Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the podcast, thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. I'm joined today as usual by Dr. Rick Hansen. So dad, how are you doing today? I'm good. And as usual.
psyched about going through our mailbag. So today we're going to be answering questions from our listeners who are popping open the mailbag once again. It's always great to do this. We get really tremendous questions from people. And if you would like to ask a question to be answered on the podcast, You can do it either in the comments down below if you're watching on YouTube, or you can join our Patreon, patreon.com.
Being Well Podcast, or hey, you can even send me an email if you are interested in ancient technology at contact at beingwellpodcast.com. So let's get right into it here, Dad. I think that most of these questions today... orbited the theme of relationships, which is just a major feature of your work, both as an author and content creator yourself and as a longtime family therapist, where a big chunk of your work was with couples and families.
some of these issues was certainly very relevant for you. One thing I love about the mailbag is that it's about specific issues, specific problems. And I just think about how science moves forward through... in effect, dealing with individual cases? Medicine. It often starts with a single case, right?
common law. You start with a single case, like two neighbors arguing over a fence and you build it from there. So I just love this. I love getting at things in a very down-to-earth, concrete way. All right, so let's get started with our first question today. My partner is currently undergoing treatment for major depression. Her depression is characterized by low mood inability to do daily tasks and high irritability which can include unpredictable and angry verbal outbursts.
She does not leave the house, does not work, and does not contribute to any household tasks. This means all responsibilities in our life are currently on my shoulders. I want to help her, but I don't want to enable her. How can I establish healthy boundaries with somebody who is clearly suffering? depressed mood and major depressive episodes. And it applies to having a partner who is underwater. It's really dealing with something, swimming upstream.
burdened in some way. What do we do about that? And you could extend that, of course, to friends or other family members who are grappling with something that's very big for them, very burdensome for them. So here we have two people who are really affected by things. And we can start with compassion. Several things struck me in this anecdote here, this case, if you will. First, that...
The woman who's identified in that way, who's depressed, is in treatment. That means there are treating professionals. We don't know what kind of treatment it is. but let's assume that there's some sort of a professional treatment involved. Probably as well, there was a history before the real slump into a major depressive episode.
which she's in the middle of. And that history as well may have impacted the partner who's writing this here. And that history perhaps also involves the reactions of the woman who's depressed. leading up to this time with regard to her partner. So that foundation can actually prime things and sensitize things for better or for worse.
And, you know, going back to our metaphor for anger, you know, each little irritation could be like a matchstick in a corner that's just piling up and then the sparks ignite a bonfire. So think about all that. The second thing that struck me, and then I'll kind of take a breath for your response so far, Forrest, is the word enabling. So here we have the person who wrote us who says, I want to help her without...
just enabling her. That's a really tricky word. On the one hand, it is true that occasionally, some people for some period of time... kind of milk their ailment. That occasionally happens. Usually that's not the case. The person who most hates being depressed is the person who's depressed.
What that leaves, though, are very legitimate remaining issues. And so I'll kind of name them as piles and then see what you think. So we have the pile here, the consideration, the concern. Okay, I don't want to enable. You know, I don't want to perpetuate. this. I don't want to be a crutch, as it were, that just keeps this problem going. Okay, most likely not going to happen anyway, but okay, we're paying attention to that. Second,
What would be useful for the partner who's depressed? Well, probably sustainable forms of compassion, helpfulness, simplicity. staying out of wrangles, being guided perhaps by the treating professionals, which might include even doing a consultation with them. Not that they're going to be your therapist, but that they can advise you about how to be with their patient, your partner. That's a very useful thing if you can do that, for example. So what would be helpful for the partner?
And then also, what would be helpful for you? You who is writing this here. There is a marathon you're involved with here. It's not a sprint. How can you take care of yourself? How can you increase the resources flowing into you? including your own compassion for yourself, as well as other things. How can you find respite? How can you mobilize other resources potentially relevant here?
friends, family members who can also participate in the care of your partner in broad ways. And over the long haul, what are your very legitimate needs? And sometimes what people do... in a helpful way, is they say to themselves, well, I know what my quote-unquote program is for the next X months. I can...
put up with a certain amount of stuff because I know my partner's not doing well. I can sustain a certain steady kind of effort. I can put up with getting less for myself from this person who's depressed. including perhaps romance, which is often one of the first things to go when someone's depressed. And I can do that, you know, for X months, two months, four months, six months, maybe 12 months.
You know, and I'm just going to do my program for that period of time while reserving my rights for what I'm maybe going to need to adjust ultimately. That can help a person to be all in. since they know that there's some kind of turning point in sight of one kind or another okay what do you think for us i think i think a couple of different things here
First, I think that there are some behaviors that are context independent. So here's what I mean by that. Some things are just not okay. You can't do them to your partner. It doesn't matter if you have a serious mental health ailment. It doesn't matter. What happened to you that day? It does not matter. You cannot hit your partner. So there are behaviors that we accept broadly as being unacceptable, regardless of context.
Things get tricky when you introduce a serious mental health ailment that begins to affect behavior, and you're dealing with behaviors that do not rise to that threshold. So an angry verbal outburst that is somewhat regular in how often it shows up may or may not rise to that threshold for a person. That's your decision. You get to choose what you do about that. And if behavior has become unacceptable...
It really is appropriate to address that, even in the context of this person's ongoing treatment and support, because you become more able. to support them effectively if they are treating you in an appropriate manner. So we scratch each other's backs here in a way that's totally normal and totally acceptable in the course of a relationship. So I just want to really highlight that here.
Just because a person is ill does not mean that they just get a blanket pass for everything. And I think what you're saying here, dad, in terms of to yourself, getting a sense of what you're really bought into long term.
Do you have an endless commitment to this person as some people do to each other? Great. Awesome. You can know that inside of yourself. You can take that on as your standard and you can make choices based off of that. But for most people, for most relationships, that commitment is not endless.
And it is fundamentally conditional on different forms of good behavior. I think that what is really complicated about these conversations is how both things are true. You love and care for and want to support that person. And you also have your own needs. And you also have things that you know you just cannot endure practically for the rest of your life. And then you make a kind of fateful choice about it.
And you reserve the right to reevaluate that choice every couple of weeks or couple of months or couple of years, whatever's true for you. So what do you think about that, Dad? That might be a little, I kind of came in hot there, and that might be a little edgy for some people. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are. I thought it was great.
Honestly. Because it's hard to talk about. It's hard to talk about the realness of that, of holding somebody who is in a lot of pain and is going through an incredibly difficult experience to some kind of standard of behavior, like that's sort of edgy territory. You're right. I think even framed as, you know, I really, really care about you. I see you're dealing with something. You didn't make it.
It's on you. And for me to be able to kind of give you everything I really want to give you here, really, please, it just really helps me if you don't yell at me. No, I think so much of this comes down to the communication of it and the way in which that communication is expressed, to your point here, Dad. And I think that's the real answer to how can I establish healthy boundaries with somebody who is suffering? And the answer is kindly and carefully.
But you can establish them, which I think is really what we're both highlighting here, that it's appropriate for you to be boundaried with this person, in part because those boundaries do serve them as well. By supporting yourself, you suddenly have more to give inside of the relationship. Fantastic. I think that's really good on that question. Let's say that you're talking to somebody, Dad, you're in the office with them. You're just with them solo.
And they're talking about their relationship. And they have a partner who, for whatever reason, is just lower capacity than they are. Maybe there's a mental health issue going on. Maybe they are highly sensitive around various issues.
And they're really talking about this. Most sessions, they're talking about how, man, this really weighs on them. This is really hard for them. How do you counsel them around that? Or have you been in situations like that in the past that are kind of coming to mind for you here? What a deep and broad and widely applicable question. So how I approach it, and as you put it, your mileage may vary.
Yeah, this is very broad stuff, totally. I think it's really quite interesting that actually as people develop themselves in various ways, they start moving farther and farther out on the tail of the distribution. farther out you go, there are increasing differences, factually, without being elitist about it, just factually, between you and other people. And then what do we do with that?
And being able to talk about those differences in capacity, let's say, or skillfulness, or level of training, or simply good fortune. You hit the genetic lottery. Being able to talk about differences is really important and something that Virginia Satir, for example, I've mentioned this before, as an early family therapist, really emphasized normalizing differences and being able to simply...
Be honest and real about them. There are certain things that your mom is better at than I am. And being able to talk about that. I really appreciate her for doing it and, you know, and accepting that she's just better at that than I am. You know, that's a really useful thing. So in the situation you're describing then, the question of effort.
really comes to the foreground for me. Yeah, I think this is a great way to add. I love this, Dad. I love how you're highlighting this because effort is not about capacity. It's about effort. Like how much effort is the person expending? Yeah, totally. Yeah, and I dropped the C word in there deliberately. It's about character. virtue. And one of the great virtues, of course, is effort, work ethic, doing your best. You start with whatever your capacities are. You may only have so much.
gasoline in your tank because you're getting older or maybe you're ill or dealing with various things for whatever reason or you maybe have an innate temperament that makes it really hard to sustain effort because Maybe you're more toward the ADHD end of the spectrum, unless you're extremely fascinated by something and stimulated by it. You know, you kind of run out of dopamine and you run out of gas. So you take all that into account. So in that context, then...
then you're thinking about effort and character. And so I would just hear that the real topic is for, let's say, my client, the way you set it up, who's complaining about their partner and so forth. would be to really get at the question of, have you talked to your partner? Duh, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And is your partner making efforts? And does your partner have a learning curve? Is there a willingness to change around some of these issues? Yeah. Yeah. And to grow and be open.
wow, what do you do when the person listens to you and nods, but they don't have a learning curve about it, and they continue to not make reasonable, reasonable efforts in this regard, then...
You have some faithful choices, to use your phrase earlier. Yeah, then you're either into the world of acceptance or you're into the world of making a decision about something. Yeah, totally. And sometimes what people do is they... find a way especially in a long-term like a marriage let's say a long-term relationship or even siblings families friends you just sort of carve out certain things you realize that you know this person is just not going to make an effort in certain areas
So I'm going to become less and less invested in those areas. And I'm not going to count on them in those areas. I just think, man, we have to talk with people. It becomes really important to be able to say to somebody, hey. it's not fair, or we need you to make more effort here, or it would really help me if I could feel that you're making efforts of a certain kind that are sustained.
You know, you find ways to talk about it, but it's really important to talk about, I think, if there's significant lapses there. Yeah, to maybe put a period on this. I think that what we're really highlighting here... is sort of these two different factors. One, the length of time that we're talking about that a disparity in effort or disparity in capacity can sustain for or last for.
I was sick recently. Elizabeth and I were moving from our condo to a different place where we're now living, and I was totally out of it. She had to shoulder 90% of the work during that period of time, which was objectively unfair and also was not going to lead to the end of our relationship. It was a time-bounded situation. She knew that that was the deal. I have since tried to make it up to her, the whole thing. And that's very normal. That's an acceptable thing, right?
but i think a lot of it what it comes back to is what you've highlighted here dad which is is the person trying In my limited state, I was still trying to be helpful in the ways that I could be helpful. And so that's why I think that's a good variable to isolate here. So let's move along to the second question. I moved through an eating disorder as a young adult and have fully recovered, but I'm still deeply insecure about how I look and that insecurity is hurting my relationship.
I constantly compare myself to other women, internally criticize myself and feel like I'm starting to withdraw from both the world and my partner. My partner is loving, kind, sensitive, and reassuring. But I struggle to trust that he really feels that way. I finally found somebody I want to build a life with, and yet I fear he will lose interest or see me as I do, lacking and undesirable. My lack of self-esteem and perceived physical inadequacies have made me retreat. What can I do?
A very touching question. You know, this is a very deep thing. We can generalize from this particular issue to what it's like to have had a real issue with something at a younger period. Now, objectively, you're different, but you don't believe it. You know, it doesn't really feel that way. You know, there's a lot of doubt, imposter syndrome and all the rest of that. Okay, good. Three things come to mind for starters.
The first is to use the linking step that I and other therapists in various ways have talked a lot about, which is to say, When you have opportunities, you, the person who wrote the question or anyone grappling with this, when you have opportunities to have a positive experience in the present that is well matched to that old.
negative material. What you can do is you can be aware of both of them at the same time. Keep the positive experience big in the foreground of your awareness with the negative material smaller and off to the side. and you can get a sense of bringing them into contact with each other, and you want to keep encouraging the positive to be bigger and to, in a sense, win.
to connect with and soothe and ease and soften and guide and gradually, eventually even replace the negative material. So in this particular case, The person could have an experience when the partner is kind and sensitive and reassuring and clearly attracted to you, including romantically.
You can have an experience of that, including the knowing that that is how it is for him, that is how he's acting, while off to the side are those old feelings that there's, you know, something really unattractive about your own body. And you can get a sense of those current good experiences touching that older material and going into it and easing it and soothing it. And you can do that again and again and again.
Over time, linking really works. You may want to do it with a therapist in some very structured ways, especially if you're connecting with sort of the white-hot core of the early trauma material and involved with an eating disorder. Or you can do a lot of it on your own, but you can do it. Okay, that's number one. Number two, when you're with your partner, while he is being friendly,
interested in you. Nurturing, supportive, saying nice things about you. Yeah. And interested in you physically and even coming into whatever your doubts are about your body. that he's good with it all, whatever that is. See if you can as much as possible, just be in the present with what's happening rather than in your head doubting what's happening.
Just kind of notice, even if you can do a little bit of narration for yourself of what's happening. Like, oh, hugging me. Oh, holding hands on the sofa while watching TV. Oh. Nice kiss. Oh, he wants to cuddle with me. Oh, we are now cuddling. Oh, and on from there. You're just kind of coming into the immediacy. and gradually disengaging from this rumination, which is what it is, that is pulling you away from what's present into this kind of bubble of a movie inside your own mind.
that's disconnected from what's actually happening. That's my second suggestion. Then my third suggestion is kind of hard, but in a way it really gets to the bottom here, which is accept the fact
that he may eventually reject you. Whoa. Yeah, that's really tough to do. But if you really think about it, there's, in a way, the... preoccupation with your perceived physical inadequacies and looking for signs that he is really going to eventually lose interest in you, that he won't really want to stay with you.
In some ways, that's a kind of defense against the ultimate fear that the relationship will end. And so it becomes hard to fully give your heart to him and fully be all in and vulnerable. and trusting because then you risk, you know, the big hurt potentially of him leaving you. And yet we all have to risk that. We have to risk that. We don't know. We can't make our partner stay with us. We have to kind of live without uncertainty. But if you could accept that as uncertainty, and then...
come into the present of the immediacy of what's actually happening with him, for one, you'll feel better. And for two, frankly, you'll be more the person that he actually will want to be with over the long run. Because he will want to be with someone who's not lost in her own thoughts around him and someone he has to constantly reassure. I think that's all great, Dad. Really good material. And for me...
What comes up is the pattern-breaking aspect of this, because we get in cycles with it, right? This person is describing a cycle that they're in, essentially, where they have a fear about a thing, then the fear is causing a behavior, which is they withdraw.
which then exacerbates that fear, which then leads to more withdrawal, which then leads to more fear. So once you've entered that kind of like a death spiral, it can be very difficult to get out of it because it's just this downward spiral to nowhere. And then often what happens for people if they're able to break that pattern, it's because they make a kind of heroic.
I don't know how to articulate this very well. There's this sort of internal major shift that happens where they brave some kind of a very dangerous experience for them. in order to shift what's going on in the relationship to a different place often this includes quite a bit of vulnerability and often includes quite a bit of honesty typically with their partner about what's going on and
what would be helpful for them and why they're doing what they're doing and how they feel. A lot of the time it's quiet and internal, but it's equally brave and equally honest because you're being honest with yourself. And I think that practically I would mostly just highlight here what you've already said.
which is a great list of practices that somebody could take on in a situation like this, and just reinforce the self-worth aspect of the whole thing. We often develop the habit of low self-worth, the habit of the loud negative voice inside of the mind. And so I wonder about that part of it too, and about what this person could do to increasingly believe the kinder voice of their partner.
as opposed to the less kind voice that's emerging inside of them. What would getting on the same side as that kinder voice look like practically? And I suspect it's one of those things that's easy to say but hard to do. But I would just, I wonder about that. Yeah, I think that's great for us. And in part, you're sort of getting at this inner skill of helping yourself believe things.
helping yourself to acquire conviction and to help yourself learn to believe it. And I think back on my experience of taking people rappelling over a cliff and they have to lean back on the rope and it's initially very scary. I've had many experiences with people right at the edge where 99% of them is freaking out. And I'm tuning in and kind of locking eyes with the 1% of them that basically trust me. And I say, just believe me, do what I say.
you're going to be fine. And so in effect, I'm trying to help them to have conviction in what I'm saying. And so it's a broad process here. To go further, I want to say also that I think there's a place. for acknowledging our history with someone we're getting to know and someone that you want to build a life with and ask for reassurance from that person related to that.
So there's a place for having an understanding with your partner. We're all kind of the walking wounded that you need some reassurance about certain things. And most partners are really willing to do that. And if a partner is just not willing to provide, you know, kind of reasonable amount of reassurance of various kinds over time, maybe a little.
frustration occasionally that they still have to do it, but mostly they're a good sport about it. You know, if a person's not basically willing to do that, that's a yellow flag, if not an orange one, about them in a relationship. Now, I'm going to take a chance and say some stuff that you may eliminate from the recording. And I'm going to talk a little bit and stick my neck out about some general features that I've observed.
in terms of heterosexual attraction because that's what's the subtext here first off in my experience there is indeed a small group of men small percentage of men who are really fixated on what their partners look like. Yes, there are occasionally men who are like that, and they're probably not going to be a good partner. Right.
Most men are not like that. Most men appreciate in heterosexual frames attractiveness, physical attractiveness. Most people, most women are, for most men, are really in the middle of that range. where, you know, it's kind of nice if there's attractiveness and they find what is attractive in their partner. And a lot of what leads to long-term attractiveness is they like their partner.
They enjoy being with their partner. They feel comfortable with their partner. They appreciate the affection of their partner. And, you know, from time to time, they kind of see what's cute about their partner. Great. If you're in that middle place. with this fellow, you're probably going to be just fine, really. And getting caught up in comparison with other women who are just irrelevant to him, you know, even if...
as a male-bodied animal, you know, his eye pauses for a moment before moving on sometimes. It's not a threat to you. It's not about you. He's fine with you. And a lot of the stuff that in the culture... you know, unfortunately, many people have been led to believe is really important, is just really not that important. What do you make of that, Forrest?
Well, I think it's complicated. I think this is another one of those, this could be an episode kind of things that we get into with the mailbag sometimes. My suspicion as somebody who has no clinical background and no experience working with people. who have dealt with eating disorders and body dysmorphic issues in the past. My general sense is that it's not driven by a lot of rational appraisal almost definitionally, right? It's about not rational appraisal of yourself compared to others.
I'm slightly skeptical about rational solutions to irrational problems, if that makes sense, in terms of a person's ability to process it in that highly cognitive way. So I wonder about that. I also wonder about more bottom-up ways in, I guess I would say. The experience of yourself as a good person, regardless of removing the variable of appearance from the equation, the experience of yourself as a good partner, and appreciation for the ways in which, to your point, Dad, beauty is fleeting.
Even when beauty does exist, there are lots of things that matter in life. As we age in particular, it matters less and less over time.
in ways that I think they're, by and large, quite good for us. And yeah, those are just kind of my reflections from my lack of expertise here, but it's just what's kind of popping into my mind. It's good, and we're wrapping up on this one. In eating disorder... occurs for many reasons, but in it sometimes is, frankly, a collection of delusions about oneself and about other people.
And so there's no replacement for being told what reality really is and helping yourself believe what reality really is, which is that... Your partner is fine with you. Your partner thinks you're plenty good enough. And appearance is not an issue for your partner. If that's true, as I'm betting 99 to 1 at least, it is true. That's an important reality to recognize.
Now, we could call that cognitive. Is it really cognitive where you realize, oh, the door is here and the wall is there, and I'm going to walk through the door? Maybe that's cognitive, but it's really about recognizing the reality of things. And I think for a lot of people, waking up from the nightmare, the belief that other people care about something about you past the first three seconds of a glance.
is what a relief. So that's what I'm talking about here. I think that's totally fair. And that's about as far as we can go with this one today, I think. So it makes sense for us to move along to our third question for the mailbag. Also, again, about relationships, my boyfriend of two years remains very close with his ex-wife and ex-in-laws. I have no problems with that.
The issue I have is they have not seemed to accept me into their clan. I rarely get invited to their family occasions and celebrations, which leads to me feeling hurt, lonely and sometimes envious. These relationships are important to him, and they've been perfectly appropriate. But whenever I'm left out, I withdraw and distance myself within our relationship. How can I accept this situation of being excluded without becoming resentful?
Well, you offered a great comment about this from the start, so I'll just say it while crediting you. The first obvious question is to the person, have you had a clear, direct conversation with your boyfriend about this? Yeah. I think that's where all this starts. Like, have you talked about this with him? Yeah. Have you made a direct request to be included? Have you said what it would actually look like operationally at least a few times a year if you got what you wanted? And is it safe enough?
to have that kind of conversation? And if not, how could you create the conditions of safety in which you could have that really important kind of conversation? Totally. And I suspect that this is a situation where there is some middle ground that exists out in the world. There's some version of you go to some number of things with this expanded group of people who are now all just friends who maybe have known each other for a long time at this point were able to
reconcile their past issues in a way that felt good to everyone. Great. You know, people have those relationships in life. And I don't think there's anything inherently inappropriate with that or problematic about that. But you're a big person in your boyfriend's life too now, and you want to feel like you are at least on equal footing, if not, you know, a little one up in this whole equation. And that's also totally appropriate for you to want to feel that way.
And so if there's a situation for you to be included even some of the time, it seems like that would be very… appropriate in most situations. And you can really bargain for that. And bargain for that in a way that it's not like weird or horse trading, but it's just like, hey, some percentage of the time I would like to be involved here.
And if these people have some kind of content with me because I'm sort of the new figure that has entered the scene, I'm comfortable working through that content with them. It might come up. Yeah, that might be real, but we can process that together and I want to do that. Now, if you've had that conversation and it hasn't gone tremendously well, that's where I would start to have some questions about the whole thing. Also, I'm curious, why hasn't the boyfriend involved her, I think?
with family events? And also how often do they occur? So I'm just curious, like, it seems strange to me a little here. And I'm wondering about an additional data point. Are there children involved? Because that changes everything as far as I'm concerned. If her boyfriend and his ex-wife have children together. Have kids together, yeah. That's a very complicated situation.
his kid's mother and her family then it you know then it adds a wrinkle here so i'd wonder about that but it also gets to a thing And this is a kind of a key general principle that I've seen again and again in relationships, and it's really a useful one. Let's say I'm going to be the person who's asking the question, talking to her boyfriend, okay?
So I'm now saying to the boyfriend, hey, boyfriend, I'd love to be included more in these events. I feel kind of sad and left out when I'm not included. I don't have to be included in all of them. I'm kind of wondering. Will you think about that? Am I being deliberately not included or just did it not occur to anybody? Could you include me? Okay, then suppose that the boyfriend says, I don't know why you care about being included.
If the shoe were on the other foot and you had an ex-husband and his family and in-laws and they invited you to stuff, it wouldn't bother me at all. So I don't see why it's a big deal for you. And you can see the structure of this. You know, person A expresses a wand. Person B says, I don't see why that you want that. You know, I don't see, I wouldn't want that myself. Okay.
Then go back to the person who's asking the question in response to the pseudo boyfriend here, the made up boyfriend. Then this person could say, okay, I hear you that we're different in this way. You would not want this thing that I want. And it might even be puzzling to you. It might even be almost impossible for you to understand that I wanted. But then here's the question. As my partner,
He's my boyfriend of two years who cares about me and we're looking forward to a future together of some kind. Can you help me here just because this is important to me?
yeah you don't need to reciprocate this wand to support me in it yeah totally yeah and then that becomes the real topic on the table the real topic on the table and it shows up in other ways area other areas too, such as where there's a difference of natural interest in, let's say, sexuality or natural interest in certain kinds of deep conversations or opera, who knows.
We're basically people who are together, and the real negotiating point, in effect, is it's not about the opera anymore. It's about, well, within some reasonable amount, and maybe we'll... make a big swap here, you know, quid pro quo, but simply because this matters to me. Can you join with me about that and be in support of me in reasonable ways? And then if, if the other person blows you off, if the boyfriend in this case says, well, honestly, I just don't want to do that. You know, I just.
I don't get it. And I'm just, you know, I kind of think that's your problem. And maybe you should go talk to your therapist about it or meditate more, you know? Whoa, now this has escalated. and become the real issue on the table. Do you care enough about me to come through for me in reasonable ways that are not going to cost you a lot about something that's important to me?
That becomes the real issue on the table. I think that's great, Dad. And I also want to spend a little bit of time with this question because we've mostly so far spoken to the context or kind of... some of the assumptions that seem to be made in the question, and we've kind of unpacked those assumptions. I would love to isolate that last sentence in the question for a second here, though. So let's assume that there are extenuating circumstances.
There is some reason that's a totally plausible, understandable reason why this person can't go to those events. But hey, they also know that to their boyfriend, it's really important that their boyfriend keep going to these events and their boyfriend is kind of like, you know,
sorry that you can't go to these things, but it's important to me. I want you to feel good. I want me to feel good. I want us all to feel good together. And everyone's kind of on the same page about this, but bottom line, boyfriend's going, girlfriend is not. What could she do? to become more accepting of that situation. She can ask the boyfriend to be empathic and compassionate for how it is for her, you know, feeling heard, feeling understood, feeling...
that what she wants has been normalized. Yeah. Is he really showing up in that way? Yeah. It can help us put up with a tough situation that then in which our partner is implicated, if our partner is understanding and sweet about it. rather than snippy and dismissive and defensive. Okay, so she can ask for that. Second, she can keep paying attention to the many good things in the relationship that are still going on being.
even if she's not getting this other thing over here. Now, in this case, let's assume that the thing that she, let's say, potentially won't get is not... really that big a deal for her i've seen many situations where people get caught up in the habit of resentment the habit of reproach the habit of grievance and it takes on
a life of its own. It's both rewarding. People become identified with the grievance. They keep coming back to it. They keep chewing on it. And it can even just become a habit. That's where their attention goes. I'll call it the zebra. They really want a zebra. Meanwhile, they have horses. They have food. They have money. They have a partner who loves them. They have a wonderful collection of things. But wow, they want a zebra also.
And then they get really fixed on the zebra, which then ruins everything else. So a person can really help themselves by really feeling and receiving, taking in the good into themselves of all these other good things in their relationship. even if they're not getting that particular thing. I think that's a great point. And this, like all of the other questions so far, very, very deep question. We could spend a ton of time on it.
I think that it makes sense for us to wrap it here. So I'm going to move us along to our fourth question, which again, relationships, but a different kind of relationship here. This might seem surprising, but I have always struggled to eat enough vegetables.
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Let me get you started with my special discount. You'll get 20% off your first order. Just use code beingwell at fieldofgreens.com. That's code beingwell at fieldofgreens.com. I have a close, loving, and fun relationship with my 20-year-old daughter, but I had a difficult childhood, and I know that I made mistakes while raising her.
I worry that as she becomes more independent and emotionally mature, she'll start to reflect on how my parenting impacted her, and then she'll want to pull away from me. I'd love to be able to repair with her in a way that really corrects what I've done wrong. I'd love to hear how you've been able to do repair work in your father-son relationship and what that looks like. Oh man, we're putting it on the table here, dad. I applaud the person who asked this question. You can just feel.
their heart coming through. And I'm glad they have a close, loving, and fun relationship with their daughter. And I really, really, really applaud going all the way back to character, one of the really most fundamental kinds of character and virtue.
is a willingness to see clearly and tell the truth and admit things, even with a little initial squirming perhaps, but to really admit it and to take responsibility. That's huge. You know, if you've got a... partner or a significant person in your life who just is committed to swerving away from what is actually factually true and also committed to swerving away from taking responsibility for their
part in situations, if only their impact on others, even if it was not intended. Wow, it's really hard to have any kind of a vulnerable, significant, you know, long-term relationship with that kind of person. It becomes a real issue. So yeah, so right off the top, lovely. And so I'd be wondering with this person about how...
really their parenting impacted their child, their daughter. Is this just a fear that they have or was there something real there? Yeah, totally. I'll say to go to her question, and you can check me on this for us, Dad. One thing that's been, you know, really important for me to do is to fully acknowledge imperfections in myself as a father and to come to it. And I'm not trying to even diminish it by that kind of Weasley word.
imperfections i mean messing up losing my temper losing my cool just being caught up in my own stuff losing sight of who you are who you were on the inside you know just whatever, any and all of it, you know, fearless and searching inventory using the AA side. That's been really important for me. And to be able to do that also, it might seem paradoxical.
The fearless and searching inventory applies to strengths as well as weaknesses. People don't tend to think of it like that, but it's really about, and so I look back and I just can, it helps me. be more prepared to acknowledge, you know, my screw ups. If I can also see, you know, the threads in the fabric of our relationship that were, you know.
Well-intended. We're good. You know, had good character behind them. You know, had good impact. We're skillful. We're loving, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. How about you? I have two comments inside of the question, and then I'm open for talking about how we've done repair work in the past, which I think is a really interesting question. The first comment that I have just in general is, worry is endless.
There's no end to worry. You can worry about anything for any period of time for any reason. So when the word worry appears inside of a question, I immediately get kind of curious about it, right? I worry that as she becomes more independent and emotionally mature, we're now casting the stone.
how far into the future, you can keep worrying about that until you're on your deathbed, you know, that your daughter will one day feel these ways. I think that there's a real place for coming into whatever your daughter says her current experiences. The second point that I would make that I think is a very kind of soulful one here, and often with these questions, what I do is I...
They're a very long question, paragraphs long, and I have to kind of squish them down to what I can do easily on a show like this. And in that longer question, there was a fear expressed by this person of a kind of recapitulation. of the same mistakes that were made toward them by their parents that they then passed on to their daughter in different ways, or made the same mistakes with their daughter. It's a very common theme, the fear that you will repeat the mistakes of the past.
What I am 99% sure, not 100% sure, but 99% sure, would be distinctly different in this situation is a willingness to talk about it. Any kind of repair work here is a categorical difference from whatever it was that happened in the past with you and your parents. And is a... total line in the sand moment around all of this that separates this iteration of the process from whatever came before. And I think it's really essential to call that out as a key difference here.
So that is some context here. Inside of our relationship, man, we've definitely had some stuff where… where we've had to kind of go back and process it. I think that with both of us, as the person who was doing some apologizing at various moments of the past, so I don't think that this has just been like you apologizing for parenting issues or something. A couple themes that come up for me.
immediately. For starters, a willingness to come into a repair conversation with a clear head. A lot of people try to do repair when they're still not just pissed off, but they are totally gripped. by the pissed-off-ness of whatever's going on. And those conversations rarely end well. And so I think that we have both been willing to give the other person space from time to time to…
calm down, to get a little bit more level-headed. Like, okay, if we can kind of create some space around it, maybe we can have a different sort of conversation about this. I definitely remember that being a theme at times in the past. A real willingness to accept responsibility. I don't know. What stands out to you? A couple of things. Well, first, unlike my own parents, when you were young, I was willing to fairly quickly apologize or put in correction on the fly.
And that, I think, helped. And then since you, let's say, entered adulthood, there have been more real-time situations. or I could tell you didn't like something I did. And so we've definitely had a few conversations like that. I can say for the record that when you put that on the table, you definitely were heated.
And that was okay. You weren't out of line. You didn't cross the lines. And I think that's an important point that very often when I call it a complaint, you know, when a wish, a request, a complaint. comes at us, it's got some topspin and maybe that's got a certain amount of sludge wrapped around it. And that's just normal. And then we keep going, but we don't just shut down the whole conversation because it didn't.
come to us with perfect nonviolent communication or some other, you know, really wonderful, but still, you know, can be very formulaic sometimes sort of approach. And this maybe relates to... The discipline topic that we just also did recently, how do you be disciplined, right? I learned a while back to really appreciate negative feedback. I want to learn. I want to see how I screwed up. I want to see what I can correct.
So it becomes framed for me as an opportunity. And you are extremely important to me. So it's a very high priority. Hey, if I've rubbed you the wrong way or I've... drop the ball or I'm bugging you about something or it's not right for you, it's a really high priority for me to know about it. And these are values, I think, in the background that can help to make repair much more likely to go well.
Yeah, just as you've been talking through this, it's helped kind of jog my own memory and thoughts about it. Maybe a few extra things that stand out. First, a willingness to talk about the past, which a lot of people don't have. combined with a willingness to not get bogged down in the he said, he said of it all. The past is the past. We're sometimes talking about events that happened 20 years ago at this point.
And neither of us is going to have a perfect recollection of exactly what happened back then. And often people get really trapped in like a legislation of that in a way that I just don't think is helpful. What matters is how somebody feels about it. that's what's still present today. And I think there have even been times where it sort of felt to me like maybe you had a materially different view of...
whatever went on that maybe I'm saying about what went on. But you were willing to kind of like nod and go like, hey, okay, who knows? Let's say that that's the case. What do I have to do now to make that right? And I think that that's like a really important stance in all of this. That's like a really important freedom to be willing to give yourself to not get bogged down in that legislative of exactly the way that it all went down.
So that's one thing that stands out to me. Second thing that stands out to me, I can't think of a single time when either of us was deliberately unkind to the other person for the sake of being unkind. We might have been unkind in process, in style, in communication, in whatever, but it wasn't because we were trying to be mean or because we were trying to hurt the other person's feelings.
And I think that that is a huge piece of this. That is often not the case for people in their relationships when they're having these kinds of conversations. People really go out of their way often to be unkind. I think on the one hand... You're certainly right about, I think of it almost like breathing room or a kind of a buffer in which two people are talking about, let's say, some stuff that happened in the past. And even if they...
Each maybe have fairly different recollections of what the facts actually were, or even more broadly, the factual context around whatever particularly happened. there's a way in which if you really want to repair, and I'm speaking now as the parent figure, where you really want to repair, internally you can think to yourself, well, hmm. There were some other facts in the mix that were cooking there. Certainly they affected me, let's say. And I can be all in on maximum joining.
with every single thing that you're talking about, particularly in terms of your own experience. And I can really enter into an unpacking of that and to feel like what a gift it is for me. My adult kid cares enough to be telling me about this. Thank you. And I want to be really good about that. And also, you know. hopefully lay a foundation so they'll have some confidence and interest in doing that again. That said, two things. First, facts do matter. Reality matters.
And I've known situations in which on the one side, let's say, a parent would just say, oh, that didn't happen. Like your father never spanked you. Like it never happened. But in fact, it is factually true that the father spanked now the adult, let's say, daughter. There's an unwillingness to see what's true. Yeah. Or even cluelessness about it. Like, I had no idea.
he was spanking you and other things like that. And so, or to go the other way, you know, sometimes the adult kid is really aided, as I was aided, frankly, when I... have been processing with my own parents to realize that I think my mom was depressed a fair amount. And suddenly now that puts some of her ways of being in a whole new kind of light.
So it didn't change what she did, but it brought more of a factual context. So I think it's a balance. Both things are true. And one thing that can really be quite powerful is to look at pictures. to the extent you can. These days, more and more people have these vast volumes of, you know, photographs. We have so many photographs, you know, of your life force from being a kid. And just look at them and even talk through them with a parent.
One thing I've done with people, I did it with my parents, and it's a really powerful exercise, especially while they are alive, is to interview them about their life, their childhood. and even interview them about their recollections of your life with them. Like, how did it happen that I was, you know, came into the world? What were the circumstances?
These are facts that can really affect us. So I'll just mention that. And then a second following point about that, it's how do we take into account the impact of the kid? on the family, the kid on the parents. You know, there's a whole bunch of developmental psychology that is increasingly understanding children as active agents, as in some ways little scientists gradually.
forming, discovering reality in a very interactive kind of way, and to realize that kids in family systems can have really, really a big influence on what happens, including through... completely deliberate volitional activity on their part. It's really tricky to talk about because kids are not morally culpable like adults are. And yet kids are often volitionally agentic in how they act. I was. I was very deliberate in how I acted, you know, from a very young age. And I...
have responsibility, you know, for that. And I was also 6, 10, 16 when I did all those things of various kinds. And how do we take that into account, right? How do we take into account the deliberate choices that a kid made which may have harmed their parents? or mistreated their parents or had consequences in their family system. That's a whole topic to really contemplate on. And it's one that I'm looking at for myself.
I appreciate your appreciation of trying to figure out what actually happened and the broader circumstances that are present and whatever went on back then. And I do think that this is one of those things where... These situations are rarely linear and black and white. Sometimes they really are quite simple. You had a single parent, they were a drug addict, and things flowed from there.
That's going to shape a lot of the outcomes that happen after that. Even inside of that situation, there are a lot of variables. Does the parent have a lot of love for you anyway? Are they doing their best anyway? Are they trying to make it work anyway? Like all of that.
These are not simple conversations or simple topics to have, which is why I think that it's helpful to focus on kind of broad principles. And one of the broad principles I think that you're trying to... sort of establish here, Dad, is a caring about reality on the one hand, married with an openness to interpretation maybe on the other hand, including the aspects of something that are about
the child's participation. And in this case, I'm not talking about like a three-year-old child. I'm talking more about like a 15-year-old child, where certainly when I was a 15-year-old, I had some agency, man. I also had a lot of hormones running through my body that were maybe affecting how I was thinking and what I was doing, and it's important to appreciate that too. But I had some agency. I was making choices.
But my ability to make choices was extremely limited relative to my ability to make choices today for a whole bunch of different reasons. Natural maturation, the freedoms that we give a 36-year-old that we don't give a 15-year-old. context and understanding and appreciation of other options I might have in life.
Seeing beyond, frankly, the relatively narrow container that is created by a family and parental structure, where there are a lot of assumptions that the parents are making about what the ways to interact are that are then getting passed on to the kids.
are then reciprocating back to the parents. These are all factors, right? And so as I've become an independent, individuated person, I've brought stuff to our interactions, including our repair conversations, that I could not bring to the table as a 15-year-old, in part because I've been able to see outside of that container and create my own sense of truth and appreciation.
and beauty and clear saying and all of that, that is independent too while also being commingled with. I'm seeing like a Venn diagram kind of image in front of my head right now. then inside of this whole thing, right? Like, I think that that's a piece of the puzzle as well. This stuff changes over time and that's really okay. And the relationship that this person has with their daughter is probably going to change over time as that daughter gets older.
gets those new inputs in there, sees things in different lights. And if you keep on returning to those kind of basic fundamental principles, don't speak with the intention to cause harm purely for the sake of causing harm. Appreciate that different people see things differently. Appreciate that you are taking a big step in your willingness to repair that other people maybe wouldn't take. See the good in each other. Try not to have this interaction when you're both
tired and hungry and at the end of a long day. Just general, simple, all-purpose stuff. I think that that's where all of that comes up. Excellent. And to be clear, I'm not talking about... Blaming the victim, blaming the kid, as it were. It's really important. But I am really speaking for a capacity to recognize complexity. It's kind of interesting for that teenager now at 45, or in my case.
you know, more than 45, to look back at their own impact on the family system and to appreciate the complexities of the forces, like you said, moving through them that manifested as their impact on the system. I mean, I wish I could go back in time while my parents were alive and have myself do a few things differently as a 14 year old or certainly a 16 year old.
I think this was a fantastic question. All of the questions we got today were fantastic. That's part of the reason that we only did four of them during this mailbag. We'll often answer a couple more, but we just spent a lot of time on them because they were incredibly rich in nature. And I thought it was great how they all
related to that topic of relationships, which is certainly going to help me package this episode in maybe a slightly more coherent way than I normally do for the mailbag episodes. So thanks again, Dad, for taking the time to have this conversation with me. I really got a lot out of it. Thank you Forrest. I had a great time today answering questions. We always get phenomenal questions from our listeners and all of the questions that we answered today.
orbited the topic of relationships. How can we get more out of our relationships? And what can we do when different kinds of challenging circumstances emerge inside of those relationships? We started by answering a question related to having a partner who's going through a significant
The questioner really wanted to support this person, but also didn't want to, in their language, enable them. And so we started by focusing on that word, enabling. It's really pretty uncommon for people who are going through a big mental health moment. to leverage their ailment in an inappropriate way to kind of like get things from it. It happens occasionally, but it's really very uncommon.
So most of the time, we don't really have to worry about enabling other people in that kind of a situation. We really just have to worry about supporting them. That being said, There is a limit to that support. And in the question, the person mentioned that their partner had fallen into some unpredictable and angry verbal outbursts. And this highlights an idea that is both uncomfortable and important. There are some behaviors that just aren't appropriate, pretty much regardless of context.
I think that it's important in situations like this to get clear about what a person really can tolerate over the long term. The bottom line here is that abuse is never appropriate. It's not appropriate regardless of how depressed a person is. So the person who's writing this question really has to make some assessments for themselves about what they're willing to tolerate and what kind of a life they want to have long term.
And that's why it's so hard to talk about situations like this, because they are so individual in nature. And I think that Rick did a great job of really slicing through here when he separated out effort from capacity. Different people have different capacities at different moments in time. That is perfectly normal. It's perfectly acceptable. That's the way the world is. It can be uncomfortable to talk about it, but just real life. Some people naturally have a larger gas tank than others.
And because those differences exist, it becomes really important to focus on effort, not what somebody's capacity is compared to yours, but are they giving a good effort regardless of their capacity? For some people, 30 seconds a day is a big effort, and it's really appropriate to appreciate that as a big effort. And our appreciation of that can be a little bit separate from the question that we ask ourselves about, okay, do I want to buy into this as the nature of my relationship from now on?
And then other key factors that Rick brought into it. Is there a learning curve here? Is the person willing to take on board your thoughts about the situation? Are they willing to change in some way? And then do they have a good heart? Do they care about you still? Do they care about going?
what's going on, and do they want to do right by you long term? The second question got to a lot of insecurity around a person's appearance and how that insecurity was leading to some negative consequences for their relationship. The questioner really emphasized that their partner was very supportive. So that's where Rick started. He talked about the linking step in his HEAL process, which goes have, enrich, absorb, and then link.
And this process gets to how we can use positive experiences, like for example, our partner saying something nice about us, and internalize them in a really felt and powerful way to heal old wounds of different kinds. So let's say that this person does have an immediate positive experience of intimacy and support inside of their relationship. They could really go out of their way to take in that their partner likes them and is supportive. And part of this process in
Really a very powerful way can be accepting the possibility of the bad thing happening. Accepting the possibility that the relationship might end, that the partner could decide to be with somebody else, that it just doesn't work out. for whatever reason. And it becomes hard to fully give your heart in a relationship if that fear of the unknown is getting in the way of really coming into the moment.
Because the moment is normally okay. It's normally not nearly as bad about what your concerns about the future are making it out to be. And part of that is a coming into reality process, believing the voice of your partner who is saying kind things about you. believing the voice inside of your mind that can appraise your appearance a little bit more accurately or can appraise how you are as a person a little bit more accurately.
And then I talked a little bit there about developing things outside of how a person looks that are really so much more important in a long-term relationship. Self-worth aspects, believing in yourself as a good person. seeing the ways in which you support your partner really meaningfully, these are all very important things. Third question got to a situation where a person was feeling excluded in interactions between their partner and their partner's ex-partner and ex-in-laws.
Obviously, this is potentially a pretty thorny situation. The person really clarified in the message that all of the relationships were appropriate. They just felt kind of left out inside of the whole thing.
And we started with probably an obvious but a very important point. Have you talked to your partner about it? And that could seem kind of trite, but it really does center something that I think is really important and is often missed here. All the time, we forget to actually just talk to the person.
about the issues that we're having. And then the question becomes a really important question, do you feel comfortable doing that? And if you don't feel comfortable doing that, why don't you feel comfortable doing that? Is there something that's going on inside of the relationship? That is leading to the sense of an unstable base or none of safety inside of the relationship for you to have that kind of a vulnerable conversation with them about it.
And inside of that conversation, there might be some compromise. There might be some horse training. There might be some situations where sometimes you go, sometimes you don't go. There could be complicating factors here like the presence of children. And then something that Rick pulled out that I thought was very interesting was how sometimes what happens in interactions between friends or often in partnerships, romantic partnerships, is that person A says something like, I have this want.
And then person B responds by saying, well, I don't have that want, and I don't really understand why you could have that want. And obvious point, it... It doesn't actually matter whether or not person B understands the want or has the want themselves. The question is, how do they want to respond to their partner having a desire? And it's very easy for people to get trapped in a kind of...
analysis of whether or not this is a good want, as opposed to actually just engaging it on face value. Okay, my partner wants this thing from me. Am I willing to give it to them or not? Then final question. Very touching question. A parent was writing in talking about their close relationship with their adult child and their fears that as their adult child continued to age, they would have some issues with the parent and some issues with how the parent raised them.
And then that child will want to pull away from the parent as a result. And the questioner asked how Rick and I have handled repair inside of our relationship. That became a window into a whole conversation about the relationships between parents and children and the dynamics there and the different things to appreciate. That's a part of the conversation that's a little difficult for me to summarize because there was a lot there that was very nuanced, but just to pull out a couple of big themes.
First, in Rick and Mai's interactions with each other, I know for a fact that neither of us have entered a repair conversation with the desire to hurt the other person. The desire to hurt them emotionally, the desire to hurt them physically. These were just not desires that we had. So we might have heard the other person, but that wasn't our intention inside of the conversation. That wasn't what we were bringing to it. And I think that's actually pretty uncommon.
Then second, this almost pair of ideas that I felt like Rick was really emphasizing. On the one hand, being very open to change and very open to feedback and very open to saying, here's where I went wrong.
And then second, caring about the broader context of whatever was going on for the person at the time. Family systems are complicated. Our behavior does not exist inside of a vacuum. And while Personally, I think that it's often a big mistake to get sucked into a lot of rigorous fact-finding about what happened 20 years ago.
I think that that's often a dead end for people. But Rick was really emphasizing the contextual nature of this whole thing. What was the kid's behavior like? What was the parent's behavior like? What was the broader context? What else was going on? What emotions were in play? What was affecting who?
And there can be an appreciation of all of that inside of a repair conversation that leads to compassion. And that, I think, is the point that Rick was really making. What supports us in finding compassion for ourselves and for other people?
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I thought it was a really interesting one. I always like doing the mailbags. And if you have a question that you would like to have answered on a future edition of the podcast, you can reach us at contact at beingwellpodcast.com or you can sign up for our Patreon. If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, please do that. It really helps us out. And until next time, thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.