuck feelings around that.
(33:21):
Like there's some judgment rather immediately there.
Because, you know, the feedback over the years has certainly been that
I present in a way at times that is
(33:47):
the most common way people have tended to refer to it is intense.
Yeah.
And I'll never forget one time one of our friends, who's a psychologist, I was talking to him about
noticing that during my daughter's like fifth grade or something basketball games, she's looking up in the stands like all the time.
(34:13):
And it's like looking at me, looking at me, looking at me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, why are you looking at me? Just play the game. Stop checking in with me. Just play the game.
And my friend said, just check your face. Check the look on your face.
And like, so I go to do that the next game and I find that, oh my gosh, I have this scowl on my face for lack of a better term.
(34:39):
And the difficulty is that the
motivation behind what could rightly potentially be described as a scowl is not negative.
It is a certain level of focus and drive.
(35:01):
And like, it's like I take all of the energy that I'm feeling on the inside and I channel it up to my face and I'm like
burning laser holes in everything that I look at so that I, my mission in the universe is accomplished or something.
Yeah.
Right. And I can hear even in describing it like that. It's like, oh, this is, what are you doing? You're burning holes in everything.
(35:25):
So I think that was another thought that I had was this that like the way that I talk generally
is like
I have so much energy
in my body
that I think
(35:48):
is perhaps
atypical like others. Some others have it, but not a lot or something, because I just don't hear anybody interact with it like this very often.
A few. Enneagram type eights sometimes.
But they have to be super aware and a lot of them just aren't.
Yeah.
But like
(36:11):
it's like the force that it's like taking a gigantic portion of energy and then squeezing it through a straw.
And so when it comes out on the other end, yes, it comes out hard, fast and can go forever.
Yeah.
And I hear that when I talk to you and I think to myself like, oh, like this is a way that like if you had to like be party to this for a really long time,
(36:43):
regardless of its intent, it would have a like
hurtful outcome.
And I can explain how I got this way.
With real clarity. Yeah.
(37:04):
And not a lot of shame. Like I know how I both like nature and nurture. I know
for the most part, I think just, you know, 20 plus years of therapy, super hungry for personal mentorship.
Yeah. You know, I've never been without that since you've known me ever.
Agreed.
Like and sometimes multiple layers of it. Yes.
(37:27):
But knowing how I became this way is not really the same as
working with it effectively.
For a long time, I just hear this and I think that some of what comes up right is I want to change.
Then like, well,
somehow it's a thing that I tell clients, it's like not really about not doing it. It's about recognizing when you are.
(37:54):
Right. And then sort of asking myself, hey, are you right? So, so maybe the thing that both of us are noticing here is that there's a certain lack of awareness.
Yeah.
That's what I was just thinking.
Yeah.
Well, if you fix yours, then.
I guess like, you know, it's that's the first time you said that to me.
(38:19):
So it's powerful for me to hear you say that in terms of your reflection of the podcast and stuff.
It's the way or sometimes the tone or combination of both.
I mean, I haven't had that experience listening to the podcast of you, but I've had that experience.
So like I can identify with that a little bit.
What I was thinking is that as you were sharing that and then thinking about my own reflection.
(38:46):
Is it it it comes back to that thing that I was saying about change and like an opportunity like.
It is sort of embarrassing to talk about that for public consumption and then know that it could have any number of responses, good or bad or anywhere in between.
(39:13):
But I'm like thankful that we're like having this conversation and where this is that I'm having an opportunity to have this reflection about myself.
Because I do know that it is a source of things that we've talked about for years and years, as is the thing that you're saying.
And sometimes it is getting the opportunity to see it and hear it is the only thing that can really produce any kind of shift.
(39:45):
And so, you know what I mean? Like we were talking last week about the unresolvable issue.
I don't think this solves that issue, but is yet another way to keep changing.
Yeah, not to beat a dead horse, but it's like it's how you carry it.
No, actually, I think what we're saying is that we're not sure some of this can change.
So in light of that, would we like to carry it or how would we like to carry it or would like to carry it differently?
(40:13):
And then don't look now, but because you carry it differently, you do have the experience of a changing.
Right. Yeah.
And I'm realizing as we're saying it, that part of why I think I was loaded for a fight was that like I wanted to record this episode like all week.
(40:42):
Yeah.
And you weren't feeling well. Life was like, frankly, just in the way, not bad life, just life, work, kids.
Mostly that one schedule like us not having time at the end of the night.
Right.
Which we gladly give up when we need to. I don't know about gladly. We give it up when we need to.
(41:06):
Yeah.
Because the kids need stuff.
Yeah.
And so many of the things that they need, I remember being real gifts that for me that my parents did give me growing up.
Like they showed up. They did stuff.
Yeah.
(41:27):
Those are necessary gifts to give the kids. And also we are finite. So like all week long, I've been wanting, and I knew that you would have that reaction to what I said. I knew that you'd be like, wow, that is good for me to hear that you hear that.
And so I'm like pissed at you that we can't get to the thing.
Yeah.
I'm like, will you just shut up so I can do something nice for you? You know what I mean? It's like a really, but there it is again for me. I mean, that is, that's not only me, but that's one way that I can show up is like, will you shut up so I can do something nice for you?
(42:03):
Yeah.
And it's like, oh my gosh.
That doesn't always work. And also sometimes I just want you to shut up so I can do something nice for you.
Yeah.
So I think that's probably the end. Yeah, this is what process talk is. So in the context of therapy, by talking about what transpires in the relationship, seeing what you experienced on a moment by moment basis.
(42:37):
Sometimes you do that, like sort of literally in real time and sometimes it's like this where we're in, you know, week four of therapy and I say, Hey, how's this been going? And we talk about that in the sort of no uncertain terms.
This is a thing that we do in our lives. Like we stop and do this.
Like, how is this, what have you noticed, like this week about how this is going between us.
(43:00):
And yeah, you, you end up discovering things that you wouldn't discover certainly if you didn't stop and do that, but that like, you really do kind of have to go around the bend.
They give you data about other things that aren't just interpersonal dynamics. It's revelatory about larger things.
(43:21):
Yeah.
I like what you said.
That's good.
This is Ryan Thomas Neace. And this is Nicole Neace. And this is the Closer Podcast.
(00:13):
Hi everyone. Welcome to the intro for Episode 3, which is called Process Talk.
So, in therapy, there are essentially two things going on all the time. At least this is how I slice it up.
I've never heard anyone else describe it this way. Others may. Or may have some permutation of it.
(00:39):
But it's content and there is process. Two things happening all the time.
Content, as I define it, is simply whatever we happen to be talking about in therapy on any given day.
It might be family of origin. It might be what's going on at work. It might be a romantic partnership.
(01:00):
It might be conversations with children. It might be something from your past, something from your present.
But it's just the contents. It's whatever you bring. It is also at the level of the contents that people bring in a problem.
Hey, this thing is going on in my life. And so in some large or small way, we may be talking about that on any given day.
(01:24):
And all these other things I've just mentioned as sort of adjuncts to that.
Okay, so that's content. Process, as I define it, is largely about what is transpiring between the therapist and the client.
So in other words, if you go into a coffee shop with someone and you're having a conversation and it's just a regular old conversation,
(01:49):
you're thinking some things and I'm thinking some things and we're sitting across from one another.
But we're, generally speaking, unless we're particularly intimate and even then this is a particular kind of intimacy,
we probably don't say a lot of those things, the things that we're thinking that you're talking and I'm looking at you and I'm noticing some things about you.
(02:13):
I'm noticing your hair or I'm noticing the kind of force with which you speak about a particular subject.
Or I'm thinking about something that you told me six months ago, how this story connects to that.
And I'm wondering whether you see that connection. A lot of times we don't say this stuff.
In therapy, we do. And that's process talk.
(02:37):
So another way of thinking about it is that you and I are having a conversation and we say pause on that conversation. Pause on the contents.
And we're going to climb up on a ladder together and we're going to look down at the two of us talking and we're going to say,
Hey, I noticed that you're doing this. Talk to me about that. I noticed that while you're talking about your relationship with your partner, you are doing some other things.
(03:04):
Your volume goes up. Your rate of speech goes up. Right.
Or you might say to me, Hey, Ryan, you were asking me a question about this. And I'm not really sure why you're asking me that.
And sometimes when you ask me questions that I'm unfamiliar with the purpose, I get nervous and that triggers this thing.
Right. And so we're talking about all these little relational pieces and the real magic in therapy actually happens at the level of the process.
(03:35):
People come in thinking that it's about the content, which is to say you come in saying to yourself,
I have problem X and therapist Ryan is going to help me with problem X by providing resolution X.
And it almost never works that way. And as a matter of fact, instead, most of the magic comes from this talk.
(03:57):
Why? Because we are typically wounded and have problems in relationships and we are also find healing and sort of resolution in relationship.
So, in other words, what you come to talk about, you know, again, let's say you're having anxiety in your life is every what's every bit as important about what's every bit as important as that is, in fact, what happens when we try to talk about it.
(04:31):
Imagine this. You come in to talk with me about your anxiety and somewhere in just trying to get to know you and help you.
And you run into a bunch of interesting data about what's happening between us.
And guess what? A lot of times that data actually holds keys to what's going on with your anxiety.
Keys that we wouldn't get to if we stay over here all the time in the land of I need coping mechanisms to help me with my anxiety.
(05:00):
So I hope I hope this is making sense. It's sort of this idea that like most people come in with a definition or way of relating to their problems that from that perspective, they are stuck.
They're at a dead end. As a matter of fact, that's why they're talking to me because they've talked with their mom and their dad or their teacher or their their pastor or their boss and or their partner.
(05:27):
And they've heard, oh, if I could I could I could do if I could just move past this, if I could just do this, everything would get better.
So a lot of people know. But the problem is they can't do that thing.
And so it's really no longer about the thing. It's about what's preventing the thing from from resolving.
And you discover what's preventing the thing from resolving as much or more in what's transpiring between you and your therapist and talking about that.
(05:56):
As you do like brainstorming five ways to resolve my anxiety, you know, before bed each night, which, by the way, you can get from Chad GPT.
By the way, parentheses, most many or most therapists don't know anything I just told you.
And so if you've never had I would say a conservatively about 70 percent of the therapists that I meet only do the first kind of work, which is this sort of problem resolution mode.
(06:25):
If you've never met a therapist that works the other way, I encourage you to haunt from one.
Maybe some somewhere down the road we'll do an episode about that.
Here's the thing. And I'm going to shut up now after this.
Nikki and I wanted to kind of stop and have process talk about how we're doing so far with this podcast.
(06:46):
And like we want to stop, climb up on the ladder and look down at the two of us doing our first two podcasts and kind of ask ourselves.
And each other, like what are we noticing?
And is there anything we need to talk about?
And is there anything that that reveals?
When we tried to do that, we actually got in a fight.
(07:14):
And we did not record the fight, though I'm not sure it would have been for public consumption.
And that's the weird thing that maybe why I'm doing this preemptive intro anyways is like we are trying to figure out what closer means.
Does it mean you like listening in like a fly on the wall when we fight?
(07:37):
I think we're willing to do that if it seems like a thing.
We're willing to give you some of that.
But mostly, I guess I wanted to point out that seemed like we kind of needed to fight to be able to talk about what we did end up talking about in process talk.
(07:58):
And maybe that's the important part for you to know.
And simply that, oh, yeah, we fight.
We're typically a higher conflict couple, meaning simply if there isn't occasional conflict, it's sort of bizarre to us.
Though we work as hard as anybody I know at sort of mitigating that.
(08:21):
So that's the content and process talk.
That's the backdrop that you'll sort of need to know going in is that we have also just had a fight right before we recorded this.
And so what you're hearing here is kind of a freshly plowed field.
(08:47):
So how's this going?
Like, you know, we've listened to the first couple, we know what we experienced during them, and then we know what we experienced listening to them.
Yeah.
(09:08):
What are you noticing about yourself, about us?
I think what I'm noticing the most about myself, or at least the most after listening to the second podcast, was there is this part of me that has I mean, I arguably have never had an opportunity to listen to myself or watch myself with enough time or frequency to even gain this knowledge.
(09:38):
But we were driving during or I was driving during the last episode, and I was focusing on three or four things outside of what we were talking about.
And I, in the moment until they got too distracting, thought I was doing it really well.
And I was like, Oh, I'm, yeah, I can I can answer these questions.
(10:01):
I can drive the car.
I can whatever.
And I'll be just fine.
And then I had to go to the bathroom and that started getting really distracting how badly I had to go to the bathroom.
And I still thought that I was present in the conversation, but listening back to myself.
(10:26):
I can see the ways in which I was sort of only half present, because the pace of my voice or the way that I was saying something or even just trying to get out a sentence was so jumbled at times that it was like, Oh, and I know we've talked about this in the past that I can have this tendency to like, leave a conversation.
(10:55):
And I had never experienced myself that way.
And so listening to it, I'm like, Oh, is that what that sounds like?
And then it was like getting insight into what you were talking about.
And I started to have a lot of shame about that, like, at certain parts.
So what you noticed is that for a variety of reasons, you can hear that you are not present intermittently in a way that you're connecting to larger, like, this is a thing.
(11:30):
This is stuff that we've run into, like, on our own, you mean?
Yeah.
And then correspondingly, when you recognize that your sort of second reaction is shame, like in real time.
And shame in a new way, like a felt in a new way.
(11:52):
It's a new kind of shame.
Yeah, awesome.
Like in a way that like, I don't know how to describe it other than to use reality television when people talk about going back and watching themselves on TV and learning a lot about themselves.
Because when else do you get an insight into yourself, other than in something like that.
(12:20):
Or at least in that kind of way.
This feels like that.
I'm seeing myself through a different lens than I have historically had opportunity to see myself.
And part of that is exciting and there's a lot of curiosity there and I'm happy to be learning.
(12:43):
And then in ways that it touches on the things that I feel insecure about from time to time, it creates the shame.
At least as I'm currently understanding it because I feel like I'm still processing through like what I'm learning about myself.
Because I think I use the words I felt stupid.
(13:07):
Like listening to.
Yeah.
Like even now, saying that out loud again is painful to think about talking about myself like that.
(13:30):
But that is that was one of the first thoughts that I had.
So the feeling of shame and you think you're thinking is that you, you heard yourself when you think I sound stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah. In a way that.
(13:55):
If we talk about sort of like the core ways we interact with people and those sorts of things like I hold a lot of things close to the chest and I don't.
I don't reveal certain parts of myself to a ton of people, only a certain few.
And this is a very vulnerable thing to be doing to be opening myself up to any number of like people I'll probably never meet.
(14:21):
And all three people that.
And thinking like.
They're going to hear the areas that I need to work on.
And that's embarrassing.
Like I want to present myself as more competent than I felt I sounded in that podcast.
(14:45):
Yeah, I certainly understand that.
And then I think subsequently and then having a reaction to you because I'm feeling that way.
(15:09):
Right now, if we talk about what happened when I'm looking at you and I'm trying to assess what your face is saying, I'm going, Oh, am I doing it?
Am I am I being stupid?
Am I do I sound dumb? What am I doing? Should I fix something?
(15:30):
Yeah, I'm sort of hesitant to interact with it too much, but I definitely have.
Correct me if I'm wrong. This is all as a result of listening to during the podcast itself.
Yeah.
What can you say about that?
What can you say about now knowing that this is what you think and feel after you listen again.
(15:53):
They have time to react and then interact with me about it and which didn't go well.
And which wasn't all you by a large margin.
But what was your awareness of it in the moment while doing the podcast?
Well, what are you aware of in real time when we're interacting?
I think that's the thing that sort of feels eye opening to me is I was aware that like, for instance, I really have to go to the bathroom and it's distracting.
(16:22):
And I'm driving a car in LA traffic and I don't know where the exit for the bathroom is.
Like I was aware of all of those things.
I was also aware of the conversation we were having and what we were talking about.
It very much interested me, but I thought that I was carrying both of those things pretty well.
(16:43):
Like I was like, oh, no, I mean, I'm as present as one can be when you have to go to the bathroom and you're driving a car and having a conversation, which I don't have a lot of like that's not good enough or it is good enough.
Like there's no like strong value judgment on it.
The value judgment came afterwards.
Which was what again?
You sound stupid.
(17:06):
Because I was realizing I would post it that I wasn't actually carrying it all so well.
Yeah, which, which, by the way, those are, of course, two different things.
You weren't carrying this as well as you thought you were.
Yeah, you sound stupid.
Yes.
It's almost like you feel stupid and that's the shame.
It's like you feel stupid or you feel shame.
And you think that you're stupid because you're like, oh my God, you sound like a moron and you don't even realize it.
(17:33):
It's like a combination of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that certainly fits my experience of trying to interact with you around the subject matter, which is to say that like, and this is what happens with June is a lot like.
I am actually not thinking that you sound stupid.
(17:58):
I am occasionally thinking that you're may not be carrying this as well as you think.
Like I'm aware of your, that you're just distracted.
And for the variety of reasons that you have, some of them like needing to go to the bathroom.
I'm like, can you just say you need to go to the bathroom and we just stop and go to the bathroom?
(18:19):
But in the absence of that, I am in kind of like feeling like at times.
Because I know you so well, and I know what it's like when you are more, when you are less intermittently interrupted.
I am kind of aware like, hey, yeah, we're not like, and it's okay.
Like a lot of other people won't, you know, people listening or whatever might not even know.
(18:43):
The point is sometimes I will, and this is like thematic for us, right? It's like I go to bring your attention to that.
And then it's either kind of like, no, I'm not doing that or fuck you or yeah, I am doing that.
(19:05):
No problem. I'm going to work on that.
And then it kind of, I am often unaware of whether or not there is any track work being done there.
Or yeah, I am, you're right, there is something going on there. Huh. I'm going to look at it. And you do.
So it's like one of four possibilities in that way.
(19:28):
But the point is that when I go to try to interact with you about it,
particularly if you have one of the first two, which is no, that's not happening or you're angry with me very immediately.
Or in time enough, like, yeah, I'm going to work on that.
And then, you know, two years later, we're like, oh my gosh, we're going around the same bend again.
(19:53):
I am then upset with you.
And then I think what happens where I and I end up feeling a great deal of shame around this myself is that I get pissed.
And then before long, I am kind of feeling the way that you're describing you feeling.
(20:17):
And that I do like as God, as my witness, man, I feel super confused.
Like, wait a minute. And this is what we end up discovering a lot of times on the back end of a fight.
It's like, I'm like, no, but babe, I wasn't actually thinking any of those things at first.
It's like in the one therapy office that we used to work in, there's, you know,
I had the clients sitting in front of the big ceiling to floor glass windows and sometimes birds would fly by behind their head.
(20:43):
And I'm like, oh, like trying to like the glass. Yeah, yeah.
Right. Yeah, right. Gosh, that's tragic. But yes, like and one eye is tracking the bird and I'm all no, no, focus on.
And so it's like one of those situations where I'm watching and I'm like, hey, babe, don't focus on the bird.
Just don't forget we're here.
And then I'm like, whoa, how did I become the thing that you are feeling? Yeah.
(21:07):
And we know that this happens for us going the other direction as well.
That like you end up feeling sometimes drawn in in a way, I think.
I don't know if you if you experience that or not, actually, do you you sometimes feel drawn into my projection?
(21:29):
No, I mean, I do think that does happen.
I think probably on the times where I'm either angry about it or I don't think it's happening on one of the denial sides, it is it's more I get stuck on.
What is he saying? Where is that coming from that? I'm not experiencing that.
(21:52):
And then like the second layer of the frustration is and he's saying something to me.
And I read it as not care and support or interest or intrigue or whatever.
I read it as like critique, which goes back to the things we've talked about already in the other podcasts that I I have some sort of narratives that it feeds.
(22:17):
Well, it isn't care and support exactly. But neither is it critique. It's supposed to be like just data.
Yeah, it's like you're driving down the road and you start to drift and you start hear the whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop.
Yeah. Which to hear you tell it, I'm more prone to do than you, although I disagree.
(22:38):
But like it's like, oh, you're not a bad guy because you're going whoop whoop whoop whoop.
You just need to move the wheel over again, which when I hear it, I feel sad for you.
Because it's like you don't have a neutral evaluation space within you.
(23:04):
Yeah, you don't have a space to like take in data. And there's this is a no judgment zone sort of thing.
Yeah. It's like and by no judgment, we mean we're not making appraisals at all.
We're not saying you started to get outside the safety lane demarcations and therefore you are.
(23:26):
That statement is not in there. Yeah.
But I do. I think sometimes I experience that so resolutely with you that again, then I find that I am upset with you that that is the case.
And then I am angry with you. And I'm like sort of like a why are you like this sort of thing?
Which I think you experience when I get mad. Yeah, I was just thinking as you were saying that that.
(23:54):
I do experience myself being able to receive that from people I maybe give less.
Of myself or I care less necessarily about their appraisal.
I can take some sort of feedback and be like, OK, and like move on with it.
(24:20):
I think I hold and it's twisted the way that I see it.
Like I hold your view and experience of me so closely that it's it's hard to not read it in this whatever this twisted version is sometimes.
(24:42):
Like sometimes I really can hear it because one of I mean if we talk about one of the very first things that ever attracted me to you was when we were writing each other back and forth online.
And you would write these really beautiful long emails and ask all kinds of great questions and I would respond with mine right.
I can remember saying to my mom one of the very first things that I liked about you the most was that I felt understood.
(25:12):
And that like when I would say a word wrong or if I didn't have a clear understanding on something instead of treating me like I was stupid, you were trying to help me better understand it.
And I never felt judged or critiqued in that way. And that was really, really important to me.
And it still is really, really important to me. But somewhere I have lost the plot and I have started at times taking that and turning it as that is what you're doing.
(25:45):
Even when later I can come back and very clearly see that that's not what you're doing.
Yeah.
Well and in between month three of our long distance before the short distance courtship and however far we're in now, which is how far 16 and a half years.
(26:14):
A lot of shit's gone down.
Some stuff has happened.
And you know obviously it's a lot of times past and there's like we're at such core inner layers of one another by this point.
This is what I was saying last time about things about us that are true.
(26:36):
That are kind of hard to not be true when you're at this this many concentric circles inward of intimacy. I don't know how we interact with each other and that isn't present, except that we keep calling for healing from ourselves or like of ourselves.
(26:57):
Because, as we're aware you calling it for me and me calling for you. I don't know.
I don't have the experience that me always calling for it from you, even with with good intention or stomping my foot because it's obstructed to some need of mine.
It just does not seem to remit and it's, it's what probably a lot of it is like trauma stuff dude when you get that buried.
(27:19):
Yeah, that that deep in as deep in as we are as intimate as we are.
It's like going to the hospital and somebody's got cancer and you thinking that you ask in real nice or real mean can talk them out of it.
It's like well it just kind of doesn't work that way. It's a similar principle. I'm not saying this is a cancer. I'm saying me asking for something to be true about you in the realm of healing that isn't.
(27:44):
And also, as confusing as it gets in there, and we sort of talked about this is where I like trauma centers meet one another.
We are genuinely confused about the details a lot of times. Yeah.
You know, so, so, can you say it again succinctly or what you noticed.
(28:14):
So far, what I've noticed so far.
Yeah, I mean I think it is it is that I, I'm learning things about myself that I just simply didn't have an opportunity to see before, and it's eye opening.
(28:36):
And it's a little hard.
And there's some hope in there.
It was sort of what I expected might happen, doing this together, which is whenever we do something and we do it.
(29:02):
There is always a little bit of pain and a little bit of growth and a little bit of good and ultimately change in there, and, and if we can stick with it, it ends up being successful.
And something we want to do again. And that is how I feel. So far, about this.
(29:32):
I think I'm also curious like what's happening for you.
So far in this process.
I'm mostly the things that I noticed.
(29:57):
Both in real time.
In real time I noticed tension between us.
Like, therapists often accused of being pathology focused, so perhaps that's something that's transpiring here, but like I noticed tension and actually though I'm not calling that tension, negative or bad.
(30:23):
I just noticed that when we talk.
And you kind of said this in our fight the other day, and at least in this way I agree with you.
When we talk. We are reading each other the whole time. And sometimes we don't like what's transpiring between us. Right. And we work hard to keep that subdued.
(30:46):
And I notice it when we're around anybody, any, any, any, I certainly noticed it with just us but maybe I'm arguably less tuned into it when it's just us.
Like when we hang out with groups of friends, it's the same way. And so the thing that the podcast does is gives you at least an imaginary audience.
And so in front of an audience, I am like aware of how much I want my best foot to be forward.
(31:12):
And how important it is to me, not in the sense of like, I don't think of putting on an act, more like no, I want to show what I'm really, really capable of.
Yeah, when I dial it in, like, which is something that I think that I do well in therapy. Yeah, I
(31:36):
know, dude, it's really me. It is the best version of me, no doubt. If you were coming and paying somebody, wouldn't you want their best version or would you want their mediocre version?
Totally. You want the version that they, with their rear ends hanging out, you know, or you want the one where they've gotten it, you know, everything's put together and. Right.
I don't mean, again, even really, I don't think of the things, the tension between us as negative per se. I'm just aware it is present.
(32:06):
And maybe I do.
I have some sort of baseline
frustration.
And that's probably not an accident why I spent a better portion of the last podcast, saying, this isn't resolvable. This isn't resolvable. Why aren't you saying it's not resolvable? It's not resolvable.
(32:34):
That's what I sort of notice in person. And then I also notice that
through that, in spite of that, whatever, that we also work well together in some ways.
I think what I notice listening
(33:00):
is that
the way that I sound is harsher than I feel.
And I think I do have some yuck feelings around that.
(33:21):
Like there's some judgment rather immediately there.
Because, you know, the feedback over the years has certainly been that
I present in a way at times that is
(33:47):
the most common way people have tended to refer to it is intense.
Yeah.
And I'll never forget one time one of our friends, who's a psychologist, I was talking to him about
noticing that during my daughter's like fifth grade or something basketball games, she's looking up in the stands like all the time.
(34:13):
And it's like looking at me, looking at me, looking at me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, why are you looking at me? Just play the game. Stop checking in with me. Just play the game.
And my friend said, just check your face. Check the look on your face.
And like, so I go to do that the next game and I find that, oh my gosh, I have this scowl on my face for lack of a better term.
(34:39):
And the difficulty is that the
motivation behind what could rightly potentially be described as a scowl is not negative.
It is a certain level of focus and drive.
(35:01):
And like, it's like I take all of the energy that I'm feeling on the inside and I channel it up to my face and I'm like
burning laser holes in everything that I look at so that I, my mission in the universe is accomplished or something.
Yeah.
Right. And I can hear even in describing it like that. It's like, oh, this is, what are you doing? You're burning holes in everything.
(35:25):
So I think that was another thought that I had was this that like the way that I talk generally
is like
I have so much energy
in my body
that I think
(35:48):
is perhaps
atypical like others. Some others have it, but not a lot or something, because I just don't hear anybody interact with it like this very often.
A few. Enneagram type eights sometimes.
But they have to be super aware and a lot of them just aren't.
Yeah.
But like
(36:11):
it's like the force that it's like taking a gigantic portion of energy and then squeezing it through a straw.
And so when it comes out on the other end, yes, it comes out hard, fast and can go forever.
Yeah.
And I hear that when I talk to you and I think to myself like, oh, like this is a way that like if you had to like be party to this for a really long time,
(36:43):
regardless of its intent, it would have a like
hurtful outcome.
And I can explain how I got this way.
With real clarity. Yeah.
(37:04):
And not a lot of shame. Like I know how I both like nature and nurture. I know
for the most part, I think just, you know, 20 plus years of therapy, super hungry for personal mentorship.
Yeah. You know, I've never been without that since you've known me ever.
Agreed.
Like and sometimes multiple layers of it. Yes.
(37:27):
But knowing how I became this way is not really the same as
working with it effectively.
For a long time, I just hear this and I think that some of what comes up right is I want to change.
Then like, well,
somehow it's a thing that I tell clients, it's like not really about not doing it. It's about recognizing when you are.
(37:54):
Right. And then sort of asking myself, hey, are you right? So, so maybe the thing that both of us are noticing here is that there's a certain lack of awareness.
Yeah.
That's what I was just thinking.
Yeah.
Well, if you fix yours, then.
I guess like, you know, it's that's the first time you said that to me.
(38:19):
So it's powerful for me to hear you say that in terms of your reflection of the podcast and stuff.
It's the way or sometimes the tone or combination of both.
I mean, I haven't had that experience listening to the podcast of you, but I've had that experience.
So like I can identify with that a little bit.
What I was thinking is that as you were sharing that and then thinking about my own reflection.
(38:46):
Is it it it comes back to that thing that I was saying about change and like an opportunity like.
It is sort of embarrassing to talk about that for public consumption and then know that it could have any number of responses, good or bad or anywhere in between.
(39:13):
But I'm like thankful that we're like having this conversation and where this is that I'm having an opportunity to have this reflection about myself.
Because I do know that it is a source of things that we've talked about for years and years, as is the thing that you're saying.
And sometimes it is getting the opportunity to see it and hear it is the only thing that can really produce any kind of shift.
(39:45):
And so, you know what I mean? Like we were talking last week about the unresolvable issue.
I don't think this solves that issue, but is yet another way to keep changing.
Yeah, not to beat a dead horse, but it's like it's how you carry it.
No, actually, I think what we're saying is that we're not sure some of this can change.
So in light of that, would we like to carry it or how would we like to carry it or would like to carry it differently?
(40:13):
And then don't look now, but because you carry it differently, you do have the experience of a changing.
Right. Yeah.
And I'm realizing as we're saying it, that part of why I think I was loaded for a fight was that like I wanted to record this episode like all week.
(40:42):
Yeah.
And you weren't feeling well. Life was like, frankly, just in the way, not bad life, just life, work, kids.
Mostly that one schedule like us not having time at the end of the night.
Right.
Which we gladly give up when we need to. I don't know about gladly. We give it up when we need to.
(41:06):
Yeah.
Because the kids need stuff.
Yeah.
And so many of the things that they need, I remember being real gifts that for me that my parents did give me growing up.
Like they showed up. They did stuff.
Yeah.
(41:27):
Those are necessary gifts to give the kids. And also we are finite. So like all week long, I've been wanting, and I knew that you would have that reaction to what I said. I knew that you'd be like, wow, that is good for me to hear that you hear that.
And so I'm like pissed at you that we can't get to the thing.
Yeah.
I'm like, will you just shut up so I can do something nice for you? You know what I mean? It's like a really, but there it is again for me. I mean, that is, that's not only me, but that's one way that I can show up is like, will you shut up so I can do something nice for you?
(42:03):
Yeah.
And it's like, oh my gosh.
That doesn't always work. And also sometimes I just want you to shut up so I can do something nice for you.
Yeah.
So I think that's probably the end. Yeah, this is what process talk is. So in the context of therapy, by talking about what transpires in the relationship, seeing what you experienced on a moment by moment basis.
(42:37):
Sometimes you do that, like sort of literally in real time and sometimes it's like this where we're in, you know, week four of therapy and I say, Hey, how's this been going? And we talk about that in the sort of no uncertain terms.
This is a thing that we do in our lives. Like we stop and do this.
Like, how is this, what have you noticed, like this week about how this is going between us.
(43:00):
And yeah, you, you end up discovering things that you wouldn't discover certainly if you didn't stop and do that, but that like, you really do kind of have to go around the bend.
They give you data about other things that aren't just interpersonal dynamics. It's revelatory about larger things.
(43:21):
Yeah.
I like what you said.
That's good.
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