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The Validation Paradox: Why Reassurance Can Feel Lonely · The Virtual Couch

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Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch.
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I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist,
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but I am not your therapist.
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Although, to be fair, I'm a lot of therapist-therapists, so technically there's
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a chance that I might be your therapist-therapist. Everything I share here is
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for informational, educational, maybe a little bit of entertainment purpose.
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This podcast is not meant to diagnose or treat or replace professional mental health care.
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If you are struggling, please do me a huge favor and reach out to a qualified
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mental health professional in your area because that is the part that matters the most.
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And if you have never done so, you can Google low-cost mental health care in
0:58
your area and you will find most likely, depending on how rural of an area,
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some affordable mental health care.
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Today's episode is based on a real couple, sort of. More accurately,
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it's based on a carefully blended psychological smoothie of many couples that
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I've worked with over the years. Couples that maybe I'm working with right now.
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Probably future couples who just don't know it yet. But while the concepts and
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patterns and emotions and dynamics are all absolutely real, as per usual,
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all identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.
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This content resonates with you. And today's episode is one I've been working on for a little while.
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It's about validation. I would love to stay connected. So you can find me on
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Instagram at virtual.couch, TikTok at virtual couch, or over on the virtual
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couch substack, which is thevirtualcouch.substack.com.
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And I love getting your stories, your questions.
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So much of what I talk about on the podcast comes directly from the real things
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that people are navigating in relationships and parenting and faith transitions
1:56
and emotional growth and trying to figure out how to be a human,
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especially in this day and age.
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You can also reach out through my website, TonyOverbay.com. While you're there,
2:04
sign up for the newsletter. And if you are a guy who is trying to become more
2:09
emotionally mature, check out my men's emotional architects group.
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And also I am updating my magnetic marriage course.
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Along with courses on parenting and navigating faith deconstruction.
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You can just go to TonyOverbay.com and find that out there.
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Go to TonyOverbay.com slash magnetic if you want to know more about the marriage
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course itself. Now, let's get to today's show.
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And today, the fictional couple, formerly played as Jack and Jill,
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are going to be replaced today by Archie and Veronica.
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And if you are unfamiliar, Archie is a well-meaning, occasionally confused,
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emotionally avoidant redhead from a fictional town of Riverdale who somehow
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keeps stumbling into all kinds of things.
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Of course, existential crisis while still looking like he should be selling
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milkshakes in a 1950s diner.
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And Veronica is brilliant and very intense and deeply perceptive and at least
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two or three levels of differentiation or processing levels ahead of everybody
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else in the room at all times.
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So they are a perfect couple for today's episode. And I think that you'll see
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why. Let's go to the story.
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Imagine this. So Veronica comes home. It's been a brutal day at work.
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Her manager pulled her into a meeting. It was supposed to be about a project
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and it turned into a conversation about her performance and all kinds of things
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of the way that she was showing up at work and she didn't see it coming.
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So the whole drive home, she's turned it over in her head. What did she miss?
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What's the actual concern?
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More importantly in today's climate, is my job okay? So she walks in the door
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and then Archie asked, hey, how was your day?
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And she tells him and Archie who loves her. and by every available measure and
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metric is a very good guy.
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He's probably on the verge of what is known as nice guy syndrome.
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He just wants to keep the peace and say all the right things.
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And if he does all the things that he can do for Veronica, then she will love
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him and adore him and want to be with him. And they will live happily ever after.
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He's a good guy. So he says, honey, you are so good at your job.
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You're one of the best ones there.
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I would imagine your boss probably stressed about something else.
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I wouldn't even worry about it. And Veronica kind of nods and says the thanks
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and then heads upstairs.
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And she sits down on the edge of the bed, but something just feels off.
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But she tries to think it through and she says, okay, I just got reassured by
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the person who I believe knows me best.
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He said the kind of thing that you're supposed to want to hear.
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He made the right mouth noises and the facial expressions. So why does she feel
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more alone than she did in the drive home in the car? So that feeling has a name.
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It's invalidation. And the strange part is that it came wrapped inside of a compliment.
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And I believe wholeheartedly that Archie meant well.
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So that moment with Veronica is something that I think most of us have lived
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on both sides of. Somebody tells us something hard and we rush to make it better.
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We say the kind of thing that sounds like comfort and the person that we love
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walks away feeling unseen.
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And then we even turn away from that and think, what on earth is going on?
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Do they not care about me? We can make it all about ourselves when they're the one that came to us.
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Looking for something. There's an article in Psychology Today that is by a psychologist named Jamie Lusk.
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She said, most of us already recognize what negative invalidation looks like.
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Things like you're crazy. What's wrong with you? Why are you so needy?
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Can't you just chill out? Just relax? Not a big deal.
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And that kind of invalidation stings, but it's obvious.
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The harder kind is what Lusk calls positive invalidation. And it sounds like,
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hey, you're great. Why do you have to be so hard on yourself?
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It's all going to work out. It always does. You don't need to worry about I'm
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sure he didn't mean to hurt you. You did so well, don't even think about it again.
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Because you can also invalidate by agreeing with something that hurts.
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Maybe you've experienced this where the person that you are pouring your heart
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and soul out to says, I mean, you're right, you probably weren't their top choice.
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Or, you know, you're right that you can be a little bit too much.
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And that kind of agreement can look like solidarity, but it functions more like a verdict.
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Now, what ties these together is they all close the door on what the person's actually feeling.
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Now, they might do it gently. They might do it with love, but the result's the same.
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The person on the receiving end, the person who poured their heart and soul
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out, is left holding their experience alone.
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Often more confused than before because the person that they trusted just told
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them that their reality was wrong without using those exact words.
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And that's the kind of invalidation that is the hardest to name because the
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person doing it is by every visible measure being nice, looking like they really
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care. And I think that most of the time they do.
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Most of us don't know what to do with our emotions because if you kind of go
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back in the time machine, even the best of parents with the best of intentions
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told us not to worry about something.
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Hey, it's not a big deal. Just calm down.
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Don't worry about this thing that you are coming to me worried about.
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And what it actually communicates to a kid is that, hey, whatever you're worried
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about, you shouldn't need to worry about that. So your worry is actually incorrect.
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Or when you're told to calm down as a kid, what is getting transmitted to that
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little brain and nervous system is that, hey, calm down.
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Your emotions are way too much. They're not welcome here.
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They need to manage them so that a parent can feel better.
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Now, that's a good parent doing it, a loving parent, a parent doing their best
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with what they were handed, what they were modeled when they were a kid.
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And then for the people that I work with who come out of things like higher
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demand, religious environments are very strict upbringings. There's an extra layer.
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They were told to think that there is one right way to think and feel and want,
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which then naturally implies that anything outside the right way is the wrong way.
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So if they notice themselves thinking, feeling, or wanting something that didn't
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match what they'd been taught, they default to, I'm wrong.
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I'm thinking the wrong things. I feel the wrong way. And I want to do the things
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that I'm not supposed to want to do.
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So you end up with as a whole generation of adults walking around with unhealthy
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relationships with their own emotions, constantly checking, constantly wondering
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if what they feel is, is this the right thing to feel? Should I be feeling this way?
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Constantly looking for somebody else to tell them, yes, that emotion, that one's allowed.
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Yes, you are seeing your situation correctly, according to me.
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And yes, I deem that you are okay.
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Which is funny because that, okay, cool, I'm good. I said the right thing.
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But then why do I not necessarily feel better?
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Or sometimes I do for just a short amount of time.
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We get set up before we ever walk into an adult relationship to need external
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validation to know who we are.
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Kids get their whole sense of self from external validation.
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And it makes sense. It's part of the way that life works.
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But when we get older, the hope is that we can learn to find ourselves and not
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need that external validation.
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Need it. And we'll talk about that as this episode unfolds.
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So, of course, when we get in a relationship, we're going to hand that job to our partner.
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Our whole sense of self has been built on getting a signal from outside that
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says, you're reading this right. You're allowed to feel this way. You're okay.
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It makes sense that we would need our partner to also then tell us that we're going to be okay.
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So that's the setup before any kind of sciencey things around the behavior,
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nervous system, the science of validation even enters the room.
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So now, open the door and welcome in the science of validation.
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Dr. Marsha Linehan, who built a type of therapy called dialectical behavioral
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therapy, or DBT, from the ground up, defines validation as finding the kernel
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of truth in another person's perspective or situation.
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And I do enjoy that definition, because it's not about agreeing with all of
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it, because we will never understand exactly what another person's going through.
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And validation, again, finding a kernel of truth in their experience.
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It doesn't even mean that you're endorsing the behavior, but it's finding the
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part that given where they're standing and what you can only guess or assume
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they've been through does make some sense.
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And this is something I talk about a lot when I'm working with couples or talking
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about my four pillars of a connected conversation.
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Pillar one, well, there's a pre-pillar separating observation from judgment.
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I'm observing that my partner walked by me and didn't say anything.
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Then the judgment is they don't care about me. You have to learn to separate
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the observation from the judgment. I'm observing that they walk by me, didn't say anything.
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And my judgment is that they don't care about me.
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Separate them because that can get me into pillar one, which is now I'm going
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to assume good intent that they're not doing it to hurt me.
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But there's also a part B to pillar one, which is, or there's a reason why that
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person's saying you're doing the things they're doing.
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Because a lot of that, it could be rooted in emotional immaturity that they
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may feel, even though that they are an adult walking around in adult clothes,
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driving cars and having jobs and things like that, that that's still the way
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that they need to communicate their message.
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I need to show you that I'm angry with you rather than talking about it.
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But then we get to pillar two and pillar two sits where we're talking about with this episode.
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It's, it's accepting their perspective that you can't tell somebody that their
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experience is wrong or that you disagree with the way that they are reading a situation.
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Big dramatic pause, even if you genuinely think that they are interpreting it
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in a way that is not serving them, or in a way that you are acknowledging that
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you don't believe that you would handle that.
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In other words, you can't tell somebody that they're wrong, even if you think
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they are, because that's their perspective. That's their interpretation of events.
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And I think when you really slow things down that way, the reason is pretty
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straightforward, because you truly do not know what it feels like to be them.
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You weren't there for the version of the day that they've had.
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You weren't standing inside their
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body, feeling their nervous system when their manager said the thing.
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And you don't have access to the 27 other moments from their week that were
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stacking on top of this one that was downstream that led up to how they felt
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right now, which is exactly why then pillar three follows naturally.
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Questions before comments. Hey, tell me more about that.
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How long you've been feeling that way? What's the hardest part about what you
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just experienced? Those questions, they're an acknowledgement that you're standing
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on the outside of an experience that belongs to someone else.
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And you care about that person. And the only way to really build and grow in
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this relationship is to ask, to genuinely, curiously ask about their experience.
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I think most of us don't think about it this way, but if a friend tells you
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that they're nervous about, let's say, teaching a Sunday school lesson and you
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say, hey, don't worry about it. You'll be fine.
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It's invalidation. You're telling them, hey, where you're feeling,
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not correct. It's not accurate.
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And you probably meant it as encouragement, but they hear on some level that
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what they're feeling isn't the right thing to feel. Once you see it in something
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that small, you start to see it in a lot of different places.
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And the research backs it up. In 2019, a team led by a researcher named Ko ran
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a study with mothers of adolescents who were self-injuring.
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And they taught the moms in a single session how to interpersonally validate.
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Then they put the mothers and teens in a conflict discussion and measured what
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happened. And the mothers who have been trained in validation showed a lower
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physiological arousal and less emotional distress during the fight.
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And that actually led to the teens also having lower emotional distress.
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One session, high stakes relationship, but you can see measurable change in the body.
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Now, Lusk also points out the research showing that validation makes change more likely, not less.
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And most of us, I think, were taught the opposite. Most of us were taught that
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if you let somebody's feelings be valid, they'll dig in, they'll move the goalposts,
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that you are allowing it, that it will just continue to get worse.
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But the research actually shows that they soften.
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And this isn't just a couple's problem or a parent-child problem.
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Research from Barthal and Halpern shows that when entire groups invalidate each other's views.
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When one side dismisses the other's reality is not just wrong,
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but despicable, illegitimate polarization happens and it deepens.
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Each side digs their heels in and the gap widens and reconciliation gets a lot harder.
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I think a lot of what we're watching unfold even in the country right now is
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a macro version of what happens in somebody's living room.
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It comes out of emotional immaturity, that right, wrong, black,
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white frame, where if you have a different opinion than I do,
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that it doesn't mean that we see things differently. It means you think you're
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right and I'm wrong, which now means I have to attack your position and defend mine.
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So there's no room left for curiosity. There's no room for two people to hold
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genuinely different views and now stay connected or stay in a conversation.
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So what gets lost, I think, at the national level is the same thing that gets
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lost in Veronica and Archie's living room.
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Kernel of truth or trying to understand what that other person's perspective
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is with the acknowledgement that I don't know what it feels like to be them.
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The possibility that somebody that you disagree with might be standing on something
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real given where they came from and what they've lived through.
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You can find that kernel without endorsing their conclusions.
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You can find it without changing your own.
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And the fix runs in the same direction, I think, on most every scale.
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And so, this is the part that sounds like the whole story.
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Validation, good. Practice it. End of episode.
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Except a man named Dr. David Schnarch spent his career looking at long-term
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couples and he would walk into the scene with Veronica and Archie and ask a
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completely different question.
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I think he wouldn't ask whether Archie validated her well.
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He would ask why Veronica actually needs Archie's validation to settle herself in the first place.
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And it's Schnarch's work on differentiation that has become a lot of the backbone
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of how I think about long-term relationships now.
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Differentiation, as he defines it, is the ability to hold onto yourself when
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the people closest to you are pressuring you intentionally or not to be something else.
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And it's the ability to stay you while staying connected to another person,
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especially those who you care about.
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And one of his core moves is to distinguish two kinds of intimacy.
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The first he calls other validated intimacy. And it's that expectation that
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your partner will approve of
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you, agree with you, reflect you back in the shape that you want to see.
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You think that you are a version, a certain version of a human,
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and you are wanting that person to agree with the version that you think you
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are. But what is so fascinating to see is that you're saying,
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hey, you know me, validate this version of me that I think that I am.
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But if you've been with somebody long enough, they're naturally going to think
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of examples of things that don't line up with what you're saying.
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If you say, and I've had this recently in session, when somebody says to their
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spouse, you know me, I'm honest.
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And then I stop right there and I say to the spouse, the partner,
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what are you thinking about right now?
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And in this situation, the guy just said, nothing. And I said,
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oh, no, my friend, I know this game.
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And, but essentially he said, I'm thinking about the times where she hasn't been very honest.
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And she took offense and I had to normalize that because that's part of the
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fascinating thing about how relationships work.
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And I think when you break it down at that simple of a level,
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and you can look at that with curiosity, not judgment, not shame.
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I want this person to think that I'm always honest, but immediately I'm with
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this person that has experienced enough life with me that they're immediately
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thinking of these times where I'm not.
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And that's why I love saying to a couple that we're going to learn how to communicate.
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We're going to learn how to say, this is my experience. This is your experience.
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We're going to learn how to stay in a conversation. We're going to learn how
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to use I statements and be genuinely curious. What do you think instead of,
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I think you feel this way.
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And what you often find is that the person I think I am is fairly based in truth.
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Hey, I'm always honest, except for those times I'm not, but then I have a good reason why I'm not.
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Or you know me, I'm always a fun time, except for, yeah, you could probably
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point out the times where I haven't been a very fun time, but there are reasons
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why. And what if all those things are true?
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But we want this person to see who we are.
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We want them to validate that we are the certain type of person.
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We want them again to reflect you back in the shape that you want to see.
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To comfort you when you're shaky. And it sounds like the goal of a relationship,
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but Schnarch will argue it's more of a trap.
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Because the moment that your sense of self depends on somebody else delivering
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it to you, you've essentially handed them a steering wheel that was never theirs to hold.
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Now they have so much power over how you feel about yourself.
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So that was other validated intimacy. And then he also talks about self-validated intimacy. see.
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This was a little trickier because it's letting yourself be known without needing
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your partner to accept what they see.
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And this is the scary part because our brains are still so wired into this all
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or nothing, black or white, emotionally immature.
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If I say this thing and they don't like it, then they will leave me.
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That's an all or nothing statement.
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It's saying the true thing and then handling whatever comes back,
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which could be silence, disagreement, criticism, and without it dismantling who you are.
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And David Schnarch is pretty blunt about this. He says that empathy and acceptance
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when they're coming out of fusion in a relationship are never free.
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There's always a bill. There's a cost.
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I'll only do for you if you do for me. And that's not love. That's a transaction.
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And that transactional model assumes a particular thing about people.
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It assumes that you and I are two separate fixed things doing business together.
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Myself over here, yourself over there, trading empathy for empathy.
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There's an amazing Buddhist concept, I think, worth bringing in here that kind
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of pokes at that assumption.
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It's called anatta or sometimes translated as the non-self or no-self.
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And before anybody tunes out at the word, I am not hovering above the floor
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because it doesn't mean that you don't exist.
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You obviously exist, but boy, sometimes my YouTube rabbit hole would convince me otherwise.
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I believe you currently exist and you are listening to this.
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What it means is that you're not what you always think you are.
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There's no fixed permanent essence sitting inside of you that is the quote real you.
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Things exist because of and in relationship to other things.
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And my favorite phrase with this is nothing stands alone.
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I've heard this taught with this helicopter image, which I love.
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When you're flying a helicopter, you don't lock the controls into place and coast.
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You're using all four limbs the entire time. You're adjusting the throttle,
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you're adjusting the pitch, you're adjusting direction every second.
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So, this Buddhist teaching of non-self sees a person the same way.
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You're not a static thing being who you are. You are a continual adjustment.
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Are you more you when you're hungry or when you've just eaten?
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Maybe when you're rested or when you've been up for three nights working a project?
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Are you more you in the loving home you grew up in or the moment that a hard
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thing happened to you as a kid?
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The answer here is that there is no fix to you.
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There's only a complex web of these impermanent causes and conditions that if
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you are going to do a thing, then there's an acceptance that someone is going
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to react a certain way to that thing.
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If I'm so worried about how they might react that I don't do a thing,
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then I'm going to feel stuck and I am not going to figure out who I am.
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So what this means is that Veronica coming home shaky is not Veronica being
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a defective Veronica. She's a person responding to a meeting,
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a drive home, and 18 other moments piled on top.
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Same with Archie. Now, he is rushing to fix her mood. That's not Archie being broken, Archie.
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His nervous system, his learning history, his own causes and conditions, those are all at play.
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So, this maybe sounds like it would contradict Schnarch's whole thing about
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differentiation, but it doesn't. It really deepens it.
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Differentiation was never about being independent. Nobody is independent.
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What Shnarsh is saying and what this Buddhist piece are saying are really these
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related things from different angles, that you exist in a web of relationships.
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It's interdependent. Nothing stands alone. When I do a thing, my partner will react.
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And that your sense of who you are can't be borrowed from one node of the web
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every time you feel uncertain. The web is real.
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So is your distinct presence in
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it. That's what makes this trap of other validated intimacy so specific.
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It isn't bad because connection with another person's bad.
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It can be a challenge because it treats the self as this fixed object that has
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to be confirmed by another fixed object.
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You know me. If you don't validate this version that I think I am,
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then all of a sudden, then you don't care about me and nobody likes me versus
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what if there's no fixed object? There's a continual adjustment.
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It's the first time that you've been you in that moment with those 18 things
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that led to that day and you went to work and your boss said the thing.
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And there's truth in the fact that maybe your boss was going through a lot and you don't know that.
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So, is he diffusing his anger, his discomfort onto you? You're in a particular
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way that day that you can't just go, huh, okay.
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Now, oh my gosh, am I going to lose my job or what's wrong with me?
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Or what are the things that I miss?
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Now you bring that energy home and you got Archie who was just sitting around
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being Archie and now he feels that.
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And when you walk in the door and now he's reacting to you.
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There's continual adjustment in you and your partner and in the relationship.
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So, the tension on the table, I think, is this.
22:43
And Lusk's research says validation calms the body, it builds trust, and it opens change.
22:50
Schnarch says depending on validation from your partner is one of the things
22:54
that keeps long-term couples stuck.
22:57
Both are right. So when Veronica comes home upset, something happened inside
23:01
of Archie that he probably wasn't even aware of. He definitely wasn't prepared for it.
23:05
Her distress didn't just land in his ear holes. He felt it in his body.
23:11
So Schnarch would say that their nervous systems were doing what fused nervous systems do.
23:16
The anxiety was actually flowing between them. And then Archie's emotional balance
23:21
got knocked off the second hers did.
23:24
There's a lot of research on this concept called co-regulation.
23:28
And it's actually really solid for a psychology topic.
23:32
Psychology, you often hear, is more of a soft science, not the medical model.
23:35
You don't just put a cast on a broken bone and you fix it.
23:38
Again, soft science. There's so many variables at play.
23:42
The most well-known study comes from james cone and his
23:45
colleagues at the university of virginia was published back in 2006 and
23:49
as someone that has a challenge not
23:53
going with jokes constantly i just want you to know i almost want to bell the
23:57
dean every time i think of a joke about what i want to say as i lay out the
24:01
dynamics of this study but i'm not going to but they put married women and a
24:05
fmri scanner so that's where you're you're putting some good old dye in the
24:09
brain and you're watching things happen in real time.
24:12
So they put married women in an fMRI scanner under the threat of mild electric
24:16
shocks, and then watch what happened in their brains under three conditions,
24:19
alone, holding the hand of a stranger, or holding their husband's hand.
24:24
Now, you can see they're starting certain jokes, but hold those to the side.
24:28
When the women were holding their husband's hand, the threat-related activity
24:32
in their brains went down, not metaphorically, but measurably.
24:36
And then in the name of being authentic, I have one mosquito that has been in the office all morning.
24:45
And there have been many pauses when he flies right in front of my face and
24:48
I try to gently grab him so I can escort him outside.
24:52
If you know what I mean. But the better the marriage, the bigger the effect.
24:57
And then follow-up studies have shown the same basic thing in other ways.
25:00
Intimate partners' nervous systems synchronize.
25:03
Heart rates start to converge during emotional conversations.
25:07
Skin conductance, the same thing that a polygraph measures, rises and falls together.
25:12
Cortisol, the stress hormone, can be measured running in parallel between couples
25:17
in a way that does not happen between strangers.
25:20
Oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, starts to run free.
25:23
And then other researchers put people in a room watching their romantic partner
25:26
go through a stressful task through a one-way mirror, and that observer's cortisol
25:31
climbs alongside their partners.
25:34
And again, if this was the Waking Up the Narcissism podcast,
25:37
maybe they would have some situations where then the partner would,
25:40
their happy chemicals would rise, but that's a whole different podcast.
25:44
But when Veronica walked in the door upset, Archie's body was reading her body
25:48
before any conscious thought caught up. I think that's one of the key points here.
25:52
His system started shifting the direction that hers had shifted.
25:56
The pull toward reassurance was at least partly biological.
26:00
It was happening without him even knowing. Get her settled because if he can
26:04
get her settled down, his nervous system settles down.
26:07
Which means when Archie said, you are so good at your job, I wouldn't worry about it.
26:12
He wasn't actually answering what Veronica said. He was managing his own discomfort
26:16
with her being uncomfortable.
26:17
So the reassurance wasn't for her, it was for him.
26:21
And I think this one can be a hard one to sit with because I think most of us,
26:24
when we do this, genuinely believe we're being loving.
26:27
Another version of this is when somebody tells you a really horrific or difficult
26:30
thing and you answer with, man, I'm so sorry.
26:33
And that's it. Because then the person telling you the story,
26:36
it's as if now they're required to then say, it's okay, I'm sure I'll be fine, or thank you.
26:42
When you see it that way, then when somebody is saying, I'm sorry,
26:46
it becomes pretty clear that it is more of a them thing.
26:51
They said the thing, hey, I am so sorry. I want you to know I'm sorry.
26:54
So, but keep going and I'll tell you I'm sorry again. And I'll even maybe even
26:59
say, let me know what I can do to help.
27:01
So, I said all the stuff, right? Check. Can I take off now?
27:04
Again, believing though that
27:06
we're being loving and I believe that that is a, it is a kind thing to do.
27:11
So, we're not lying to ourselves on purpose. We just, we have this system,
27:15
one that we now know is measurable in the body that registers a loved one's
27:19
pain as our pain and then dispatches comfort because that's what gets the temperature
27:23
down for us. It gets the temperature down for us.
27:27
Schnarch has a phrase for the system underneath it. He calls it emotional fusion,
27:30
togetherness without separateness.
27:32
It's this persistent emotional link where every move that one person makes will
27:36
impact, or he says, upsets the other's balance.
27:40
And then the only way to feel okay again is to get the other person to feel okay first.
27:45
And fusion, I need you to feel better and I need you to feel better so I can
27:49
feel better are the same sentence. You just can't tell that from the inside.
27:54
And I think this is the part where a lot of us, if we're honest,
27:56
find ourselves on the giving end.
27:58
The friend who can't let your bad day be bad, the parent who needs you to be
28:02
okay so they can sleep tonight, or the partner who keeps reassuring you while
28:06
you're trying to tell them something difficult, and then us doing it back to them.
28:11
Now, I want to do a quick tangent here because this co-regulation piece is so
28:15
fascinating, and it opens up something that I've been chewing on as a couples
28:18
therapist for a little while since I've been currently obsessed about co-regulation.
28:23
So this, the biology that I just described, a partner's nervous system synchronizing,
28:27
it usually shows up in therapy in, I would say, a hopeful way.
28:30
One partner starts doing the work, they get a little more grounded,
28:33
a little less reactive, a little more able to stay with their own experience
28:35
without needing the other person to fix it.
28:37
And the other partner will push back a little bit at first, but then often within
28:41
weeks or months starts to settle too.
28:44
And they come into alignment or coherence, not because they got drug into therapy,
28:48
but because the system around them shifted and their nervous system had something
28:51
different to basically attune to.
28:54
That's the version that makes co-regulation sound like a beautiful love story.
28:57
But the version I see a lot less written about is different,
29:02
where one partner does that same part, the work.
29:05
They get grounded, they get present, they become non-reactive,
29:08
and the other partner gets more dysregulated.
29:11
And at first, the other partner is typically going to get dysregulated regardless.
29:16
I call it testing for safety because they've seen their partner say things before,
29:20
I'm going to change, I'm going to do this different, but they can't trust it.
29:23
The person is testing for safety, but then over time, when one person calms
29:28
and comes into coherence, but the other person in another situation,
29:32
they become even more and more dysregulated, not less.
29:35
Sometimes the point of blowing up the whole relationship.
29:38
And I've just been noting that for quite a while. So I started a conversation
29:41
with somebody who works in the field of epigenetics that I just absolutely love
29:45
and I've known for a very long time.
29:47
We'll call him Jack. We'll bring back Jack here. No Jill, but Jack.
29:50
What follows, I'm going to share some notes with you. Full transparency,
29:54
two people tossing ideas around, not running a study. We were not landing on conclusions.
29:58
We were two curious humans wondering if there's something here. So take it as that.
30:02
So the first concept that Jack brought in was from the world of physics,
30:05
which I know little to nothing about. And he talked about energy landscapes.
30:09
And it's this idea that systems in physics and in chemistry tend to settle into
30:13
states that take the least energy to maintain.
30:15
And this makes sense to me because I know that this is why we form habits.
30:18
We do things repetitively and then the brain eventually habitualizes it because
30:22
it takes less electrical activity of the brain.
30:25
And in the world of the brain is a don't get killed device. The brain is operating
30:29
from this incorrect assumption that it has a finite amount of electrical activity.
30:34
So, it's trying to habitualize everything, thoughts, activities, you name it.
30:37
But when you get back to these concepts of energy landscapes,
30:41
Jack said, picture a ball rolling across a series of hills and valleys.
30:45
The ball never will stop on a hillside. It rolls until it finds a valley,
30:50
a low point where it can rest without effort.
30:52
And what he was suggesting was that people might have something like emotional
30:56
energy landscapes, that we settle into patterns that feel stable,
31:00
even if those patterns are unhealthy, because stable takes less energy than change.
31:05
So, when two people enter a relationship, their individual landscapes combine,
31:08
and now they make a new shared landscape together.
31:10
And that shared landscape has its own valleys, its own low energy stable states.
31:14
And that's where a relationship tends to come to rest.
31:18
A couple can be settled in a valley that's healthy or settled in a valley that's
31:22
painful, but it's stable.
31:24
You both feel normal once you're in them because stable is stable.
31:29
It becomes the familiar. I think of it often as a couple can actually co-regulate in chaos.
31:36
Because change then, by definition, would require going back up a hill,
31:40
which is going to take work, which means when one partner starts doing the work,
31:44
it becomes more grounded. They're not just changing themselves,
31:46
but they're essentially trying to change the shape of this shared landscape.
31:51
The old valley that everybody has been resting in starts to flatten out,
31:55
and the system has to find a new equilibrium.
31:57
Sometimes the system finds a healthier valley. That's the love story.
32:01
Other times, the partner who isn't necessarily doing the work can't tolerate
32:05
the climb out of that familiar valley.
32:08
Their system, for reasons that may go all the way down into their biology,
32:11
early adversity, childhood trauma, neural wiring,
32:15
autonomic patterning that got laid down before they had words,
32:18
those deeply rutted neuropathways, it registers the destabilization of getting
32:23
out of this familiar dynamic, this familiar dance,
32:26
this familiar pattern as a threat, not as an invitation to, hey,
32:30
let's go find something better.
32:31
So, they push back, sometimes by leaving, sometimes by escalating,
32:35
sometimes by blowing the whole thing up.
32:36
Jack actually used a cell biology image that was wild and fascinating and it
32:40
stuck with me, that cells actually respond to signals from neighboring cells.
32:44
If you think about it, when cells divide and creating life, they're just a bunch of cells.
32:49
They respond to signals from neighboring cells. They don't operate independently.
32:53
Some cells, given the right signal, integrate and become something new,
32:56
some new organ some new it's fascinating the body the
32:59
human body is a miracle other cells though given the same signal
33:02
behave destructively some literally self-destruct like i guess viruses and things
33:06
like that different cells have different thresholds for what they can absorb
33:10
and then what shatters them so here's my big old speculative leap and i want
33:14
to be clear it is a very big leap but what if people are somewhat similar the
33:18
grounded partner is essentially sending a new signal into the system.
33:22
Some nervous systems, meaning their partners, can take that signal and adapt.
33:25
You bet. I'm ready to go be a heart or a liver.
33:28
Maybe you wouldn't want to be a liver, but I'm ready to change,
33:31
to be something new, something that is healthier, better for us.
33:34
But then others can't. Not because they're bad, but because their regulatory
33:39
capacity built from early childhood adversity, trauma, wiring, all of it.
33:45
They don't have room yet for destabilization. And if any of this stuff is even
33:49
partly true, it changes how I sit with the couple in front to me because the
33:52
partner who's doing the work isn't doing anything wrong if the relationship comes apart.
33:55
They're sending this signal to get to this new place in the relationship.
34:01
But the system as it currently is, as it currently exists, can't yet take in, can't metabolize.
34:06
And sometimes that feels pretty crummy to say out loud, especially as a couple's
34:10
therapist, because the temptation is then to make somebody a villain,
34:12
the partner who left, the partner who escalated, the therapist who should have done more.
34:17
But the energy landscape image opens something up completely different.
34:20
Sometimes a system reaches a place where its current valley doesn't work anymore
34:25
and the next valley over isn't available.
34:27
And what's between the two is a climb and the system maybe can't make it right now.
34:31
Or one of the people is so set in their ways of trauma that they don't want to try.
34:38
And if their partner tries, it can probably feel like a deep form of abandonment
34:43
if their partner no longer can remain in the relationship as it is.
34:48
But they're willing to go and look for this new energy landscape because they
34:52
can't put the genie back in the bottle.
34:54
They can't go back into the unhealthy,
34:55
toxic dynamic that they have been co-regulating around for so long.
34:59
Okay. End of the tangent back to the main thread. So how do these two things sit together?
35:04
So validation is real and validation is powerful. And I think it does get a bad rap.
35:08
It needs a new PR department because it isn't a negative thing.
35:12
It can make us feel better and more connected and close.
35:15
However, needing validation is a trap.
35:19
So both of those things are true. So where does that leave someone who is really
35:23
trying to show up and be a good partner?
35:25
Let's talk about the word paradox, because to me, if you spend any time around
35:29
mental health work, you start to notice that the most helpful mental health
35:33
moves are almost always, and I don't like to use the word always or never,
35:38
but almost always paradoxical.
35:40
The things that look like they should make you better often make you worse.
35:44
And then the things that look like they should make things worse are often where the growth lives.
35:49
I talk as often as I can about the negative impacts of shame.
35:53
I don't think that I've ever worked with anybody where shame has been a component of growth.
35:59
Yet most people still go to this place of shame that I am bad.
36:03
Something is wrong with me.
36:05
If that was the thing that worked, then everybody would be better and I wouldn't have a job.
36:10
And people would go around shaming each other, shaming themselves,
36:13
and then live happily ever after.
36:15
But it's moving away from that, which is so difficult because it's so deeply
36:19
rooted in us that is the thing that actually helps.
36:22
Or I'd say a more obvious example is the concept of discomfort.
36:26
The human default is to avoid discomfort. We move away from hard conversations,
36:31
difficult feelings, awkward truths.
36:34
And the more that we avoid, the more our life gets organized around what do I have to do to avoid?
36:41
What do I have to do so people won't find out until that avoidance itself is
36:46
the problem and it gets too big to manage.
36:48
So the paradox is that growth lives inside the
36:51
discomfort that we're running from growth from discomfort so when
36:54
somebody learns to lean into the thing that they used to dodge it's
36:57
not because they are a sadist or a masochist but it's because all right i now
37:02
have the confidence that i'm going to grow through the discomfort that i'm going
37:05
to be able to make it through this the world is still going to spin people could
37:08
get upset and frustrated and angry and all those emotions and it's going to
37:13
be okay now your version of okay we could talk about that,
37:18
everything continues to move. And I think certainty works the same way.
37:22
We crave certainty. We want to know that the marriage will last,
37:25
that this relationship is going to be worth the time I'm going to spend,
37:28
that this job, if I change jobs, that it's going to pay off in the long run,
37:31
that the kids will turn out and the career will work, and that the diagnosis will be benign.
37:35
The more we need certainty, the less able we are to be present in the actual
37:42
life that we are in because the actual life that we're in is uncertain by definition.
37:47
We can make lots of guesses and set amazing, wonderful goals,
37:51
and then we can work toward those guesses and goals.
37:54
But somebody forgot to tell life that that's the thing that we're doing.
37:57
The paradox is that accepting the uncertainty is what makes you more in the
38:03
present moment. It makes the present moment more available.
38:06
You can't be here while you're trying to nail down what's coming next,
38:09
or I should have known something from the past.
38:11
I would say then the validation paradox follows that same pattern.
38:14
The thing that looks like the answer, get validated by your partner.
38:18
Manage their emotions, make sure everything they're okay in order for me to
38:21
be okay, is the thing that traps you.
38:23
So the thing that looks impossible, give validation generously without needing
38:28
it back, is the thing that can open up the relationship.
38:31
Because in order to even give that validation, I need to know and understand
38:35
what you are experiencing and what you're going through and not how it makes me feel.
38:40
That resolution then is in differentiation itself because a differentiated person
38:45
can give validation generously because giving it doesn't cost them anything.
38:49
They're not bidding for it to come back to them. They're not buying future credit.
38:53
They're not building up that emotional bank account. They're not soothing their
38:56
own anxiety by managing their partner's mood.
38:59
They're not trying to find the right thing to say so that they can feel okay.
39:03
They eventually learn to have a quiet enough mind and a calm enough heart,
39:08
to use Schnarch's phrase, that they can sit with their partner's pain without
39:13
needing to fix it for their own regulation.
39:18
A differentiated person can also receive validation when it shows up without
39:22
it becoming a structural beam of their self-worth.
39:26
It turns out it becomes a bonus. It's not a verdict of who you are.
39:30
And a differentiated person can hear something difficult from their partner,
39:33
including a refusal to validate them and then stay standing and be okay.
39:39
Their sense of self doesn't fall apart when their partner doesn't reflect back
39:42
to them in the way that they want them to.
39:46
This is the move that Schnarch calls self-validated intimacy.
39:49
And it's so much harder than what most of us were sold about relationships.
39:53
Because most of us were sold the idea that the right partner makes you feel
39:56
seen and valued and safe and it just unfolds and happens naturally.
40:00
Schnarch would say the right relationship makes you build the version of yourself
40:03
that doesn't need to be made to feel those things by another person.
40:07
There's a line that I keep coming back to that in an adult relationship,
40:10
you can have love or you can have control. You cannot have both.
40:13
Validation given as a gift is one of love's truest forms.
40:17
Validation given as a transaction is control with the better PR firm, the better marketing.
40:22
So the paradox concept, I think, holds true here. Validate generously,
40:27
but do it from a place of genuine validation because you are learning about
40:31
your partner. You're trying to understand who they are.
40:34
Don't make your partner responsible for delivering it back, though.
40:38
Both halves of that sentence have to stay alive at the same time.
40:41
The moment you try to resolve it cleanly one way or the other,
40:44
then you lose the power of this differentiation moment.
40:48
The discomfort that you want to skip is where growth lives.
40:51
The certainty that you want to know and grab hold of is the thing keeping you
40:56
out of your own life and being in the present moment.
40:59
The paradox isn't a problem to solve. It's actually the thing to then welcome and acknowledge.
41:04
Oh, okay. The paradoxical thing. It's the thing that I'm probably avoiding the
41:09
most is telling me something.
41:12
And then there's one more thing I think to fit in here as well,
41:14
because none of this works without it. And this is big.
41:17
If you can't validate yourself, you cannot really give validation away as a
41:20
gift. You can maybe loan it out, but you're kind of waiting for it to return.
41:24
The whole structure of self-validated intimacy is built on the floor of self-validation.
41:31
Now, what does that look like? Because here's where we start getting into the world of cliches.
41:35
Usually you'll hear the advice is just to learn to be okay with yourself or
41:38
just learn to self-validate.
41:39
And that on its own is kind of useless because if you've already built your
41:45
entire sense of self on the validation of other people, which most of us have
41:48
for the reasons that we talked about earlier,
41:50
then you truly don't actually know who you are without interacting with somebody
41:55
else who is telling you this is who you are or this is what I think you should do.
41:59
There really isn't a real deep self in there yet that you can validate.
42:04
This is where I become an unapologetic acceptance and commitment therapy fanboy
42:08
because in ACT, that is the work of figuring out who you actually are.
42:12
What drives you? What do you actually care about? What are your core values?
42:17
And again, a value is not something you land at. A value is not to make a million
42:22
dollars. A value is a North Star.
42:24
A value is something you can always turn back to, like curiosity,
42:27
like adventure, like connection.
42:30
It's what you want your life pointed at, and it will help you discover the things
42:34
you like. But that last one is kind of sneakier than it sounds.
42:37
Because if you can't easily answer what you like to read or watch or listen
42:42
to or eat or to do when you have time by yourself on a weekend,
42:45
and I think a lot of adults can't, It's usually not because the answer does
42:49
not exist, but maybe somewhere along the way, you learn to check what other
42:53
people would think of your answer before you let yourself have one,
42:56
which means that even if your taste was being run through this external validation filter,
43:00
you still weren't necessarily choosing what you like because you're aware that
43:04
maybe that isn't the right thing to like, which is kind of crazy when you lay
43:06
it out the way that we're talking about it today.
43:08
But you're more choosing what was safe to like, which is still a form of needing
43:14
external validation. You need somebody else to tell you that the thing that
43:17
you like or that the thing that you want to do or even the thing that you did is okay.
43:21
This is where the work starts to come into play. It is your own hero's journey.
43:25
Going back and forth, figuring out what is actually you. You're not going to
43:29
know. You're going to start doing and trying and figuring things out.
43:32
It's this journey to figure out what you actually enjoy, what you'd choose with
43:36
your time if nobody were watching and nobody were grading you.
43:39
What matters to you when nobody's going to clap and applaud and say,
43:42
way to go. So, and then knowing that even the, I don't even know what I like,
43:46
or I don't know what my values are, I don't know what my values are,
43:49
is a story that my brain can still get me fused to and stuck on.
43:54
I have people that will come in after a couple of weeks or a month and say,
43:58
man, I still haven't figured out what they even do to start.
44:02
That's still this fear that I'm going to do the wrong thing. Just start doing.
44:07
And then that work done over months and years is eventually what gives you something to validate.
44:12
That kernel of truth that you're looking for in your own experience becomes
44:15
something you find, you discover because now you have a reference point.
44:19
You start to know what you can stand on. It is such a cliche and it is never felt more real.
44:25
The more that you figure out who you are is that if I don't love myself,
44:29
I cannot genuinely love another person because I'm trying to figure out how can I get them to love me?
44:34
Then I'm showing up as any different version of myself, hoping that's going
44:38
to be the right one to get them to love me and that that will feel good.
44:42
If I love myself, truly love myself, now I can absolutely love this other person.
44:46
And back to the Psychology Today article, her piece and I think Shnarsh's first
44:51
point of balance are walking up to the same door kind of from two different angles.
44:55
Shnarsh is talking about knowing who you are without needing anybody else to
44:58
tell you, being able to confront yourself honestly, staying authentic,
45:01
figuring out who you are under pressure to be someone else.
45:04
Self-validation in that sense is not the same as positive self-talk.
45:08
It's not telling yourself you're amazing.
45:10
It's the harder move of noticing what you're feeling and recognizing,
45:14
again, this kernel of truth in it and giving it room to exist without trying
45:17
to talk yourself out of it.
45:18
The practice that the author Lusk offers is worth, I think, really kind of slowing down.
45:24
She talks about noticing a moment when you've been harsh with yourself.
45:27
Find where you feel it in your body.
45:29
Get curious about what that harsh voice is trying to do.
45:33
Protect you, fix you, motivate you. And where did you first hear that voice?
45:38
And then once you've actually listened, tell yourself a kinder and more accurate truth.
45:44
So something like, man, it makes sense that I learned to talk to myself this
45:47
way because that's the way it was modeled to me.
45:51
Now I'm going to choose something else. The body piece is worth noting because
45:55
most of us live so far up in our heads and trying to intellectualize things
45:59
that we're trying to argue our way to internal peace.
46:02
Self-validation, the kind that actually changes anything, usually has to land
46:06
in the body before the head catches up.
46:10
And that's the work that lets everything else in this episode become real instead of just theoretical.
46:15
Because without it, you're just collecting another framework. This, it sounds good.
46:20
Back to Veronica. She's sitting on the edge of the bed. What could Archie have done differently?
46:25
The temptation is to hand him a script and pay attention, reflect what you heard,
46:30
acknowledge the feeling, ask before solving.
46:32
And Lusk gives all those tools in her article and their real tools worth practicing.
46:36
I think a more useful question might be what Archie would have needed to be
46:41
capable of in order for any of those tools to land.
46:45
Because he would have needed to stay with her in her pain long enough to actually
46:49
hear it. without his own nervous system shoving him toward the nearest exit.
46:54
So even if you hand him a script, tell his nervous system about that.
46:58
He would have needed a self solid enough that her bad day didn't become his
47:02
emergency that he needed to get rid of.
47:04
The script is downstream.
47:06
The differentiation is upstream. And I could not wait to work this concept into
47:12
a podcast because the word upstreams, it's something that I've been using more and more.
47:19
So when we talk about a reaction, Archie rushing to fix Veronica's mood and
47:23
Veronica coming home already shaky,
47:24
what we usually see and we try to work on is the downstream moment,
47:29
the reaction itself, the words that you're going to say, the script that we're
47:32
supposed to use in the middle of the conflict.
47:35
Upstream is everything that set up that moment. And it could go back days,
47:40
weeks, months, years, nervous system regulation in the hours and days before
47:45
the conversation happened. That's looking upstream.
47:48
And that can be things that are going to sound pretty boring.
47:51
Sleep, food, hydration, movement, sunlight, time outside, time alone.
47:57
The mindfulness practice that builds the capacity to notice your own state before it takes over.
48:05
Because by the time you're reacting, if I'm being honest, it's already too late.
48:10
And I'm not saying that like you're doomed, but it just is acceptance.
48:13
The reaction is happening at a speed that your conscious mind can't catch up to.
48:17
This is one of the few places where I think the nervous system science,
48:19
it gets really practical and it's to me helpful to know and to understand.
48:25
Because if you want a fighter's chance at responding in a moment instead of
48:29
reacting, you have to give your nervous system the conditions to stay online.
48:34
And those you're going to actually be able to do the more you learn about where
48:38
upstream did this reaction start?
48:40
Hydrated, slept, fed, moved, outside, even briefly, that boring stuff,
48:45
that's the upstream stuff.
48:47
And there's an old acronym in recovery that lands here too, halt,
48:51
hungry, angry, lonely, tired.
48:53
If you find yourself reacting bigger than the situation actually calls for, go through those four.
48:59
It's almost always at least one of those that's at play.
49:02
And when you find it, and this is so key, it's not an excuse, it's data.
49:08
The move of, man, I snapped because I hadn't eaten, used to defend yourself
49:12
in a conversation, is still outsourcing your stuff to somebody else for validation.
49:16
You want them to tell you it's okay.
49:18
The actual upstream move is, I snapped. And when I look back,
49:22
I noticed that I was running on three hours of sleep and I hadn't eaten since
49:25
breakfast and it's already almost bedtime.
49:27
That's good data. That's information about me, about what I need to set up differently next time.
49:32
And I'm not saying the next time that she walks in and has this bad information
49:36
from her boss. It's that's going to help set me up to be able to deal with whatever
49:41
it is that life throws at me.
49:42
So the script is downstream, the differentiation upstream.
49:46
And so is most everything that gives your nervous system more of a chance.
49:50
And then let's talk about Veronica. So she walks in the door.
49:52
She's already shaky, already needed something from him to feel okay.
49:56
Important to note that with that said, she could have been in a state that even
49:59
if Archie would have said the perfect thing, whatever the perfect thing would
50:01
have been, there's a chance she would have settled.
50:04
Maybe, maybe not. And if she would have for tonight, but the underlying setup would still be there.
50:09
Her piece, depending on him saying the right words, showing up from the right
50:14
person at the right time can calm one's anxiety. So a lot of times our brain
50:18
goes back to, but this one time when I did say the one thing, then it worked.
50:22
And it did that one time for the one thing, but this is a different time with different things.
50:26
What if Veronica had walked in the door and she actually was already settled?
50:30
Not because the day wasn't hard, all the same stuff happened.
50:32
It was, but because she'd done the work, even in the car on the way home of
50:36
acknowledging what she actually felt, finding the kernel of truth in it,
50:39
sitting with her fear without needing to be talked out of it,
50:42
then she could still share that with Archie.
50:45
That's the amazing thing. It's not that you don't need your partner or you want
50:49
your partner, you're choosing your partner to then process these things with.
50:53
Then whatever Archie said could have been a bonus connection instead of trying
50:57
to get rescued or trying to rescue the other person.
50:59
So both of those moves, Archie building the self that can sit with her pain
51:03
and then Veronica building the self that doesn't require him to,
51:07
which again, doesn't mean that we're not going to communicate.
51:09
But I'm not depending on him to say the right things to make me feel better.
51:13
And if he doesn't, then he doesn't care and I'm unlovable.
51:16
But those things can both be true. You've got that Archie building the self.
51:22
Creating the container to handle her emotions and Veronica being able to self-soothe,
51:28
calm her own anxiety so it doesn't require him to do anything.
51:33
That's the same work, differentiation from both sides of the relationship.
51:36
And there are stages along this path because I would imagine even some of you
51:41
are thinking, I don't even really know what this guy just talked about for 45 minutes or an hour.
51:45
Others are saying, okay, I get it, but man, I don't do it very often.
51:48
Some might be patting themselves on the back a little bit saying,
51:51
all right, I'm starting to do this more than I didn't before.
51:54
Stages. Stage one. And these stages, you bet.
51:57
I have been working these in as much as I can because they're really resonating.
52:01
I hear that from my clients who listen to the podcast. I'm receiving more emails
52:05
that are talking about this.
52:06
It's helped me so much. I want to lean into this. Stage one,
52:08
unconscious incompetence.
52:10
You don't know what you don't know.
52:12
An example, you walk into the kitchen, you see dishes in the sink, and you are mad.
52:17
You don't even know why you're that mad. You just know that your partner in
52:22
the moment, they are the worst.
52:24
They do this all the time. I can't believe it. They don't care about me.
52:27
The reaction, though, feels justified because you're that mad.
52:31
You're not even aware that there's another way to be in that situation.
52:34
Now, stage two, conscious incompetence.
52:38
You walk in, you see the dishes, and that irritation still flares up in you.
52:43
Somewhere in the middle of it, maybe you catch yourself. Sometimes you don't, but you're aware.
52:47
You know, your reaction's probably a little bit over the top.
52:50
It's a little bigger than what's actually happening.
52:52
You know, you're not really mad about the dishes, maybe kind of feels that way,
52:57
but something else about it, you still can't quite stop it. You grumble,
53:01
you make the comment anyway.
53:02
And this is the stage that's the hardest. It's the one where people want to quit.
53:06
They wish they didn't know what they didn't know because awareness has arrived,
53:09
but mastery hasn't. And the reason I like laying it out this way is because
53:12
hopefully when you hear it that way, of course it hasn't. This is all new.
53:15
You're going through this. You got nervous systems and the need for validation
53:18
and managing the other person's anxiety and real life happening.
53:22
Watching yourself do the thing without being able to stop the thing is painful,
53:26
but you're on the path of growth because soon-ish, eventually.
53:33
Stage three, conscious competence. The dishes are there.
53:36
You notice a little bit of the irritation. You pause. you feel it move through
53:40
your body. You remind yourself that your partner does a lot of things that you
53:43
don't always acknowledge.
53:44
You recognize that nobody's perfect, including you on a Tuesday,
53:48
and you let it pass without making it everybody else's problem.
53:51
And you probably put the dishes away and you don't need to say, do you see what I did?
53:55
Then stage four, unconscious competence. The dishes are there. There's no spiral.
54:00
There's just noticing they are there. Maybe you load them. Maybe you mention
54:04
it later. Maybe you don't.
54:05
There's no big mood or moment around them. It just is.
54:11
If you find yourself in stage two right now, aware, but still reacting,
54:15
welcome to the human experience.
54:16
It's part of the process that most people quit. It's where they quit going to therapy.
54:20
They go back to listening to, I don't know, I want to just say fantasy books.
54:24
I'm not saying that listening to fantasy books is bad, but I know that I hear
54:27
people often say that they will listen to things like my podcast for a while
54:31
until it gets frustrating.
54:32
And it's funny because they'll say to me as almost then I need to do something about that.
54:36
My bad. But that just means that it's getting uncomfortable and the person is
54:40
probably aware, but they're not doing.
54:42
That part as well, this conscious incompetence is the part that's closer to
54:47
the other side than it feels.
54:48
The awareness is landing in the body.
54:51
It just takes longer than the awareness landing in the head.
54:54
I'll get it. It'll make sense, but I don't feel it or I'm not doing it yet. So keep going.
55:00
And what do we learn today?
55:03
Validation is real. The research is very real.
55:06
And it is something that we have needed. And now we need to learn to not live off of it.
55:13
It is nice to have. Practice it generously.
55:16
Look for the kernel of truth in the people that you love, even if their reality
55:19
doesn't match yours. and then keep doing that harder work underneath.
55:23
Look further upstream. The work of being someone who can give that gift of validation
55:28
and seeing the other person without needing credit for it and learning how to
55:33
stand on your own ground, even when it doesn't come back.
55:37
That is the thing that is going to change the way you show up in a relationship.
55:41
And that's where intimacy actually lives. I would love your thoughts,
55:45
your questions, examples, experiences, anything that you have about this.
55:48
Share it with somebody if you think that it would help them.
55:50
And taking this out per usual, the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with
55:53
her song, it's wonderful because dug on it, it really is. We'll see you next
55:57
time on The Virtual Touch.