Foreplay listeners, join us today for a lesson on emotions! In this installment of our ‘Love School’ series George and Laurie are letting listeners in on the meaning of emotions and how we can lean into our feelings to improve our love life. There are 5 universally recognized emotions and behind each emotion lies a longing or need. In relationships miscommunication occurs because our non-verbal signals display these emotions well before our verbal communication has a chance to catch up. Go behind the science of emotions and communication with us today and learn how to repair when a bid for physical intimacy begins to go wrong. There is a depth of emotion to explore in s*x and this episode will give you actionable steps to having better conversations. Have you liked our lessons on love? Let us know by leaving a rating/review wherever you listen to our podcast and give us a follow on Instagram @foreplay_sextherapypodcast
Show Notes
Understanding the Five Basic Emotions
– Overview of the five basic emotions: joy, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and sadness.
– Explanation of action tendencies and impacts of each emotion on partners.
– The necessity of embracing all emotions for a vital relationship.
Emotions as the Language of Attachment
– Discussion on how emotions influence behavior and communication in intimate relationships.
– The paradox of joy and the difficulty some individuals face in genuinely expressing happiness.
– Explanation of TEMPO as a framework for managing emotions in relationships.
Communication and Misinterpretation in Relationships
– Examples of how emotions can lead to confusion and mixed signals between partners.
– Importance of clear communication and the risks of dismissing or ignoring emotions.
– Laurie’s personal anecdote on stress and rejection of a partner’s advances, and the ensuing negative cycle.
George Faller’s Perspective on Rejection and Protection
– George’s narrative on feeling rejected and its impact on him and the relationship.
– Discussion on protective responses and how they can be counterproductive.
– Role of therapists and the resources available for them at successandvulnerability.com.
Strategies for Better Emotional Communication
– The significance of acknowledging and discussing emotions in partnerships.
– Introducing the “I” and “oil” approach for vulnerability and understanding needs.
– Role-play scenario demonstrating effective emotional communication.
Transcript
Speaker Ads [00:00:00]:
I’m Lucy Fink, and this is the real stuff, a weekly podcast series where we lean into some of the world’s most taboo topics. In each episode, guests will share intimate details about their sex lives, their finances, and their innermost thoughts. And I want to bring you on the show. Visit lucyfink.com slash apply for a chance to call in as an anonymous guest. Let’s get to the real stuff, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Joe Davis – Announcer [00:00:24]:
The following content is not suitable for.
George Faller [00:00:26]:
Children to understand this theory of love. Laurie, we must understand emotions.
Laurie Watson [00:00:33]:
Ooh, George. I want to understand emotions. And I want to understand emotions in ooh, yeah. Welcome to foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.
George Faller [00:00:47]:
And I’m George Faller, a couple’s therapist.
Laurie Watson [00:00:49]:
We are here to talk about sex.
George Faller [00:00:52]:
Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate their body, their mind, and their hearts.
Laurie Watson [00:00:59]:
And we have a little bit of fun doing it.
George Faller [00:01:01]:
Right, g listen, and let’s change some relationships. Emotions are what is an emotion? Let’s start off there. It’s just a signal. It’s your body saying something’s happening. For better or worse, pay attention to it. It’s just giving us information. I think it’s pretty logical to listen to the information. Don’t mean you have to act on it, but it’s just trying to inform us.
Laurie Watson [00:01:22]:
Yeah, I love that, that so many of us, we don’t even pause to hear it as information. We do act on it. So what are emotions? It seems like this huge array of things that I might feel.
George Faller [00:01:38]:
Well, again, there’s so many theories out there going from five to hundreds of emotions. And who knows? We’re not God. We don’t know exactly, but we do know the five basic emotions that if you show these faces anywhere on the planet, everybody recognizes these emotions. So that’s where I usually like to start with. I think there’s lots of variations within it, nuanced.
Laurie Watson [00:02:00]:
But what are the five basic ones?
George Faller [00:02:02]:
So you have joy.
Laurie Watson [00:02:04]:
I like joy.
George Faller [00:02:06]:
Anger.
Laurie Watson [00:02:07]:
Ooh, that’s not as easy.
George Faller [00:02:09]:
Fear.
Laurie Watson [00:02:10]:
Bad.
George Faller [00:02:11]:
Shame. Guilt.
Laurie Watson [00:02:12]:
Worse.
George Faller [00:02:15]:
Sadness.
Laurie Watson [00:02:18]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:02:18]:
You saw the movie inside out.
Laurie Watson [00:02:21]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:02:21]:
Well, for the listeners who haven’t, here’s a plug. The main gist, without a spoiler alert is that all five of these emotions are important, that people that live with all five of these emotions and can embrace it have the greatest, most vitality in their lives. If I grew up in a family where I didn’t do sadness, I didn’t do anger, well, guess what? It was harder for me when those things happen, to know what to do with them or to know what to do with other people. So the goal is to be able to do all five of them.
Laurie Watson [00:02:49]:
Okay. The goal is to do all five of them. And what do they feel like? Help us. What happens for each of us?
George Faller [00:02:58]:
Well, if we break them down, every one of these emotions have an action tendency, something they want to kind of make us do, and they’re trying to get a response. So if I’m angry, that anger, protest is trying to grab attention. It wants to create change. It’s trying to motivate something. Right. There’s health in that anger, but then there’s also fear. Right. It also makes people intimidated and not safe, and it could be counterproductive.
George Faller [00:03:22]:
So we’re always trying to separate intent and impact. What’s the intent of this emotion, and what’s the impact on your partner?
Laurie Watson [00:03:29]:
Right. I want something. I’m trying to get attention or draw attention to something, something that I might need or want changed. But the problem is with anger, oftentimes, it causes fear in my partner. They want to go away from me. It’s not good.
George Faller [00:03:44]:
Yes. And that’s what we’re trying to help partners see, like, just how quick these emotions are. If your body wants to seize a threat and it wants to protest, but your protest impacts your partners. Now, they get scared by the anger, and their protection is to move away. It don’t matter what you’re saying. That game’s over in a couple of seconds. Right? So we’re just trying to befriend these emotions, know what works and what the risk is. So, sadness, we’ll go for the next emotion.
George Faller [00:04:11]:
Sadness pulls people closer. Right. It’s looking for comfort and reassurance. But if you were raised the way I was, to avoid these emotions. When I see my wife’s tears, it doesn’t make me want to come closer. It makes me want to go away, because they’re my fault. So how people interpret emotions might be different than how that person’s actually experiencing them.
Laurie Watson [00:04:33]:
Yeah. So things can get crossed in between.
George Faller [00:04:36]:
Exactly.
Laurie Watson [00:04:37]:
I may be sending one message or think I’m sending a message, and either I’m wrong. When I’m sending anger, I’m sending what I think is a message for change, but it gets twisted up in my partner. And if I’m sending sadness, I’m actually asking for something, wanting my partner to come close. And you’re right. I think sometimes tears are confusing. I don’t know what that means. Sometimes people think tears are manipulative. Tears are scary.
George Faller [00:05:07]:
I blame myself, which is why it’s all about sending clearer signals. Most couples are sending these mixed, confusing signals and they don’t know how to articulate to get their partner to understand. And that’s what we’re trying to slow it down. So the next one would be fear. Fear is another one of those emotions that it’s looking for reassurance. Right. I’m threatened. I want help.
George Faller [00:05:31]:
But a lot of times my fear causes me to do something that my partner doesn’t get the signal. Like, I don’t know how to share it, so I hide it or it turns into anger. Right. But that fear. Fear is very healthy. I mean, it makes us cautious because we want to feel safe.
Laurie Watson [00:05:48]:
So I need my partner to offer reassurance when I’m fearful. And I may not be able to send that clearly because I’m not asking.
George Faller [00:05:57]:
For it or I’m afraid it’s not going to be responded to. So the best thing I could do, I don’t want you to use this against me. My fear is I’m unlovable. I’m not attracted to you. So I don’t want to share that and have you reject me further. So I keep it to myself.
Laurie Watson [00:06:11]:
Right.
George Faller [00:06:12]:
And when we keep these emotions to ourself, it leads to more of these confusing signals.
Laurie Watson [00:06:17]:
Yeah. Okay.
George Faller [00:06:18]:
The last two are guilt and shame, which is I’ve done something wrong and how do I make amends? But a lot of times, my way of making amends is to hide. That’s what shame tries to get me to do. The difference between guilt, I did something wrong and shame, I am wrong. To me, shame is hell. Right? I’m cut off from relationship, and I hate myself in that relationship. So nobody really does super well with that. But again, so many people are struggling with shame, and the antidote to shame is connection, and they can’t get the very thing that they need.
Laurie Watson [00:06:53]:
What’s our last one?
George Faller [00:06:54]:
Joy.
Laurie Watson [00:06:55]:
Yay.
George Faller [00:06:56]:
Yay, joy.
Laurie Watson [00:06:58]:
This is actually a hard one to express sometimes.
George Faller [00:07:00]:
Yeah.
Laurie Watson [00:07:01]:
My husband’s family was not good with joy. Exuberance was smashed down and smothered, and so he learned to be very contained about his enthusiasm and his joy.
George Faller [00:07:14]:
Yeah. And a lot of people mask other emotions with a smile. They pretend everything’s perfect while they hide. They put that face on that’s not genuine because that’s what they’ve learned to survive.
Laurie Watson [00:07:25]:
Right. Sometimes we fake it. We’re faking joy.
George Faller [00:07:29]:
The science is really clear to research. If you chase joy if that’s the only emotion you want to have, you’re going to be a pretty unhappy person. It’s about the range and being present with what is and be able to lean into all five of these different emotions. But I guess what I wasn’t ready for, and I want to prepare our listeners for, is just the speed of these emotional triggers. They’re designed to be fast. So if I’m walking in a trail with my wife, and I was just in Australia with some of the most dangerous animals in the world, I mean, it’s not only, like, alligators and the sharks and the snakes and the spiders, scorpions, but actually, the plants can kill you. So I was like, normally not too nervous about these things. I was a little bit more vigilant.
George Faller [00:08:14]:
When I make a turn and I see something moving the grass, it’s like one 10th of a second. Does my brain notice there’s a threat? That’s how quick we are. It takes six tenths of a second, six hundredths of a millisecond to do what we call a second appraisal, where it goes from my limbic amygdala region of my old brain to the frontal Cortex of my new brain, where I can do a second appraisal. And sometimes the second appraisal says, you know what? Wait, that wasn’t a snake. That was a leaf blowing. Not a big deal. Well, what’s the problem? The half a second lag time between the first and second appraisal. Because if my wife is with me, how quick does she see my face?
Laurie Watson [00:08:57]:
Very quick.
George Faller [00:08:58]:
One 10th of a second, she says to me, what?
Laurie Watson [00:09:01]:
What’s wrong?
George Faller [00:09:02]:
I say, nothing. What does she believe your face? What do I believe? What I just said? Yeah.
Laurie Watson [00:09:10]:
Hard to feel it, right?
George Faller [00:09:12]:
This is the mixed signals that are being sent. I’m working with a couple. I say, how’s it going? Husband says, I think it’s been good. Boom. That word good is a trigger for that other brain. You better be ready. That wife’s going to jump in and say, good. What do you mean, good? We haven’t talked the whole damn week.
George Faller [00:09:29]:
What are you lying here for? The George? And he’s like, boom. These triggers are so fast.
Laurie Watson [00:09:34]:
And he’s like, it was good because we didn’t talk. There was no fight. That was good.
George Faller [00:09:38]:
They have different realities. Good was no fighting. She wasn’t good for her at all. And that one word lights both of them up.
Laurie Watson [00:09:45]:
Exactly.
George Faller [00:09:46]:
So we want you all to listen to emotions. They’re wise. A lot of us have been grown up saying, they’re hysterical, they’re pathologized. Don’t listen to them. Like, be calm and logical. Logic is important, but these emotions are the vehicle of change that we want to use. It’s given us the information we need. That’s telling us, one, what the problem is, and two, what the solution to the problem is.
George Faller [00:10:08]:
We need emotion to give us that. If we lose the emotion, we lose the solution.
Laurie Watson [00:10:13]:
Yeah, this is kind of what you’re talking about, is if we can feel it, then we can kind of take that pause.
George Faller [00:10:20]:
Yes.
Laurie Watson [00:10:21]:
If we’ll give ourselves permission to know what’s going on inside, know what’s happening in our body, what our thoughts are telling us, and what it feels like, we can have a pause. We can know something. We can take the information, and then we have a minute to choose how we express it. Do we reach? Do we blast? What do we do with this? What’s important to do to get the result that we want in our relationship?
George Faller [00:10:46]:
Yeah, exactly. And I love that you’re mentioning paying attention to your body, because we have a saying, body in, body out. Whenever there’s emotion, there’s always a physiological response. If there’s a threat, your body is going to notice that, and it’s going to be embodied somewhere. So trying to get people to listen to that, if you want to get good information, where do you feel that fear? When you’re criticized, you feel that in your stomach. You feel that in your chest. If you listen to the fear, you could also start to access the longing. Like, I feel scared in my stomach, like, I’m in trouble, I did something wrong.
George Faller [00:11:22]:
And if I listen to that stomach, it’s trying to say, no, it’s going to be okay. You’re not a bad guy. I still want you. That’s the longing in the emotion. We got to go to the body to find these answers. And if we’re disconnected from our body again, this is why we’re sending these confusing, mixed signals to our partners. To our partners.
Laurie Watson [00:11:41]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:11:42]:
And ourselves.
Laurie Watson [00:11:43]:
And ourselves.
George Faller [00:11:44]:
Yeah.
Laurie Watson [00:11:44]:
Right. When the guy shuts down and says everything’s all good, he kind of believes that even though maybe inside his body says it’s not all good.
George Faller [00:11:52]:
Right.
Laurie Watson [00:11:53]:
I kind of got a pit in my stomach. I’m anxious. I hope it’s good.
George Faller [00:11:57]:
I don’t know. We’re not blaming anybody for the moves they have. These are all adaptive strategies to survive, and most of us just don’t know what we do because it moves too fast. When my wife criticizes and you ask me how that is. I’m like, yeah, it’s fine. That’s no big deal, because I’ve been trained to make it no big deal my whole life. That doesn’t mean somewhere deep down there isn’t something happening that I just don’t notice. But all of our work is trying to be more intentional, being more present.
George Faller [00:12:24]:
Like, listen to your signals, because it gives you more to work with.
Laurie Watson [00:12:28]:
Right. And this relates to attachment because emotions are information about what’s happening inside us. And if we can understand them better, we have more choice about how we express them. And that creates, hopefully, that little moment, that pause when we make a choice that will draw our partner to us instead of pushing them away, creates more attachment.
George Faller [00:12:54]:
Beautiful emotion is the language of attachment. If you want to ace this love.
Laurie Watson [00:13:02]:
College school of you want to get.
George Faller [00:13:05]:
Straight a’s, learn this language of love.
Laurie Watson [00:13:08]:
Okay, let’s come back and talk about the language of love, the emotions in bedroom.
George Faller [00:13:22]:
All right, so to really break down this process that’s so quick, no wonder why people send these confused signals, right? We want to slow it down, and we want to start to assemble clearer messages. So, Laurie, tell us how we’re going to do that.
Laurie Watson [00:13:39]:
Okay, so we’re going to use an acronym in school. Lots of acronyms. Oil. Tempo. This is number two for the school of love. Tempo. T-E-M-P-O-T is for the trigger. E is for our emotions.
Laurie Watson [00:13:52]:
M is for the meaning that we make out of this incident that’s happening to us. P is for how we protect ourselves, and o is how we organize it with our partner.
George Faller [00:14:02]:
Yep.
Laurie Watson [00:14:02]:
Okay, so I want to think about this in sex, George, and let’s just say my partner comes home and he’s in a place he wants to have sex. And for whatever reason, I am done for my day. Too much going on. I’m distracted, can’t think about it.
George Faller [00:14:17]:
And he comes in and want to read that book.
Laurie Watson [00:14:20]:
I want to read that book on attachment. Yeah, I’m sure. Okay, so he comes in and says, hey, baby, what do you think? What do you think? Right? And I go, I just haven’t thought about it all day. Really? I’m sorry. I’ve had such a big day. I just can’t do that. And then his face looks angry, upset, mad, let down.
George Faller [00:14:48]:
I’m having my own triggers here, Laurie. I have a headache. I’m too tired. These are all the words that set this thing into motion, right? So Laurie’s trigger, go for it. Okay, his face.
Laurie Watson [00:14:58]:
Yeah, his face is my trigger. And so I start to feel something about that, and I make up a meaning about it, about what’s happening. I don’t really know what is happening in him, not really, because I can’t mind read, maybe I’ve done this cycle a bunch of times. So I think I know what’s happening, but I don’t know. And so emotionally, though, for me, I’m really anxious. I think we’re headed for a fight. I think I’ve been down this road before, and it’s like, oh, shoot.
George Faller [00:15:25]:
Where do you feel that anxiety?
Laurie Watson [00:15:27]:
Yeah, I feel it in my stomach. Absolutely. I’m just like, here we go. I’ve got not the good butterflies, but the bad spinning in my stomach, starting to feel sick.
George Faller [00:15:39]:
Remember, every trigger has a physiological response. Even if you can’t feel it, it’s there. Keep trying. You’ll get it. You can feel laurie. That thread is in her stomach.
Laurie Watson [00:15:48]:
And our body responds faster than our mind can kind of collect.
George Faller [00:15:52]:
This whole thing takes less than a second.
Laurie Watson [00:15:54]:
And that’s why we want to know and have intelligence about our bodies, because then we get the shot at having a pause, knowing what to do with all this emotion.
George Faller [00:16:03]:
Precisely.
Laurie Watson [00:16:03]:
Yeah. And I tell myself, okay, he’s mad at me. I always let him down. I’m basically not good enough in bed. I’m not a good enough partner because I’m never up for it when he’s up for it. So I’m failing. I am failing. And then what do I do to protect myself? I mean, basically I’m just going to roll my eyes.
Laurie Watson [00:16:26]:
That’s how I protect myself. I kind of do this. Go away, move away. It’s like, roll over, right? I’m at the table, just for the record, when he says this. Well, okay, but I’m going to roll my eyes and I’m going to go back to work, right? Which shuts him out and hopefully shuts out the big fight that I thought was coming. And that’s my protection.
George Faller [00:16:48]:
You’re finding safety through not engaging.
Laurie Watson [00:16:50]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:16:51]:
Right. So that o is trying to help you understand your own experience. That happens so quickly, right. You don’t even see it coming. He says, hey, you want to have sex and you don’t want to have sex. You’re not in a mood, and boom, you get this message. You’re failing. You feel that in your stomach, and that sucks.
George Faller [00:17:07]:
And you protect yourself by going away because you don’t want to make things worse. And you get away from that feeling, too, which also helps.
Laurie Watson [00:17:13]:
Right? I get a double benefit.
George Faller [00:17:15]:
Double benefit.
Laurie Watson [00:17:16]:
I kind of push it away from myself. Now I can focus again, back on my work, what I really want to finish on the computer. So I’m okay. And I’ve pushed him away. So he stomps off and it’s like, oh, well, I’ll deal with that another day. And I’m not going to deal with the fight right now. I have two Benny’s.
George Faller [00:17:32]:
And you look at my perspective, I’m in a good place. I’m reaching out. I’m taking a risk. I’m, like, thinking, we’re going to have sex, and you’re telling me no, right. And immediately that becomes a trigger. I can feel that rejection in my chest. It’s like, here we go again. It actually hurts to put yourself out there only to be kind of pushed aside.
George Faller [00:17:52]:
So I can feel that in my chest. And how I make sense of it is you just don’t care. Right? You’re rejecting me again. This isn’t fair.
Laurie Watson [00:18:00]:
Don’t care about your needs. Don’t care about you.
George Faller [00:18:03]:
Exactly. And then my protection kicks in where I want to communicate that I want to let you know. Yeah, there you’re going, and you’re never really in the mood.
Laurie Watson [00:18:10]:
Right?
George Faller [00:18:10]:
I mean, this is the problem. You don’t want to address this stuff. You’re not doing your own work. You didn’t read the book I left for you. And again, my brain is going to look for all examples of evidence to make my case that you have a problem here you need to fix. Right. And I don’t communicate any of that stuff underneath about me feeling rejected or what’s going on in my chest. And all that stuff gets left out of the equation.
Laurie Watson [00:18:31]:
Yeah. And so you inside, you’re feeling what, rejection. In your body. Where did you say you felt it?
George Faller [00:18:39]:
In your body? Chest.
Laurie Watson [00:18:40]:
Your chest. What does it feel like in your chest?
George Faller [00:18:43]:
It’s like a stabbing pain. It’s like, oh, it’s just like a knife to your heart. Exactly.
Laurie Watson [00:18:49]:
Knife to your chest.
George Faller [00:18:50]:
Yeah.
Laurie Watson [00:18:52]:
Like your lover is killing you.
George Faller [00:18:55]:
No, not good.
Laurie Watson [00:18:57]:
Not good. And then you let her know.
George Faller [00:19:01]:
I let her know. My yellow brain protests how unfair it is, and I send her another message that she’s failing. And her yellow brain, here’s another message of failing. And she don’t want to engage, and we’re in trouble.
Laurie Watson [00:19:15]:
Yeah. And in some ways, they are reading each other right. It’s just they don’t know what else to do. They don’t know how to let out these emotional feelings in ways that would actually help.
George Faller [00:19:27]:
Exactly.
Laurie Watson [00:19:28]:
Yeah. So this emotional language. If, let’s just say me. If I could feel the anxiety and say something about that, like, oof.
George Faller [00:19:39]:
It’s why emotions are the language of attachment is because they’re giving us the information we need if we want to have more success. This moves so fast. Laurie’s feeling like she’s failing. I’m feeling rejected, and neither one of us are talking about it. All we’re talking about is she doesn’t want to talk. And I’m angry and protesting. No wonder why we can’t repair. We continue to get lost in these conversations.
George Faller [00:20:05]:
So we go back to that oil acronym, right? We’re both focusing on the other. You’re focusing on disappointing me. I’m focusing on you rejecting me. None of us are talking about the I. The inside.
Laurie Watson [00:20:16]:
The inside, right.
George Faller [00:20:17]:
And when we could start talking about that and listening to the l, the longing, what do we need in that place? This is where couples learn to repair.
Laurie Watson [00:20:25]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:20:26]:
So what do you think you could say to me that could lead to a repair or what I would say to you?
Laurie Watson [00:20:31]:
I mean, I might have said, oh, honey, I am so sorry. I appreciate you asking, I really do. And I know it’s risky, and I know that when I’m not in the mood, we can go to a bad place. And I can already feel it in me. I’m feeling anxious just as I talked to you about this, because I don’t want to reject you.
George Faller [00:20:52]:
Right.
Laurie Watson [00:20:53]:
But I just got no juice, nothing left in me today, and I have to get this work done. I don’t want to have a fight with you. And so I feel this temptation just to shut down. And my stomach is feeling sick already. But I want to meet your need. I want to be there for you, but I want to be there for you when it works and I can actually be joyful with you. I don’t know, I guess I need you to tell me that it’s going to be okay if we don’t have sex tonight. I need reassurance that me not being in the mood right this second is not going to kill us.
George Faller [00:21:32]:
Well, I appreciate you letting me know what’s going on instead of walking away. And it is okay to not. I’m glad you don’t want to have sex. You don’t want to have. I just want to know that tomorrow night you will. There’s going to be a time when you’re going to want to circle back to this.
Laurie Watson [00:21:47]:
Sure.
George Faller [00:21:48]:
Right. And I do feel like, what are you going through? I feel like when you don’t want to have sex, and it doesn’t seem like you’re going to want to have sex. Then I start to feel rejected. I start to feel hopeless, and I start to feel, like, just really heavy and beaten down by this. And I guess I just need to hear from you that you do want me. You’re going to find the energy in the space that you do want this to. And if this isn’t just me, and I have a problem because I want sex all the time, it’s okay that I want sex.
Laurie Watson [00:22:25]:
Yeah. And I get it. I think it makes a lot of sense to me that you’re feeling rejected. I have been preoccupied. I’ve been busy, and I’ve kind of turned you down a lot lately. So I can see that it kind of feels hopeless, like I’m never going to be in it again. But I do want you. I do think you’re attractive.
Laurie Watson [00:22:44]:
I want to have the kind of sex that we can have. And I know it’s good. And I want to have that sex. And I can just tell you that. Look it, I’m almost at the end of this project. I’ll be done by tomorrow, this weekend. Let’s set time aside. Let’s go to a hotel.
Laurie Watson [00:22:59]:
Let’s just relax, take space, be together.
George Faller [00:23:04]:
Right? You got me. You had me at hello with that again. And notice, it’s so hard to have this conversation if you’re not listening to your emotions. If Laurie’s just going to walk away and I’m going to continue to be angry, we’re never going to make progress on this. That’s actually both of us avoiding our emotions, not listening to what’s going on. If you’re going to pass this college of love, you’ve got to take the time to do the work, to listen to your own emotional signals. They are so wise, they’re so important, and they’re going to lead you to where you need to be. It’s nature’s natural way of letting us know either it’s working or not working.
Laurie Watson [00:23:48]:
Right? So first, be aware of your triggers. Figure out your body, emotions, what you tell yourself. And look at how you protect yourself and then how that lands on your partner. And we really want the eye and oil, right? Instead of focusing on the other, we want you to focus on the inside. What do you feel and communicate that that is vulnerability.
George Faller [00:24:13]:
And the more you can communicate that with specificity, not just I’m mad or I’m hurt, like, get specific. See how Laurie said it’s like, it feels like I’m letting you down. I start to feel bad about myself. People that get more specific have more success, and the only way you’re going to get that is to spend time sitting and listening to these emotions. Unfortunately, so many of us grown up not listening to them. Right. And the good news is, never too late to learn how to do that.
Laurie Watson [00:24:40]:
I love that.
George Faller [00:24:41]:
So, everyone, thanks for listening.
Laurie Watson [00:24:43]:
Keep it hot.
George Faller [00:24:45]:
Yeah, baby.
Laurie Watson [00:24:46]:
Okay, so tell us about your cutting edge training that you’re doing on success and vulnerability.
George Faller [00:24:52]:
Laurie. We just keep pushing it. Coming up with a new module on the playbook of a pursuer, playbook of a witcher. Really practical moment by moment moves of what a therapist can use. We’re so focused on what’s happening in session. Enough this talk about theories and these global things I think most therapists are looking for. What do I do in this moment? Give me a tool, George. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Laurie Watson [00:25:18]:
That’s awesome. I am so glad you guys are doing this work. I think it helps us be organized to see you do it. You do demos, you do explanations, teaching. It really is interactive, and I think that so many trainings that we sit through don’t give us an opportunity for that. So what you’re doing is really important.
George Faller [00:25:37]:
No, we try to emphasize the teach it, show it, do it model of learning. You need to have some ideas. So we try to teach those, and then we try to show what it looks like implementing those ideas. But most importantly, you now got to practice it. That’s how they become yours. And that’s what we want our listeners and watchers to do, is become their own moves.
Laurie Watson [00:25:56]:
Find George and his teaching@successandvulnerability.com call in.
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