DR JULE: The Relationship Advice You NEED to Hear | GREAT MOMENTS

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1:13Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Lang and this is Great Moments.

1:21Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Great Moments. Now today we're looking back on my conversation with the wonderful Dr. Julie. Now Dr. Julie is a clinical psychologist who has an incredible gift for taking the things we all struggle with silently and instantly making them make sense. Now when I read her book, it kind of opened up my mind to so many things. And in this great moment, she opens up about how our inner child might be sabotaging our love lives. and why leaning into the difficult conversations is the most important thing you can do for our relationships. So here it is.

1:51Our next episode of Great Moments with Dr. Julie.

1:58So if we are in a relationship, which lots of people listening probably are, and they're struggling to communicate with their partner or their partner is not really understanding what their partner is trying to tell them, how do you fix that? How do you make sure that communication works? Because I always believe that relationships, unless there's cheating or whatever go on, but relationships break down because the communication is right. One side is not understanding the other. So how do you sort that? I think something that probably goes wrong is when people avoid the difficult conversations.

2:27That if something, if we know something's going to bring up emotion or it's going to be a little bit testy or heated, then we avoid it and we cover it over. And those sorts of things, that tendency to do that is a bit like trying to hold air underwater like it will always find its way to the surface but when you least expect it so as you know if you're um often do this um exercise in therapy actually people where um we can probably do it with the book actually so if you put your hand on the other side and just push against me so if you imagine that feels great if you imagine that is a kind of a bunch of feelings or issues that you don't really want to deal with it's uncomfortable and so and so you don't right you just hold it at arm's length you can carry on with the rest of your day and you're pushing it away so we're holding so for people listening where you're pushing one side of the book i'm pushing the other side of the book and we have the so yeah i'm all the i'm all the i'm all the shit you don't want to have i'm all the the thoughts and the feelings or the difficulties in your relationship that you don't really want to deal with yeah and i'm trying to be in your head and so you have to keep pushing back to keep me at bay correct so now if we said okay end of this go about the rest of your day and i'm just It would be difficult to kind of focus on stuff, but also when you get tired or you let your guard down, this is going to come flying over and hit you in the face.

3:46So that's when all the difficult emotions suddenly hit us and we feel absolutely overwhelmed because we've been holding it back for so long. And then something's happened, we've let our guard down and it's just like opened the floodgates. Right. So now if we take that and this time, if you just hold your hand out and it's the same stuff you don't want to have, same uncomfortable stuff, but I'm just going to hold it there for you. You're just going to just carry it with you. So if now we said, okay, end of the session, you go about the rest of your day, but you just keep that with you. That would feel fundamentally different, right?

4:17Feels different. Yeah. So you would be more able to engage in conversation, do your work, your arm's going to be less tired. Yeah. And you still get to choose to look down. It's still there, but you get to choose when you consider it and when you think about it and when you work on it. But you're also free to do all the other stuff. whereas you know it's not waiting to hit you in the face when you as soon as you let your guard down so it's that kind of difference of if you're not pushing stuff away if you're willing to hold it it doesn't fight against you so much but Julie but some people find it so tricky to have those conversations oh yeah and and it's so hard right because it's like I don't think I can talk about it I don't think I can say it someone once told me the best way to have a conversation with your partner is to lie on a bed and look at the ceiling so you don't face each other.

5:05Yeah, or go for a walk, that kind of thing. Sometimes that can help if the intimacy side of it is tricky or kind of overwhelming. That can be really helpful. But also, it's really helpful to go into it knowing what your goal is. And by that, I mean, often disruptions in relationships, they give you the sense that you want to win. You just want them to understand your point of view and then it will all be all right. And they feel exactly the same way. And so if the aim is to win, the relationship loses because the only person that feels good in victory and looks good in victory or feels that they look good in victory is you.

5:48So if you win the argument, you feel fantastic. And actually the person you're trying to have a relationship with feels crushed. And that does nothing for your relationship. What they get is a sense of how he was willing to completely annihilate my self-esteem in order to feel like he was right. Or, you know, he was willing to really break my heart in order to win this argument. And that stays and that kind of chips away at trust and the ability to connect in the future. So when we sort of enter into those difficult conversations or arguments with the set idea that, okay, I married this person.

6:26I want to have a really good relationship, improving relationship with them in the years ahead. Actually, our goal here is resolution and finding a compromise. And that's going to be really difficult because I'm really angry at this person and they've done this and they've done that. But let's, you know, and also kind of seeing it as it's you two against the problem rather than you against them. It just, it changes the dynamic of how you're going to approach the problem Julie you've just changed my whole perception I'm going to be honest I had an argument with my wife today yeah I had a big argument we woke up this morning we had to we're renovating a house we had to go god the first world problems we had to go and look at some marble I just think we had to go look and she was very stressed and it wasn't my fault right it actually generally wasn't my fault and so I wanted to try and prove to her that it wasn't my fault yeah So she got cross at me.

7:22Hang on. She's getting cross. This is unfair. This is not my fault. I need to win this argument to prove to her that this isn't my fault. And you're right. And I do. I win the argument. And what I get from her is an apology. And I'm sorry. That doesn't make it makes me feel a bit better because I've won. But actually, you're so right. What is the issue here surrounding it? What is the resolution? We're married. It's OK. She's obviously struggling with something there. Me wanting to win the argument because I feel like she's, that's the total wrong attitude to have. And yet it's so natural, such a natural response to feeling like you're being attacked is the defenses go up, right?

8:00And that's where, you know, when we have an issue with the other person, going in with the criticism or the attack, or, you know, if any of that is laced with contempt, like a, you always do this or you never do that, then the other person immediately, you know, the emotional shutters come down because you're being personally, you know, your character is being attacked. And so you're just in defense mode because it triggers shame. And when you feel shame, you are just defending yourself. You're just protecting yourself. You can't really do anything else. It's on impulse. So that's when you kind of, then you go back and bite back and then they bite back.

8:34And so it is natural, but sometimes just having that awareness of what's my goal here. I want to spend my life with this person. let me take two minutes out of the room to just recalibrate and think about that. And then I can come back in with something a bit different. Why as humans do we have that sort of innate ability to avoid fault? We never want it to be, it's within us, right? We want to blame others because if we blame ourselves, that's wrong. So we try and find blame wherever we can. Why do we do that? Because it's painful, isn't it? No one ever wants to feel like, you know, it's so psychologically threatening to feel like you might not be enough.

9:12And, you know, it's really painful. And, and when you then that triggers shame, there's no learning to be had in shame. It's just threatening. It's just, uh, protect, just shut down, withdraw. And, and all of that leads to kind of negative outcomes. So we, we try to defend ourselves and we try to, you know, convince the people, That's natural, right? Convince the people in your life, you're okay, you're enough. And in the same respect, we're trying to convince ourselves of that too, that we're enough. Because if you don't believe that, you're going to be in turmoil, absolute turmoil. So with your partner, with your husband, when you have an argument...

9:53I'm always right. There we go. Different for us. Do you think he's listening now? And he's like, hang on a second. You'd never do that. You'd never admit. I mean, what I'm saying is do you practice what you preach or try to? Try to, but also I never want to give the impression to people that because I've read the books and know the stuff, that that makes it easy to do or that that makes you sort of somehow more than human. You know, so part of this is you learn how to deal with relationships early in life based upon the people you're in relationships with as a child. And that becomes your template that you then take into adulthood.

10:37And so when something happens that feels familiar in your mind, so your brain is constantly taking information from the outside world, but it's not only taking that information, it's trying to make meaning out of it. And so to do that, it will take memories from the past, past experiences when you have felt similar. Give me an example. So let's say as a child, you were always criticized for academic imperfections or something like that. And then as an adult, you're sat there with your wife and you're doing your accounts or something and you make a mistake and she mocks you for doing it. then it will trigger that really painful feelings that you had as a child of kind of just never being good enough.

11:27And so your reaction, even though it might've been a little, you know, she probably thought this is just a bit of banter, just, you know, he might even laugh at the reaction. It might trigger such an emotional response because your brain has made meaning that perhaps isn't in this situation, but it feels like something that felt that happened back then. So you'll have this big emotional reaction and she'll go, what happened there? What, you know, why did that you know push a button uh she didn't see it coming because um your brain is making meaning of it based on past experiences that you've had that felt similar wow so that child within us that inner child doesn't go it's it's hard to heal that inner child in some ways so you've got yeah you've got a series of kind of templates for so all your experiences as a child you're absorbing all that and you're learning okay when this happens do that and that leads to that outcome or you're learning how to survive relationships as a child who has no control over them but desperately needs them to survive.

12:26So you develop kind of survival strategies in complex and difficult relationships as a child and then those templates carry on into adulthood. But they're less helpful often in adulthood because the relationships are different. You're not child to adult, you're adult to adult and you have responsibilities and you've got compromise and those sorts of things. So then they become disruptive and then we have to kind of, you can't necessarily unlearn or remove those templates that you have. You can become aware of what they are, become aware of when they're detrimental and then make adjustments. You know, you can keep learning so you can develop new patterns with your partner and they can override the old ones.

13:12If someone's listening now, right, and they're recognizing that perhaps they're being triggered or they're having conversations with their partner or their friends and they bring up emotions and they're listening. They suddenly go, oh, I'm making the connection from when I was a child to now and maybe it's bringing up those emotions. How do we stop the cycle? What tips would you give to someone listening who is in that sort of cycle and can't get out of it? So it happens really gradually. So what happens in therapy is people will come along and talk about the things that have been happening and you literally map it out on paper.

13:43So you'll go, okay, this happened, then you felt this. and so because of that feeling you did that to cope with the feeling and it made the feeling go away but then the feeling came back so you did that thing again and you went around the cycle again so you kind of map out these cycles that you get stuck in and what you find is week after week the details of the cycle change but the cycle is the same generally and what you're doing over those weeks is you're building up this familiarity with the cycles you get stuck in this you know when you you think i do this same thing over and over again and i don't know why i just find myself doing the same thing.

14:16And when you kind of look into it and therapy like that, you start to notice it in the moment. So in therapy, you're doing it in hindsight. You're looking back at the week gone by. But then when you're in it in real life, you start to go, oh, I know where I am on the cycle. We've done this 10 times. I know. And then what you get is this moment of opportunity to either go around the same cycle again or do something different. because you would have talked about what the exit is and where you break it. Sometimes you'll go around the same old cycle again. But that bit's hard. That bit is hard to take that different direction.

14:56Yeah. Because it's so easy because what you're used to, the familiar, that cycle, that's easier to stay in that, right? Yeah, yeah. So you go with the familiar rather than something new or different that feels unpredictable, even if the familiar is destructive. it's a coping strategy that probably worked back then so something you did as a child you know if someone who has an avoidant kind of style you know avoidant attachment style which is so if you're an avoidant attachment style you maybe struggle with intimacy or you pull back and withdraw from people and it might be that in your childhood you didn't have like physical affection or your caregivers were unpredictable.

15:46And so actually it felt unsafe to be very close to them. And so it felt safer to be, you know, to pull back. And then in adulthood, that might be kind of difficult for your relationships. So, you know, if you've got that sort of avoidance strategy that came from childhood, in adulthood, it might not work. Okay, so going into that sort of relationships as well, right? If you're in a relationship and you're going around in the same cycle where you're either constantly meeting people and it doesn't feel right and you're breaking up with them and you're just going, I just don't feel like I'm lucky in love.

16:29Is that the wrong partnership or is perhaps something with you in relationships that is making these relationships not work because you're doing the same thing you're stuck in the same cycle yeah and and the thing is it's it's one thing to um just think well you know I've had bad luck and you know men are whatever and

16:54and and therefore you know and then feel a victim of it but it's really really interesting the the progress you can make when you're brave enough to look at your part in that cycle so you know are you accepting certain types of behavior from the beginning that if you can pull back you might be able to protect yourself in the future and are you um uh you know not connecting with certain people that would be more healthy for you to get in a relationship with um Because you're following that pattern of, you know, you seek relationships that feel familiar, not that feel healthy.

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