Every relationship deals with conflict, just in different ways. Some are avoidant, while others are confrontational. Some are constantly simmering, while others are explosive. Our guest today is therapist Trevor Hanson. Not only does he want to help us reframe how we see conflict–not an inhibitor to a successful marriage, but necessary to it—he wants to help you get better at what he calls “healthy conflict—” the kind where we can come together with different fears, needs, and messages, but still come away connected.
Because a partnership takes two people, with different backgrounds and different emotional responses, couples can often find themselves caught in a negative cycle. Trevor goes in to detail about what this can look like, and offers advice on where to start. In his words, “If you can change at least one half of the cycle, you’ve changed 50% of the problem.”
Kwame Christian on conflict and people pleasing.
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica: Trevor, welcome to about progress.
Trevor: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Monica: This is an interesting topic. I mean, I think we all know conflict happens in relationships, period. And if we avoid it, it doesn’t have the best results for us but also if it’s chronic and it’s not the healthy kind, also not the best results for us.
Trevor: Yeah,
Monica: So you’re a therapist and I wanted to start by asking you why conflict does need to be a part of the relationship.
Let’s just start there.
Trevor: yeah. Yeah. So I think it. We need to approach it from asking ourselves what is the definition of conflict? Because the word conflict itself can sound really negative and destructive, which at times it can be. Right? I think that’s our first association, but when we think about the word conflict or even confront, confrontation.
It’s all about approaching things, you know, directly rather than the opposite is avoidance. And so I think about, you know, good, healthy, quote unquote, like conflict. It doesn’t have to look like escalated, you know, yelling and all that. That’s, that’s unhealthy conflict. Healthy conflict is where we’re, you know, maybe we do conflict on an idea.
A thought or an opinion and we need to be able to sort that out with our partner. And I think it without some level of healthy conflict, we wind up getting into a hard spot where, where we build resentment towards one another cuz we’re holding back, we’re we’re sitting on things that we’re upset about and then down the road, That resentment is gonna come out into that unhealthy conflict.
So no matter what you do, you cannot avoid conflict. You’re either gonna approach it in a healthy way or you’re gonna sit on it, boil it up and become resentful, and then it becomes an unhealthy way of approaching that same, that same topic, potentially, but in a way that leaves you disconnected rather than, than connected and close to your person.
Monica: I see like the end from the beginning here. You know, good healthy conflict can lead to good, healthy connection. So I’m like, spoiler alert. We want to teach women how to do that especially those who are in a married relationship. But I, I’m just curious though, first though, just my own curiosity, what drove this focus for you?
Like when, how did this come about for you that you’re like, conflict? This is something I really wanna make sure we’re talking about a lot.
Trevor: Yeah. It’s just, it, I, it’s at the heart of, it’s at the heart of like, disconnection is a misinterpretation of like intended messages or when we don’t make what we’re feeling overt. We’re not approaching subjects with our person. Like you think about it, your partner, that’s a, that’s a strong word that is.
Partner in crime, that is the, your partner and life that I think about a business partner, you know, the fundamental decisions that would have to be made in order to make an organization or a business run. My goodness. If, if they never, if they never approached the critical conversations, the hard topics, the whole organization would fall apart.
And, you know, maybe some people who are listening are you know, have, have kids and some don’t. But either way, we think about, you know, structural family therapy. It’s a whole discipline of, of approaching therapy. And you and your partner, you are the executive system, you know, in line with this analogy of business.
And you are at the head. Your, the strength of your relationship, the communication there, the clarity on what’s going on within the system together really determines the health of the overall system in a great way. You know, I have a lot of people sometimes, you know, I work primarily with couples, but oftentimes I’ll work with like teens and kids here and there and you know, sometimes parents will come and then it’s kind of like, Hey, here’s my kid, I’m gonna drop ’em off, and like you fix ’em and like make everything better.
And I’m like, wait, hold on. I actually don’t need to see them. I need to see you. And your husband, or you and whoever, you know, whoever you’re with, because that is the trickle down effect of the executive system. That’s, that’s one answer to your question, but it’s, it’s, I, I just see it impacting the family system so much.
The, I love it and it’s, I don’t know from a selfish point of view, I think it’s exciting. You know, sometimes individual therapy is great, it’s really fun, I love it. But when there’s two people in the room and there’s kind of this like dynamic, we’re playing a little bit of a tennis game between people, they’re sharing, you know, you’re watching them heal together.
Like, it’s kind of exciting and it makes my job more fun. So from a, from a selfish standpoint, I like doing a couple therapies just cuz it’s a little bit, a bit more exciting.
Monica: and I bet that’s a lot of learning how to, to, you know, conflict I guess in appropriate, healthy ways. But let’s, let’s move to that. Let’s, let’s talk about those who are dealing with chronic conflict that is unhealthy. It’s damaging. It’s, it’s, it’s creating tension in the, in the marriage, and worse.
I wanna actually ask you first with conflict in general, when it’s chronically happening, what is really going on with this conflict?
Trevor: Yes. That is a great question. So at the heart of disconnection is usually, or I say disconnection because it could be like really escalated conflict. It could be just like, oh, we just don’t feel close, we don’t feel connected. Both can be chronic and both really stem from the same place. And I have to kind of go back a little bit into this idea of, of attachment and some people who are savvy to like therapy terms might be familiar with the idea of attachment theory, which is this concept that says the way that we attach to our primary caregivers.
Becomes kind of a foundational model for how we attach to others in the future, and it shapes our beliefs about the world. We may leave our home as a child with this belief that love is scarce, that you have to prove yourself in order to receive love, that it’s not accessible or readily accessible.
There’s fears of abandonment. There’s fears of not being good enough. There’s, you know, longings to be close. And maybe the way we’ve learned to cope in situations is by people pleasing, you know, rolling over and just letting our partner do whatever they want. All of these form foundational patterns, the two individuals bring into a relationship and then there’s a new attachment.
All of a sudden it’s you and this person. Your most important attachments in life are your primary caregiver, your mom and dad, and then your intimate partners. Those are really the, the foundational ones, and that’s where we see , we, we see a kind of a connection and a tie while they’ll start taking on similar messages.
But what happens in, in these intimate partner relationships between you and your spouse is that there are messages about love, attachment, closeness, being traded all of the time. Most of the time they’re covert, they’re under the surface, and they sound. They kind of have two categories. There’s disconnecting attachment messages and ones that are connecting, and I’ll kind of give you examples of both.
There’s the, the disconnecting ones sound like, I’m not good enough for you. I’ll never get this right. You don’t love me. You’re gonna leave me, you’re not there for me, or I’m afraid you’re not gonna be there for me. I’m fearful is kind of, is kind of the feeling. I’m fearful I’m not enough. There’s a whole bunch of that going on.
The connecting attachment messages are, I’m gonna be there for you when you need me. You’re more than enough for me. I’m not gonna leave. We are close or you are not gonna leave. It’s like a, it’s a reflective kind of. Kind of process. Ones that say, I’m safe with you, I’m secure with you. You love me, you see me as a person.
You value me and you respect me. Those two messages, when we can stop sending and receiving, cuz sometimes it’s a factor of just interpretation. Maybe your partner’s trying to send a message that says, Hey, I love you, I want you close. But all you hear is I, they want me to be different. I’m not good enough.
and I feel rejected and abandoned. So being able to help couples make that really over, like what are the messages we’re sending?
Monica: Yeah,
Trevor: it, can it? This, the reason people get stuck, I guess if I’m circling back to the question, long answer here, if I’m circling back, the reason people get in chronic disconnection is these negative attachment messages continue to get sent back and forth, and then the way we cope with those messages, when I hear that I’m not good enough the way I respond and react.
Again, reinforces the negative attachment messages for my partner, and we can talk about this more in depth, it’s a whole cycle. It’s a back and forth cycle where I receive a negative message, I then send a negative message. They receive that message, they send one back. But at the, at the end of the day, neither of us are intending to do that.
We’re trying to say, I love you, I want you close. You’re important to me. I’m afraid of not having you close to me. But we’re hearing kind of the opposite.
Monica: When you lay it out like that, if, if it’s kind of one of those like you. You pat your head moment like, duh, like of course this makes so much sense and yet we’re all living it. We have been living it for so long without recognizing that interchange happening, the reinforcement and that cycle and how it’s so connected to either, well, I said the word disconnect or connection, and that’s really the fork on the road where we do have a choice, right?
With conflict. We can choose to con, you know, to have conflict in ways that are connecting or ways that are disconnecting. Am I reading this right?
Trevor: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s, it’s, it’s all about translation of messages, what we’re sending, what we’re receiving. And it’s, it’s so funny cuz nearly, nearly every first or second, that I have with a couple, we actually map out what we call the negative cycle, where we draw like a figure eight.
And this comes from emotionally focused therapy which is one of the most evidence-based and research-backed approaches to therapy. It’s kind of right up there. You have Gottman and emotionally focused therapy, but we’ll, we’ll map out this cycle where we will actually show, and we can kind of describe this if you’re curious, where we will actually show how your behavior and your partner’s behavior reinforce negative disconnecting messages that then create more of that same disconnecting behavior. Maybe you know, your partner’s more likely to withdraw and shut down and kind of stonewall in the face of of conflict, and you’re more likely to get like critical and blame and pursue, well, my goodness, there’s deeper reasons behind all of that.
And once we start making that overt. People, I, I draw it on a whiteboard and everyone’s like, oh my gosh. Like, can we take photos of this? We wanna take this home with us. Like, this is, this is us. This is what we do. But we never realized it. And so the first step in getting out of this negative cycle is just realizing it, mapping it out.
Monica: I feel like this is true to every issue that we’re working on in our lives. The first step is really being able to see it, for what it is, to recognize it, but not just the surface level recognition, like you said. It’s, it’s recognizing the deeper reasons, the deep stories and experiences and patterns that are brought to life.
Acknowledge truly is power in this case, especially. So that was, that was the first step you’d, you’d kind of advise people to do is, is get into that place of awareness. What else can they do if they’re like, we need to deal with this conflict better in a more connective way.
Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think to, to help your listeners understand how to make that, that awareness come up, I wanna describe the cycle a little bit more. Cuz I think that within that you will find answers to your second question. So, I’ll describe a typical negative cycle, and yours could look totally different, whoever’s listening, and some people have a really highly escalated negative cycle.
Some they’re kind of low, low cadence, low frequency, right? , but we all have them. The moment when you don’t feel connected with your partner, you don’t feel close, most likely you’re kind of getting in the cycle. And if you have chronic, you know, disconnection, there’s, you know, real hard fighting you’re definitely in the cycle a lot.
And what happens in the cycle, and I’m gonna give an example, In, in gender roles, just because they tend to, I tend to see this and the data shows that this is typical. It doesn’t always have to be this way, however cuz actually the roles on, on what I’m about to describe are actually kind of reversed in my own relationship.
So there’s usually some sort of pursue, withdraw type of relationship. One is more pursuant, one is more withdrawn and typical. Women are more likely to criticize, blame you know, get defensive or kind of get a little bit more I guess pursuant in that sense, men are more likely to shut down, stonewall, withdraw. Both.
Our disconnecting moves within the cycle. So if you were to imagine like a figure eight that we draw and then we draw a line horizontally through that figure eight, so it, it splits it up and down above the line are the things that we can see in the cycle. And for maybe one partner, the female in this case, let’s say, let’s say she’s.
Criticizing and blaming, and the guy is withdrawing and stonewalling. We’re seeing that on the top of the cycle. That’s all they see. They see that, and then maybe one or two emotions, which is usually anger and frustration, but they don’t see much more than that. But what we find out is that when he withdraws what’s actually happening for her are a handful of things.
There’s usually a fear of some sort. There’s usually a message. And a need. Those three things are really important. So what’s her fear? Oh my goodness. Like I’m, I’m afraid that, that he doesn’t love me. He’s just pulling away, or that he’s gonna do this forever, one day that I won’t have him, or that maybe I’m not good enough.
He doesn’t even have, you know, the capacity to show up for me and listen. Like, man, I, I’m, I’m not good enough for him. So she’s, she’s receiving those kinds of, and the fears and the messages, they’re usually kind of meshed. They can kind of go back and forth, like messages, like, I’m not good enough. But it could also be, I’m afraid that I’m not good enough.
So there’s fears and messages. That are softer, they’re deeper. They have to do with loneliness, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, all those disconnecting words that I talked about when we’re receiving disconnecting messages. And she also has some sort of need in that moment. She’s maybe needing reassurance, maybe needing to know that she is good enough that he does love her or something of that sort, but maybe due to her upbringing or maybe just because life goes this way, her way of coping with that is to say, oh my goodness, I need to fix this.
How do I fix this? Telling him what he’s doing. Criticizing or blaming and saying, no, no, no. You gotta do it right. You gotta do it different come, she’s really trying to say, come close to me. This is how you can come close to me. This is how I, I want us to be close. But what does he hear? Oh, we’re going down the other side of the cycle.
Now he hears maybe, gosh, I can never get this right for her. She’s always mad at me. And maybe due to his upbringing, his way of coping is to shut down, withdraw when I got things wrong growing up, you know, I had to quote, be a man. I had to just shut my mouth and kind of withdraw. I don’t, I don’t know how to help.
I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid that this is going to turn into a relationship like my parents’ relationship. You know, the fears, whatever the fears. The longings and the messages are, that’s what’s going on underneath the surface. And they go back and forth. He withdraws, she pursues, he withdraws, he, but underneath, they had no idea.
It’s like, oh my gosh, I’m actually afraid I’m not good enough for you. Well, I’m afraid I’m not good enough for you either. Wow. And I’m afraid to lose you cuz you’re the most important person in the world. Well, I feel the same way. Holy cow. We just changed everything, right? My goodness. It changed everything.
So first, being able to map out that cycle, asking what’s the more tender, the deep, the fears, the longings, the needs underneath that cycle is your big step one. And honestly, if that’s all you do, and you make that overt, That’s really how we’re gonna start getting out of that negative cycle is staying in that, you know, your anger makes sense, you’re hurt, your anger’s trying to help you and protect you, but it’s not terribly helpful when you meet it up next to your partner.
I never see, you know, I, in the movies, someone goes, you’re the worst. And they scream or they throw a fit and all of a sudden the mo person has this like, come to Jesus repentance moment and they’re like, oh my gosh. Like I, I do need to do something different. Doesn’t really happen like that in real life.
When we’re soft, we’re tender. We’re gentle with ourselves and Arthur, our partner, about what’s underneath the cycle. We start to break it.
Monica: Gonna ask a really obvious question that is not so obvious and how it actually plays out and it’s what does. Look like, and I’m gonna say first because in my mind when I think of conflict, I think of fighting. I think of harsh words and yelling, and that might be part of it.
But maybe you can give us a full picture of what conflict looks like.
Trevor: Yeah. Conflict in, in my mind. I a healthy conflict? Well, conflict can look like both. It can look like, it can look like fighting. It can look a whole lot different too. I think healthy conflict really rarely takes on the fighting. Like most of the time you are very, very ineffective if you are, you know, yelling or using harsh words or any of that conflict really can look like what we’ve talked.
today, which is getting down to that bottom side of the cycle, making overt your pains, your fears, your longings, sharing with your partner in a way that invites them to come close, that like you hurt and maybe something that they did hurt you. And like, you know, that you, you’re con, you’re, you’re bringing something to the table and you know, so, and it doesn’t always have to be that deep if you’re having conflict.
you know, an opinion on some sort of logistics thing. Maybe it’s not packed with all that like kind of the attachment messages as much, but there’s, there is kind of an underlying attachment method message. If I respect you in the way we talk about, you know, how we’re gonna do X, Y, and Z or what’s gonna happen our, our vacation.
There again is that underlying message that. I love you enough that I’m gonna respect you. I want to hear you. You’re important to me, so I’m staying present. You’re not necessarily saying those things, but you’re showing up in a way that does that. And maybe you do need to say those things. Maybe you need to stop and say, whoa, hold on.
I wanna make sure the, the way we talk about this, like you feel that I care about you cuz that’s important to me. We totally don’t agree yet on this, but let me understand you a little bit deeper and you understand me most of the time, I would say in conflict, the goal should not be to convince the other person that you are right, if you are starting there, you are going to end there and it’s gonna be miserable. Your goal should, it’s coming from Arbinger Institute stuff, which is seek to understand before being understood, and you will change the dynamic of the outcome as well. Let’s say you have a people pleaser in the room and they always just agree and they, before they even like fully understand why their partner needs something.
I always tell people, don’t agree to do stuff that you just don’t agree with in your relationship. You will build resentment and again, it will turn into nasty conflict rather than the kind that can be connecting. So what’s the antidote? Increase understanding to the point where maybe you do have flexibility.
Oh. Oh, okay. I can see why that’s important to you. You are important to me. I’m gonna be flexible on that. Same with them. Okay. They increase understanding to the point where, oh, I, I get it. And this is different than compromise. Compromise is where I sacrifice something in order to meet you. In a way that honestly like builds that resentment, but you’re not sacrificing when you deeply understand your partner and you willingly move towards a new solution.
It’s, it’s like, oh yeah, this is cool. This is in line, this is natural. I can naturally move towards that solution. I’m not, I’m not carrying resentment.
Monica: And one thing I wanted to clarify for people though is like even with unhealthy conflict, And be the fighting, the yelling, the criticism. It, it looks more overt. Can it also not be like the unhealthy conflict? How else can it, like in ways that are kind of sneaky? I wanted to hear about the sneaky version of
Trevor: Yeah. Sneaky versions are like Kind of, kind of covert criticisms. Things that just send, again, that message just says like, you need to be different in order to be with me, kind of thing. Or like, when you have two withdrawing type partners, conflict can look like silence.
Monica: Mm-hmm.
Trevor: Where you’re just not saying anything and you’re just avoiding the topics there.
Definitely can. I, I think the, the difference between as far as a feeling goes healthy and unhealthy is one feels connecting and one feels disconnecting.
Monica: That’s perfect.
Trevor: conflict about something with my partner and it’s like, oh wow, this is drawing us closer. I’m seeking to understand you. You’re seeking to understand me.
That’s cool. The other one is you’re either avoiding or we’re sending like negative messages back and forth. It’s, it can it, like I said, the negative cycle can take on a ver variety of temperatures. It can be really, really hot, really escalated, and it can look like just silence.
Monica: Which I like because I think it’s more of a. Maybe what you have to look for. Okay. We can pay attention to the feelings.
I have written so many notes, like I might, I have to turn the page like it’s, it’s just so many, and, and yet, you know, I, I have lived this, I’ve lived the difference I think of, of being able to arrive with, you know, one recognizing there’s a disconnect, and then two, understanding more what’s going on below the surface as part of that cycle you mentioned.
Now the third part to this, to me is, is where it can’t get tricky and that’s where we can fall off the path. Right? And that’s the, you know, you talked about map, what’s the cycle right now? And, and the messaging and the fears that is going on. And then, and, you know, and your needs too. And then make a overt, how do we do that?
How do we make that happen in a way that is connective and not disconnected?
Trevor: Yes. Yes. So there’s kind of this co-regulation and self-regulation principle where I am in charge of what I feel, but I influence my partners dramatically with what I do, and they do the same thing. I think sometimes we get really caught in this narrative of like, don’t be codependent so much that we can’t even be interdependent or we can’t rely on each other.
And I, I don’t like that narrative sometimes
Monica: Me too. I find it so frustrating.
Trevor: Yeah. Yeah.
Monica: to real relationships. Right. But yeah, there’s a balance
Trevor: there is a balance, right? And in this, you have a balance. Let’s say I’m the pursuing partner. I tend to blame and criticize, and really what I need is I just, I just want them to be close. I just want to know that they care about me, okay?
And I’m afraid I’m not, not good enough for them and that they might leave me. That’s kind of a whole soup of things. So what, what do I need to do in that situation? Well, I know that my attempt, we call it an attempted solution. The, the blame and criticism is literally giving me the thing that I don’t want.
The more I do that, the more you know I’m afraid of abandonment. So what I do, I criticize to get him to come close. What does he do? He abandons me more by shutting down and withdrawing. Not to say you’re fully responsible for your partner’s behavior, cuz obviously that that’s a, that’s not a good narrative.
However, you do impact it dramatically. And what do you have control of? You. And so if you can take a hundred percent responsibility for that and say, okay, I don’t know what else to do yet, but blame and criticism doesn’t work. Even soft blame and criticism doesn’t work. I like to think of this.
There’s kind of different tiers. We’ll take criticism for example. There’s, let’s give the example of the criticism, you are never home on time. Boom. Straight criticism. What’s the next level to that? The next level is okay, instead of just telling ’em the way they’re getting it wrong, I’m gonna ask for what I actually need.
Okay? Hey, I would really appreciate it if you came home, you know, at a decent hour. So, you know, we could spend time together. Oh man. Even in that, I started to sprinkle in a little bit what I call the seeds of attachment so we could spend time together. It’s the attachment reframe. This is what they teach me to do as a therapist is reframe the ask within the context of the attachment.
I don’t just want you to be home on time, but I want you to be home on time because I care about, because I love you. It kind of hurts when I’m alone in those moments when I just, I’ve just been hoping to see you all day. You know? Or I start to believe these things, you know, maybe, maybe we talk a little deeper conversation.
Hey, I, I love being with you. You’re the most important person in the world to me. When you don’t come home on time, I start to get confused about, you know, whether you do love me and I, I, I love the benefit of the doubt. I’m gonna sprinkle that in there. Or you can say like, I know you do love me, but sometimes, sometimes it feels like I get confused and I, it being together would mean so much to me.
I love being close to you. Whoa. Okay. Let’s pause and check in with him now. Right. So we used to send him a message that says, you’re not doing it right, you’re wrong. You’re always home late. Hmm. Okay. We escalated that to a better place where we go I need you to come home on time. That’s a little bit better, because now he’s not hearing the, he’s just piece of garbage and doing it wrong.
And then we go next level and we sprinkle him that attachment where we actually send him a message that. No, no, no, no, no. It’s not that you’re getting it wrong. You’re actually everything that’s right in the world for me, and I wanna be with that more often. I’m inviting, I’m taking criticism to invitation.
It’s a totally different thing, but you’re, you’re doing the same thing. You’re communicating what you need, and honestly, you’re actually communicating what you need. When you criticize, you’re missing so much of the picture. We call this concept congruent communication. How you actually feel, what you actually need is congruent with what you’re actually speaking.
Monica: Yeah.
I’m just, I’m saying yeah, because like I, I can look back and think, a lot of the times when it sounds like you’re criticizing or you’re withdrawing over a certain thing, it does not match what’s really going on. What really is the problem and the needs that are not being met on both sides.
Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. And you, you look at withdraw too. Like we can take that example. I don’t know how to show up for, let’s say her cuz we’re going along that same example. I don’t know how to show up for her. I’m gonna withdraw. Okay. So maybe there’s two parts in here. One is, hey, I wanna show up better for you.
Sometimes I, I don’t know how this has been my pattern. I learned how to do this as a kid, but I want to break it because I love you. Right? We’re coming back to the attachment. You are important to me. I might not have the, but just so you know, I want to be there for you. I want to listen. And then, you know, just, just engaging.
I think about the two words that go with criticism and withdraw. The opposite of criticism is usually invitation and softening
Monica: Okay.
Trevor: and withdraw is, is engage is kind of really the biggest word. Just, just engage. Just stay. Yeah, and yeah. Yeah, just trying and, and you know, there’s, there’s kind of moves to engage.
Like if you do feel a little bit more withdrawn, like, I don’t know what to say. Well, can I be empathetic and like just validate what my partner’s saying? Like I might not agree with their stance. That doesn’t matter at all. Their stance is their stance, and if they’re feeling a particular way, all you can do is say, okay, how in my mind can I make sense of what they’re going through?
Oh, okay. If X, Y, and Z were true, then that that makes sense. You know, if I really didn’t care about them then of course, you know, they would feel so alone and, and abandoned when I’m not home. You know, when I say I’m gonna be home or I don’t show up to events, like yeah, they must really feel like I don’t love them.
Obviously that’s not true, but I can validate that. Ah, I can see how that’d be really lonely. I’m so sorry that that’s happening. Tell me more, tell me more. Is one of my favorite phrases. You’re, cuz that is getting into the bottom of the cycle. In the top, you’re really trying to avoid it. You’re like, how?
What’s the quickest way to get this done? I’m gonna shut down, withdraw, avoid all this stuff. I’m gonna get critical and we miss all of the information. But if you slow down, even just like, even if you don’t know what to say and you’re like, Trevor, this is a lot, I don’t remember any of this. Well, you can just remember like gentleness and curiosity are your friend.
If you just stay gentle and curious. , you naturally will start to do the things that are the opposite of the disconnecting cycle.
Monica: For me why that is, when I think about the disconnecting conflict, the root is really fear,
Trevor: Yeah.
Monica: really broke that down for us with what’s going on on the bottom half of the cycle. And the root of connecting conflict is love. Because of those, those traits of arriving with gentleness and curiosity, as you know, being there to understand and to be understood is feels a whole lot different than the reverse.
So. I am imagining there are women who, this has been such a chronic pattern in their marriage, however long their marriage has been. This is so helpful. But they’re also like, so how do I get started? Do I start by having a really big, long conversation about what’s under the surface or what, what, where do I go from here?
Trevor: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question. If you’re in chronic conflict and you feel like a conversation about what’s below the surface will create more conflict cuz you’re just not quite there yet. Explore it on your own first. Take time just to get curious. Drought of figure eight, I mean.
Not to plug my own resource, but I do have a free, like little mini workshop
Monica: Plug away.
that
We need, we need that.
Trevor: well you can, you can find a little mini workshop on this where I could basically teach the same principle and I have a worksheet that will guide you through how do I deconstruct my negative cycle.
It’s a smaller portion of the connection course, which is my kind of flagship course for helping couples to decrease conflict and increase connection. And it’s actually all meant to be taken individually cuz I know that sometimes. Partners don’t want to, don’t want to jump in there. You’re not quite there yet, but if you can change at least one half of the cycle, you’ve changed 50% of the problem.
That is huge. Right? Like, wow, I don’t even have, my partner will never go to therapy. They never agree. Like, you know, you know, they don’t show up right now. Hmm. Okay. Well you have 50% of the challenge, right? Where you have influence on this, it doesn’t mean, again, that you’re responsible for your partner’s reactions and all that other stuff, but if you can start to look at, oh, what are my disconnecting behaviors and what are the messages that I’m sending to my partner?
And what are potentially the more loving messages my partner’s trying to send, but they’re just not doing a good job at it, you know, because we, we both don’t do a very good job sometimes at sending messages. I criticize. You withdraw, I get defensive, you blame. And it’s like, wow, really? We’re trying to get somewhere.
We love each other. We’re still on the same team. We chose each other for a reason. But yeah, getting curious and making maybe guesses. Maybe you can’t quite introduce your partner to this topic yet. Maybe you can maybe just send ’em this podcast and like, Hey, I wanna talk about this. I wanna think about this.
I think this could help us do that. But I say, start with you. Just start with you. That is a huge, that that can make huge, huge benefits as you do that, and then watch for it when you wanna get critical, when you wanna withdraw, stay engaged, get soft, get gentle. Listen for what are the messages I’m receiving from this person?
Is that what they’re trying to send me? What am I sending them? Is that what I’m trying to send them? Can I stop? Can I hit the brakes and say, hold on. I think I’m sending you the wrong message right now. What I really wanna send you is that I love you a and maybe that’s it, right? Maybe it’s not as complicated and flowery and whatever.
It doesn’t have to be. It’s just like, I love you and it hurts to be disconnected. Whoa. That can put the brakes on a really heated conversation pretty quickly.
Monica: It brings it back. To me too, what you just said. You know, starting with just understanding our own half of this negative cycle, our own figure eight can help us with the awareness piece and also how to arrive to it with that gentleness and curiosity because we understand better so we can calm ourselves down better as we arrive too a conflict. Beautiful.
Trevor: yes, yes. And a, a big part of that also is, I mean, we haven’t even touched on this, but exploring attachment history. Like how did I grow up? What were the influences around love? How, you know, were people there to comfort me when I needed it Was one of my parents highly anxious and therefore, you know, maybe not emotionally present as well as they could be.
And some people think like, I got a great childhood. My parents are so nice and loving and they’re awesome. And, and that can be totally true. And at the same time, you can have experiences that change your perception of love, and maybe you are as a present day, you know, adult human overcompensating for these negative beliefs that you have constructed in childhood.
And I, I say that you don’t have to have a crazy childhood in order to have these happen because you look. . So as, and a lot, a lot of the attachment is actually formed before conscious memory. So what you remember it, it kind of helps in ways cuz it gives you context for like, you know, if mom and dad were this way when I was, you know, six, they’re probably that way when I was, you know, two.
Children, babies in particular, they get cues for connection by things like eye contact, you know, returning smiles just some sort of mirror reflecting that says, I’m here with you. I see you, I got you. And if they have that really consistently, then there’s this kind of core belief that starts to form that says, Easily accessible.
It’s readily available. I have a lot of self-worth. These people value me and I can have my needs met. My goodness. A baby connection is literally lifeblood. If you don’t have connection, you’re not gonna eat, you’re not gonna change yourself. You’re not gonna have any of that. So it’s really, really, In ways traumatizing for kids if they don’t have that.
And this could be as simple as, let’s say mom was just really, really anxious, and so she’s, you know, maybe got a bunch of kids too. Like, let’s give her all the compassion and benefit of the doubt and the world. You know, maybe she’s, she’s picking you up and running around and cleaning up and hardly ever making eye contact.
Maybe you’re upset and she, she can’t really be there for you in the ways that, that you need or, or maybe dad is just really emotionally unavailable cuz he’s just working so much, he’s busting his back to help this family. Or maybe he didn’t have, you know, emotional connection growing up. He doesn’t know how to do it.
His stonewall shuts down all that, right? My goodness. You’re getting all these messages to your little developing brain that say, hold on love. You have to qualify for it, or it’s not readily available. or all of those things, and they can affect you to become more anxious, more independent, and avoidant like, Hey, I gotta take care of myself cuz I don’t know if people are gonna be there for me.
So looking back at your history a bit, it can also be really helpful and giving you clues to like, oh, where does this come from? From a place that’s not angry and rude to yourself where you’re like, I always criticize, I’m such an.
Monica: Hmm.
Trevor: Okay. That’s actually not effective, so quit doing that because it doesn’t actually explain what’s happening if you stop the story at, I do this because I’m an idiot.
I did a video on this today where it’s like riding your bike through nails and then through mud, and then blaming the mud for your flat tires when. In reality, what’s under the surface, which is found through compassion and curiosity is why you’re doing this stuff. It’s not cuz you’re a bozo, you’re an idiot, you’re stupid.
You’re ever gonna get this right or you’re a bad person. That is not the explanation. That is not the explanation. And if you stop saying that, you’re one step closer to at least finding the explanation and finding it takes a lot of compassion, love, and curiosity towards yourself and your own.
Monica: And that’s what I hope. Those who are listening can have the courage it takes to have that compassion and that curiosity to, to be willing to go to the things that are deeper and often harder and more uncomfortable to look at seemingly, but in the long run, not like this is what will pay for a beautiful connective relationship.
Trevor: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. And, and you know what? I, I empathize with those who, you know, are really harder themselves and they say like, I’m a terrible person. Or they chalk it up to some character flaw and just end there because that sometimes that feels like accountability. You know? It’s like, oh, I gotta be account.
I value that, and that’s beautiful. That comes from a good place. I value being accountable for what I do, and if I can say I’m an idiot, that feels like I’m accountable. Well in, at the end of thi, at the end of the day, you’re not actually being accountable because you’re not being accountable for the whole reason.
There’s, there’s no power behind that. And you also, maybe on the other hand, sometimes it feels like it’s justice. Like, oh, if I told myself I’m an idiot, Good. Like justice has been served to me. It’s, it’s pseudo justice. It doesn’t actually make any sense. You will not stop the crime. Right. And I say a crime that’s kind of harsh, but like it’s a crime against your relationship when you’re.
You know, in this disconnecting pattern doesn’t, again, doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means that you have some unresolved fears, maybe insecurities, trauma, what have you, that can explain why you do this. When you have an explanation, you have a path forward. When you don’t have one, you’re stuck in the cycle.
Monica: It’s so interesting, Trevor, because I, I, I primarily work with women for their fulfillment and their habits, but we have to start with identity. And as part of that, it’s this, cuz there’s always, there’s a reason you are not showing up to the laundry. Like, or, you know, there’s, there’s always something deeper and.
That small way of me understanding this. And, you know, within my own marriage too, I just really hope again, that we can come back to please be willing to try and just start with what Trevor said is, is start with yourself be aware of your own cycle and map it out. We’ll make sure we link to the resource that you, that you have.
. I, I would like to know where you want people to go, who are like, I actually want, like, all of it. I, I want the, the whole course. I, I want everything that Trevor teaches. Where should they go?
Trevor: absolutely. Well, I’ll give you one, one link that will have everything that you need. It, as a therapist, you’re limited by location on who you can see.
And so if you’re looking for a therapist and you’re in the state of Utah, Hawaii, and some international locations, I can help you there. But within that same link, it’s the full stack. If you got this free resource, you got access to the connection course, which will be transitioning a little bit into like a built-in community.
So if. Where you can actually get support from other people. I’ll be on there. We’ll be doing like weekly podcasts from other experts on topics that the community is asking questions about, because I know it’s intimidating to buy a course and then be like, well, I’m a freak. I’m like, alone in this.
Like, I have all this great information and I have no follow up. How, how do I do this? And so I’m trying to solve that problem. So that’s kind of in the, in the making. Yeah, so that is where you can find all of that. It’s just that, that one link.
Monica: Okay, so we’ll just say, look in the show notes that will be there, or go to Trevor’s Instagram profile and you’ll see
Trevor: Yeah. And that’s just at the Art of Healing by Trevor.
Monica: Okay. I love how simple that is. This has been wonderful. Thank you for being so willing to share your expertise with us today and I’m, I’m really appreciative of your time.
Trevor: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
