The Skill No One Teaches Us About Love | Baya Voce

20:22Whatever. I can have a whole bunch of reasons. But we were in so many fights about this, about like me wanting to go home early. Can we just compromise and go home? And it just didn't work. It was really, really hard for us until we started to get underneath the surface, underneath her real value and desire for freedom and my real value and desire for safety. Those are things that we are going to deal with for the duration of our relationship. But once I started bringing to her that this is what's happening for me when you leave. And this, it was, it started to change the game for how we did social events.

20:58She started to feel more compassion. I started to be able to, I saw her coming home every time I didn't go home with her. I saw her coming home and not springing something on me, which was my biggest fear that all of a sudden I was going to turn around and she was going to say, hey, just have something to tell you. And I would be like, how did I miss it? What did I miss? Right?

21:15Dr. Mark Hyman:Or you couldn't trust her. Yeah, but it wasn't necessarily about her. And the truth is in relationships, We bring in all of the baggage from every single relationship leading up to that relationship that hasn't been healed, whether it's from our family of origins or the relationships before. We bring all of that into our partnerships. And what we're really saying is on a totally unconscious level, because it's not like most of us are having these conversations. What we're really saying is. Here is all here are all the places that I'm still unhealed. my hope is that in this dynamic i offer things these things to you on the altar of our relationship i offer these things to you and that you can help me heal them i'll do my part you'll do but nobody's having those conversations consciously and by the way vice versa so we're both just dealing with a bunch of all of us most of us are just like two little kids in our little kid selves having the fights, not our grown-up adult higher self, right?

22:17100%.

22:17Dr. Mark Hyman:And those are very hardwired automatic responses that we can change, but we have to first identify them. I mean, here's what I would say. So there's also, funny enough, research that talks about how it doesn't actually matter so much how we fight, even though it's important. But some people yell, some people are going to go quiet, Some people are going to want to process more. Some people are going to avoid. And we can find couples who are just as happy, actually, with that kind of tension in the relationship, but they have to come back together. So we might always be fighting with the five-year-old version that shows up.

22:58And the truth is, as long as we come back together, we'll likely be okay, but most of us don't know how to do this. Now, when we think about why we know so much information about relationships, like using eye language and active listening, but then we cannot practice that.

23:15Dr. Mark Hyman:Do it in the moment because we're hijacked. We're completely hijacked. So to me, 90 % of what we're doing in repair is building our capacity for tension. The nervous system regulation. Yes. But it's not just nervous system. Of course, we have to have nervous system regulation, but it's also nervous system expansion. capacity capacity where your window of tolerance if you have a window of tolerance and you're you generally go into hyper arousal those are my friends who are like you know you might yell you might get hot you might say too much you want to process forever and talk talk talk talk those that's me and then on the other side of that window of tolerance is hypo arousal those are the people who overwhelm looks like they completely leave the building they kind of shut down dissociate yeah literally leave or figuratively what we're trying to do with repair the key skill here is expanding the window and then understanding little by little how we can start to notice in our bodies what comes up before we're at 90 percent, before we're like almost tipping over into hyperarousal or into hypoarousal.

24:20The problem gets to be where we, if we're in, if we're going into hyperarousal or hypoarousal, we've lost choice. How I think about the repair actually, like what is repair, is the ability to have choice. But when we're hijacked, we don't. And so we might know the tools. We might have read the books. And when we're in the heat of the moment, we have no ability to use the tools that we actually have because we're completely hijacked. I mean, and your audience knows this better than anybody. Just like you train to go into a cold plunge and you don't, you're probably not gonna start at three minutes.

24:56Like you're probably just not, you like need to build up. You go to the gym. You need to build up to the weights that you cannot go in there and lift 100 pounds if you have never lifted before. That's just literally not going to happen.

25:09Dr. Mark Hyman:To love gym. That's right. Actually, one of our mutual friends and a colleague of mine, Annie Lala, I love this line that she says. Relationship dojo? Well, yes, that. But what she says that I just feel like, she said this and I was like, that is brilliant. That we think that relationships should be going to the spa. That's our orientation towards relationships. If we're in a healthy relationship, it will feel like the spa. But healthy relationships feel way more like going to the gym. And then maybe that gym has a spa attached. But you're not going to the spa. You're going to the gym and then you get to steam after.

25:47That's right. And I think that really can help orient because so many people come to me with, what is too hard? How do I know if my relationship is too hard?

25:58Dr. Mark Hyman:Like you pull the ripcord. Exactly. And part of that is, this is going to be simplifying the whole thing, but to ask yourself, you can kind of like get the noise out of the way, to ask yourself, am I shrinking inside of this relationship? Am I disappearing? Am I watching myself go away? Am I abandoning myself? 100%. Or betraying myself. Yes. And little by little, all of a sudden, like you don't feel quite as you as you used to. Like maybe you don't do the things that you used to love as much as you do. You're not as you don't have that kind of spark you used to have. You've given up some of your friends.

26:37You're like a duller version of yourself. or am I becoming more of who I want to become? And part of how we do that is by building capacity. So even through fighting, even through tension, am I starting to be like, oh, wow, I breathe just a little bit longer there. I had between stimulus and response, I had just a nanosecond more of time and space.

27:03Dr. Mark Hyman:That's practice to get there, right? Well, it's training. This is practice, it's training. This is what I'm saying about the cold plunge. Like you cannot, you're just, It's going to be so unrealistic. And if you do go into the cold bludge for three minutes the first time, you're probably holding your breath and freaking out and just want to show off for your friends. It's probably not sustainable. But you have to practice. I actually think a lot about cross-training here. And I think about mapping this onto other relationships. And most of us, what we're doing is we're training in the hardest environments possible when both of us are super triggered.

27:31And we're not training outside of us.

27:33Dr. Mark Hyman:Are you saying that people should learn tools to help regulate their nervous system, like with their breath or separating until you kind of are resourced and regulated? Because you talked about how if you're not resourced and regulated, it's not a time to have a conversation or a fight. But sometimes, but this is what generally happens. Of course, it's not the time to have a fight. But what do we do? For some of us, it feels good to expel. And so we just say the thing because in the heat of the moment, it's like, there's just like a, ah, that felt really good. or it feels safe to close down. And so this is what I mean by the window of tolerance.

28:05But if we don't know what our physiological cues are before we go into the place of complete shutdown or before we say the thing that we might regret, it's going to be really hard to train that at 90 % arousal, right? So absolutely, this is physiological. And I think what the relationship space is missing right now is a lot of the conversations are around the communication skills of repair and less about the physiological. To me, repair is actually not, first and foremost, a communication skill. Repair is a capacity skill because we are going, I mean, I could say this a million times over and it probably won't be enough.

28:45We're going to lose our skills. We're going to lose the tools and the moments that we need the most if we're not training, if we're not actually building the capacity. And this is what I mean by cross-training. This is what I mean by setting ourselves up for how we actually practice repair when we don't need it. Instead of practicing repair, instead of me giving you a laundry list of scripts here about what to do when you're fighting, because you're going to forget them. You're not going to use them.

29:12Dr. Mark Hyman:So how do people navigate to build the capacity? Why I use a gym, which I know is kind of cliche, but it's just easy for all of us to understand, is because we know we have to start with lower reps, lower weight. to build if we don't want to get injured. Start with the easy stuff. You have to. Like the dishes. Exactly. Exactly. You start with the things or you, so say your partner sends it, okay, so here's what I want you to do for your audience. I want you to think about right now your hardest relationship. Maybe it's your romantic relationship. Maybe it's a relationship with a parent or a sibling or a boss or a coworker.

29:47And think about something that they do that if you're talking about on a scale of one to 10, 10 being like the highest trigger, it's like a five or lower for you that could be something like the dishes it could be something like they leave a mess on the counter for you to clean up it could be that they send a text that that you know usually they use an exclamation point and an emoji and today they didn't and

30:10Dr. Mark Hyman:you don't know why and now you're in your head so i want you to pick one or two of these do you know what do you know i text trauma it's like a thing now it's like a new thing i don't worry about it, but I get it like this. It totally exists. If you say, if you say good morning and it doesn't have an exclamation point versus good morning with an exclamation point, like we read into that. That's language now. That's like the way we communicate. If you do one heart and not four hearts, like, you know, this is, I mean, this is real language. This is how we're communicating to start actually practicing.

30:43So, you know, that the, so I'm asking everybody to think of the thing right now and think of it for you too. What's a five or below? For me, it's something, it actually would be something like a text. Oh, no, you know what it would be for me? It would be, my wife comes home and she's on her phone when she walks in the door. It's like a five. To me, transitions are really important. And I get really impacted by like, how did we wake up today? How are we coming home from work? And did something happen? And is it about me? And anyway, I'm still in my own work. But but so it would be something like she comes home, she's on her phone and she doesn't immediately say hi and she doesn't look up and she's kind of distracted.

31:22So what I might do is all of a sudden, like my my kind of initial response might be to in my head. It's not it's not actually something I would say out loud. It would be like, great, something happened at work or what did I do? Or now we're going to be here all night. That might be my automatic response is not necessarily towards her, but it's a thought for me. Maybe for you, it's something physiologically that happens. It's like you can feel your heart start to race or you can feel yourself start to sweat a little or you get cold or you start to...

31:51Dr. Mark Hyman:Or just shallow breathe. Right. So you start to track these little responses. If you don't know what they are now, you literally from this moment on, you start to track what's that little thing. So for me, the cue is, ah, I can feel this thought loop coming on. So the goal is this is a five or under. And now I start to disrupt the pattern. So instead of, oh, that thought is wrong, now I'm saying, okay, what's my one practice? For me, it might be literally breathing for 30 seconds, extending my exhales and starting to just calm for 30 seconds, maybe 60, maybe 90 if I'm lucky. But it's powerful when you do that.

32:29And I don't think we understand. And I think we've, I think we, because we're starting, we've, the conversation for so long has been about trauma and about using eye language and what's the thing we're going to say. And it's not actually, what's our physiological response that is going to completely derail the conversation after this.

32:47Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, what you're talking about is very specific, which is when we have a stress and it could be, you know, you think your partner came home half an hour late because they were having an affair with somebody or maybe they were on their way to buy you flowers. Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, you're going to have the same physiologic response regardless of the insult if you have an interpretation of that as danger, right? It doesn't matter if it's a real or an imagined threat. It could be really a tiger chasing you or it could be you think your partner is having a fair because they stayed late going to find something beautiful for you to buy as a gift, right?

33:20Dr. Mark Hyman:And it's the same physiology. And so the stress response is what you're talking about when your heartbeat quickens, your breath becomes shallow, your chest tightens up, your gut tightens up. You can't think clearly. And all of a sudden, you know, it's like you're in this acute stress response. And that's what we're actually engaging in relationship with. And that's very dangerous because that's when we were hijacked by what we call our amygdala, which is our fight or flight or fear or feeding or fawning center in our brain that keeps us stuck in these ancient limbic lizard-like relationships that aren't very mature because they don't allow us to sort of wake up to what it's like to actually be in a sort of an adult awake person.

34:01Dr. Mark Hyman:You're in this sort of hijacked state. So I think you're talking about is asking people to stop when they start to feel those sensations and tune into those sensations and then do something to interrupt that pattern. That's right. That's right. Because the thing is, we probably won't be able to stop the physiological response from happening. That physiological response, maybe it decreases over time, but get used to it. Like, make that response your friend because that's not necessarily going anywhere. What we do after is the thing that we can control. Now, maybe it goes away. Maybe our partners can repair with us and all of a sudden, like, over time, that's...

34:43Dr. Mark Hyman:Or you do Ivy game. Yeah. Mark's favorite topic these days. I did it. My wife did it. It changed everything in our conversation. And our ability to regulate in a conversation is really dramatically, it was like so noticeable for both of us that our ability to stay in a grounded resource state in a conversation where maybe we wouldn't have been able to before was really, it was interesting. It was like a nervous system reset. And I don't know if it'll last, but it's good while it lasts. Well, it's such, I mean, this is part of why psychedelic therapy is such an interesting modality to explore, right?

35:15Is I, listen, I don't think it's a panacea. I don't think it's for everybody. I have a whole, you know, I do a lot of research in that space. So I'm not. But I also, I think I, you know, I have my qualms about it. But, you know, we have this critical window that opens up, this critical period that opens up after different psychedelic experiences. And I'm pretty sure, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Ibogaine has one of the long.

35:35Dr. Mark Hyman:The 90 days. At least that's what they, they stop measuring after 90. So who knows how many it is. Yeah. So with something like MDMA, it's two weeks. With psilocybin, I think it's a little longer. But this window is what allows you to start to retrain habits. And so it would make sense that you're able to practice regulation in a very different way. And then the hope is that translates over time, not because you did this one-time peak experience, but because you've integrated it and then practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And then it becomes habitual. And this is, I think, a really big piece here is that the goal of healthy relationships is not to fight.

36:13less. It's not to not fight. That's not the goal. The goal is how do you come back together?

36:20Dr. Mark Hyman:You learn how to not fight dirty. That's right. How do you come back? How do you learn to come back together? Because most of us are fighting and not actually coming back. Well, let's talk about this because you do talk about this whole repair framework that you use to approach with your own relationship and with your clients. And I think there's some really powerful things in there. Like a friend of mine once said, you know, only one crazy person in the room at a time. Yeah, that's great. That's kind of the first one, like one person at a time. Talk about that. And what is that? And take us through this framework.

36:48Yeah, yeah. The one person at a time, I think, is, again, where a lot of us get into trouble. Because think about how many fights you have gotten into where they're talking and you're talking over them and you just want them to hear you. But obviously, they just want you to hear you. Like, it's a hot mess. We know that doesn't work, but it's really hard not to do. And we're not going to be able to do it if we're not regulated. That's just the truth. So the first step I actually talk about is to do nothing. That's where we're practicing. We're practicing with a five and below. We're literally starting to expand our tolerance for tension.

37:22Then we get into it. At some point, we're going to have to come into a conversation and start to hash some things out. I learned this from my teacher, Terry Reel, and colleague Terry Reel, who's a fantastic couple therapist. And what he talks about is one person goes at a time. and why this is so important, which it is critical, is because if both of us are going, nobody's listening.

37:44Dr. Mark Hyman:That's right. No one's listening. But we have to, this is, I'm just going to go back to differentiation and the power struggle, because what's happening here is if somebody is speaking something that hurt you, right, they might not be using I language. I actually have, the more I understand repair, the more I think it's a one-person job. I used to say, okay, so your partner has to talk to you this way and you then you go back. It's like kind of the frameworks that we hear about, right? Which is you talk this way, you speak from the eye perspective and without blaming. And listen, in an ideal world, that's what we're doing.

38:21We're speaking without blaming. We're talking from the eye. But like we're not living in an eye world. And if you're talking to your boss or your mom, the idea that you're going to say, hey, mom, will you use eye language with me? And that's going to work is like zero. And you're not going to hand your boss a worksheet and say, hey, let's practice nonviolent communication. Like, that's just totally unrealistic. So I've started to think about it.

38:44Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, maybe not a bad idea. Maybe not a bad idea. But most of us are probably not going to have the luxury to do that. So if you're just a normal average everyday human, like most of us, and that's just not on the table, then I like to think about repair as a one person job. Again, hopefully your partner shows up for this. But if they can't, you're owning your side of the street. So first step, one at a time, right? You have a speaker, you have a listener. There are many frameworks that people talk about. You can use Imago. You can use Ellen Bader's developmental model. You can use Terry Reel's RLT.

39:19Like there are lots of ways that you can have this conversation. So the idea of what I'm talking about is you could basically map what I'm talking about with any tool skill set that you already have. One person goes out of time. What does that mean? That means one person.

39:32Dr. Mark Hyman:By the way, I don't think most people know how to actually properly listen to somebody. Oh, I think it's a it's a totally underdeveloped skill. We'll talk about why. Well, I'll get there because it's it's real. It's it's not because we don't want to, by the way. It's because it is freaking hard. So I'll talk about that. So one person is speaking. We'll call and the other person is listening. We'll call the speaking partner the hurt partner. Not that you're not both hurt. You just it's just for right now. Just for right now. So you'll both get a turn, but you're not going to go at the same time.

40:00So the her partner is speaking. The hope here, if this is you, the skill that you are building is you are building enough differentiation. And I'll talk about differentiation in just a second to be able to say, here's what's happening from my perspective. Here's what's happening over here in my world. In order to do that, I'm not blaming you because I am different than you, because I am literally differentiated. I am saying to you, I'm saying, I'll just use Emmy and I as an example. We'll use the night out thing. What I used to say is, hey, it's really hard for me when you go out because I don't trust you, right?

40:41That would be kind of undifferentiated. Now I say it's really hard for me when you go out because I actually feel quite lonely. I've now done the digging inside of myself to say, like, we're different. I'm responsible for what I'm feeling and experiencing over here. And you can help me. You can help me with that if you want. But ultimately, we can't control another person. The other person's job, the listening partner. This is critical and hard. To your point, most of us don't know how to actually listen. Part of why it's hard to listen is because if you're not differentiated, it's very hard to not take what your partner is saying personally.

41:23Dr. Mark Hyman:And what do you mean by differentiated? The idea of differentiation is that we are two eyes, we're two individual people, and we're also caring for the we, which is very different than individuation, which is I'm going to do what I want. I'm an autonomous human who can who can is going to make my own choices. And it doesn't actually matter how that's going to land on you or how it will hurt you. Or I'm just like, I'm going to do what I want. That's independence. I'm going to do what I want. And codependence is that merge phase, right? Then you don't have to call it codependence, but that's like just to help kind of identify.

41:59Dr. Mark Hyman:Where you do what the other person wants. Yeah, 100%. I have a friend of mine called and said, knitters become skiers and skiers become knitters. It's like if you're a guy, you know, like to knit, but your partner skis, you're not going to ski. That's right. Until you're done with that, and then it'll be over. That's exactly right. So differentiation would be, I'm my own autonomous human, and I care about you. In fact, one of the highest predictors of relationship satisfaction is the ability to accept influence from your partner. So if I say to you, hey, Mark, when you talk to me like that, when you talk to me like that in that tone, it's really hard for me to hear.

42:38And you might be thinking in your head, what tone? Like, I'm not talking to you anyway. But instead of saying that out loud, you can think it all you want. You're crazy. you say, okay, here, let me actually try and change that. Not because you agree with them. This is where also we get into a lot of trouble. Not because you agree with them. You might literally be in your head like that person is crazy. My tone is fine. But because you love them, because you love this person. And so what do you do? You shift for them. You accept their influence so that you're building a relational habit and foundation here.

43:16Now, when we think we have to agree with our partner, this is again, the listening person, when you think you have to agree with them. So they come home and they say, we just went to dinner tonight and you made fun of me in front of all of our friends. And you're over here being like, what are you talking? I definitely didn't like, I didn't, I don't even remember what I said, or I said that and I didn't, like you totally took it the wrong way. You're not saying that out loud. You can think it, think it all you want, but you are listening to the person like you're a researcher being like, huh, or like they're an alien.

43:53I like actually thinking about them as an alien. Like, huh, you're an alien creature who is so different than me, who I would never think the same as and who's, like, I would never get hurt by that thing that you, like, if I said, if you said that, I would literally never get hurt. But if we assume sameness, which is agreement, if we assume we need to agree, we're on losing ground. We're on losing ground. So if I know I don't need to agree with you and I can literally look at you like you are a full-on alien from another planet and be like, huh, what's that like to live in your alien planet over there?

44:26Dr. Mark Hyman:I think that's a really useful construct that you've written about, which is this idea of perspective over perception and how to become an anthropologist of your partner's inner world, which is getting curious. well like you like you don't have to agree that you want to you know be a cannibal any you know a dead people but you can be curious about that culture that does that right exactly and so i think i think that's a really important framework because you know most of us are operating from these automatic childhood wounds and patterns and our traumas big traumas little traumas and so we bring that into the relationship and the conversation and unless you get curious and listen and realize, well, that person is really just in this moment of being a five-year-old girl or a 10-year-old little boy.

45:09Dr. Mark Hyman:And you can have compassion for that and know it's not about you. This is differentiation. Literally, that's the work of differentiation, which in order to do that, we have to expand our tolerance for tension. We have to expand our capacity because your partner might be saying some stuff about you that you really don't want to hear. I want to share an example. Okay, great. because this is happened to me and it was like a magic trick i was uh my ex-wife and i were still great friends and we we you know we went to my best friend's 60th birthday now she didn't know a soul and she said to me before mark would you please make sure that you introduce me to people and include me in the conversations and do all this sure no problem now i just had heart surgery and i had an atrial fib and an ablation and i was a little comfortable and i was on a pain pain pill.

45:57Dr. Mark Hyman:So I was like a little gonzo. And we walk into the party and my best friend's girlfriend at the time rushes up to me. And I was like kind of overwhelmed. And I just like, my wife was standing there and I didn't stop her. And after like five minutes I did, but by that time it was too late. My wife was just so upset. And she went out of a 10 out of 10 reaction and probably triggered by something, you know, not being taken care of by her family, her father, who knows what was going on there underneath the surface, but it didn't really matter. She was, she like stormed out and went to the parking lot.

46:32Dr. Mark Hyman:So I was like, oh shit, this is my best friend's birthday. And so I, and I obviously didn't do what she asked me to do. And so I understood that I kind of screwed up. After a few minutes, I went to the parking lot and we found her and we sat on the curb. I said, so I said, okay, tell me everything. Like, what are you feeling? What's up for you? Like, I'm here to listen. And I just let her, rant and like you didn't do this and you didn't do that no no just like just it was intense and i had to sit there and i had to take it and not take it personally but just receive and hold my presence and breathe and stay grounded in my body and not you were able to do this and not be about like my my point of view or god don't be such a you know don't be so annoying this is my best friend's birthday how could you do this like whatever all this stuff you know i could have That's going on in your head, probably.

47:25Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, like, come on. Yeah. Get your shit together. She was crazy. But she legitimately felt that way. So I wasn't going to say, don't feel that. And I just listened. And then after she was done, I said, is there any more? Is there any more? I let her get it all out. And then I just said, let me get this right. Let me see if I understand. I didn't do this. And I heard you this way. And I did this. And I just kind of laid it all out. And she's like, yeah. And the next minute, she was in my lap. And I was like, wow. And so I was like, oh, this isn't a magic trick. It is a magic trick. But it took an enormous amount of, I would say, lifting weights.

47:58Dr. Mark Hyman:It's that same analogy. It's like, it was hard to hold myself still and just listen without having my own narrative of trying to argue with her in my head while she's talking. But actually to just listen to her and be the anthropologist to like, what the hell is going on with you? And all people want is to be seen and heard and understood. If you get that, it's like... It is kind of like a magic trick. Kind of like a magic trick.

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50:59I love that you shared that. I love that you said that. Part of what you were doing that you probably didn't know you were doing at the time, this is from former CIA agent Andrew Bustamante, and you mentioned it a little earlier, which is the difference between perception and perspective. So most of us spend all day in our own perception. We are looking out of the world from our eyes through our lens. And like I'm over here thinking, okay, is the mic working? Am I thirsty? Right? Those are things. And we are not spending even a fraction of time visiting perspective, which would be, what's it like over there for you?

51:37How are you feeling? Is the temperature okay for you? Right? That's another muscle to train. that's actually what you were doing when you were able to be like, it's not like those thoughts go away. It's not like you're not thinking this is crazy. This is my friend's birthday. How could you be doing? You're thinking those thoughts. You just don't say them out loud. I didn't say

51:56Dr. Mark Hyman:them out loud. And I was like, they don't really matter because she's having her experience and I'm not going to convince her otherwise. So all I can do here is just like, listen to what she's suffering with. That's right. Because I love her and I don't want her to feel this way. So I care about her and I know she's having a moment and it no yes I did something that I said I wasn't going to do I didn't include her I didn't introduce her but I was like you know on drugs and out of it and kind of overwhelmed and I just lost it for a minute but it didn't matter like all she needed was to be seen and heard and felt and to not have me even present I didn't I didn't even need to present my point of view I wasn't like okay now I need you to get me and hear what my perspective is because it didn't matter in that moment.

52:36Dr. Mark Hyman:And then we went back and had a great time at the party. I mean, this is one person goes at a time. And maybe you never need her to hear her perspective. But for some of us, you might. Now she will. She'll probably listen to the podcast.

52:50But for some of us, we will want our perspective to be heard. So the key here is your perspective matters. You're putting it over to the side just for a minute while your partner gets to do exactly I mean, this was such a good example, Mark. And then you get a turn. It's just not at the same time. And if you start to lose your capacity to be with the other person, to be in their perspective, to be like, oh, this is making sense to me. I mean, I don't agree with it, but like, cool, that makes sense given your world, your history, your traumas, your wounds, your patterns. It makes sense that that would hurt you.

53:24If you start to get out of that, right, you're now getting out of your window of tolerance. This is what I mean by starting to track it at like 20 % versus being 90%. So here you are, you're starting to like, you know, maybe she's saying all these things. I have to just breathe.

53:40Dr. Mark Hyman:Totally. I literally had to just like force myself into the earth. But you have to train that. Not all of us are Jedi ninjas like that, Mark. Trust me, this wasn't, I had practiced this skill. It was something we have practiced, but it was, it was like in a 10 out of 10 environment. So we, we practice it in, in moments where it wasn't so activated and that's easier. But when it's so, when it's a 10 out of 10 emergency, you know, lights are off. Yeah. As it was, as it was. And so I, you know, I think what you're, what you're talking about in terms of this, this, this ability to actually regulate and to get your nervous system in a place where you actually can have these conversations and then do the repair is so critical and it's physiological first and then it's psychological.

54:24Yeah, that's exactly. But we've been taught the opposite. The opposite. Exactly. And I just want to say, just to wrap that up for people who are starting to lose stamina in those conversations where you're the listener and your hurt partner is saying some shit that you're like, okay, that stung. Like, I don't know if I can be here anymore. Your training ground is how can I start to notice when I'm starting to get dysregulated? And then you set boundaries. This is what I mean when I mean repair can actually be a one-person job. So if your partner is talking to you in a way that doesn't work for you, what do you do?

54:56You say, hey, can you actually say it this way? That would be really helpful. There's no way you're going to be able to do that if you're dysregulated. You won't be able to say that. But if you're regulated, you can actually help your partner help you. If you start to lose it, if your partner is talking and you're just like, okay, this is way too much for me, then this is where boundary practice works. So either you're in repair work or you're in containment work. You're in nervous system regulation or you're saying, hey, I actually need to go practice. I need to contain.

55:24Dr. Mark Hyman:What does that mean? So you set a boundary. We get boundaries really wrong. We think boundaries. Oh, okay. Let's go into boundaries. Well, we think boundaries. This is going to be pretty simple. We think boundaries have to do with someone else changing. I'm like, hey, stop talking to me like that. That's my boundary, right? But actually, my boundary is you're going to talk to me like that no matter what because I can't control you. again if you care about me hopefully you won't but i can't i can't ultimately control you so if you keep talking to me like that i'm gonna like hey this conversation so far i haven't been i'm like i'm about to hit my edge i actually need to leave the room and i need 10 minutes and i'll be back but that's a boundary the boundary is a way to take care of yourself it has nothing to do with what you do over there asking the person change yeah as if we have way more power in repair than we think we do.

56:14We have, it doesn't, our partner, it would be great if our partner can show up. Yes. But if our partner can't, we can make requests. And then if they meet those requests, like 70 % of the time, that's pretty good. If they can get you and attune to you like 70 % of the way, that's pretty good. I like the 70%.

56:31Dr. Mark Hyman:68? I don't think 68 is enough. I'm not like the Gottmans, you know, 69 is just not going to cut it for me. I like a solid 70 heuristic here. So you're literally either practicing expanding your capacity for tolerance, extending that window, or practicing boundary work, and none of this requires the other person. That's what I found in that moment. She didn't have to do anything except vent and be completely activated, and I could just hold space, and that was enough. And even though in my mind I can think she's wrong, it doesn't matter who's right or wrong. Like someone said to me, do you want to be right or do you want to be in a relationship?

57:10Yeah, who's right, who's wrong, who cares?

57:11Dr. Mark Hyman:And we, yeah, we get in this sort of rigid view that we have to be right or we have to convince our partner about the rightness of our perspective or our opinion or what they didn't do or what they did do. And there's just kind of no point in that. It doesn't serve anything. There's another great line by Terry Railhood that I just think, I think he nails it with this one where he says, there is no such, there's no such thing as objective reality in a relationship. there are just two subjective truths happening at any given time. So there's my experience over here, which is, hey, that thing that you said at dinner really hurt my feelings.

57:44And that was messed up that you said that. I can't believe you said that. And then there's the other person who's like, I just made a joke. I did like there was nothing personal about that. That meant nothing. Nobody's right. And as long as we're fighting for that, we are going to get nowhere. There is no quote unquote truth in that experience. There's no. And but if you're on that plane, if you're riding on that plane, you're both going to lose. Because by the way, if you win and your partner loses, you both lose. You have to go to bed with them that night. You're both losing.

58:11Dr. Mark Hyman:That's right. So in this repair process, the first step is sort of one person at a time. Well, do nothing. Do nothing is actually the first. You got to regulate. This is the capacity building. This is where you're not bringing anything until hopefully you're regulated. So then you're regulated. You come back. One person goes at a time. Well, then the being curious part. Then there's the - The anthropologist part. That's right. This is where you're literally practicing differentiation here. You're practicing. You are a separate person with separate ideas, beliefs, values, wounds, traumas. And because of that, I can look at you like an alien species because we're very different from one another.

58:48And I can learn to not take that personally. In order to do that, I have to expand my capacity for tension because you might say some shit that doesn't feel good. Right. Right. And if you say that, I want to be able to either be with that and have it kind of roll off my back or ask you to say it differently. Or maybe that hurts so bad and it just pinged something in me that I can set a boundary and I can walk and I can pause and I can come back.

59:12Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, when I was 18, I don't know if I ever told you the story, but I was bullied a lot as a kid. And I was this sort of nerdy kid who read a lot of books. It served me well in the end. I hate thinking about you being bullied. But it was fine. I'm good now. When I was traveling out west, I was 18, and I was camping in this kind of campsite outside of Banff, which was like this little town in Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. And there was this British guy, kind of older, like probably 40s or maybe early 50s. He was just kind of a dick. And he kind of was making fun of me. And I was like, and I just kind of felt initially I'm like hurt and upset.

59:48Dr. Mark Hyman:And then I had this insight that really helped me navigate my life, which is when someone is saying shit to you, that's mean or hard or difficult or whatever it is, it's either one of two things. Either it's their issue and they're projecting onto you and they just, you know, you can have curiosity and compassion for them. Or two, maybe there's some nugget of there, even though it's coming out in a messy package, that is worth you looking at yourself for. So it's always a gift. In other words, like it's always a gift and it's hard to hold that, you know, But you kind of start out early on talking about this, that relationships aren't this kind of fairy tale.

1:00:28Dr. Mark Hyman:They're a place for growth. So they're a place where we evolve, where we wake up, where we learn about ourselves, where we can't do it on our own. We can be very happy alone, but the minute you are in a relationship, all of a sudden you kind of have to deal with things you haven't dealt with. And I think that's the beauty of it. It's also the hard part of it. But it's actually what makes relationships so amazing is that they're a vehicle for waking up. yeah and it doesn't mean you're going to stay together but it means it's a vehicle to wake up and help each other evolve and grow and if if that could be your north star as a couple i think then you you have an anchor that you're both working towards and it's not me against you it's we're holding hands together walking towards a place that's better for each of us either together or alone it's so beautifully put i mean this is to just make a real roundabout way here into the third the third stage of relationships right you have the merge you have the honeymoon stage you of the power struggle, I mean, what you're painting a picture of is interdependence.

1:01:23It's so hard to get to that stage, that place of I can exist fully and we can exist fully. I don't lose myself in you. I can appreciate you for your differences. I can allow you to have the freedom that you want while also feeling the safety that's here, right? That's interdependence. That's the stage that most of us never make it to because we get so stuck in the power struggle. And my hypothesis here is part of why it's hard for us to have that North Star and make it there is because we aren't practicing capacity building, which is the thing that allows us to get there. It's the thing that allows a really shitty fight to end up with.

1:02:03okay, wait a second, I can self-reflect, I can take ownership that is mine, but not more than what's mine, and I can see the value in it, that's hard to do. We have to have healthy enough self-esteem that we're not pointing the finger and blaming outward or we're not pointing the finger inward and blaming ourselves in order to get to a place where a relationship, to your point earlier around Annie Lala's dojo, right, this relationship dojo, in order for a relationship to deeply be a dojo, we have to be able to look inward. And then we also have to be able to say, just as much as we say, my neighbor's shit stinks too, we have to also say, and I'm human just like the rest of us.

1:02:48Like we have to be able to hold both of those pieces in order to get to the place where we can actually fulfill on that North Star.

1:02:53Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And it's something that just, we don't have any guideposts for in the society. and and i'm kind of excited for your book to come out because i think people are are gonna eat it up i hope so i mean the hope here is that we normalize how how hard relationships actually actually let me let me just say what i actually want to normalize uh another another colleague and mutual friend of ours um jennifer and brian russell they have a line that i think is phenomenal where how they hold relationships is that it's not that we we always say relationships are hard but it's not that relationships are hard it's that our personal work is hard and we get to do that inside of our relationships that's right that's right and i think that's such a beautiful way it's an opportunity versus a burden it's and so many of us won't actually be fortunate enough to find somebody who to do this work with there are people who are looking all over and haven't found so if you're fortunate enough to be in a relationship and to be in it with somebody who's willing to do the work with you, that's a gift.

1:03:56Even if it is a pain in the ass, it's also this deep gift. And so I really want to normalize that it's okay to be in the thick of it. That is part of relationship. It's not outside of it. It is part of what love is.

1:04:10Dr. Mark Hyman:So just getting kind of looped back for a minute on this capacity piece, because this seems like a core skill. It's like if you want to be in relationship, it's like if you if you want to go and run a marathon you have to actually train for it you know you don't have to do this many miles every day and it's like there's a whole thing to build the capacity to be able to do that how do you build the capacity to be in the heat of a relationship and to do the work without causing more harm and actually both of you progressing towards waking up and healing so we talked about two critical pieces today one is building these I call them kind of micro repairs, which is building a space where you're a five or below, where you're practicing this daily.

1:04:54You are literally like something comes up that just kind of stings and you consciously start to take a few breaths or notice what your body does or take yourself on a walk or do what you need to do to start to take care of yourself to be able to come back. You do those daily reps. And it doesn't need to take long. But if you do those daily, you are in, I mean, that's a huge. Five breaths. Great. And another way to practice is perspective versus perception. So your partner is talking to you. They're talking to you about their day. They're not even bringing something that, you know, you're not in a fight.

1:05:29They're talking to you about that. This is your practice ground where you're like, huh, what would it be like to think about my boss that way? I've never thought about my boss that way. What would it be like to think about my mom or my dad or my sibling that way? I get along really well with my sibling. But if I were in their shoes, so you're literally practicing putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. If you practice just those two things, you are in really good shape. And then what I'd like to add on to that is once a week with your partner, set up a time where you two are literally practicing doing this work together.

1:06:02where one person is the speaker or the hurt partner and one person is the listener, and you're doing it outside of a level 10. You're bringing up something that's like once a week, like again, we're in the middle of the scale here, something that's around a five, that's not nothing, but isn't, you literally consider this practice so that when the inevitable big fights hit, you're not sitting there being like, I have no idea what to do. And now all of your mechanisms take over.

1:06:31Dr. Mark Hyman:But I imagine, I imagine being like, if you do this consistently in a relationship over time, that, that the whole volume comes down and everything. And then your capacity to do this much more fluidly, easily, quickly, without the level of activation, without the nervous system getting out of control, without your amygdala hijacking your entire body and brain, that actually, even though these little maybe irritants or things won't go away, how you navigate them changes. And it becomes almost kind of like just a soft part of the relationship, not like this thing you're just fighting against every day.

1:07:04You will completely change if you take this on. This is if you take on building your expansion for capacity, you will be more confident. You'll be more self-assured. Things will more easily roll off your back. And I don't mean roll off your back like you're rolling over and you're like this. That's not this because you're also learning to set boundaries. Right. You're also because you're building the capacity to be brave enough to actually say something out loud that you would never say before because you're too scared of what they're going to think because you don't think you can handle them leaving or them.

1:07:34You're building all of this capacity. this there is not to me nothing more important well there's also something in here that you're

1:07:40Dr. Mark Hyman:we haven't really explicitly named i think it's so important which is honesty in a relationship because it's those small things that get buried never get said never get shared that eat away in a relationship and even if they're a little bit sticky to deal with in the moment that ultimately that brings more clarity and connection by actually being honest this is this is why you take one day a week to practice. So you're literally, you're like, it's like you're cleaning the dust off of a table every week, right? Once a week, you both go do it on different days. And it's a 10 minute conversation.

1:08:14You keep it short, you keep it time bound. So for my avoidant friends or my people who don't love to process as much, you still naming no names, that you can actually stay in your window of tolerance and you're not thinking this is going to go on forever. So if you create a structure where it's time bound, one person listens, one person responds. The only job of, excuse me, one person speaks, one person listens. The only job of the person who is speaking is to just name what hurt and try and own your side of the street. The only job for the listener is to get their world, understand their perspective.

1:08:47And again, you could put any framework inside of this if you already use a framework.

1:08:50Dr. Mark Hyman:But it's not just listening and being silent. It's actually letting the other person know that you've got them. Yes. And here's the thing. If we're practicing, sometimes we're starting at square one. Sometimes we're literally starting at, I can listen and I can repeat back your words and that's about all I can do. Yeah. Like that's some people we're just starting there. That's not bad. That's just lack of practice. Yeah. Some people are going to be able to repeat back your words and do it with some chutzpah, right? Like you can actually feel them and you're like, oh my God, I get where you're coming from.

1:09:21Some people it will sound like you're regurgitating. It's going to be terrible. It's not But this is a practice ground. This is literally a practice ground where the hurt partner says, hey, here's what I'd like from you. I'd like for you to repeat back. I'd like for you to ask an open question. I'd like for you to give me a hug after. I'd like for you to respond with one thing that makes sense to you. Right? So you can think about what you want and ask for it in a conversation.

1:09:47Dr. Mark Hyman:This is such a beautiful reframe of relationships from the fantasy, love story, live happily ever after Disneyland kind of romance to understanding relationships as a vehicle for growth and evolution of our souls and our emotional, psychological state, right? And that ultimately is going to get us to happiness. This other thing just kind of hijacks us and then we… It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist, right? It doesn't exist, right? It doesn't exist. And so we have this fantasy and that's why we're always struggling in relationships. This is such a beautiful framework. I want to spend a couple of minutes now after we've sort of gone through this repair framework, and there's a lot more to come, and we're going to talk about how to find more about it in a second.

1:10:28Dr. Mark Hyman:You also work in psychedelic-assisted couples therapy. So people understand about anybody who's watched How to Change Your Mind on Netflix or read Michael Pollan's book understands that there's a lot of therapies out there that are being used to help people deal with trauma one-on-one. But you're talking about relational psychedelic therapy, which is a very different understanding of how to use these compounds to help change dynamics. And Rick Doblin, who is a friend of both of ours and you work with, said to me, I wouldn't still be married if I didn't do MDMA therapy with my wife. Yeah, yeah.

1:11:01Dr. Mark Hyman:So can you kind of talk to us about what this promise is of this potential, what the limitations are? I think it's going to be probably soon approved by the FDA as a therapeutic modality for trauma and maybe for relational therapy. I don't know. But talk to us about, you know, the promise and the pitfalls. Yeah. So to clarify, I do MDMA-assisted couples therapy research, and I do that in conjunction with Columbia University and MAPS. Right now, a lot of what's been researched is MDMA for PTSD and trauma. And what we're looking at is what's happening in the underground, which is the practitioners who have been doing this for many, many years, some of whom have been doing it before it became illegal.

1:11:45What practices are they using and how can it actually benefit couples? So we're looking in the underground to give us some answers about what are best practices, what are protocols, how are people dosing, how are people using the therapy process within a couple's setting? The hope is that, I mean, listen, what we understand about MDMA, and I do research with MDMA specifically, what we know about MDMA is that it takes away our amygdala's response, which, to your point earlier, is going to be the response that is putting us into fight, flight, freeze, etc.

1:12:20Dr. Mark Hyman:It puts a lizard in a cage. That's great. Yes. Yes. Especially for people with entrenched, really tough relational dynamics or trauma. If we can just get a little space from that, if we can just get our amygdala quieted just a little, it helps us do everything that we talked about today. It helps us listen to the other person's perspective, which puts an entirely new lens on what's happening relationally. It can change an entire dynamic. So what we see is because MDMA lowers the amygdala response and it's dumping all these feel-good chemicals, the hope is that what we're starting to see is that couples can use this in a one to three-time session and with the right integration that they can actually reset their relationship and then start to learn new patterns.

1:13:12For some of us, the work that I'm talking about today, it's just, it's too entrenched. It's too hard. Our brains just cannot. And so for those people, NVMA assisted couples therapy, when it's legal, like it will be an amazing resource. But again, I want to say it's not a panacea. And I have seen many people, I know so many stories about people who do it. And then they go back to their patterns because they think that they do the drug once and all of a sudden it's going to, everything's going to be. And I've just seen it over and over.

1:13:40Dr. Mark Hyman:But in a way, it allows you to be in that dynamic conversation that we're talking about for repair in a way that's downregulated. It sort of physiologically changes you so you can actually be present and be curious and have an open heart and not shut down and not go into your reaction and not go into your fear. And that really helps with understanding and compassion and healing, I think. And if you can do that in a couple session and you start to bring to light, you sort of lift the baseline where now you can see each other a little bit differently. You have a different understanding of the patterns that have been happening in your relationship before.

1:14:13If you can do that and then you layer in practices, tools, integration, right? Then all of a sudden, like we're in a different place. And so there's a clinic out of San Diego called Enamory, and they're working on a protocol right now with Rick around doing a pilot study to put couples through, 6 to 12 couples through a protocol for this. So we'll start to understand a little bit more. I mean, we don't have a lot of couples research. The only person really researching is Anne Wagner out of, there's a couple more, but she's done a lot of research. But right now, and she's out of Canada, but right now, a lot of the research is focused on PTSD, even in a dyadic approach.

1:14:52One person has come in with PTSD or only one person, the PTSD partner is the one taking it. And so we haven't done this with quote unquote healthy normals, which what does that even mean? But with somebody who is undiagnosed. And that's the hope is that this can also translate to people who don't have to have a diagnosis.

1:15:09Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, and who can just want to enhance their dynamic or enhance their understanding of each other or improve their relationship. I mean, there's so many ways that this can be used. And I think, you know, I'm glad we're starting to have these tools because, you know, historically we just had to white knock white. Yeah, totally. Which is what we've been talking about, breath. It's hard to know your mind. It's hard. I mean, that's why I think meditation is such an incredible tool because most of us think we're our thoughts. and when meditation is a simple practice you sit there and you observe your thoughts and you try to quiet your breath and quiet your mind but inevitably thoughts come and go and you realize wait they're just like clouds floating on the horizon these are just just chatter that isn't so substantive it's not real and so we de-identify with our thoughts and that's a very powerful thing i remember when i was 18 19 i did a 10-day meditation retreat and we meditated for like 12 14 hours a day.

1:16:05Dr. Mark Hyman:And at the end of that, you know, I just realized, wow, you know, like, like there's my whole inner world that I constructed that I thought was, you know, concrete and real, but it's just, it's just like clouds and I don't have to attach to them. I don't have to believe them. My friend, Daniel Amon says, don't believe every stupid thought you have. And I think, you know, that's the power of these practices. So when you're talking about capacity. There's lots of tools like meditation or other things that can be helpful or even like psychedelics can be very powerful. Absolutely. There are so many ways to build your capacity.

1:16:41Meditation is a great one. I mean, all what you're doing is again, putting more time in between stimulus and response. And you're practicing that out of a level 10 trigger, outside of a level 10 trigger, which is so unrealistic for us to be able to do anything inside of, do anything differently inside of.

1:16:55Dr. Mark Hyman:So I imagine people listening okay this sounds great i don't know how to do this help the good news is you've created a web app yeah that allows you to take people through a process so to unpack what you've done what you've created and what you've been available to people because i think everybody's flailing around searching i mean if you look at instagram it's like all this relationship advice it's like and i don't know how much of it's good or bad i mean i tune into your instagram which is bea voce b-a-y-a-v-o-c-e yeah so everybody check that out follow bea but in addition to that she's got and by the way she does these amazing little brilliant clips that are just like little nuggets of gold that you could listen to in a very short time and feel better afterwards because i certainly do and i know you're my closest friend i still like listen to them like wow that was good is this person actually my friend?

1:17:49Dr. Mark Hyman:She's so cool. I love you. And then tell us about this platform that you created for people. So it's called the Repair Lab. And the idea is I do, listen, I was getting so many DMs being like, help, what do I do? And I was like, I need to figure out how to work with more people. My private practice is full. I need to figure out how to work with more people. And so I launched this membership program where we do monthly Q &As where you can literally write in and I'll answer questions and we'll go live and we'll talk about it. And then it also has a platform that will have all this content about the foundations of repair around practices, around boundaries, around forgiveness, around all these tools that we need to build our capacity to learn repair.

1:18:32And then I've developed a repair AI app. So you can literally get on at any time and you can, if you're in the middle of freaking out, you can be like, what do I do? And it can help you. And that's built off of my, you know, my work, a lot of other professionals worked and I just kind of combined it into this repair app to help you. Because what I found was that, you know, maybe you don't have therapy booked until next week or, you know, and so in the heat of the moment, it's really hard. You just need something to, so you can call it or text it and it will help you get through. And, and it's a membership program and we're launching it right now.

1:19:06So it's brand new. So it's exciting because the people who are getting in on the ground floor, Like I'm getting feedback. We're like, you're helping me build it because I want to know how to build it with you. So you can just go to beavoce.com, B-A-Y-A-V-O-C-E.

1:19:18Dr. Mark Hyman:How do they find it again? So you go to my website, beavoce.com, which is just B-A-Y-A-V-O-C-E. And you can find it and sign up. And we'll put in the show notes, we'll put the link. And, you know, your website has a beautiful quote on the front, which is, we're taught how to fall in love, but not how to stay there. And so if you want to stay there, check out Bea's work, check out her repair lab. check out her Instagram and her new book. Stay tuned because that's coming out. It's going to be a blockbuster. I know it is. And hopefully she'll let me write the word. I love you. Thanks for being on the podcast.

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1:20:34Dr. Mark Hyman:This isn't a broken system. It's a perfectly functioning machine producing disease, dependency, and distraction exactly as intended. Food Fix Uncensored pulls back the curtain on the collusion shaping your health, your choices, and your future because once you see how it works, you can never unsee it. Food Fix Uncensored, the truth they never meant for you to read.

1:21:05Dr. Mark Hyman:If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer.

1:21:36Dr. Mark Hyman:This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

1:22:09Dr. Mark Hyman:It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.