January 8, 2024 • 34 mins
I love me these Auto generated AI episode descriptions. It always has me on the edge of my seat....
Have you ever felt like your emotions were holding the reins, steering you through every twist and turn of life's unpredictable journey? Join us, Brett Nicola, on a heart-to-heart conversation in the latest installment of the Fighting for Connection podcast, where we explore the delicate interplay between our thoughts and feelings amidst life's trials. We're laying out the roadmap to navigate the rough terrains of strained relationships, financial stress, health battles, and the weight of loss, focusing on the transformative power of reshaping our thought patterns to find solace in the storms we cannot calm.
Venture with us as we dissect the essence of pain, examining its shifting impact through the lens of life's ever-changing experiences. The talk turns inward, challenging the instinct to flee from discomfort and instead embracing pain as an integral slice of the human experience. In the dance of relationships, we scrutinize the whispers of unworthiness that can amplify suffering. By interrogating our beliefs and adjusting our perspectives, we uncover a path to lessen our pain and reclaim control over our emotional well-being.
To cap off this week's soul-stirring exchange, I share a personal chapter from my life – the journey through hair loss – and the profound lessons learned on self-worth that go skin deep. This revelation isn't just skin deep. It's about how shifting my inner dialogue led to richer connections with others, including with my beloved Kelsey. Our discussion underscores the immeasurable impact of nurturing positive thoughts, fostering resilience in the face of life's challenges. As always, your engagement through ratings and reviews fuels our mission to build bridges of connection, so join us on this odyssey of reflection and triumph over adversity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brett (00:01):
Episode number 67.
Hello and welcome to theFighting for Connection podcast.
I'm Brett Nicola, a husband,father and fun lover.
Listen in as I share stories,tips and inspiration that will
(00:23):
move you toward the connectionthat you want in your
relationship.
Hey everybody, and welcome backto the Fighting for Connection
podcast.
I hope you all are doing well.
You know when I say that I don'texactly know who all this
(00:45):
podcast touches and I often tryto think about who I am talking
to out there and you who I'mtalking to.
I really do hope that you aredoing well, but I have to think
that there are some of you whohave found this podcast because
(01:10):
you're experiencing pain,because you're not doing well,
and I want you to know that.
I know that you are here, thatyou're listening and you're
wondering what to do to helpyour marriage, how to show up in
(01:30):
a way that can take away someof this pain.
You're looking for tools, fortips, for inspiration that you
can use to help you through thischallenging time that you're
facing.
The nature of my job is onethat I do sit in some of the
(01:51):
most difficult moments inpeople's lives, and I have to
say that being able to do thathas touched me.
It's impacted me, how I viewthe world and my own life.
It really I don't have a betterway to describe it besides
(02:12):
saying it's humbled me.
It's helped me have a differentperspective about my life and
what I've gotten.
That is nothing from which I'vedone or deserve, and I have
really been able to seeindividuals, couples, families
(02:37):
that are facing some verydifficult circumstances, and I
know that some of you that arelistening are going through some
of these very difficultcircumstances, and I want to
talk to you for just a littlebit.
When we encounter circumstancesin our life, we often have an
(03:01):
emotional experience.
Maybe our spouse is doingsomething or not doing something
, maybe we're in debt, maybewe've lost our house or in the
process of losing our house,maybe we've lost a child, maybe
we get sick.
These are circumstances thatpeople face in life and most of
(03:25):
these circumstances, I wouldguess at least, would cause an
emotion for all of us.
But pick any one of thesecircumstances and I guarantee
you we don't all have the sameemotional response.
All right, someone might feelanxious if they're in debt and
(03:50):
another person might feelembarrassed that they're in debt
, and there might be someone outthere who doesn't care at all
if they're in debt, right?
So we all have a differentemotion to the same
circumstances and when we cansee that, we can see that our
circumstances aren't directlytied to our emotion and there
(04:12):
has to be a link between thesetwo things our circumstances and
our emotions.
That's important to consider,and what this link is is our
thoughts, and it's veryimportant to be able to
recognize this and see this,because so many of you guys are
experiencing circumstances thataren't necessarily changeable.
(04:37):
It's natural for a brain to tryto change our circumstances that
it doesn't like in order tochange the emotion that we're
experiencing that we don't like.
And if we don't like somethingour brain's like, let's change
it so that we don't have to feelthat feeling of not liking
something Maybe it's somethingthat we don't like that our
(05:00):
spouse is doing.
We go to work to try to changethem, change how they're showing
up, so that we feel betterabout them, right?
We don't want to feel thatfeeling of not liking something
that our spouse is doing, so wego to change the circumstance,
we try to get them to stop it orto start it, whatever it is
that we want, in order to feelbetter.
(05:23):
But and, by the way, oftentimesthat works, right, it's it's
raining outside and we don'tlike that, so we go inside and
we get out of the rain.
Right, we change ourcircumstance so we feel better,
and in life there are manycircumstances that are easy to
(05:43):
change and we can feel better.
But what happens when weeventually come up against a
circumstance that we can'tchange or a circumstance that we
don't want to change?
What if, for example, our childdies?
There's nothing we can do tochange this circumstance to feel
better.
We just can't change thesethings that happen, no matter
(06:07):
how hard we try, and that's anexample of a circumstance that
we can't change.
An example of a circumstancethat we don't want to change
would be, for example, ourspouse.
Right, many of us are in acommitted marriage.
(06:27):
We are married to our spousefor life, and if your spouse is
sick or if they're showing up ina way that brings pain,
emotional pain, to you, we don'tnecessarily want to get a new
spouse and we don't want to getrid of them.
Right, we want to keep them,but we try to change them so
(06:49):
that we don't have to feel theseemotions.
And it's not working, and thisis an example of a circumstance
that we don't want to change andwe haven't been able to figure
out how to change.
And so we're left feeling thisemotion that feels like is from
the circumstance.
(07:09):
Whatever it is that our spouseis doing that we can't figure
out how to get them to stopdoing or start doing, and we
don't want to change thecircumstance of our spouse,
meaning we don't want to get ridof them, we don't want a new
spouse, we don't want to changethe circumstance of our spouse,
meaning we don't want to get ridof them.
(07:31):
We don't want a new spouse, wedon't want to not have a spouse,
we want to stay in thatmarriage.
But we continue to experiencethe emotion that shows up when
we stay in that circumstance,and these situations can be so
hard.
Our brain goes to work to tryeverything and anything in order
(07:55):
to change the circumstance.
We desperately need ourcircumstance to be different, to
feel different, and we don'tknow how to do it.
Now, from my perspective, Ican't say that I've been faced
with some of the circumstancesthat so many of you have faced,
(08:18):
and I can't say that I know yoursituation or your experience,
but I have sat with many, manystories and have held pieces of
these stories and I've seen thereflection of the pain that
(08:40):
these circumstances can bring upin an individual, and in that
way I feel like I have someunderstanding or perspective
because of it.
And I think what I've seen, orthought at least, is that our
(09:03):
life is one of duality, meaningit seems that no one can live a
full life and truly escape thepain of life, and it just seems
like that's how it is, that weall, as we live our life, to any
extent of time, we're going toexperience pain.
(09:24):
We can't avoid it.
No matter what we try to do,we're going to experience this
pain.
That comes from our brain,really.
But if we're going to measure,like from a humanistic
perspective, if our pain isequally distributed or
(09:45):
distributed fairly, I can't saythat it seems like we all
experience the same amount ofpain.
It really does seem like someexperience many, many heavy and
challenging circumstances, whileothers seem to experience much
less, and I don't know why thatis either.
(10:05):
I don't know why.
You know, we all have thesedifferent experiences in life
and some have maybe morepositive experiences and others
have more challengingexperiences.
I think that there is, you know, a reason for the duality of
(10:26):
our life, that there's good andbad, that there's like good
feelings and difficult feelings,and that I guess I see through
the lens of my faith thatbecause of original sin, we all
experience these challenges andthis pain here on this life, and
(10:51):
so it seems that that is life,that we experience pain.
Now, we don't all experience thesame circumstances or the same
level of challenges, forwhatever reason, but I also do
know that our brain works in away that doesn't necessarily
(11:12):
experience pain on a universalcontinuum, meaning, you know,
like the pain of losing our bikeis equal to everybody and the
pain of losing a job is equal toeverybody and the pain of
losing a child is equal toeverybody.
(11:32):
I think that we experiencethese circumstances and the pain
that we experience in thesecircumstances is very
individualized to us, and theeasiest way I could show this to
you is maybe just having youthink of like a time from when
(11:53):
you were young and maybe therewas a distressing thing that
happened to you that now you'reable to kind of laugh about it
and you can see that it wasn'tas big of a deal as you felt
like it was when you were achild, for example, maybe your,
your parent, ran over your bike,and I don't know why, but it
seems like that's like auniversal experience.
(12:14):
Haven't we all had somebody runover a bike?
I don't know, I think so, butat the time, maybe with this
kind of an experience, you mighthave felt like the world was
ending right.
It was very distressing, and itwas.
It took a lot for you torecover from that circumstance.
And maybe today, if your bikewas ran over, you wouldn't be as
(12:38):
disappointed, you wouldn't beas dysregulated and you'd be
able to kind of manage yourselfa lot better.
It wouldn't be as painful as itwas when you were like six At
least I think for most adults.
It wouldn't be as painful as,and we wouldn't see the same
meltdown that we did when wewere six.
(12:59):
And why is that?
I think it's because of twothings.
First, at that time in our lifethat was, that was, one of the
most difficult things we everfaced.
Right, we'd never had theexperience of having this
amazing bike and then losing it.
And so, because of that, thatwas, that was all we knew.
(13:22):
Right, it was all the pain thatwe knew at that time.
And now, because we've had moredifficult experiences, our
perspective is different, and wecan see that we thought that
was bad then, but we've nowexperienced more difficult
things, and so it's not that bad.
The second thing I think itrelates to the first somewhat,
(13:43):
but it's that, you know, backthen our bike was really
important to us and now it's notas important to us.
There's other things in our lifethat we view as more important,
and this is important to know,because I think that, no matter
what we experience in our life,I do think we all experience
(14:05):
intense pain, because ourperspective and our experience
really has an impact on the painthat we experience.
And I heard this quote recently, and I think it illustrates a
little bit of how pain works inour brain, and the quote went
like this it said something tothis effect that we all have
(14:25):
many problems in our lives.
Until we have a significanthealth problem, then we just
have one problem, and I think itjust really illustrates that
until we're faced with acircumstance that trumps the
other circumstances in our life,we face the pain that is
(14:48):
directly tied to our currentcircumstances.
And so, without thatperspective and without those
experiences, the intensity ofour pain is tied to what we
think is the intensity of theexperience or how bad our
experience is and I think Ishare all of this to help you
(15:13):
see that your brain and yourthoughts have so much power and
if you're faced with acircumstance that you can't
change or you don't want tochange, I think this is
something that you consider.
First, that the pain that you'reexperiencing is a part of life.
(15:34):
We can't escape pain, we canjust learn how to feel it.
And if you don't learn how tofeel it, then you end up trying
to run from this pain your wholelife or until the circumstance
changes.
You buffer away from the pain,and the ways that you do this is
you might go to your phone, youmight go to food, you might
(15:54):
isolate or you might turndevices that take you away from
reality.
So learning to really let thepain be and learn how to feel it
is so important and to just letpain be a part of the
experience that we call life.
The other thing that we want todo is we want to begin to watch
(16:19):
our brain right Versus justalways being in this reactive
place of trying to improve ourcircumstances, to feel better.
I want us to kind of watch thatlink that happens between the
circumstance and the emotion,the thoughts, our brain and, for
example, if you have a spousethat isn't as loving, caring or
(16:39):
invested as you like them to be,this definitely can be a
difficult situation, one that isfull of pain.
And to apply that, to applythese two things, we remember
that our goal isn't necessarilyto get rid of the pain, even
within marriage.
I don't know that the goal isto have, like, a super
(17:02):
pleasurable marriage.
I think marriage isn't theplace that we go to to have
ultimate pleasure.
It's a place that we go to toserve.
So when we're serving, it cancome with pain.
But when we learn how to dealwith the pain and we learn how
(17:24):
to be with the pain, then,rather than trying to get away
from the pain, we can begin towatch our thoughts and this is
very powerful.
It's that link between ourcircumstances and our emotions.
When we begin to watch ourthoughts, we can begin to
examine these thoughts andreally begin to measure what is
(17:47):
really true and factual and whatisn't necessarily supporting
what we want to believe andthink and where we want to go in
our life, and we can begin tolet go of some of these thoughts
that aren't helpful, that arecreating a more painful
situation than we have toexperience.
(18:09):
Another example would be thatsome of the most intense pain
that can come with a spouse thatisn't showing up in a caring
way is this thought that wearen't worthy.
Now, if we don't recognize thatwe're having this thought, then
we're going to just be in thisreactionary emotional place.
(18:34):
What we need to do is just slowdown a little bit, recognize
this thought that's happening aswe just examine and watch our
thoughts, and what we can beginto do is we can begin to see
that, oh, our spouse is showingup a certain way.
We're having this thought thatwe aren't worthy about it, and
(18:54):
now we're having this feelinglike hurt or rejection or
disconnection, and we're blamingit on our spouse, on the
circumstance.
But it really isn't deriveddirectly from our spouse or from
that circumstance, but itreally is because of this link
that's happening between thecircumstance and our emotion,
(19:16):
which is this thought that weare believing and what the
actions of our spouse seems tobe confirming that in some way,
their behaviors or the way thatthey're showing up has merit on
our worthiness or loveability orsomething like that.
When we can begin to see this.
(19:38):
We can begin to just softly,gently poke holes in this and
see how maybe it's not as trueas our brain would like to
believe.
It is true and our brain alwayslikes to be right.
If it has this belief, it'salways looking to confirm that
belief.
But what we can do is we canbegin to become intentional
(19:58):
about changing this thought.
When we intentionally changethis thought, we can change the
emotion and our response to thecircumstance, to our spouse.
This is so important because wecan take our energy off of
trying to change ourcircumstance or change our
spouse and we can put it towardssomething that we have much
(20:20):
more control over, and thatthing that we have more control
over is our thoughts.
If we can change our emotionalexperience in our marriage, with
whatever circumstance that weare facing, we can begin to show
up with much more alignmentwith who we want to be.
(20:41):
We can begin to really, nomatter what, be loving, caring,
supportive, whatever.
Right now, when ourcircumstances are directly tied
to our emotions, like we canbelieve, then we're kind of out
of control because we have tocontrol our circumstances to
control our emotions and ifwe're hurt, then we're upset and
(21:04):
angry and protective andfrustrated and resentful and
defensive, but and we think theonly way to not be that is to
change our spouses behaviors orour circumstances.
But it's not the case.
We can change our thoughts andour spouse can do whatever
they're doing and we still canshow up in a loving, caring,
supportive way.
(21:25):
Now, why might you do that?
Because I really believe thatso many of you are married to
spouses who are in pain, who arereally struggling, and when we
show up in a protective waywhich is angry, frustrated,
defensive, resentful it doesn'treally help them show up in a
(21:49):
way that is clear, right.
They move into their protectivespot, we get stuck in our cycle
and we become confused in ourrelationship and we lose each
other.
And that's really why I want usto change our emotional
experience, because that's howwe can show up as a cycle
breaker, that's how we can showup with clarity within our
(22:10):
relationship and we can reallyunderstand what is happening for
our spouse in a much moreefficient way and a much more
productive way, and we can makesure that our spouse really has
a clear message of our love forthem, our care for them and how
important they are to us.
And when that happens, we canoftentimes break this confusing
(22:32):
cycle that can cause distanceand hurt in our relationship and
we can have a much moreconnected, close and loving
relationship.
I often ask my clients todescribe how they want to be as
a spouse, and they sharedescriptives like they want to
be caring, supportive,intentional, loving, loyal,
(22:58):
things like this.
And then I ask them if theyalways show up that way in their
marriage, and pretty muchuniversally I have to say it for
myself and it seems like mostothers answer the same way that
no, there have been times when Ihaven't shown up in those ways
that I like to be in my marriage, and then I'll ask them why,
(23:22):
and they'll often point to thethings, the circumstances in
their life that are preventingthem from doing those things
right.
And now, when we can see itthis way, we can see that it's
our thoughts and our emotionsthat are causing us to show up
out of alignment with who wewant to be, and we don't
necessarily have to change ourcircumstance to change our
(23:43):
thoughts and emotions.
We can leave our circumstancesas they are and we can change
our thoughts and emotions, andin this way we, in theory, can
always show up the way that wewant to, and it's a skill that
we can develop and we can becomebetter at it and more
(24:04):
consistent at it, so that wedon't have to change our
circumstances.
We can have the samecircumstances that we have right
now.
We can believe differentthoughts, we can have different
emotions, we can show up indifferent ways and have
different results.
I'm going to give you an exampleof a time that I was able to do
this in my own life.
(24:26):
So when I was like 20 or 21, Istarted to notice that I was
losing my hair and I guess thetruth is my friends started
noticing that I was losing myhair and they began to point it
out, and I have to admit that itwas a pretty challenging
circumstance that I faced.
(24:46):
I remember, maybe after, likeour second baby, I was sitting
in the hospital and I wasresearching on my phone, like
how to prevent hair loss, andlet me tell you, there's a lot
of theories out there and Ican't say I've tried them all,
but, based off of my research,it's pretty difficult to keep
(25:07):
your hair once you start losingit, and maybe I don't know, I
guess send me an email if youknow a solution, but I didn't
really find one that lookedviable and feasible for me, and
I wasn't able to change thecircumstance of hair loss.
(25:27):
So what did I do?
I began to like wear hats.
I began to cover up my head.
I began to dislike going intopublic indoor spaces where I
might need to take my hat off orbecome exposed, and when I was
exposed or didn't have a hat on,I wasn't covered up.
I had a hard time looking atpeople in the eye.
I lost my confidence and itwasn't because I was going bald
(25:53):
that I lost my confidence.
It wasn't because of thecircumstance that I lost my
confidence and I was showing upin this way, but it was because
I believed that people thoughtbald people were weird and
people thought that bald peoplewere less attractive or less
likable.
Those were the thoughts thathad me feeling really
unconfident and self-consciousand embarrassed, and these
(26:19):
thoughts created the difficultfeelings for me.
And when we can see that it wasthese thoughts and not the fact
that I was losing my hair thatwas making me feel this way, I
began to be able to see thatthese thoughts weren't 100% true
.
And then, one day, as I wasthinking about my thoughts, this
(26:40):
new thought came to me and thisnew thought was that I can be
bald and be a loving, caring guy, no matter what.
And I love that thought becauseall of a sudden I wasn't
focused on what the other personwas thinking about me, but what
I was thinking about the otherperson.
(27:00):
For some reason, it was justlife changing for me to be able
to believe this thought and tobe able to just go to these
functions and be loving, caring,interested, compassionate and
have a feeling of care for thatperson that I was interacting
with rather than focusing on ifthey were caring about me.
(27:21):
And that was just a change inmy thought.
But it changed the way that Ipresented myself and it opened
me up to the connection that Iwanted, that I feared I was
losing by losing my hair andthat by being bald would prevent
me from having.
So I know that being balddoesn't really feel like a big
(27:43):
deal for you.
Like it's not that big of adeal, brian, it's not a big
circumstance, but it was for meand I know that you can do the
same thing.
You can change your thoughtabout your life and your
circumstance if you want, if youwant to feel better, if you
want to show up differently.
(28:03):
It's possible.
Now I would still take a fullhead of hair.
It's still something that Iwould like, and if I could get
one, I would take one, believeme.
But I also experience a lotless pain around being bald and
losing my hair and I'm able toshow up much more in alignment
(28:31):
with who I want to be.
I don't resent people who makefun of me for being bald and I
don't pull away from situationsthat I'd like to be part of
because I'm worried about whatthey think about me not having
hair.
So it's just a small example ofhow I've used the same process
in my life, and I hope that youcan see how it's possible to use
(28:54):
this process in your life sothat you don't have to change
your circumstance, so that yourunchangeable circumstance
doesn't have to be any differentthan it is and you still can
feel better.
We just have to begin to watchthis link between our
circumstance and our emotion,our thoughts, and we have to
begin to examine what thoughtsare really true, what thoughts
(29:16):
are not necessarily 100% true,and find new thoughts that we
can believe, that are going tohelp us feel differently around
the circumstance, so that we canshow up differently.
I know this podcast was prettydeep and pretty heavy and so I
thought I would end it with justa little story and it kind of
(29:36):
relates to this topic Early inmy name, kelsey's relationship.
I would buy Kelsey flowers andshe would look at them and make
some comment about how much theycosted, or she would share with
me that flowers don't reallymean anything to her and she
(29:58):
would just be fine with a cardand time together.
Why bother getting the flowers?
Don't waste your money.
And for some reason that reallyhurt at the time and we'd get
into conflict cycles aroundflowers and I spent a ton of
time and energy trying toconvince her to like my flowers.
By golly I was persistent andshe was consistent with her
(30:22):
message about not really caringabout flowers and eventually she
won and I stopped buying herflowers and for years and years
I never bought her flowers.
But I thought about this forquite a while and it came up
quite a bit that why was this sopainful for me?
(30:42):
And as I was able to kind ofexamine and watch my thoughts
about around it, I recognizedthat I was looking for her to
help me believe that I was thebee's knees that I was amazing
and I was giving flowers tomyself.
Essentially, I was trying toget her admiration by giving her
flowers and when she didn'tgive that response that I was
(31:05):
looking for, my brain took thatto mean that she wasn't willing
to make me feel as loved as Iwas willing to try to make her
feel loved, that she wasn't asinto me and I was looking for
how much she loved me by herresponse to me giving her
flowers.
And once I saw this, I realizedhow backwards that was and I
(31:29):
started buying her flowers againand I love it.
You see, to me buying herflowers feels so much like love.
It's just a little act thatrepresents how much I love her
and I love loving her.
She has shared with me that shefeels loved when I serve her,
(31:57):
when I do tasks like take thingsoff of her plate, and I've made
efforts to show love to her inthis way.
But for some reason to me doingthe dishes doesn't feel a lot
like love.
It feels less like a loving actto me than for me to shyly go
(32:24):
to the flower department at thelocal grocery store explaining
to a nice lady behind thecounter that I'm just looking to
buy some flowers for my wifeand she will say, oh, is it for
anything special?
And I respond to her, yeah, mywife.
(32:44):
And she blanks at me confused,not getting the joke.
Then I go on to pick out abouquet of flowers with her and
I write a little card and I giveit to her and I don't know why,
but to me that feels so good.
(33:05):
I love giving that to my wife,I love doing it, and even though
she doesn't necessarily feelthe same amount of love in
return, that's okay.
And I don't really care whatshe does with the flowers or how
she responds to it.
I'm going to make sure that Icontinue to try to show up in
(33:29):
the way that she feels loved.
But sometimes I give flowersfor myself.
I still do it because I loveshowing her love that way, and
doing the dishes is just how Ishow up so that maybe, just
maybe, that girl that means theworld to me would love me back.
(33:55):
I hope you enjoyed this podcastand if I could ask you one thing
, just like Kelsey feels lovedby me doing the dishes, I feel
loved by you when you rate andleave a review on this podcast
or share it with a friend, justletting you know that have a
(34:16):
great weekend, have a great week, everybody, and I will see you
back here next week.
This has been the Fighting forConnection podcast.
If you've enjoyed this podcastand want more content like this,
check out my Connected Couplescampus, which can be found on my
website, wwwpivotalapproachcom,and become the difference you
(34:40):
need in your relationship.
Episode number 67.
Hello and welcome to theFighting for Connection podcast.
I'm Brett Nicola, a husband,father and fun lover.
Listen in as I share stories,tips and inspiration that will
(00:23):
move you toward the connectionthat you want in your
relationship.
Hey everybody, and welcome backto the Fighting for Connection
podcast.
I hope you all are doing well.
You know when I say that I don'texactly know who all this
(00:45):
podcast touches and I often tryto think about who I am talking
to out there and you who I'mtalking to.
I really do hope that you aredoing well, but I have to think
that there are some of you whohave found this podcast because
(01:10):
you're experiencing pain,because you're not doing well,
and I want you to know that.
I know that you are here, thatyou're listening and you're
wondering what to do to helpyour marriage, how to show up in
(01:30):
a way that can take away someof this pain.
You're looking for tools, fortips, for inspiration that you
can use to help you through thischallenging time that you're
facing.
The nature of my job is onethat I do sit in some of the
(01:51):
most difficult moments inpeople's lives, and I have to
say that being able to do thathas touched me.
It's impacted me, how I viewthe world and my own life.
It really I don't have a betterway to describe it besides
(02:12):
saying it's humbled me.
It's helped me have a differentperspective about my life and
what I've gotten.
That is nothing from which I'vedone or deserve, and I have
really been able to seeindividuals, couples, families
(02:37):
that are facing some verydifficult circumstances, and I
know that some of you that arelistening are going through some
of these very difficultcircumstances, and I want to
talk to you for just a littlebit.
When we encounter circumstancesin our life, we often have an
(03:01):
emotional experience.
Maybe our spouse is doingsomething or not doing something
, maybe we're in debt, maybewe've lost our house or in the
process of losing our house,maybe we've lost a child, maybe
we get sick.
These are circumstances thatpeople face in life and most of
(03:25):
these circumstances, I wouldguess at least, would cause an
emotion for all of us.
But pick any one of thesecircumstances and I guarantee
you we don't all have the sameemotional response.
All right, someone might feelanxious if they're in debt and
(03:50):
another person might feelembarrassed that they're in debt
, and there might be someone outthere who doesn't care at all
if they're in debt, right?
So we all have a differentemotion to the same
circumstances and when we cansee that, we can see that our
circumstances aren't directlytied to our emotion and there
(04:12):
has to be a link between thesetwo things our circumstances and
our emotions.
That's important to consider,and what this link is is our
thoughts, and it's veryimportant to be able to
recognize this and see this,because so many of you guys are
experiencing circumstances thataren't necessarily changeable.
(04:37):
It's natural for a brain to tryto change our circumstances that
it doesn't like in order tochange the emotion that we're
experiencing that we don't like.
And if we don't like somethingour brain's like, let's change
it so that we don't have to feelthat feeling of not liking
something Maybe it's somethingthat we don't like that our
(05:00):
spouse is doing.
We go to work to try to changethem, change how they're showing
up, so that we feel betterabout them, right?
We don't want to feel thatfeeling of not liking something
that our spouse is doing, so wego to change the circumstance,
we try to get them to stop it orto start it, whatever it is
that we want, in order to feelbetter.
(05:23):
But and, by the way, oftentimesthat works, right, it's it's
raining outside and we don'tlike that, so we go inside and
we get out of the rain.
Right, we change ourcircumstance so we feel better,
and in life there are manycircumstances that are easy to
(05:43):
change and we can feel better.
But what happens when weeventually come up against a
circumstance that we can'tchange or a circumstance that we
don't want to change?
What if, for example, our childdies?
There's nothing we can do tochange this circumstance to feel
better.
We just can't change thesethings that happen, no matter
(06:07):
how hard we try, and that's anexample of a circumstance that
we can't change.
An example of a circumstancethat we don't want to change
would be, for example, ourspouse.
Right, many of us are in acommitted marriage.
(06:27):
We are married to our spousefor life, and if your spouse is
sick or if they're showing up ina way that brings pain,
emotional pain, to you, we don'tnecessarily want to get a new
spouse and we don't want to getrid of them.
Right, we want to keep them,but we try to change them so
(06:49):
that we don't have to feel theseemotions.
And it's not working, and thisis an example of a circumstance
that we don't want to change andwe haven't been able to figure
out how to change.
And so we're left feeling thisemotion that feels like is from
the circumstance.
(07:09):
Whatever it is that our spouseis doing that we can't figure
out how to get them to stopdoing or start doing, and we
don't want to change thecircumstance of our spouse,
meaning we don't want to get ridof them, we don't want a new
spouse, we don't want to changethe circumstance of our spouse,
meaning we don't want to get ridof them.
(07:31):
We don't want a new spouse, wedon't want to not have a spouse,
we want to stay in thatmarriage.
But we continue to experiencethe emotion that shows up when
we stay in that circumstance,and these situations can be so
hard.
Our brain goes to work to tryeverything and anything in order
(07:55):
to change the circumstance.
We desperately need ourcircumstance to be different, to
feel different, and we don'tknow how to do it.
Now, from my perspective, Ican't say that I've been faced
with some of the circumstancesthat so many of you have faced,
(08:18):
and I can't say that I know yoursituation or your experience,
but I have sat with many, manystories and have held pieces of
these stories and I've seen thereflection of the pain that
(08:40):
these circumstances can bring upin an individual, and in that
way I feel like I have someunderstanding or perspective
because of it.
And I think what I've seen, orthought at least, is that our
(09:03):
life is one of duality, meaningit seems that no one can live a
full life and truly escape thepain of life, and it just seems
like that's how it is, that weall, as we live our life, to any
extent of time, we're going toexperience pain.
(09:24):
We can't avoid it.
No matter what we try to do,we're going to experience this
pain.
That comes from our brain,really.
But if we're going to measure,like from a humanistic
perspective, if our pain isequally distributed or
(09:45):
distributed fairly, I can't saythat it seems like we all
experience the same amount ofpain.
It really does seem like someexperience many, many heavy and
challenging circumstances, whileothers seem to experience much
less, and I don't know why thatis either.
(10:05):
I don't know why.
You know, we all have thesedifferent experiences in life
and some have maybe morepositive experiences and others
have more challengingexperiences.
I think that there is, you know, a reason for the duality of
(10:26):
our life, that there's good andbad, that there's like good
feelings and difficult feelings,and that I guess I see through
the lens of my faith thatbecause of original sin, we all
experience these challenges andthis pain here on this life, and
(10:51):
so it seems that that is life,that we experience pain.
Now, we don't all experience thesame circumstances or the same
level of challenges, forwhatever reason, but I also do
know that our brain works in away that doesn't necessarily
(11:12):
experience pain on a universalcontinuum, meaning, you know,
like the pain of losing our bikeis equal to everybody and the
pain of losing a job is equal toeverybody and the pain of
losing a child is equal toeverybody.
(11:32):
I think that we experiencethese circumstances and the pain
that we experience in thesecircumstances is very
individualized to us, and theeasiest way I could show this to
you is maybe just having youthink of like a time from when
(11:53):
you were young and maybe therewas a distressing thing that
happened to you that now you'reable to kind of laugh about it
and you can see that it wasn'tas big of a deal as you felt
like it was when you were achild, for example, maybe your,
your parent, ran over your bike,and I don't know why, but it
seems like that's like auniversal experience.
(12:14):
Haven't we all had somebody runover a bike?
I don't know, I think so, butat the time, maybe with this
kind of an experience, you mighthave felt like the world was
ending right.
It was very distressing, and itwas.
It took a lot for you torecover from that circumstance.
And maybe today, if your bikewas ran over, you wouldn't be as
(12:38):
disappointed, you wouldn't beas dysregulated and you'd be
able to kind of manage yourselfa lot better.
It wouldn't be as painful as itwas when you were like six At
least I think for most adults.
It wouldn't be as painful as,and we wouldn't see the same
meltdown that we did when wewere six.
(12:59):
And why is that?
I think it's because of twothings.
First, at that time in our lifethat was, that was, one of the
most difficult things we everfaced.
Right, we'd never had theexperience of having this
amazing bike and then losing it.
And so, because of that, thatwas, that was all we knew.
(13:22):
Right, it was all the pain thatwe knew at that time.
And now, because we've had moredifficult experiences, our
perspective is different, and wecan see that we thought that
was bad then, but we've nowexperienced more difficult
things, and so it's not that bad.
The second thing I think itrelates to the first somewhat,
(13:43):
but it's that, you know, backthen our bike was really
important to us and now it's notas important to us.
There's other things in our lifethat we view as more important,
and this is important to know,because I think that, no matter
what we experience in our life,I do think we all experience
(14:05):
intense pain, because ourperspective and our experience
really has an impact on the painthat we experience.
And I heard this quote recently, and I think it illustrates a
little bit of how pain works inour brain, and the quote went
like this it said something tothis effect that we all have
(14:25):
many problems in our lives.
Until we have a significanthealth problem, then we just
have one problem, and I think itjust really illustrates that
until we're faced with acircumstance that trumps the
other circumstances in our life,we face the pain that is
(14:48):
directly tied to our currentcircumstances.
And so, without thatperspective and without those
experiences, the intensity ofour pain is tied to what we
think is the intensity of theexperience or how bad our
experience is and I think Ishare all of this to help you
(15:13):
see that your brain and yourthoughts have so much power and
if you're faced with acircumstance that you can't
change or you don't want tochange, I think this is
something that you consider.
First, that the pain that you'reexperiencing is a part of life.
(15:34):
We can't escape pain, we canjust learn how to feel it.
And if you don't learn how tofeel it, then you end up trying
to run from this pain your wholelife or until the circumstance
changes.
You buffer away from the pain,and the ways that you do this is
you might go to your phone, youmight go to food, you might
(15:54):
isolate or you might turndevices that take you away from
reality.
So learning to really let thepain be and learn how to feel it
is so important and to just letpain be a part of the
experience that we call life.
The other thing that we want todo is we want to begin to watch
(16:19):
our brain right Versus justalways being in this reactive
place of trying to improve ourcircumstances, to feel better.
I want us to kind of watch thatlink that happens between the
circumstance and the emotion,the thoughts, our brain and, for
example, if you have a spousethat isn't as loving, caring or
(16:39):
invested as you like them to be,this definitely can be a
difficult situation, one that isfull of pain.
And to apply that, to applythese two things, we remember
that our goal isn't necessarilyto get rid of the pain, even
within marriage.
I don't know that the goal isto have, like, a super
(17:02):
pleasurable marriage.
I think marriage isn't theplace that we go to to have
ultimate pleasure.
It's a place that we go to toserve.
So when we're serving, it cancome with pain.
But when we learn how to dealwith the pain and we learn how
(17:24):
to be with the pain, then,rather than trying to get away
from the pain, we can begin towatch our thoughts and this is
very powerful.
It's that link between ourcircumstances and our emotions.
When we begin to watch ourthoughts, we can begin to
examine these thoughts andreally begin to measure what is
(17:47):
really true and factual and whatisn't necessarily supporting
what we want to believe andthink and where we want to go in
our life, and we can begin tolet go of some of these thoughts
that aren't helpful, that arecreating a more painful
situation than we have toexperience.
(18:09):
Another example would be thatsome of the most intense pain
that can come with a spouse thatisn't showing up in a caring
way is this thought that wearen't worthy.
Now, if we don't recognize thatwe're having this thought, then
we're going to just be in thisreactionary emotional place.
(18:34):
What we need to do is just slowdown a little bit, recognize
this thought that's happening aswe just examine and watch our
thoughts, and what we can beginto do is we can begin to see
that, oh, our spouse is showingup a certain way.
We're having this thought thatwe aren't worthy about it, and
(18:54):
now we're having this feelinglike hurt or rejection or
disconnection, and we're blamingit on our spouse, on the
circumstance.
But it really isn't deriveddirectly from our spouse or from
that circumstance, but itreally is because of this link
that's happening between thecircumstance and our emotion,
(19:16):
which is this thought that weare believing and what the
actions of our spouse seems tobe confirming that in some way,
their behaviors or the way thatthey're showing up has merit on
our worthiness or loveability orsomething like that.
When we can begin to see this.
(19:38):
We can begin to just softly,gently poke holes in this and
see how maybe it's not as trueas our brain would like to
believe.
It is true and our brain alwayslikes to be right.
If it has this belief, it'salways looking to confirm that
belief.
But what we can do is we canbegin to become intentional
(19:58):
about changing this thought.
When we intentionally changethis thought, we can change the
emotion and our response to thecircumstance, to our spouse.
This is so important because wecan take our energy off of
trying to change ourcircumstance or change our
spouse and we can put it towardssomething that we have much
(20:20):
more control over, and thatthing that we have more control
over is our thoughts.
If we can change our emotionalexperience in our marriage, with
whatever circumstance that weare facing, we can begin to show
up with much more alignmentwith who we want to be.
(20:41):
We can begin to really, nomatter what, be loving, caring,
supportive, whatever.
Right now, when ourcircumstances are directly tied
to our emotions, like we canbelieve, then we're kind of out
of control because we have tocontrol our circumstances to
control our emotions and ifwe're hurt, then we're upset and
(21:04):
angry and protective andfrustrated and resentful and
defensive, but and we think theonly way to not be that is to
change our spouses behaviors orour circumstances.
But it's not the case.
We can change our thoughts andour spouse can do whatever
they're doing and we still canshow up in a loving, caring,
supportive way.
(21:25):
Now, why might you do that?
Because I really believe thatso many of you are married to
spouses who are in pain, who arereally struggling, and when we
show up in a protective waywhich is angry, frustrated,
defensive, resentful it doesn'treally help them show up in a
(21:49):
way that is clear, right.
They move into their protectivespot, we get stuck in our cycle
and we become confused in ourrelationship and we lose each
other.
And that's really why I want usto change our emotional
experience, because that's howwe can show up as a cycle
breaker, that's how we can showup with clarity within our
(22:10):
relationship and we can reallyunderstand what is happening for
our spouse in a much moreefficient way and a much more
productive way, and we can makesure that our spouse really has
a clear message of our love forthem, our care for them and how
important they are to us.
And when that happens, we canoftentimes break this confusing
(22:32):
cycle that can cause distanceand hurt in our relationship and
we can have a much moreconnected, close and loving
relationship.
I often ask my clients todescribe how they want to be as
a spouse, and they sharedescriptives like they want to
be caring, supportive,intentional, loving, loyal,
(22:58):
things like this.
And then I ask them if theyalways show up that way in their
marriage, and pretty muchuniversally I have to say it for
myself and it seems like mostothers answer the same way that
no, there have been times when Ihaven't shown up in those ways
that I like to be in my marriage, and then I'll ask them why,
(23:22):
and they'll often point to thethings, the circumstances in
their life that are preventingthem from doing those things
right.
And now, when we can see itthis way, we can see that it's
our thoughts and our emotionsthat are causing us to show up
out of alignment with who wewant to be, and we don't
necessarily have to change ourcircumstance to change our
(23:43):
thoughts and emotions.
We can leave our circumstancesas they are and we can change
our thoughts and emotions, andin this way we, in theory, can
always show up the way that wewant to, and it's a skill that
we can develop and we can becomebetter at it and more
(24:04):
consistent at it, so that wedon't have to change our
circumstances.
We can have the samecircumstances that we have right
now.
We can believe differentthoughts, we can have different
emotions, we can show up indifferent ways and have
different results.
I'm going to give you an exampleof a time that I was able to do
this in my own life.
(24:26):
So when I was like 20 or 21, Istarted to notice that I was
losing my hair and I guess thetruth is my friends started
noticing that I was losing myhair and they began to point it
out, and I have to admit that itwas a pretty challenging
circumstance that I faced.
(24:46):
I remember, maybe after, likeour second baby, I was sitting
in the hospital and I wasresearching on my phone, like
how to prevent hair loss, andlet me tell you, there's a lot
of theories out there and Ican't say I've tried them all,
but, based off of my research,it's pretty difficult to keep
(25:07):
your hair once you start losingit, and maybe I don't know, I
guess send me an email if youknow a solution, but I didn't
really find one that lookedviable and feasible for me, and
I wasn't able to change thecircumstance of hair loss.
(25:27):
So what did I do?
I began to like wear hats.
I began to cover up my head.
I began to dislike going intopublic indoor spaces where I
might need to take my hat off orbecome exposed, and when I was
exposed or didn't have a hat on,I wasn't covered up.
I had a hard time looking atpeople in the eye.
I lost my confidence and itwasn't because I was going bald
(25:53):
that I lost my confidence.
It wasn't because of thecircumstance that I lost my
confidence and I was showing upin this way, but it was because
I believed that people thoughtbald people were weird and
people thought that bald peoplewere less attractive or less
likable.
Those were the thoughts thathad me feeling really
unconfident and self-consciousand embarrassed, and these
(26:19):
thoughts created the difficultfeelings for me.
And when we can see that it wasthese thoughts and not the fact
that I was losing my hair thatwas making me feel this way, I
began to be able to see thatthese thoughts weren't 100% true
.
And then, one day, as I wasthinking about my thoughts, this
(26:40):
new thought came to me and thisnew thought was that I can be
bald and be a loving, caring guy, no matter what.
And I love that thought becauseall of a sudden I wasn't
focused on what the other personwas thinking about me, but what
I was thinking about the otherperson.
(27:00):
For some reason, it was justlife changing for me to be able
to believe this thought and tobe able to just go to these
functions and be loving, caring,interested, compassionate and
have a feeling of care for thatperson that I was interacting
with rather than focusing on ifthey were caring about me.
(27:21):
And that was just a change inmy thought.
But it changed the way that Ipresented myself and it opened
me up to the connection that Iwanted, that I feared I was
losing by losing my hair andthat by being bald would prevent
me from having.
So I know that being balddoesn't really feel like a big
(27:43):
deal for you.
Like it's not that big of adeal, brian, it's not a big
circumstance, but it was for meand I know that you can do the
same thing.
You can change your thoughtabout your life and your
circumstance if you want, if youwant to feel better, if you
want to show up differently.
(28:03):
It's possible.
Now I would still take a fullhead of hair.
It's still something that Iwould like, and if I could get
one, I would take one, believeme.
But I also experience a lotless pain around being bald and
losing my hair and I'm able toshow up much more in alignment
(28:31):
with who I want to be.
I don't resent people who makefun of me for being bald and I
don't pull away from situationsthat I'd like to be part of
because I'm worried about whatthey think about me not having
hair.
So it's just a small example ofhow I've used the same process
in my life, and I hope that youcan see how it's possible to use
(28:54):
this process in your life sothat you don't have to change
your circumstance, so that yourunchangeable circumstance
doesn't have to be any differentthan it is and you still can
feel better.
We just have to begin to watchthis link between our
circumstance and our emotion,our thoughts, and we have to
begin to examine what thoughtsare really true, what thoughts
(29:16):
are not necessarily 100% true,and find new thoughts that we
can believe, that are going tohelp us feel differently around
the circumstance, so that we canshow up differently.
I know this podcast was prettydeep and pretty heavy and so I
thought I would end it with justa little story and it kind of
(29:36):
relates to this topic Early inmy name, kelsey's relationship.
I would buy Kelsey flowers andshe would look at them and make
some comment about how much theycosted, or she would share with
me that flowers don't reallymean anything to her and she
(29:58):
would just be fine with a cardand time together.
Why bother getting the flowers?
Don't waste your money.
And for some reason that reallyhurt at the time and we'd get
into conflict cycles aroundflowers and I spent a ton of
time and energy trying toconvince her to like my flowers.
By golly I was persistent andshe was consistent with her
(30:22):
message about not really caringabout flowers and eventually she
won and I stopped buying herflowers and for years and years
I never bought her flowers.
But I thought about this forquite a while and it came up
quite a bit that why was this sopainful for me?
(30:42):
And as I was able to kind ofexamine and watch my thoughts
about around it, I recognizedthat I was looking for her to
help me believe that I was thebee's knees that I was amazing
and I was giving flowers tomyself.
Essentially, I was trying toget her admiration by giving her
flowers and when she didn'tgive that response that I was
(31:05):
looking for, my brain took thatto mean that she wasn't willing
to make me feel as loved as Iwas willing to try to make her
feel loved, that she wasn't asinto me and I was looking for
how much she loved me by herresponse to me giving her
flowers.
And once I saw this, I realizedhow backwards that was and I
(31:29):
started buying her flowers againand I love it.
You see, to me buying herflowers feels so much like love.
It's just a little act thatrepresents how much I love her
and I love loving her.
She has shared with me that shefeels loved when I serve her,
(31:57):
when I do tasks like take thingsoff of her plate, and I've made
efforts to show love to her inthis way.
But for some reason to me doingthe dishes doesn't feel a lot
like love.
It feels less like a loving actto me than for me to shyly go
(32:24):
to the flower department at thelocal grocery store explaining
to a nice lady behind thecounter that I'm just looking to
buy some flowers for my wifeand she will say, oh, is it for
anything special?
And I respond to her, yeah, mywife.
(32:44):
And she blanks at me confused,not getting the joke.
Then I go on to pick out abouquet of flowers with her and
I write a little card and I giveit to her and I don't know why,
but to me that feels so good.
(33:05):
I love giving that to my wife,I love doing it, and even though
she doesn't necessarily feelthe same amount of love in
return, that's okay.
And I don't really care whatshe does with the flowers or how
she responds to it.
I'm going to make sure that Icontinue to try to show up in
(33:29):
the way that she feels loved.
But sometimes I give flowersfor myself.
I still do it because I loveshowing her love that way, and
doing the dishes is just how Ishow up so that maybe, just
maybe, that girl that means theworld to me would love me back.
(33:55):
I hope you enjoyed this podcastand if I could ask you one thing
, just like Kelsey feels lovedby me doing the dishes, I feel
loved by you when you rate andleave a review on this podcast
or share it with a friend, justletting you know that have a
(34:16):
great weekend, have a great week, everybody, and I will see you
back here next week.
This has been the Fighting forConnection podcast.
If you've enjoyed this podcastand want more content like this,
check out my Connected Couplescampus, which can be found on my
website, wwwpivotalapproachcom,and become the difference you
(34:40):
need in your relationship.
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