Ep 10- Couples Series- getting back on the same team

Sarah Wills: Hello and welcome to episode 10 of Unmasked Minds, the podcast with me. I'm Sarah the Psych on Instagram. I am a psychologist in real life and I work with of millennial middle-aged women ⁓ and of the challenges that come with this stage of life. I recently was reflecting on the podcast and how I show up on here and all the feedback that I'm getting and I thought to myself, I think I need to be more organised. I feel like I need to actually write down the topics and the plan for each episode. And I said that on Instagram and I got some really beautiful feedback from people saying, Sarah, we don't want that from you. What we love about your podcast is that we get to come on here. and it feels like we're chatting with a friend. There's no judgment. There's no sort of clinical, I'm talking down to you and I'm lecturing you on all of this stuff. There's this real feeling, and this was always my intent, this real feeling like we're just sitting in a room with each other, talking about all of the shit that you might be going through, but that I've either been through or I'm also going through at the same time. And a big part of this podcast is just really normalising. ...all of the challenges and things that we go through as middle-aged women. talking a lot about neurodivergence. We are talking about childhood trauma. ⁓ We are talking about midlife trauma. We're also talking about perimenopause. But one of the things that I get asked all the time in ...and on my Instagram account ⁓ is couples work, How do we get out of the rut that we're in? How do we get back on the same page? How do we navigate life now that the kids are growing up? Or how do we navigate this first stage now that we've become parents and it's all sort of everything has changed and everything is new? I also know that there are so many women out there specifically doing a lot of work… …whether it's with a therapist or with a coach or just absorbing… …and putting energy into, you know, researching online… …and finding tools on social media in improving themselves. And often I get asked, well how do I now communicate this with my partner? How do we get on the same page because I've changed? And so I'm going to do a little bit of a couple series. A couple of sort of the main things that I talk about with clients in therapy when it comes to relationships. So let's start unpacking some of this couple stuff. Now I am a trained Gottman therapist. If you are a therapist out there, you'll know that Gottman is like the guru. Some people might not agree, but I love Gottman and their learnings and their education. So I will be using a lot of those templates for how we talk. And the first thing I want to do today is really focus on getting back on the same page. What I mean by that is so many people come to me and we are years into disconnection, Or at least an extended period into disconnection, whether that's because we've had children or whether that's because we've just been busy or we've just stopped talking to each other, And it usually becomes really obvious when ⁓ the is resulting in arguments or fighting or avoidance. or not being on the same page intimately, It is such a common thing for women to sort of show up and say, my husband wants sex all the time and I, ⁓ yuck, is the last thing I want at the moment because he can't even talk to me and we're not even getting on the same page with anything. My body does not want to make love to that. And so let's just normalise that. One of the things I work on with a lot of my clients when there is no intimacy or libido is we go through things like what are your hormones doing? But also what are the stress levels in your life? What we know, do a whole episode on this actually, maybe we will, is that your reproductive system and therefore your libido, your sex drive, is significantly affected by the amount of stress or anxiety that you're feeling in your day-to-day life. So I will park that for now, but it is definitely worth coming back to because that is one of the main things I get asked about is, you know, how do we re-sync our sex drives? But the topic of today ⁓ when couples come and they usually ask me whether it's the couple or just the woman in therapy. How do we do all of these big things? How do we resolve conflict? How do we realign on values and goals? How do we parent the same way? How do we navigate the tough conversations around parenting when we parent very differently or one of us is being triggered by the parenting and that's really not sitting well with me? What I like to do is introduce the Gottman Sound Relationship House here. So I usually show it but I'm going to explain it for everybody just listening. The Sound Relationship House is basically, I like to think of it, I came from a management and leadership background so a lot of my studies were used Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which basically was this triangle and it sort of looked at for a human to get to self-actualisation which is the goal in this model. ...feeling free and happy and content and self-actualised... ...you've got to start from the bottom of the pyramid. And the bottom of the pyramid is things like food and safety and shelter. And as it goes up we ask for... ...humans need more things to become self-actualised. So let's get the basics right. And then we can start to add in things like community and clothing. I don't know what order it is but you get the picture, right? You can't be self-actualised. if you don't have basic safety food, shelter, that kind of thing. So I like to think of the sound relationship house somewhat in the same way. There's two walls of the house and then within the walls are all of the things that you want to work on or could work on as a couple in a relationship. But it is really important to make sure the walls, the two walls of the house are sturdy to begin with. and the two walls are trust and commitment. I trust you, I've got your back and I am committed to this. We are gonna work through this together. I don't have one foot out the door. I am here and we are gonna navigate this shit storm together, Now this episode isn't focusing on that, but I just want to highlight that if you ⁓ in a position in your relationship, And some of the challenges are stemming from problems with trust or problems with commitment. And that is always where we would start. You know, we have to acknowledge that the walls of the house are broken or fractured or under threat. Okay. Now, if there have been challenges in those areas, it doesn't mean a couple can't get through it. I have seen Tremendous recovery ⁓ for couples who done the work but we've almost got to call it what it is. We've got big fractures in these big parts and that's in the big walls and that's where we've got to focus. ⁓ After that the sort of looks at a number of different areas and at the very bottom we have this concept called love mapping. Then we have a concept called turning towards not away. ⁓ And we've also got bids for connection. I'm trying to do this just from memory. So if I am missing anything, then please excuse me. And all of those are the ones we're gonna talk about today. How do we reconnect? Now, typical couples therapy tends to focus on conflict and communication. And that's the next layer up, You may have heard of Gottman's Four Horsemen. And I'm going to do that in the next episode. The four horsemen are when we are in conflict, what is our fight style? What is our fight or flight style? What are we doing? What weapons are we grabbing? What are we defaulting into when there is conflict or communication? And it is, it's called the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Once we start fighting, we're at war and it's all downhill from there. Now I will name them just so you're familiar with them. The four horsemen are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling, And ⁓ run couples retreats and these are the types of things that we often focus on. We do a whole workshop on the horsemen and get people to sort of reflect on not is what your partner doing, which is always the first thing. People are really easy to say that's what they do, but what are you doing as well? And how do we notice that once one of us jumps into a horseman, ⁓ the other one tends to get triggered into their horsemen as well. And nothing good happens once we are in that kind of situation. So a lot of people want to start there. But often I will say to clients or to friends or to people, hey, we don't, we're not ready to start there yet. Because to have these deep, vulnerable, honest... conversations where we need to take accountability and responsibility for our own actions, not just pointing out the other partner's actions. We need to be safe and we need to be on the same team. So often what I say to people is we can do that work and there's stuff that we need to be aware of. I can see it. But let's first reconnect. When was the last time you actually felt like you were on the same team? When we are in a relationship and we have challenges, our children are having challenges, our marriage is having challenges, our workplace, you know, whatever it is, does it feel like it is your problem and you're solving it and you're against each other? Or does it feel like how are we going to solve this together. Now if it doesn't feel like you're on the same team and often this happens ⁓ over years of sort of misalignment and disconnection and then all of a sudden we've been on the opposite teams for a long time and we don't know how to get back from it. So today I'm going to take you through a couple of tools that we use to get back on the same team. Now it is difficult. because if there is a lot of disconnection and a lot of water under the bridge and a lot of challenges, then it's hard to kind of park that and focus on this kind of more nice feeling warm and fuzzy stuff. So it may not be suitable for everybody, but it is something that I really want a lot of you to consider. It's really easy to see the big problems, but is it all stemming from a lack of connection. Now I can personally tell you this has worked wonders in my own marriage We ⁓ often go phases ⁓ of we're in the night, we're busy, we've got four kids, we've got a couple of businesses ⁓ and we're both you we're both ADHD, we just get stuck into things and, ⁓ you know, want get things done ⁓ and we can to disconnect. from each other. And often it sort of turns out, you you start to see the resentment building and a little bit of tit for tat and a little bit of defensiveness coming in. And we've gotten really good at sort of calling that and noticing that and saying, hey, how do we get back on the same team? Because this doesn't feel nice because as soon as you disconnected from your person, your partner, you start to feel really alone and it often starts to trigger a lot of childhood wounds. you know, lot of abandonment wounds or a lot of wounds that I'm not good enough or I'm not loved or they don't care about me or I'm not worthy. So it's really worth noticing that as the disconnection increases, what does that do for you and how are you responding to that? So anyway, back to getting on the same team, there's a couple of tools. Number one is called Love Mapping. what I love about this is, do you remember when you first met your partner? And everything about them was exciting, and you wanted to learn about them and you wanted to understand them. And if you think of it like a GPS, is that really, am I showing my age when I say like a GPS? I'm thinking of the one in the car, right? ⁓ So of it like a GPS. You are building these maps ⁓ within mind of your person. What's their favourite colour? What's their favourite food? What do they smell like? What do they enjoy? ⁓ And we spend a lot of time making sure that we meet those needs and we're curious and playful around building this love map. Now it is so natural that over time we stop doing that, We stop building our love maps and we kind of make these assumptions that I know that person and I understand them and this is how they are. ⁓ our maps become outdated, And I'm getting this image now, you know when you've got the GPS in your car and then you go to drive somewhere where they've built a new freeway and a new roundabout and it just doesn't work anymore because the map hasn't been updated and now you're getting lost and now you're have an accident or something because the maps haven't been updated, I like that one. I'm going to use that. ⁓ really worked for me. So it's about rebuilding the love maps. You know, there's these wonderful apps. There's an app that I use, it's a Gotman app called Card And you just download the app and you go into it and there's questions, you know. And so to a lot of my clients I'll say, scheduling a date night. Now date night doesn't need to be these fancy dinners where you get dressed up and you get a babysitter. Like that really doesn't align with our phase of life probably because we just don't have any family support or babysitters. But we also don't want to be spending money on... expensive dinners all the time. So for us it doesn't mean we can't do intimacy and connection. You do it differently. Put the kids to bed, have a cup of tea or a glass of wine and bring out the questions and just reconnect over questions. We did this on a couple's retreat recently and all the couples started asking each other questions and ⁓ not a test. It's not about saying, I know more about you than you know about me. ⁓ It's really just about seeing it as an opportunity to update what you know about each other. On one of the last retreats I ran, one of the questions the couples worked on was who are your three best friends? So you sit with your partner and like I would sit with Rob and I would say who Rob's three best friends are, who I think they are. And then he would respond with yes, that's right or no, that's not right. And it's not that I get it wrong, it's that just there's updating to be had and learning to be had and therefore more connection to be had. And I remember going back from the retreat and I was like I'm going to actually try this with Rob because I, you know, I talk and teach this stuff all the time but don't actually do it in my own relationship sometimes. So I went back and we had this discussion around who are our three best friends each. And it was so interesting. know, Rob was like, ⁓ yours must be these three people who were like really heavily involved in my bridal party and have been, you in my life for ⁓ really important chapters. And I was like, yeah, yeah, they are really important people to me, but there's a differentiation between, you know, a long-term important person and a best friend right now. They're not the people that I'm talking to every day. They're not the people that know what's happening in my day-to-day at the moment. They are a different type of friend now, right? And he had similar reflections on his friends as well. And I'm sharing that as an example because realistically, when was the last time you asked your partner who their favourite people were or who they feel most close to at the moment or how are they feeling in their important relationships? And it was just a really beautiful way of talking and connecting and learning more. about each other. I remember witnessing one of the couples ask each other and one of them had lost two of their best friends just to illness and, you know, they'd passed away. And to be able to sit with them, like the partner obviously knew that, but to sit with them and hear them talk about what that means to them now and how that feels years later was just so powerful at reconnecting for them. So... updating your love maps, asking each other questions, making the space to continue to learn and reconnect with each other. That is the first tool. The second tool I want you to think about is what we call bids for connection. Bids for connection is when we are trying to connect with our partner. We make a bid to connect with our partner. Now a bid either gets accepted or reject it, right? And when we are in a state of disconnection, we end up not even realising that we're rejecting our partner's bids for connection, And when we do that enough times, our partner will stop connecting with us, You know, it's like if your partner goes to hug you and you say, too busy right now, and goes to hug you again the next day and the next day and you keep rejection, they're going to stop trying to hug you. ⁓ And then you're probably going to show up to therapy and say, my husband hasn't touched me, my partner hasn't touched me or hugged me for years, right? And so it's really starting to recognise, and this is one where love languages comes in really handy. What is your love language and what is your partner's love language? Because if you've got different love languages, then your partner may be bidding for connection, but you're just not noticing it because you don't speak that language. Do you know what I mean? me give an example. My husband's love language ⁓ ⁓ of service, right? And let's say my ⁓ love language is words of affirmation. So when I'm feeling in love and really appreciative of him or grateful for him, I'm gonna tell him, I say that and then I think I definitely don't do that enough, but... ⁓ I'd like to think that I'd tell him. I like to use big words and mushy words and really communicate how meaningful he is to me. Now he doesn't do that. My husband is dyslexic and really struggles to read and write, let alone to communicate and articulate complex feelings and things like that, And so when we first got together, I used to get really frustrated. You know, don't tell me that you love me. You don't tell me how much I mean to you. You don't tell me ⁓ this feels really good for you. And what I had to realise, so I was like, you're not bidding for connection in this way that I want, but he does it in different ways, He is constantly, we joke, we've got this list of things that I want done and he's always doing the list. Or every morning he will go and make me a cup of coffee or a cup of tea at night and bring it in to me. ⁓ if we don't stop and slow down and recognise where our partner is bidding... then we might end up in this state where neither of us are bidding because we've just rejected each other too much. And so if you are in a state where you think there's disconnection and maybe you haven't bid for connection with each other for a long time, how can you start that, So instead of talking about these big complex issues, which are you get defensive and you stonewall me and I'm criticizing you, how do we bring it back to the basics? spending time with each other and reconnecting with each other. And it doesn't have to be complex. Bids for connection are simply, hey honey, how was your day? How often does someone, one partner ask the other one how your day was? You're yeah, good. You keep going, I'm busy with the kids right now, And it's, we are rejecting their bid for connection. And then like I said before, we get upset that there's the disconnection. So how can firstly, You tune in and recognise and accept your partner's bids for connection, but also are you bidding very much? Are you prioritising connecting with your partner? Are you saying, honey, how was your day? Are you giving them a little... ...a touch on the bum as they walk past or a little cuddle... ...or a little squeeze on the hand at dinnertime. And, for Rob and I, that is a really huge one. We both also have physical touch as one of our love languages. When we are feeling disconnected, it's bringing that stuff back. So for me it's also bringing back more words of affirmation. But it's also those little things. You know, the little squeeze of the shoulder. If I'm... having an argument with the kids or really, you know, negotiating with kids or something, he'll walk past and put a hand on my shoulder. Let's give it a little squeeze. That is a bid for connection. And if we are open to feeling that, it means so much, doesn't it? It just means I'm here, I've got you, I believe you're doing a good job. Hey, I love you. So really just asking yourselves, are we even aware of this? Like how do we let our partner know that we're doing this? You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, darling, I've noticed that we've been disconnected lately and that's really important for me that we reconnect. want to get back on the same team. So I'm going to start doing this thing that this psychologist on a podcast talked about, bidding for connection. And so I want you to know that I'm going to try that. I might let you know when I do it. you know, here's a hug, darling. I just want to tell you, I'm just trying to show you that I love you. I've made you this cup of tea because I want you to know that I see you today and I appreciate what you did at work today for our family. ⁓ I just want to say thank you for picking up the kids today, it means a lot. Or hey, thank you for unloading the dishwasher. It doesn't have to be big, but how do we bring back these bids for connection? How do we get back ⁓ on same team? ⁓ Sometimes it just takes something little like that for everybody to put their weapons down. We're storming around the kitchen, we're cranky, you haven't cleaned this, you haven't done that, ⁓ worked late or you said this and all it takes is a little reconnection. Put the weapons down, have a hug and then the rest of the night goes very differently. So bidding for connection. ⁓ last one I really want to talk about is ⁓ we call turning toward rather than away. And this is the one I often use when I'm talking about being on the same team. As soon as there is conflict or disagreement or just anything in the relationship, are we turning away from each other? You know, that's your fault. You don't understand. You don't get me and I'm against you, right? And we're going away. Or are we turning toward and saying, hey, how do we solve this? This is an us problem. Even though I feel like I'm in the trenches here dealing with this problem by myself, we are together and we, with both of our minds combined, have a much better chance at solving this problem. ⁓ doesn't it feel better when we solve the problem together anyway? You know, it's always so much nicer if we're going through a tough time to have someone supporting you rather than ⁓ of calling over the fence. You're doing shit. ⁓ You're not very good at that. I would have done that differently. I know you can all relate to that because even when I say it, I'm like, oh, you know, that still happens in my relationship. And if I reflect on my own relationship, I would say we have a very, very healthy and securely attached relationship, but we absolutely go through periods of disconnection. We absolutely sometimes forget to prioritise us and our relationships amongst all the other things that we've got going on. But it doesn't mean it's the beginning of the end. It just means that if it's important to you, you will find ways to reconnect, right? And like I said, it doesn't have to be big and fancy. Sometimes it's just sitting down and having breakfast together. Sometimes it's just actually talking about things. I am so guilty. I will work all day with clients and I come home and I'm mentally exhausted. Now, I don't wanna talk. I just wanna get the things done and I'm like, okay, I'm happy, I'm fine, but I don't wanna talk. And my husband who works all day by himself comes home and wants to tell me all this exciting stuff. That's his bid for connection. What about this and this and this and this? And I just fucking ignore him. ⁓ Yes, yeah, babe, ⁓ good, good. And I'm not even listening, And sometimes I catch myself doing that and I'll be like, ⁓ honey, I'm so sorry. I just don't have the capacity to do that right now. But can we come back tonight and have a go? I'm not rejecting your bid for connection. ⁓ just don't have the capacity right now. So. To summarise, guess, or bring this episode together, it is really about what are those little things? I do have couples that come and they want to do all that deep heavy stuff and I'm like, just get back on the same team first. Park that stuff and know that we'll get to it. You will get to it. But it is a lot easier to fight those bigger battles when you're on the same team. Yeah, so let's... get back on the same team, let's get our nervous systems back feeling safe in the presence of our partner. Because often there's been so much conflict or so much disconnect that just seeing them or talking about them or, you know, thinking about having a conversation with them alerts our nervous system, triggers our nervous system, and it's just the whole exchange is not pleasant because one of us or both of us are in vital flight mode. And so... How do we just re-establish safety, connection and being on the same team? So I hope that was useful for you. I did have a lot of questions come through on that. How do we get back on the same team? So please let me know if that was useful. I am going to film the next episode now which is going to be a bit deeper and going to be on those four... Gottman, horseman. So what are those communication styles that we default into when we are in conflict with our partner? And I will share some really raw and vulnerable insights into me and my own relationship and why I do what I do even though it's, know, ⁓ used to hold a lot of shame for the way I would react in conflict. but I understand it a lot more now and I want to really share that with you guys because I think it's really important. So I'll save that for the next episode. Thank you for being here. Let me know if that resonated with you and see you soon.