What Drives an Emotionally Abusive Person | Lee Kaufman

[Music] so i'm glad to have a chance to sit and talk with you today just to just because it's nice to talk things out and see how we're all thinking so topic today is you know kind of getting inside the head of an abuser whether it's the wife or the husband whoever the the person trying to power in control over the other one is kind of getting into their head asking the questions why does he do what he did does why is she doing that do they mean to be harmful so i'd love just to kind of pick your brain a little bit too on um how to think about that because it has a huge impact on how we coach people like trying to figure out that motivation or figure out that why impacts what we do next especially how we actually grapple with the reality of it and then decide what our next steps are so we'd love to know your thoughts on why why does he do what he does and does he really mean to be harmful i want to unfold it at first i was talking to dr hawkins recently and i thought about we're talking about financial abuse and manipulation and we're talking about people that never actually had education around finances how would they naturally show up and be good together in finances so what we're often seeing is people who never had a good model for relationships who never actually saw what a healthy couple looks like who are trying like you've said before trying to just grit it out and bootstrap it and figure out how to get through it without actually having a whole lot of experience in healthy relationship so i think part of it one is that people don't always trust their own inner guidance system in their intuition and know what does it actually look like when somebody's being abusive i maybe their gut is off because they've been having an autoimmune disease for years because of the stress or what have you so i think it might be helpful to define what does it actually look like when somebody's in their right mind versus not in their right mind so at least as a partner to somebody who's potentially being destructive or abusive what might be happening are they being punitive or are they actually just not really capable of functioning properly in which case we would respond differently i think it's also important to define what we mean by in their right mind right like it's it can be rel there is the our experience shows us that there are things that are constructive in relationships and there are things that are destructive right like experience shows us that but as far as what is right or wrong tends to be a really relative topic because like you said you know someone who has no experience of something good to them that my that marker of what is right is going to be very different than someone who's had really excellent connections all of their life and experiences something bad like that that marker that line of demarcation is going to be different and so actually setting up some sort of um a paradigm of what really in your right mind looks like without it becoming about trying to just diagnose someone or label someone as disordered because in so many ways we're all disordered we come into this world very immature and selfish in little monsters and have to learn that we are not the kings of the universe and that other people are important too so you know essentially it's a matter of maturity to get more and more into our right mind but obviously there's a lot that gets in the way of that process that keeps people stuck so it reminds me of dr daniel ayman in california he's a psychiatrist who is the one that coined the idea that psychiatrists are really the only doctor who don't look at the organ that they treat and now with more modern technology and the ability to image brains and even image them in process while we're doing something or thinking something now we can start to see a little bit more technically what does a brain look like when it's in balance and what does a brain look like when it's in dysfunction so we're starting i think to have a little more insight maybe in and to add to that there's a there are brain databases around the world where you could take someone's brain scan send it there and say can you give me a report compare and contrast this against somebody who's in a similar age group who has a similar level of education and tell me what is different about their brain what stands out to you what might be hyper active or what might be underactive so there's a little bit objective that we could look at where we could say somebody might not literally be in their right mind and then they're obviously the subject of things how is somebody treating us how do we feel in their presence versus how we felt other times so i think we're we're we have a lot of tools but it's more art than science to try to figure it out right now right it's almost like you're looking at um you're looking at the symptoms so to speak trying to figure out the organism rather than looking at the organism and making sense of the symptoms so yeah there is a lot of that but i think that is the case as well because it's not like you can't you can't see personality all you can see is the effects of a personality you can't see these predispositions towards things you can't see motive you can't see connection you can't see empathy it's it's the out pouring of that that you see it's the effects of that that you see and so it it makes it harder and a lot of guesswork because everyone sees things differently and and it's our prerogative actually to see things differently and to learn from that and to grow into you know more and more wisdom and maturity so that does make it really difficult which is why there's so many versions of like the diagnostic manuals there's so many versions of it because people are seeing things differently trying to nail down something that can't be actually seen only the effects of it can yeah i'm sure you're familiar with the aces study that kaiser did during the 90s which looked at early childhood trauma and then tracked it across a lifetime for health and physical ailments and so we would call that epidemiological meaning you're looking at a large data set and trying to extrapolate out meaning from it but the correlation is high enough that we can at least talk about it with some sort of reason and awareness so the more early chill childhood trauma a person has the more physical disease they have and the more mental illness they have and i think that we could probably assume that that's something happening in the subconscious coping mechanisms and ways of interacting with the world based on protective mechanisms that have outlived their usefulness that then cause disease they diminish the immune system or they result in behavior drinking smoking acting out that threaten life span and expectancy and in quality of life so i think we can we can at least probably assume that some trauma or a lack of a good childhood would set somebody's mindset into a different trajectory that would lead to choices that could be difficult for them and for their partners too right i think you know with trauma and the reality is none of us get through life unscathed by trauma but trauma does predispose us to more and more see the world through a lens of threat everything is threatening right so the more extensive the trauma is especially in childhood the more likely the structure of the brain is changed enough so that that even when things are good it's still viewed through that lens of threat like where's the other shoe gonna drop like i can't trust this because i know that for real there's a monster behind that somehow there's something dangerous here that i have to be on guard on because what trauma does is it tells us no one's paying attention to me and it's all up to me to protect myself so i'm the only one for myself and of course that's going to impact future relationships unless they practice doing things differently than that unless they you know take courage to step into a relationship even if it looks scary or threatening or whatever to give themselves a chance to experience they call it a corrective emotional experience experience something different and then actually take the time to process it so it doesn't just get dismissed because of confirmation bias like unless someone has the wherewithal to do that then they get stuck in those patterns of just like even in trying to love or care for other people it's still very self-protective it's still through that lens of there's a threat here and i'm the only one that cares about me in reality i'm the only one that cares about me i'm the only one that knows me enough to know what i need what i want what makes me say like that kind of thing and so we don't even allow there to be that connection because we can't trust enough and that impacts our conversations that impacts our thinking that impacts how deep our connections are and very clearly correlates with the high levels of divorce and just broken relationships all the way around i like the way you described what you did because you were sort of talking about what does it actually look like to retrain yourself to rewire an existing predisposition for one reactivity but change to another and it reminds me i tend to be the geek maybe in the group that dives into science and so when i think about the structure of the brain the hindbrain is something on the order of a million times more powerful than the prefrontal cortex which is what we think of as consciousness if you're overwhelmed you're not going to be present and conscious because you just don't have enough capacity in that part of your brain to hold attention in space so you're going to default to patterns that you developed and acquired earlier if they're really good patterns you're going to be a really easy person to be around really likable really considerate and kind but if the patterns that you had like you were saying are defense mechanisms and protective mechanisms and narcissistic mechanisms where it's really about yourself when you're in that state of mind you're going to act out and lash out without thinking unless you retrain yourself yep yeah so it's a matter of processing the trauma thinking about what happened but also actively intentionally deciding how do i want to show up differently sometimes it means role playing practicing something different like giving yourself eye contact in the mirror so at least you're looking at somebody and repeating phrases or you know just talking it through because that is setting up a new pathway in the brain that may be more likely more easily accessed when there's no blood in the front of your brain where your reasoning centers are so i often tell people you know to practice some of these things just it's a healthy step um just so that you don't end up falling off a cliff somewhere with your behavior or your words or attitudes or whatever because because we're so easily triggered especially still dealing with the trauma so easily triggered and if we can learn how to back up from that better then um then we won't end up trying to recover so much so many of the pieces that get shattered when we fall off the cliff again whatever i hear you i might use a different word for that but i think about hormestas uh you're a runner aren't you or you you run sometimes yeah be in shape as one of your things that idea of looking in the mirror and doing things that are potentially uncomfortable and trying to find a way to be comfortable in it so anybody that i work with will hear me talk about hormesis which is really just the greek word for the idea that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger got it so going to the gym if we looked at exercise and we said let's look at the biomarkers before and after you lifted heavy weights you've got tearing of the muscle fibers you've got a buildup of lactic acid blood pressure sometimes skyrockets none of these things are good for a person so don't do that right but then we look and see well what's the recovery in the integration piece and how does somebody come after that into potentially better health and wellness and the research shows that there's a dip down but then the recovery is to a higher level and so a lot of what we do with people is get them uncomfortable but not so much so that they disconnect and they're triggered and they're gone and then we try to work in that space where they're uncomfortable and they slowly develop capacity yeah i talk with people about that just in terms of their everyday life too that you know being uncomfortable in and of itself isn't a bad thing that strength training requires resistance right and so you know first of all the world around us is not safe there's not enough that you can do to make it safe there's a lot of ways that you can use it the world around you and the adversity to become stronger because that's what we need in a world that's not safe is not to try to control what we can't control but to be stronger in the face of it and that requires adversity we don't we don't learn anything without struggle we don't learn anything when life is easy and good and you're sitting on the beach all the day all the time that might be good rest but you're not it's not building strength like even to sit there long enough in that place of peace and safety and quiet and reprieve sit there too long and you will die because you need some resistance of life to actually provide meaning to provide strength to be a purpose a mission that kind of thing so oftentimes dealing with all of this trauma is a matter of learning how to manage life in such a way that you're using it to grow rather than letting it overwhelm you to destroy you so i heard you in there sort of change flip the script a little bit so it seems like a good time to talk about a person who might be with somebody who's not behaving well not in their right mind not being thoughtful and considerate because you were also equally describing the person who's with that person and what does their experience look like and how do they actually how do they decide what to do and who to be in the face of that yeah yeah because no matter where you go we have to deal with difficult people and so you know as we know there's so many of the couples that we work with that do want to stay together but for whatever reason there's not the movement and growth within the context of the relationship that one or the other is looking for and so a lot of our work becomes about helping helping the person trying to be healthier actually be healthier in a context of their their spouse as being exactly who he or she wants to be and you know there comes a point where we've got to just acknowledge that that that that's what they're choosing for whatever reason how do we how do we use that to to grieve what we need to so grieve what it's not grieve what our hopes and dreams were without losing a sense of self because those hopes and dreams and expectations are usually a good thing you know they're written on our heart so they're a good thing we don't want to just shove them away but we have to grieve that it's not the reality of this relationship but then still learn how to navigate it in a way that there's good boundaries and yet room to relate with whatever the other person is offering to whatever depth they are offering just learning to relate in that and still find space and purpose and meaning until if and when something moves them to do something different because it's just it's a season of life we have no idea what the future is going to hold one way or another but we have to live today so how do we do that and still be healthy and well even if you know our other partner in crime so to speak isn't really doing a good job of protecting us or caring for us or you know whatever it is we're looking for in the marriage i i was talking to dr hawkins yesterday because he and i recorded something so we some of these topics they all overlapped because we're talking about people and interpersonal dynamics and i was i was hypothesizing talking about business and thinking about if you were going to open a business or create a business from scratch and thinking about who you want your partners to be in that business you would be thoughtful and considerate about how you would choose them the expectations would be quite clear in the in the partnership agreement if they didn't show up for you in a certain way you would talk about things you would try to work through them and then i think of marriage as the most important partnership that we would ever actually create because not only is it a business relationship meaning you have income coming into the household and you have expenses going out and you're then you're deciding on how you're going to spend your time together you have financial goals you're thinking about being a good partnership with regard to what you want to do with your time in the future and planning in that regard you might have kids and you're trying to figure out how to be partners in that endeavor too and then i don't understand sometimes i get that it happens but i don't understand why people can't see that that level of partnership commitment requires the same kind of work and also objectivity in certain ways to work through things in a healthy fashion what did we sign up for what are we doing what's the gap between what we said we were going to do and what we're doing and let's try to work together to heal that gap i think one of the things that we run into is first of all the couple never really sat down and identified what they meant by partnership right so even if they had had pre-marital counseling talking about you know how compatible are you and where are you going the language they used might have seemed to make sense at the time we love each other we're in this together we just want to be together forever and you know we're going to do this together but they never bothered to really define what love means for example what does that look like for you because it especially when we're young and all in love and feeling all of those emotions we think we're saying the same thing and then what often happens in the marriages is that we realize that their definitions are very different and so even coming back to the definition of partnership you know one one might have come into marriage thinking that the partnership was gonna look like she does everything in the home the whole the tech the christian norms of she takes care of the home and takes care of the children and it's her job to just submit to him and you know all of that kind of role and while that sounds good in her eyes there's probably also an expectation that that means he's gonna care for her hard and to love her and but they never really talked about what that meant and so they miss each other right and then and then that partnership the desire for partnership or the motivation to be on the same team ends up gone and then what we end up working with is trying to even get them back on the same page to even define what a partnership looks like and decide whether or not they want to be a part of it and then talk about okay what do we mean by this what does it look like how can we talk about this differently so that we're actually headed somewhere constructive because our assumption is oftentimes when couples come for marriage counseling the assumption is well they want to be in a partnership right and yet the reality is the definition of partnership is all over the place or one or the other really doesn't want to be in partnership there that's not what they came into marriage really expecting it to be their definition of what that should be is so different it's just business-like or logistical or whatever but only in terms of what that person wants so there's no there's no collaboration on what it looks like together and then of course they end up hating each other they end up in these conflicts that they can't get out of because there's no starting point for the conversation you make a really good point about the age because i think about what little i knew when i was 20 or even 30 or sometimes even 40. and if somebody had asked me to define what i wanted then i probably would have won it and come up with something just because it was what was required at the time but it's been an incredible evolution into very different things and so if two people don't evolve in their wants and desires with regard to partnership there's inevitably going to be conflict and and some work to either compromise or give in or or agree to disagree for a chapter as well i um i prefer to use the word collaborate rather than compromise it feels so much more yes because technically you're talking about the same thing but it feels so much more proactive right like collaboration requires um giving up some things or re-evaluating really talking about things but but yes we are going to evolve that is what like when we're born we know nothing when we die we know way more so we're meant to grow and to change and to evolve and to to better define our purpose our mission our sense of direction and our sense of self and even even two people who don't really know what they want when they get married they could have they could potentially have an incredible relationship if they took the time to actually talk about it along the way here's what i'm thinking you know vulnerable transparent all those things that we long for in relationships here's what i'm thinking here's what i'm struggling with without it being all about that fear of if i show this about myself i'm going to lose this relationship or i'm going to lose my control or i'm going to lose something right so without that which is a lie because we actually lose more by not talking about things by not being real we lose more but in the moment it doesn't feel like that it feels counterintuitive if i tell him what i really think he's just going to get angry and leave me and i can't have that right that's simplifying what we think but it gets to that so anyway evolving requires talking about everything doing life together looks like hey here's a new thought i had today right don't know where this is going but let's unpack it together let's just talk about it and then if it's something meaningful something both of us can learn from what are we going to do with that how are we going to use that to inform how we relate to each other or relate to our kids or relate to the world because life is stupid so let's figure out our way through this in a way that's going to work for us so we don't end up part of the carnage like our friends who never talk and yeah so i'm glad you pointed out like the collaboration and the compromise piece because it one it highlights that language is really important and then two it also reminds me that i think sometimes we're culturally influenced and we have our priorities wrong a lot of the work that we do with people is them arguing over data and in small ideas but the i think that the highest priority that a lot of people have at the beginning of partnership is to be connected to be in connection i want to feel connected to you and when i do i feel the happiest and the healthiest but then somehow i'm arguing about whether we go to saint bart's or we go skiing at vail and we're disconnected and if we just for that moment remembered oh yeah more than anything i like to be connected with this person because when i am everything is fine so i think culturally we're really influenced and you see it sort of in the legal system and you see around the political system and what's happening in the world people posture and they and they move to one side or the other very quickly as if that's somehow gonna make something better but almost everybody i've ever met they feel better when they feel connected yep to be seen and known is what makes us feel loved and connected right and i think we get stuck in arguing you know that minutia those details because because we feel unseen and unknown and so we think if we could just get them to see what i need or what i want or what i'm thinking say it a million different ways to get them to see it it's going to bring back that connection but in the arguing is that that shield that that brick wall that makes you unable to connect so you're destroying the very thing you're trying to get because you're working so hard to be seen and be known so that just requires you know the capacity to to hear someone else without losing a sense of self and then to talk about it like okay i hear you we can do both so let's figure out how to do both rather than arguing over what you want versus what i want and you know that kind of thing that kind of idea let's collaborate on what's going to work for us because so many of the rules that we bring into relationships are opinions they are man-made opinions cultural norms religious norms whatever that are just dysfunctional they might have worked for that couple way back over there because of whatever they had going on in their minds or their hearts but because they were still writing on stone tablets exactly exactly and it's it's not going to work here like there are like i said our experience teaches us that there are absolute things that do build relationships and tear down relationships so there are absolutes in there but as far as how we get to those places there's all kinds of ways to be constructive that might work for one couple that totally don't work for another because of where they are how they're thinking what their maturity level is how many kids they've got like whatever the dynamics are just different and that's and it's okay that's the other thing we get hung up on is well that that's not okay is it okay to be this way yes if it works for you so one i don't think i've ever had a conversation internally about this topic but i think you're the one that i'd like to have it with because a lot of our client base is christian and because christians typically believe in marriage as an institution for life unless something very significant happens and some of that's defined people stay together for a long time even in the face of difficulty in relationship and so the topic we're talking about today is sort of getting inside his mind but really the mind of somebody who's treating you poorly in the face of a long-term committed relationship do you think that the faith commitment sometimes means people are more likely to act in terms of cleaning things up or being open and honest and clear and trying to get to resolution or less likely to act because they worry in sort of using the thermonuclear option that they'll break it irrevocably meaning if we can't if you can't do this a healthy boundary if you can't stop verbally abusing me i'm going to find an apartment and we're going to separate for example that seems like such a dramatic move especially in the face of a committed long-term relationship that it wouldn't seem for a lot of people like a reasonable choice to make so they might defer doing something that feels like a principled boundary because it would put some other idea at risk and i'm curious to get your thoughts about how the people that you work with navigate that both recognizing the commitment and at the same time trying to create a healthy environment where they feel safe and secure and supported i i definitely think the faith element adds a nuance that makes it harder to look at some at all the options because there's that piece of if i even think about putting space in this marriage i'm dishonoring god and there's nothing i would despise more than to dishonor god right there's that piece of it such a faith and it's and it's huge and it's sacred so there there is that but i think what what also happens in that is it also like you just said it's because of that fear that you know their spouse won't respond in a healthy way that it's gonna automatically mean now they're they're falling off this cliff that is so sacred to them but nothing they can like it's so hard to reckon that there's nothing they could do about that and yet this was such a sacred thing to them so that does add that that additional nuance i think you know coming from a christian point of view i think satan has a huge vendetta against marriages right and so not only is there that faith peace the last thing in the world i want to do is to dishonor god and my commitments and covenants and reflecting him to the world and all that but we have a very real enemy that wants to make sure that we never connect because it's in the context of a good healthy marriage that the love of god is really seen to the world shown to the world and so with that spiritual aspect as well i think there is a not just that desire that you know i don't want to dishonor god but there's also the lies being spoken into your head you can't do this you can't even think about leaving him because it would be it would dishonor god and then all of this becomes a distraction right your job is to submit your job is to just pray and wait for god to step in it says he will avenge and so you forgive and you keep going and like all of that sounds good but it becomes a distraction to not really take a stand against the sin happening in the marriage right it's because there's such a huge sense of i can't talk about that sin because if i confront the sin then i'm left with this option of divorce and i can't do that or i'm left with this option of like i'm breaking up the family or i i just can't so it's this huge dichotomy um and a lot of times i feel like they have to choose between the lesser of two evils right and then they're recovering from this huge egregious sin against their own selves for having to make this choice when in reality they're they're having to make a choice in a space where someone else a wild card has free will as well and no it's not something they wanted to have to make but there is still a way to walk through that standing true to who you are standing up against the sin having good boundaries still honoring god even though none of it looks like we're told he created it to be so it is really hard having that that faith aspect i think the teachings of the church haven't helped because they have just perpetuated the idea that men can do what they want to do and a woman has no authority whatsoever to confront him on it and and so she stays stuck in these cycles he stays stuck in them as well not even realize how much damage he's bringing to his own soul because he chooses not to even think about doing something different and doing something different in my book means talking about everything looking at what is not building up the relationship getting away from the distractions you know quit chasing all the rabbits what's the point the point is we want to be connected like you said we want to be connected how do we do that without listening to all of this other stuff that's distracting us what needs to happen for us to learn from our trauma learn from our corrective emotional experiences if we've had them put it all together and decide how are we going to do this so that we stay connected because the number one way to truly walk in victory so to speak truly walk life well is to not succumb to the lies or the oppression i tell people all the time that accusation condemnation oppression never lead to life they lead to death god always leads to life and so if they're looking at all of these things and they're just finding their soul moving more and more towards death and darkness and oppression something is wrong and so it's worth reevaluating the commitments the covenants what is sacred to them because if again we have a very real enemy that wants to twist the truth just enough that you miss the point and if you're missing life and freedom and light and you know bringing a sense of self to the table in life you've missed something hey i like the way that you describe sort of the difficulty of having to choose between two evils or two bad choices and it makes me think where did the break happen you know if somebody's in a situation where they're trying to struggle with their faith commitments and their commitment to self i think it'd be curious if they went back farther pulled on the string all the way back to the beginning and started to look at where did things actually start to go wrong and what would healing look like if we were dealing with the root cause not the symptoms of what's happening and start from there i think there's so many nuances that go into that you know probably the biggest piece of it is just maturity right like again learning to live life and for for both ends of the spectrum for a woman for a man both sides like we have to learn how to find our own self our sense of self really what our faith is or our commitments to life are and a lot of times we come in especially when we're young married you know we come into this relationship looking to the other person to actually define so much of that for us right some people come into marriage in a little bit healthier place than others so there is a little bit more um peace to begin with although you know because we work with a lot of marriages where you know on the honeymoon everything changed and there was no p there was no foundation of anything but i've worked with marriages that you know they started out good but in the evolution process lost something along the way and i think what gets lost is that sense of the self like ultimately this isn't about the marriage the marriage just ended up being a crucible that forces us to have to learn and to grow and to look at ourselves and to to find some some solitude in the aloneness in a way that it's healthy and i think a break happens a lot of times in that process we can't stand the idea of being alone and yet we're alone in this marriage so what we're hanging on to is an idea in our head and a lot of not good stuff but it's coming to grips with that sense of solid sense of self that doesn't require that other person to tell me who i am so i think some of it starts there um because i'm a firm believer that recovery healing requires coming out of hiding and learning to know who you are and where you go what are you bringing to the table so that's what i'm talking about in that space is what do you what are you bringing to the table you've got to figure that out and a lot of times that's what you're figuring out the first years of your marriage and but if you never get to talk about it or when you do the other person just internalizes it as an offense rather than hey here's information to work with then you get stuck in that place and the rift grows bigger because you're not able to collaborate on what you're learning how you're evolving where to go from there and then if you add additionally on to that um habitual patterns of abuse powering over being angry just the complacency of not doing something different well then you just compound all of that and make it bigger so yeah i try to bring it all back down to you know even when i'm doing couples work is who are you do you like the man you're showing up to be and if not let's do some work on that do you like the woman you're showing up to be and if not let's do some work on that because that's what gives us the materials with which to talk about doing the marriage everything in the marriage context is symptoms everything is a symptom i am i think about the things that we haven't completely processed coming out of childhood i think that we seek a partner to continue that work because they reflect back to us the pieces that we have yet to fully integrate understand and evolve from and so i will often tell people especially in struggling situations if you want to end this like i respect that but end it after you've learned every lesson that you need to learn in this situation don't end it because you're uncomfortable and you don't like what's happening figure out how to be fully you calm cool collected straight forward in charge of your own perspective advocating for wellness for everybody if you do all of that and at the end you can say i really know why i was in that relationship i i understand now why i chose that person at that point if those two people continue to walk together in health fantastic if if one evolved into that perspective but the other one wasn't capable of showing up in any way to acquire any of those same kinds of experiences and understandings it's a little tougher maybe we can talk towards the end now if you're one or the other of these people what would you do next and and how would that look so let's start with the person who maybe is behaving badly and we've tried to define what that might be and why what set that into motion whether it's always been that way or something happened a mental health issue or a physical ailment sometimes we deal with people that have chronic pain and they're clearly not able to be patient and considerate as they would if they weren't let's say you're that person and you're acting out what would the work look like for that person at all places along the continuum obviously the ones who are completely unwilling to admit that i'm actually doing something that's undermining my own life and the people around me but somewhere where somebody can listen what would be the thing that would typically happen next with them and what would that trajectory look like if they were really willing to show up to work if they're really willing to show up to work that definitely makes it much easier to change direction i think often times what it looks like is just getting down to the nitty gritty of what's what's bringing the destruction to the relationship like just specific patterns of behavior and you know what are some ideas then what we can do to do differently just to invite the spouse back into something to engage in some way i think so is that is that singular work one-on-one work that you're describing or at that moment is it is it right for the couple to be together if one person is behaving badly but they maybe have understanding of it if they're behaving badly and have understanding of it um i think most often i prefer the individual work because then i can you know talk with him get like i can be direct i don't have to beat around the bush without him feeling like oh no my wife is hearing all this and she's going to use it to you know say something and then be so distracted by what his wife might be hearing same thing with her like i want to be able to help her think without you know him sitting over her feeling like he's sitting over there going okay he's just getting more weapons to harm me later so i prefer the individual work although what the couple's work looks like is okay so how do we talk about things differently so that you're inviting the conversation rather than shutting it down you know the couple's work actually does end up more often be becoming about how to have a good conversation which like again communication isn't the issue but if you can't talk about things then you can never resolve the issues and so most often couples work revolves around that because the idea is we're working on the issues individually at the roots so that what they're bringing to the table to talk about is differently different so with him you know if he's got an awareness of what's going on really wants to change that real recognition that he is losing his wife and that matters to him then we have some motivation to change so tapping into that internal motivation and then giving practical like the information in and of itself isn't gonna change anything he has to have practice walking it out differently it's the implementation of the information that makes a difference in in his life so you know sometimes guys have a hard time really understanding what implementation looks like so sometimes we have to really define that sometimes it's just a matter of them going well i never thought of it that way before but here's what i'm going to do to do differently and then the work with her is about you know still um finding her sense of self her own identity pause for a second so okay i wanna i wanna define the i think about the implementation piece so i often talk about it as the awareness will get you to the starting line oh yeah i screwed up i lost my way i behave badly i feel terrible but when i'm overwhelmed or stressed at work that's just how i am and so full understanding that i'm i'm i need to evolve my way of being otherwise i'm going to put some other thing that i care about more at risk what does the work look like sometimes i have a man that was in a recent core group he showed up every time he was lovely in group he did all of his homework assignments perfectly he was a straight a student in the understanding of the concepts but in how it actually happened in his life i'd say i'm not sure he's doing anything and so i think it's really key to talk about this because it's sort of any habit that you want to begin to create in your life it could be flossing your teeth if you understand the value of flossing your teeth from a dental health perspective and you read everything every journal article ever written it doesn't make your teeth healthier it just makes you understand that integrating that habit is actually going to be the thing that changes your life so maybe we can define more so people that you see that who do really well in the implementation piece who actually understand and integrate and then begin to carry it into their marriage do they come to you once a month do they come to you once a week what happens in between how because i think people need to understand a bit for the ones that we see who really succeed what kind of work are we talking about is this window dressing changing the orientation of the furniture in the room or or what is it really so um so i can think of a couple that i've worked with over the last it's probably been a year maybe a little bit more than a year that we've worked together he started out in a core group she she did a redeemed group they did a one-day intensive with me i think prior to both those groups and they both did the work of the groups but it ended up a few months later i think that she kicked him out of the house so had that that moment where they had a lot of information under their belt but she was done with the same old same old like he answered all the right questions he did all the right stuff he checked all the right boxes off but it wasn't really changing the dynamic at home so she kicked him out so immediately he set up weekly sessions with me and he was actually way more serious this time about getting some work done because he realized he really really didn't like being in his own apartment he hated that even though home life was miserable too it's being his own apartment so they had intended it to be six months and then they were gonna reevaluate and this whole time every week he's working with me i've given him homework to do i'm making him answer questions having him tell me how he's thinking about stuff so it's not just me giving him information i want to know how people are wrestling with it so i'll ask the questions what are you doing with that and poke around deeper than probably they like but you know really saying how is that working for you right is is that really work and making him have to take an assessment is this changing anything in you first of all because that's the point and then is it inviting your wife into something different and you know he was separated the whole six months hated it not really they were not even really sure at the end of that whether or not he was moving back home but he did end up moving back in the home but the rules were all different and he had to be okay with that he didn't get to rule the roost anymore and he had so damaged the relationship with their teenage kids that um you know he pretty much like they knew they had to listen to him so to speak but he knew that in walking this out to repair the relationships with them this couldn't be about him telling them what to do and lecturing them and yelling at them for leaving their bikes in the driveway and that kind of stuff it was he had to change everything and he did so um you know their relationship they're actually going to do a marriage renewal ceremony um this summer that they've invited me to so i'm excited about that but but i watched him really really really struggle with staying motivated why is he doing what he's doing because none of none of it felt good to him he didn't like the work i made him do the books i had him read the questions i was asking him like he didn't like crying in front of me he didn't like it when i had to say you just have to put on your big girl panties and like yeah he didn't like any of it but there was something in him that knew he really wanted this to be different at the end and so yeah for anybody listening this has been my experience too that you're describing a situation where somebody did threaten a bigger change in the marriage unit and brought him to a place where he had to make some serious decisions about what he wanted in his life sometimes that's actually what has to happen the other piece that you highlighted there's a great book new york times best-selling book called atomic habits by a guy named james clear what he says that you are describing beautifully is that the bad habits have a very positive and immediate feedback loop cocaine drinking smoking cigarettes eating junk food very good habits have a difficult enough and negative feedback loop at first and so we go through a lot of adversities change a part of our personality that isn't working and it takes time and it's uncomfortable to become the thing that we actually want to be so anybody who's sitting here thinking this is going to be easy or i'm going to enjoy the process is really unlikely that that's how it's going to look for a good habit that's going to be integrated over time right yep so it's swinging background to our original question why does he do what he does yeah i think one of the answers to that question is that it's easy right he does what he does because it's easy it it's lazy if there's that immediate you know when someone is in a fit of rage they are getting an immediate sense of i am in control i am on top of the world everyone is bowing to me this feels good right that immediate reward for a fit of rage but there's nothing about that that actually gets him what he really wants right he's not making room for connection he's not actually in control of anything in fact he's very out of control and doesn't realize that but it's that feedback like you just said that feedback of well this works for me but but the laziness the passivity which all of us are inclined to because we would way rather sit on a beach and do nothing it predisposes us especially when we're not properly motivated it predisposes us to go well that felt good and that worked so we'll just smooth it over go on with life as if nothing ever happened and and who cares because because there's also that realization of you know that i don't really see that going anywhere right i know that's not really going anywhere but i sure liked the fix i liked what i got that moment in that dynamic you're describing something where the person is much more attuned to their own needs and behavior in the moment and i think about this i'm a kind of a new dog owner i have a one-year-old puppy and sometimes i'll get frustrated at something that he's doing and i'll be lashing out in whatever way either to discipline him or to put him somewhere so that he stops doing that thing but in that entire interaction i'm not watching him i'm not looking at his biological reaction what is happening in his face is he is he getting meek under the face of my getting big and bad wolf-like and so i think that the minute that you start to look at your audience and you realize what's the end result of me behaving like this and you can see it somewhat objectively you stop almost immediately because you're like that's horrible that's the last thing that i want to do if i want these people to be my my team my family my connection i think another thought in that too is that there are some people that don't even have that awareness of what they really want yeah like they get stuck in those moments and they might acknowledge the look of devastation on their kids faces or their wife's face or whatever but instead of it going to that place of oh wait this isn't what i really want it's like oh whatever they need to get over it because i need this or i want this or what so it's not good there's there's brokenness in there that has to be worked through as well and and sometimes it can't be right i've seen people go to their grave as mean as ever with years and years and years and years of counseling under their belt and um so there is that and i guess going back to the other thing you kind of brought up too is the other side of that like if she chose to stay with him who is like that what does that process look like as well because there's that there's no sense of recognition that he would want something different he's quite fine being the way that he's being so i'd love to hear your thoughts on so what do you do with a wife that wants to stay in a place that is potentially so harmful so the one thing i want to just say first is some of our best examples in life are of what not to do right so people are often holding in high regard something that somebody did that's really admirable but some of my best teachers have been people who are horrible in their behavior who went to their grave without changing because you watch what they end up creating in their life and it's often the opposite of what you want to do so if you want what they have do what they do it's a really clear recipe and if you don't want what they have then get ready to change because your behavior isn't it isn't leading you towards something healthy it's leading you towards that example but you don't want to emulate yep so on the other side the person who's in the face of somebody who's treating them unfairly and trying to figure out what to do i sent you a link to a video that was brene brown talking about um she was talking about two things one is our people doing the best that they can and it was a research project that she did and also talked about with russell brand but the thing that struck me at the end of that video was she said that the most compassionate and empathetic people are also the most boundaried and that leads me to think how does somebody want to feel you're often asking the question what kind of person do you want to be like who do you want to be right how do you want to feel and often how you want to feel dictates how you're going to treat other people somebody's treating me unfairly but i want to create a model in my life of treating people fairly it wouldn't make any sense for me to do something that breaks my model that goes against it i should continue to treat them fairly but set up the environment so that i'm boundaried and safe if they're not taking care of my livelihood and well-being as well right so in in people in our world i've seen a lot of times if a relationship is unbalanced and the pendulum has swung all the way to one side where someone's behaving badly and the other person's feeling trauma what i often see is that maybe the trauma stops but the other person is so frustrated and angry and finally able to feel that that they begin to behave what we would seem to think is badly and justify it by saying you've treated me like that for 30 years this is nothing compared to what you've done but i worry that those people are integrating patterns into their behavior that they're going to be unable to unravel they're behaving badly for long enough sometimes that they forget how to behave well right so i always err on the side of good behavior and so you can behave well and you can be connected to your core values and draw clear and distinct boundaries right and so so that's what i hope for the people that are in the situation with somebody and the boundaries are staggered in terms of intensity at first the boundary might be i'm just not going to talk to you for a few hours because i don't feel comfortable in the way that you're treating me and we're violating our agreements right now it might need to escalate to i'm gonna go sleep in the other room or you're gonna get an apartment or we're gonna do a therapeutic separation or we're going to bring somebody in to oversee this because we're out of our depth and being able to do it ourselves and at every stage your boundaries change based on the inputs that are happening in the relationship but i don't think there's ever a time for somebody to lose their core values and the kindness and empathy that they also want for their partner to extend towards them right i i tell people all the time who like i'll have someone say well i tried to do i tried to be nice and it didn't work and i am always like what do you mean it didn't work it didn't make him be different well that wasn't the point you're nice because you're a nice person right that's true to your character if you if you let that be the measuring stick the the reward of why you do what you do you're going to get much farther in life because it's manipulation to do something to make him respond which never like that doesn't land well with any of us like well you're right if i'm doing what i'm doing to make someone else do something that is manipulation and so if you're using that as the marker you're always going to feel crazy always feel crazy because it's not true to our character to be manipulators either so reframing that why do we do what we do because it's true to my character i am a kind person i am a conduit of grace and mercy i want to move in this space regardless of the people i'm around however what they are offering to me is going to depend how much time i spend with them how much towards my inner circle of friends they get to hang out in and whether or not i make room at my table for them right not because i'm acting in a way to make them do something but i am staying true to who i am giving them room to show up who they are and and the the boundary is how much i invite them more into my space based on whatever behaviors they have going on and so when you can learn to move in within any relationship with adaptability and flexibility what that looks like is not just showing up well but also being able to identify and recognize to what depth of authenticity the other person is offering us because we can only connect to what is authentic and so you know if someone's offering us only a little bit of you know how's the weather and has the kids kind of think like we can totally interact with that and be fine if we're expecting them to be deeper than that when that's not what they're offering we're going to run into conflict or if we aren't if we don't have good boundaries and we allow ourselves to just hang out with people that are destructive there's going to be all kinds of conflict with that as well because that's us not paying attention to what the other person is offering and none of that is about our identity our worth or our value that's us bringing us to the table so that's where that balance is of of um you know knowing who you are and where you're going being authentic to yourself but also having good boundaries in place and you know it's a beautiful description you know i sometimes look at steven covey's the seven habits of highly effective people the beginning of the book and this is a book that a lot of people have in their houses the beginning of the book talks about what it means to be core or principally valued and and it talks about what happens if you're not and a lot of people put their marriage above their own principles or the keeping it going or the feedback loop from their spouse so i think they lose their way and it's really key to know who you are how you're wired what's important to you and to simply advocate for that straightforwardly without any control or manipulation this is who i am if you want to be with me this is what it's going to look like yep one you know also from the atomic habits book there was an example of a woman who lost a lot of weight and she started her weight loss just simply by asking the question all day long before any major decision that impacted her health what would a healthy person do he didn't always know because a lot of her choices prior had led her to where she was overweight and out of shape and unhealthy but she had enough data and it's easy with the internet to just go out and seek what generally would a healthy person do and i think i would probably ask that most people out there do the same in relationships at any moment where you can take a pause and resist the urge to be reactive ask in that moment what would a healthy person do right now and and the answer might be nothing or take another hour because i have no idea or give them a hug and say i'm so sorry or it's it's it's an unlimited basket of things to do but but when you wait and pause you actually have access to it right and it's okay to not know like it's hard for us to give ourselves permission to be okay with not having a clue how to respond right and then taking the time to do something to find out how to respond giving ourselves that permission because it's hard like we're we're all in some sort of self-protect mode to some extent right and a lot of times that means i can't show any weaknesses i can't show that i don't know i need to have it all together like that's part of that facade of you know i'm strong and i'm in control of myself and that self-protection so learning to give ourselves permission to be raw and messy and have no clue but a willingness to figure it out actually it's scary and it feels counter-intuitive to walk in that kind of space but way more fun it makes life way more of an adventure when you can go i don't have a clue but let's go find out and let's figure this out together and then decide what do we want to do with it and people like us more yeah how brave to actually show your vulnerabilities yep yeah for for the person who is maybe aware of their bad behavior some of the work is probably self-reflection work they can do themselves but i think you you gave a great example of this one guy that you worked with for six months during his separation and that kind of work is key with somebody who can hold you accountable sometimes push in ways that you're uncomfortable so that you can go into areas of growth that you otherwise wouldn't choose so that's that for the person who's listening who who is ready to do something and they have no idea what it looks like that's probably a lot of how it looks and for the person who's with that person you have a lot of choices but one of them is not to give up who you are and behave in ways that are uh outside of of your own belief system right because that won't get you into a better place either never so yeah trying to find that space and it really is about learning and growing we're not done until we're dead like we're not we're not trying to get to a destination and park it there it's always about learning and growing for for all of us no matter what end of the deal the perspective we're on it's all about learning and growing and being becoming more and more true to ourselves and even from a christian perspective that means you know really looking hard at who god is calling us to be and making sure that that's in terms of reflecting him to the world with truth and life and freedom not oppression and accusation and condemnation because that's the distraction but just owning that give you a sense of mission and purpose and then talking about that in any of your relationships but particularly marriage in a way of really deciding how are we going to do this together because we live in a world we cannot control we cannot make the world around us safe enough for us to ever be healed by the world we have to figure out how to navigate it and so yeah just walking through it that way with a realization that you're not always working with someone who wants to do that with you right so being able to say how do i do this should the other person decide not to how do i still be healthy and good and congruent and find life even with all of the grief that i have to carry at the same time and and to add one piece to that sometimes you know we're walking parallel paths sometimes right next to each other but sometimes those paths diverge a little and if people love each other in in the way that i think which is unconditionally i want the best for this person i want them to experience life and be whole and full and if they need to do something to do that to become healthy in that way i'll support it and so sometimes the paths go apart for a while because that's really important because the work can't be done together it's just right we haven't seen the evidence that it's going to work like that so they go apart and if those people can still hold on to the love that they have for each other there's a really good chance that they'll come back together maybe in a different fashion but both better for that time right you

Channel: Dr. David Hawkins

Views: 33,304

Keywords: what drives an emotionally abusive person, emotional abuse, what drives emotional abuse in relationships, what is emotional abuse, emotional abuse in relationships, emotional abuse warning signs, emotional abuse relationship, do narcissists know they hurt you, dr david hawkins, Lee Kaufman, emotionally abusive person, signs of emotional abuse, emotional abuse signs, psychological abuse, signs of an emotionally abusive relationship, narcissistic personality disorder, narcissism

Id: cTJPi4AFWAE

Length: 71min 5sec (4265 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022