The Hidden Secrets to Why Your Relationships Fail | ft. Dr. Nima Rahmany Heal Thy Self w/ Dr. G #467

We don't fall in love with the other person,

we fall in love with the idealized version of ourselves

through their lens.

It's kind of like an unconscious deal

that the two of us make in codependency

is that I'm gonna be the mother that you didn't have

and you're gonna do the same for me.

In the initial phases of that codependency or trauma bonding,

it's just so addictive because you get that high,

you feel that sense of belonging, like finally,

I've met somebody that's going to help

quell that little insecure little boy inside

that feels like he's not lovable

and they're doing the same thing on the other side.

And eventually after that, for six months to a year

where that initial honeymoon phase is over,

something triggers you and now you've gone into

some sort of a disillusionment

where they aren't that fantasy

that you thought that they were going to be.

Essentially in codependency,

we don't fall in love with the other person,

we fall in love with the idealized version of ourselves

through their lens.

And then when it gets taken away,

we are so disillusioned

because the fantasy didn't turn out to be real.

So there's a crisis of disillusionment

that must happen for a relationship

to transcend that immature phase into the mature.

You've never been in a relationship

and you know you're sabotaging it

but you just can't stop, you can't overthink that text.

Where you pull away when it's getting too close

or you're picking fights or you want to cling tighter

when they just want to create space.

And maybe you've told yourself why am I like this?

At first it was magic that honeymoon phase

the chemistry, the connection.

And then boom, anxiety comes in,

power struggles, the shutdowns, the reactivity.

You didn't even know you had in you, you feel crazy.

That's your nervous system protecting you from old wounds.

And this is one of my favorite topics to talk about today.

I'm joined by Dr. Nima Romani.

He's a nervous system and attachment specialist

known for his work in shadow integration

and emotional healing.

And for more than two decades,

he studied the nervous system

and what it teaches us about healing the parts of us

that keeps sabotaging our relationships.

In this episode we break down,

what really ends that honeymoon phase?

Why power struggles are predictable?

How to set boundaries without losing connection?

And the actual formula for a secure, healthy relationship

whether you're single dating married,

we're healing from heartbreak.

This one will really land and maybe expose

something deep inside of you.

All right, everyone.

I am very excited to talk to Dr. Nima.

Dr. Nima is a nervous system attachment specialist

and a somatic psychology expert.

He's a former chiropractor, former chiropractor.

I want to welcome you to the show, man,

because I love the work that you do.

I love the work that you do.

You're about relationships, healing, attachments,

which is really hot.

I'm not talking about it.

But I don't think anyone on social media

is really getting to the core of what we're going to talk about.

And yours is to the lens of real nervous system healing.

Yeah, well, when people are coming to chiropractor's

naturopaths, doctors with health issues,

they don't first think about, when did they start?

And what kind of conflict was I going through at the time

that kind of emerged this dysfunction,

this dysregulation, this disease?

And so most of the time, I was noticing with patients,

people coming in with long-term chronic issues.

And when you asked them when did it begin,

it was coincided with some sort of a relational attachment

rupture, a divorce, betrayal, a grief of a loss in it.

And we don't know.

Our system doesn't know what to do about it.

And it starts a chain of events that leads to disease.

And so I was always curious, what happens if we just

go upstream and then learn how to heal relational conflict?

What would happen?

And my life changed, clients life changed.

So that's why I like focusing on the upstream root cause issue.

Well, we're also going to go.

I'm lazy, I want to just, I'm lazy.

Let's just go to the root, go upstream.

I got some quick questions for you.

I got some rapid fire ones.

Are you ready to be in a hot seat?

I'm ready.

OK, born ready.

A lot of people talk about their traumas and their issues.

It's an intellectual thing.

Why, in those cases, that there's a nervous system, not heal?

Everybody knows.

Everybody talks about their problems

from the lens of the story.

They did this to me.

My husband should be more alive.

He should value me more.

They should respect me more.

They did this.

They did this.

We stay in the level of the story.

And the story is a way for us

to regulate the emotional pain.

Let's call it the energy, the emotional energy

from those woundings.

And they stay, they're held in our body.

And they're very uncomfortable.

And they are dysregulating.

This is where our dysregulation comes from.

Those woundings, those ruptures in attachment from childhood,

they live in the body.

And because they're so painful, we escape up into our heads

to protect ourselves from that pain.

And then we stay in the level of the story.

And by telling the story, they did this to me.

I was betrayed.

My father abandoned me.

And we stay in that level.

And we get those parts validated.

At a therapist, it feels good for the moment.

Because now you're validating me.

You're reflecting me.

I get this hit of dopamine.

But I haven't gone beneath the surface.

To move that charge, that trauma, that life force energy

that is stored in the cells in our body.

We don't do anything to, we don't traditionally

do anything to move that energy through the body

so that we can release it.

So it stays stuck.

And we have this low grade alarm in the system

that stays in the background.

And no amount of homeopathic remedy or outside in type

of approach is going to address that until we go back there.

We have to go back there.

Awesome.

OK, we have to find a number two.

Why do high performing people usually

struggle in relationships?

Because what gets you very successful in business,

in performance, which is your ability

to compartmentalize emotions, to push through,

to kind of power through and force an outcome and use logic

to work your way through brilliant when it comes to work.

Putting aside your emotions and playing a role, playing

a character, in other words, playing this role

and playing this character in the corporate world

with clients on stages.

My clients are stages in intimate relationships.

You can't hide from those shadows.

They come out.

So what makes a successful in business actually hurts us.

It actually is destructive to intimacy, which

requires vulnerability.

So you become successful by hiding vulnerability.

But in relational dynamics, intimacy requires it.

So now we have a catch 22.

I love the way you said that, because it's so clear.

And it's so real.

And there's people viewing and listening.

Yeah, my husband or my wife is a high performer.

And all of this goes on in our relationship.

Well, it's like on stage in public,

you can put on a character.

But then what happens off stage, you can't hide from your wife.

I can't hide from my wife, my shadows.

She gets to see them.

And the split between my public persona and my private persona,

that the more the gap is between those two,

I call it the success anxiety paradox,

the more incongruence we have, the more fractured we

are from ourselves.

And it is in our health and our personal relationships

that will suffer the most.

Yeah, I love, because I'm sure you've heard that a lot

in partnership.

He or she doesn't go into the vulnerability.

I got another one.

Another rapid fire, boom, is people

pleasing a trauma response or a personality trait?

It's a trauma response that we develop into from childhood

that becomes a personality trait.

And it's extremely difficult to undo because it's reflexive.

You don't even know you're doing it.

It's cultural.

I mean, every Persian, I'm Persian, every Persian,

it's part of our culture too.

This word called tarof.

Tarof means kind of like conditioned cultural self abandonment.

You offer, I'm thirsty.

You offer me this water.

And I say no, because I want to be polite,

because cultural decencies.

But over time, it just becomes who I am.

So it becomes a personality trait.

So it is a trauma response.

What's the reason that in relationships

or around the people we love the most,

we're so quick to also abandon ourselves so fast?

We develop into this character.

We develop, these are great questions.

By the way, I love your questions

and I love the engagement around them.

If you as a child were in, receive the message

that you're authentic self, who you are,

your expression of your desires, your preferences,

your values, your beliefs, was not acceptable

to the people that raised you.

And that by expressing them,

it would jeopardize that connection.

Then you develop into a person that lives in a framework

that feels that love equals self abandonment.

That I can't have me and have you at the same time.

And so it becomes an identity that love means

that I must lose myself to be connected with you.

I cannot be me and experience love.

If my nervous system has an experience that,

then when I get older and I start going into a relationship,

I'm going to go back to that framework

that, oh, I really like this person.

I'm gonna obsess and orient towards what they're saying

or thinking and doing and what music they like.

And I'm just gonna, what music do you like?

Well, whatever you like.

So do you ever meet someone and think,

wow, they've really been through it.

And then realize we all have,

that's what we're all insane is all about.

It's a podcast where real people sit down

to share their stories that have shaped them.

The raw, unfiltered moments that don't usually

make it into everyday conversation.

There are no scripts, no interruptions and no filters.

Just honest storytelling that unfolds naturally.

From heartbreak and loss to recovery and resilience,

every episode is a reminder that even in our darkest moments

we're never really alone.

If you love hearing real stories that make you feel something,

stories that connect us all,

this is one you'll want to subscribe to.

You can listen to we're all insane

wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Sunday.

So it's love means self abandonment

and ultimately that's manipulation.

And it will be a devastating outcome

of you lose yourself to be with that other person.

I know that feeling sometimes.

All right, if last question, last hot tea question,

if someone doesn't repair their nervous system

before having children, will it pass on inevitably

to the children?

I believe that it will indirectly

because even, you know, I have a five-year-old

and I knew this.

So I knew that it was my the best way that I can serve him

was to create as safe of a relationship

with his mother as possible because I knew

that even in breastfeeding,

even while even when she's carrying him

in development in utero,

he's experiencing her nervous system

is downloading onto hits.

And so our nervous systems are contagious.

So if you're around a mother who's dysregulated,

who's got this background alarm, who's highly reactive,

then it's like the fish bowl of dirty water

that you're born into.

You don't know it's dirty water.

You just say it's water.

And until my clients, they leave that environment

and then they spend some time in purified water.

They don't even realize, wow,

it's just so unfamiliar to be in safety.

So I believe, yeah, it's going to, yeah, absolutely.

It's going to pass down.

Yeah, what a beautiful analogy.

Kids don't really realize that they're in that.

No, you don't know that it's just normal.

It's just, yeah, you don't know that

if there's constantly, like you're in a war zone

or it's just there's this dysregulation

and there's lack of safety

or the home is like a battlefield

because of mom and dad.

You've normalized that that's what it is.

And until you leave and then you go to another place,

you don't know that that was abnormal.

Like, I moved from Vancouver.

I moved from Vancouver to Victoria.

And as soon as you take the ferry from Vancouver

and you land in Victoria,

your nervous system goes,

and you don't even realize that you're on edge

until you leave, you know?

I feel when I leave LA every single time.

Exactly.

That's why you need, if you live in LA,

you need vacations.

You need vacations and I got one coming up next week.

So I'll be ahead of now.

Good, awesome.

Thank you for those, those, those answers.

They're just so concise and wise and viewers and listeners.

You know, that's just appetizer.

Really getting, feel we're getting the momentum going

so you can just see and feel really

these wisdom that's coming from you.

But for people who don't know your work,

tell us about what you do,

describe what you do and why is it so important right now

in medicine?

As a health care provider,

for 20 years, I was a chiropractor,

patients coming in with stress-related issues,

really, they're coming in with aches and pains,

but as you get to know them,

you probably get it there.

There's always a story around their symptoms, you know?

Whether it's a, you know, sports injury and accidents,

one thing, but there's chronic issues

that are developing, when did this happen?

Three years ago, what happened three years ago,

going through a divorce, I lost my mother.

So they saw these patterns of relational ruptures happening,

and then they develop chronic issues

on the other side of it.

So interestingly enough,

I went through my own divorce, 2013, got married in 2010,

divorced in 2012, 2013,

and I went through a series of failed,

eight, nine failed relationships after that,

leading to this one that was just an epic disaster zone.

I didn't know what a trauma bond was.

I didn't know what codependency was,

but it was a highly sexually charged relationship.

She helped me take my kind of, my methodology,

and then she reached out to me,

I started doing my methodology on her

that I was developing to help people

shift their perceptions of stress,

and we started a relationship after that.

Long story short, it was a highly toxic,

codependent relationship that over time started to become abusive.

And on March 11th, 2018, I did something

that I'm really embarrassed about after it,

during the middle of a five hour argument

where I was just trying to get some peace,

things escalated and I physically I slapped her,

and that was a wake up call for me and going, all right,

so how did I get here in this relationship?

How did I react in such a way that these hands

are used to heal people?

How is it that I can go from that

to actually becoming physical with my partner?

And I really wanted to make sure that,

how do I make sure that this never happens again?

I want to be able to trust myself

that no matter how many times I'm with somebody

who's pushing my buttons that I don't get to that level

where I dissociate and then react the way that I did.

And so as I did that,

I, the concept I studied polyvagal theory,

shadow work, nervous system regulation, attachment theory,

I just went deep into this, I stopped working

as a chiropractor anything for six months

and I just said, I got to figure this out.

And there the concept of becoming trigger proof was born.

And I thought, if I could do that,

can I have a relationship?

Can I have what I've never had before,

a relationship that I was all in with

that that feels secure?

And then I met my sweetheart Diana

and we had a beautiful sunborn September 21st, 2020.

He turned five just a few months ago

in the recording of this.

And now I teach other cycle breakers,

this concept of becoming trigger proof.

How to expand that space between stimulus and response

so that what you're reacting to,

you can take responsibility for

and thereby transform your relationship

from insecure dynamics to secure dynamics.

And then of course, entrepreneurs and professionals,

how to be able to have success in the workplace

and intimacy at home.

So that as you've talked about,

you don't have to compromise one for the other.

So I'm living, I'm living what I'm teaching.

So the work actually lives in my bones

of what I'm teaching, which is secure, polarized relationships,

rupture and repair.

And Pauli Vagel, what I call Pauli Vagel parenting,

raising a child who knows himself, who loves himself,

who expresses his authentic self

and doesn't have to put on a,

put on a, what do I call it?

Doesn't have to put on a character in order to be loved.

Yeah.

Can feel lovable for who he is, his authentic self.

That's the most important parenting out there

that we all needed growing up.

It's actually a healthcare consideration.

It's like everybody who's in there,

everybody who's in the medical system,

they're what I truly believe is that

this is why left-care practice is because

they're looking for love from the parents

that they didn't have.

So they project it onto doctors and practitioners.

It's like we're transferring, it's like I didn't receive that,

but if I can get that for that real parenting

that I didn't get from.

Yeah, you know, it's, and thank you for sharing

that vulnerable story, that part of your life

because oftentimes the things that we do that we're ashamed of,

and I have many, I have a whole list of them.

There's things that arise from that.

If we listen to that moment, you know,

if we face it.

If we face it and you were able to see what was arising

and say, well, how did that happen?

That is out of the, how did I get there?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then moving that shifting into bringing to life

something new, you talk about parenting

and, you know, we in the medical field,

I feel like we all have a patient

that has latched onto us.

And I was, it's crazy that you say this.

I was just the other day out of nowhere

one of my first patients I ever worked with.

I remembered her and it was, it was non-stop.

And I didn't have it.

Did she have a, did she have a,

papers, papers, did she come in with a,

she, they usually come in.

Multiple diagnosis.

They come in with, with, with their folder of medical stuff.

And I'm just, as soon as that comes in,

you know, that they're, they're projecting, you know,

I'm looking for a parent through the, the medical system.

Something was so unwell.

And I thought to myself, if I had the tools

as a practitioner now, maybe things might have been different.

But now I can see with that lens.

And I haven't visited this, in my mental,

this person for so long, maybe eight years, nine years.

And then it was, it was beautiful to see.

So you mentioning that it's, it's a little circle.

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Well, the thing is is that if your home life was so chaotic,

that the only time that you ever received love

was when something you were sick or you got into an accident,

guess what your unconscious is going to do

when you're in a low place, you're gonna get sick

and you're gonna get into accident.

So patients are coming to me again and again,

and I'm working on them.

And I'm just like, this is not it.

You get everyone, every practitioner that I know

who's at some point has been doing this

for more than 10 years, more than 20 years,

knows exactly what I'm talking about.

And I had to get out of the system

and then tell my story and then share really what the path is

and say, I only want to work with people

who are ready to take ownership,

not to become saved or rescued by somebody outside of them,

how to learn, how to become their own medicine.

That's the shift, that's the shift.

It is, I'm ready to step into that

because otherwise, not everyone is.

It's gonna be external nonstop.

Those are the ones that are just going from one doctor

doing it and maybe someone out there

is gonna save me.

Yeah.

All right, inter-relational stuff.

There is, you mentioned codependency in your experience.

A lot of people are codependent.

I just saw my friend upstairs.

He just got out of a codependent relationship.

People who aren't codependent relationships,

they may follow psychology pages

and watch some shows about therapy.

But what are they really missing in codependency?

What are they not seeing?

What is their pattern?

What's the energetic expression?

What's in the system?

What is the one thing that is like,

you're not really looking at this?

Yeah, great question.

Codependency is when the me gets engulfed by the we

is when I lose, when I live in a framework

and it feels, by the way, it feels great at first.

This is the problem, codependency in the early stages

that we can all look back in a time

where we literally lose ourselves into love

and it is very addicting.

It's this sense of belonging.

It's the child inside of us that lost connection

didn't feel seen, can now surrender

and just lose themselves and feel loved

and it's amazing.

And it's almost like there's no boundary

between me and we.

The me is gone.

And so this is where we have things like enmeshment

where emotional fusion happens.

Whatever your feeling comes into me.

So there is no me, there's just we.

What do we want, right?

So what are they missing?

They're missing a strong sense of self

that intimacy in order to be sustainable and healthy

requires a me, kind of like an interdependency,

that there's a me and a we,

that there's a duality of a me and a we,

which then serves something greater than ourselves.

And so what they're missing is a purpose

for the relationship that's greater than themselves.

Oh, I like that.

That's what's really missing.

If I can go to a really high level of your question,

what's missing is a purpose for the relationship

that's greater than themselves.

So in other words, I have a mission, all right?

There's my relationship to divinity first.

Then relationship to self and then the other.

Right, and so codependency is when the other

or the relationship becomes your divinity.

And so you lose yourself and there's all sorts of feedback

that the system will give you through depression,

through anxious attachment,

through the anxious avoidance that push pull

where the two are struggling between this need

for individuality and togetherness.

And we haven't really figured it out

unless you had a great model growing up

which who really did, not me,

you're gonna struggle with it.

Even if you're really smart, even if you're a doctor,

you're gonna still struggle with it.

Because an education isn't going to,

even a psych degree isn't gonna solve it.

It's facing your own shadows.

That's why I don't take advice from people who aren't,

if I'm hiring mentors or guides,

I'm looking, even business, even in business,

I wanna see how their wife looks at them.

Yeah.

That tells me more about the person,

how they're embodied than who you're being.

Because I used to put on a great performance too

when I was wearing the mask.

And so it's another animal to be able to break free

from that codependency trap and then really create

authentic, secure love.

I never, never understood what that was.

Yeah.

So it's not a logical thing.

You're saying that it is a something

and experienced modeled in childhood

that most of us don't necessarily get.

And so we, we don't even know.

We don't even know.

So we find our first love.

And oh, it feels so good.

I'm alive again.

I'm surrendering.

I finally feel the nurturing that I always wanted.

And it's easy to fall into that.

Correct.

So I feel seen.

I feel seen that the child in me that didn't feel seen

now feels that belonging that I've been searching for.

Right?

And so it's kind of like an unconscious, unconscious deal

that the two of us make in codependency

is that I'm gonna be the mother that you didn't have

and you're gonna do the same for me, right?

And so at first in the, in the initial phases

of that codependency or trauma bonding,

it's just so addictive.

Yeah, because you get that high,

you feel that sense of belonging.

Like finally, I've met somebody that's going to

help quell that little insecure little boy inside

that feels like he's not lovable, loved good enough.

And so, and they're doing the same thing

on the other side.

And eventually after that for six months to a year

where that initial honeymoon phase is over,

something triggers you,

whether if there's a life events happen, health issues,

come on, parent dies, financial, whatever.

Something comes up that triggers

and now you've gone into the net,

some sort of a disillusionment where they aren't,

that fantasy, they aren't that fantasy

that you thought that they were going to be, right?

So you can keep up with that, essentially we're not,

we don't fall in love with the other, in codependency,

we don't fall in love with the other person,

we fall in love with the idealized version of ourselves

through their lens.

And then when it gets taken away for some reason,

we are so disillusioned because the fantasy

didn't turn out to be real.

And now the disappointment,

so there's a crisis of disillusionment

that must happen for a relationship

to transcend that immature phase into the mature.

How many times I've been in a relationship,

a codependent relationship, and that happened, right?

Honeymoon would be over, and then I'd be like,

well, you changed.

Something about you changed.

You're not what I thought you were.

Yeah, you're not what I thought you were.

No, what I expected you to be.

That's usually the narrative.

Yeah, exactly.

The ideal, I don't know what change,

just so different, this isn't working.

Yeah, devaluing and then discarding.

And discarding, right?

At least for me, in the past that was my pattern

right around six months, something would happen.

And then I lose interest.

Yeah.

And then I just, like, just not be.

She's not giving me the attention that I wanted.

She's not pedestalizing me like I expected.

She has other interests.

Yeah, like another life.

Yeah, how dare you have your own values.

Like hobbies and values.

It should be all about me.

It's, it is really, really, and there's compassion for me

because I've been there.

I know what it feels like to feel so good

to finally, like, I love the way you said it's a render, right?

Being seen and you can just surrender.

And you're like, hey, there's a little kid in me

who's finally getting the love that

it's leaning into the womb.

Yeah, you didn't have any, you were just,

that's what it is, you know.

Full surrender.

Why does oftentimes, people in relationship,

it's so easy for us to say we're gonna have boundaries.

I am gonna start speaking up and I'm gonna put my opinion

and I'm gonna say no.

And then when it comes down to it,

people keep abandoning their boundaries over and over and over.

It's so hard to hold boundaries in relationship.

Why?

Great question.

First and foremost, if I were to tell you,

hey, no, that's not acceptable.

That's not a real boundary.

It's a warning, but a boundary isn't,

it isn't really spoken.

It's who you are.

So if I say, so when people violate their boundaries,

it wasn't really a boundary, okay?

So let me give you an example.

If, you know, let's say this interview,

it says, see, at 12.30.

And let's say I come strolling in here at 1.30,

an hour late.

And I come in and you say, hey, I say to you,

you text me before you, through your email communication,

you tell me, make sure you're here by 12.30.

This is when we begin and I message you and we're clear.

And then you tell me, by the way,

if you're not here by 12.35, we're gonna have to cancel.

So I message you, message you, message you,

and I tell you, hey, it's traffic was crazy

on the 405, which is which it was.

It is always crazy.

And you tell me, that's okay, no problem.

And I stroll in at 1.30 and you say, okay, no problem.

Let's go through it anyway.

That wasn't a real boundary.

A boundary is when you actually enforce it, right?

And if you were in a situation where having me on your show

is more important to you than upsetting

the next interview that you had,

let's say you have a string of them.

What in a moment, in that moment,

what we're going to do is we're gonna evaluate.

Is this person having them in my life,

is it valuable enough for me to bend my boundaries for?

So it's not an all or none.

Let me give you an example.

This is the first time we've met

and I don't have that huge of a following

at this stage of my career.

I just left car practice.

You might say, if I strolled in at 1.30,

you might say, Nima, sorry,

we're gonna have to either reschedule or cancel

or that doesn't work for me

because you disrespected my boundary.

So it's a no for me.

But what if I was like Barack Obama or Michael Jordan

and I was an hour late?

I'm sure you wouldn't mind.

You would bend that boundary.

So it's a complicated question.

It is, yeah.

And it all depends.

We at this moment in time, we make it an evaluated,

we make an evaluation, evaluate,

depending on our values.

Is my no going to hurt my highest values

or is my no going to uphold my highest values?

So it's gotta be, it's a case by case basis, right?

So your question has the intent of saying,

why do we keep violating our boundaries?

And it's because in that moment in time,

we perceive that maintaining that connection

is more important to us than potentially losing them.

And sometimes that's appropriate to violate a boundary.

Yeah, I love the nuance in that.

It's so nuanced because it's not just a boom boom boom.

It's not black and white because you might tell me,

screw you, Nima, you can't be an hour late

for this interview.

But if I was Michael Jordan

or if I was two pocket, if I was two pocketcourt

coming from the dead, you'd be like, bro,

tell them, tell me when you're ready.

I'll wait for you.

Yeah, I'll wait for you all day.

Right. So why did you violate your boundary?

Well, because in that moment,

there's a, there's a, there's a values question

that your system is making.

Evaluate.

Evaluate.

Evaluate.

Evaluate in that moment.

So what it tells me.

So the goal here, I think what we're getting at is

the goal here is to develop a standard

of what you will allow and what you won't allow

and to define it.

And whenever it gets crossed,

it gets violated to check in and inquire

because secure relationships are all about

boundary violations that are repaired.

So if you and I started a friendship today,

which I wouldn't be opposed to,

I think you're awesome, as we get to know one another,

our relationship can only get stronger

through violations of boundaries that are repaired.

You might, I might hang out with you for a few,

few weeks and then I'll drop an F bomb here and there,

which if you listen to Tupac, I'm sure you don't mind.

But let's say you had an issue with that

and you say, hey, Nima, it makes me uncomfortable

when you use that language around me.

In that moment, you've given the feedback

that I have violated a boundary, not purposefully,

but you're giving me feedback.

And then I think to myself, you know,

Dr. G's a really great guy.

Anybody else, I'd be like, take a hike,

don't tell me what to do.

But having you in my life is very valuable.

So I wanna respect what you say and be like, all right,

when I'm around Dr. G, I'm just gonna pay attention

and not use that language.

Why?

Because it's important for me to have this connection.

The communication piece right there is so important

in relationships, we have to be able to speak

then communicate what's happening, right?

Yeah, like you gotta tell me when I violated your boundary.

But do people in relationships,

do we not even know when our boundary's violated

or do we know we suck it in and we don't say anything?

Well, most of us haven't inquired about it

or done the work to really figure that out.

So how do we know is the body tells you

when there's a constriction happening,

the animal body will let you know.

So I don't know, like when you start a job,

when you start a relationship,

you don't know what the boundaries are, right?

So if I'm late constantly in this friendship

when we're meeting up, eventually it starts to erode

out you from a few minutes late, doesn't bother you.

I'm like, okay, cool, I come see you

and you don't give me any indication

that my lateness bothered you, I go, okay, cool.

This is where his boundary is.

But then if I'm like three minutes late

and you go, hey buddy, you were three minutes late

and I'm like, whoa, okay.

Now I know around Dr. G, time is a thing for him.

So I can make that, I can make that evaluation and go,

all right, I want this guy in my life.

I wanna make sure to respect that.

But somebody like Eminem, for example,

I went to his concert and the dude was an hour late.

And we all just waited.

Because we just paid, we just paid all that money

to go see Eminem, right?

Am I just gonna leave because I feel bad?

Does he care the question's business here?

Probably not, right?

So it's a nuanced topic.

It's a nuanced, so in relationships then,

it's always about we have to have that connection

to our body to know, okay, this was something

that is important to me that was crossed.

And then the second part is we have to be able

to be courageous enough to express it in a loving way.

Say, a loving way.

Friend or hey partner, I love you.

This makes me really uncomfortable when so and so happens.

When you, or on a date, you know, can I share,

you know, it really makes me uncomfortable

that we're going this fast.

And this is the boundary by the way, you know,

especially with masculine and feminine dynamics,

the way that a woman, especially important for women,

because women are afraid if you were raised

in an environment where a boundary felt like rejection

to somebody else, then a woman will sweep her kind of like

feelings and her boundaries under the rug to, yeah.

You know, to maintain that connection,

how many times as a woman said yes to sex,

even when her body was a no, that's sexual fawning

because she wanted to be liked or maintain that.

And it's not her fault.

I'm not saying it at all.

It's just that if she wants to have a secure relationship,

she's going to have to stop violating her own boundaries

and speak up and say, listen, it makes me uncomfortable

that we're progressing a little bit too fast.

I need a little bit more time.

Now in that moment, when she speaks her truth

and the boundary has nothing to do with the other person,

when you speak that your boundary,

you're talking about what you're comfortable with.

And in that moment, if the guy turns around and goes,

what are you talking about?

I bought you a steak dinner, you know, kind of like entitled,

if she says that and he responds that way,

that's the red flag, oh, this guy's not respectful

to my boundaries, that's when she's responsible

for hopefully leaving that situation.

Of course, this is how you know that the person is safe.

Early on, you share what you're comfortable with,

what makes you uncomfortable and comfortable,

what works for you, what doesn't work for you,

and let the other person demonstrate

if this is a safe person to be around.

If someone isn't demonstrating

that they can respect someone's boundaries

and they're quote unquote unsafe,

is that because it was modeled at home

that no boundaries were respected

between their parents or maybe between them and their parents?

Yeah.

So are you asking why people don't respect?

Cross batteries, yeah, yeah.

Why do they?

Yeah.

The question you want to ask is when you said no,

when you were told, when you said no,

how was that met by your parents, right?

But don't do that, I don't want that.

If your boundaries were crossed over by your parents,

that's why my five year old, when he says no,

dad don't pick me up.

I'm like, hey, thanks for letting me know, right?

We're teaching him and so he'll come in

and grab my butt and he's obsessed with penises.

So he's coming after me.

Let me touch your penis, I'm like, hey, bud,

teaching him, we don't touch,

we don't touch out other people's penises.

Yeah.

Nobody touches that word.

We're learning and we're taught what's okay

and what's not okay.

And we're modeled that with our parents,

then the whole concept of other people's boundaries

become sacred.

But if they're kind of stepped over with yours,

you just learn that that's just what we do.

If somebody's no makes you uncomfortable, you push harder.

Yeah.

Because that was what's modeled to you,

you're not going to be a really safe person to be around.

Yeah.

People in relationships who are viewing and listening

right now, they say, we trigger each other so much,

but they stay with each other for years,

but they trigger and they fight and they trigger again.

Is that just a form of codependency?

If they are constantly triggering each other

and fighting, what that tells me

that they're in the second phase of the relationship,

which is the once you go from the honeymoon phase,

as you described in your relationship,

then you go into the next phase,

which is the power struggle phase.

And it's what all relationships go through,

but most will get stuck there in the push and the pull

and the push and the pull.

The trigger one another, this person gets activated

and triggered and they pull away,

which then triggers this person's anxious attachment

and pushes harder, which causes them to pull away

and it just keeps going back and then finally,

they're like, I'm out of here and they're like,

wait, wait, wait, wait, and this person's fear of abandonment

gets activated.

I'm coming back, coming back, okay, fine,

let's do this and trigger again, same pattern.

So back and forth, most people who haven't really

explored attachment work will spend decades

in the power struggle phase until they break up.

And some of my clients, they've been in it for like 30 years.

30 years, right?

Why do they stay in that?

Well, that's what their parents did.

Or they have some sort of a religion that says

that you're not supposed to leave, right?

So people will stay in that because it's familiar.

Familiarity equals safety.

In other words, it feels more unsafe to leave

than it does to stick around

because they know that this is what's familiar

until the safety of staying is jeopardized.

It's more unsafe to stay.

So they keep going until it escalates into something,

maybe abusive.

That's what finally wakes the person up.

There's usually a wake up call that drives us

into this type of work.

Yeah, it has to, right?

There's something has a break like in any system

it's bubbling up.

Is there another phase then that people can move out

of this?

And what does that phase call?

It's called mature love.

Mature love.

Where you take full responsibility without blame

for healing your part of this unconscious dynamic.

Now it's ideal if both parties take on that,

but within my clients, that doesn't happen all the time,

right?

So usually the pattern is she threatens to leave finally.

She's been kind of doing the emotional labor.

And he's just like fine, I'll do therapy or whatever.

And then it gets better for a while

because he didn't go deep enough.

He just kind of like postured that he was just gonna

just to shut her up type of thing.

And finally where she goes deep enough does the work

and turns to him and says, that's it,

I can't stay anymore.

This is when he wakes up and is like,

oh my God, am I gonna actually lose her?

She's like, and he'll often say things like,

we just, we had the perfect relationship.

I didn't see there's any problem.

And so that just shows you how disconnected emotionally

one of them is not attuned to the person's emotions.

So it's usually some sort of a wake up call

that causes us to say, I can't keep doing this.

And that's for the one person,

the one who wants to break the cycle

to heal what this is about.

Nothing is about what it's about.

And when they do the work,

they realize that they're repeating

unfinished business from childhood using their partner.

Partners do the same thing,

but it's up to that one person to go deep

and then resolve that.

And then one of two things will happen if they do it.

The first thing is they realize

that they are projecting their past onto them

and they stop doing that.

And the energy between them shifts

and there's a deeper love and connection

that happens just from the one person doing the work.

Powerful.

Option number two, they do that work.

They heal that energetic dance.

They divorce mom and dad.

Finally, before they divorce the other person,

they divorce mom or dad.

And after they've done that work, they realize,

ah, I see, I see how I was the perfect person

in this relational dynamic.

I see how my part in it.

And I can see that they're wounding as well.

And I love them.

And I see that it's time for us to move on.

And so one couple that I worked with was in a couple,

was working with her after about six months,

he started noticing a difference

and she was ready to leave.

And finally, he was like, oh my god,

I don't want to lose her.

He jumps in and starts rewiring his childhood patterns

and seeing the unresolved shame and starts noticing.

And then after about six months,

he was like, you know what?

I realized it's time for us to move on.

Wow.

And so both of them did a face time

with their 26-year-old daughter

and made the announcement, say, hey, sweetheart,

your mom and I have decided that we're parting ways

and we're doing it with love.

And she was like, wow, I'm so proud of you guys.

You guys have done the work.

And they're great allies and friends,

but they both, after going through the process

of divorcing mom and dad and realizing,

divorcing from mom and dad internally,

realizing why they got together,

realizing the source of their root of their,

kind of toxic dance and codependency.

And then they transformed their relationship

to allies and friends and they have moved on

and started dating other people.

Incredible.

Without a war.

Without a war.

Without a war.

It doesn't have to be war.

Without the legal battle.

It's just they were like, hey, let's do this with love

with open hearts.

Incredible that the man did that.

He jumped in and rewired and saw.

But he didn't until he thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

For sure.

And it, but it doesn't happen.

Isn't that how we are sometimes men?

We got to get hit with a brick and then we go,

oh, okay, let me, let me, let me, let me get it going.

I think to adapt to our childhoods being raised

by emotionally unattuned fathers or mothers

that were chaotic in their own way

with their codependent relationships,

we learn to kind of stuff away our emotions.

We learn to intellectualize and then become successful

so that we can have the wife that appreciates us

the way that we deserve kind of like an entitled,

my first marriage was very entitled.

It was like, look, I'm providing you this.

You should just, you know, and I was just confused.

Why are you unhappy?

I would judge her emotions and say, look,

look at what I'm providing you.

You should be, you should be really thrilled by me.

You shouldn't be giving me any negative feed, critical feedback.

How dare you criticize me when I'm so amazing.

So for some reason, she didn't appreciate that.

I have no idea why.

So I think as men, because we're so out of touch

with our emotional body, we're confused about them

and we interpret a woman's sadness as a failure on our part.

Instead of learning how to separate our emotions

from theirs and just hold that space

and just be a witness, a safe witness to them.

We are not, we don't learn how to be safe witnesses

to a women's emotions.

We actually feel threatened by them.

And this takes us back to a childhood state

where mom is sad and we feel like we have to fix her.

And so it becomes all about happy wife, happy life,

making her happy and a woman based on her emotions

and, you know, human beings, they're blood glucose levels.

They're at various stages of mood.

And so if they're not in that great mood, we feel attacked.

We feel victimized by their emotions.

So then we instead of being able to be a safe witness,

we become the opposite of safety emotionally for women.

It comes down to this fear of being a failure.

So then her sad emotions, we interpret as our failure

and then we go, what's wrong with you instead?

Which for some reason doesn't make them feel better.

And so that keeps going for decades sometimes

and then shit breaks down and falls apart.

And inevitably, it's not sustainable.

One thing that my partner and I really value is that

anytime there's a rupture in the relationship,

we can repair it.

And God bless her.

She's just a communicative and more mature one

and she's 15 years younger.

And it's just incredible every single time I've done my work too.

I'm pretty damn good here.

We're meeting in a great place.

But what I notice is every time there's a repair,

there's a new level to the relationship.

Exactly.

Without fail.

That's the hit and blessing when you master

the rupture repair process.

Conflict becomes a portal to deeper intimacy.

It's like you go to the gym and you're building muscle.

What you're doing is you're creating

little ruptures within the muscle fiber.

And then it repairs, but stronger.

It hypertrophies.

So the muscle becomes stronger through the repair of the rupture.

So my marriage, we've been married now almost six years.

Our relationship is stronger because of the ruptures

that we've repaired rather than how I used to have

relationships that started out super hot

and then they would fizzle.

This has actually become greater and deeper in intimacy

as we go along.

And I didn't even know that was possible

until my mid 40s, so now I'm 50.

How old are you?

41.

41, okay, cool.

So yeah, I didn't even know that was possible

until I started to learn how to do that.

Yeah, and it's, it's just a different,

there's relationships and then there's like proper,

like you said, mature, love relationships.

And we all deserve to feel secure to that level.

And I think for us for men, when there's a fracture,

that's exactly what you said.

It's like, well, why are you bad?

What did I do?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, we get defensive.

We get defensive and it's like everything's fine.

I don't get it, you know?

Which then causes her to feel invalidated.

Of course, yeah, right?

Which is, she doesn't want it fixed.

She just wants to be understood, right?

But we don't understand.

If I don't understand the little boy

that feels like he's a failure,

there's no way I can understand her when she's in pain,

which she's been activated from her child wound,

her wounding that, from a father

that didn't really understand her either.

Yeah, you're a wise cat, man.

A real wise cat.

I'll earn these gray hairs.

Yeah, I love that, man.

You have, so you have a method.

Yeah.

Tell us about the trigger proof method.

It's a cognitive and a somatic methodology

that takes every trigger

and helps you understand the core wound

and through a somatic process,

rewire that conditioned self-abandonment

into deeper self-love.

And then it's called, you know, it's integrating,

bringing understanding to the part of you

that you've abandoned during that trigger,

during that conflict.

And once you take care of that part first,

which doesn't involve the other person,

usually we get into conflict when people trigger us,

we don't want to feel that way.

We turn to that other person and say,

hey, I need you to stop doing this,

what the hidden message is,

so that I don't feel this,

which the trigger proof methodology

is really about bringing integration

to the wounded parts of me that you just triggered

before I even ask you to do anything,

so that I can go from child consciousness

to my prefrontal cortex

and now talk to you like an adult

and communicate from my adult self

because if I'm communicating to you

from my reactive child self,

that's gonna activate your wounding.

And now we have two children

that can't connect instead of an adult

talking, saying, hey, listen, back there,

or yesterday, you know, when you said this,

when you said those words to me,

what you didn't realize was I was going through this,

I wasn't ready for that.

And you can now communicate and repair

and now understand, it's really about understanding

each other's pain.

Understanding the pain that I just went through

and find the root of it.

And without needing another person

to understand, to empathize and bring compassion

and what's another word for integrate

somatically the trigger that comes up.

So it basically, it's weird, you know,

I have this little four week little mini courses

that I put on for people who are curious about it

and this realtor that I finished,

she just finished, I got on a call with her

and what was it like?

She goes, I feel like I've emotionally matured.

And four weeks.

In four weeks.

I feel like I feel like I've matured.

And it's a rewiring of our condition self abandonment.

Yeah.

The trigger proof method is the biggest discovery

I made is that every time I get triggered,

it's because I, every time I get triggered,

in that moment, the pain that I'm experiencing,

the emotional pain is the pain of my own self abandonment.

When I think I'm not enough, I'm not lovable.

If you say no to me or say that you don't want to

go somewhere, you don't want to do something with me,

it's not because I'm not lovable,

it's because you have a different set of values.

But I make it mean that I'm not lovable.

So I'm the one that abandoned myself.

So the trigger proof methodology is really about

rewiring our condition self abandonment.

And over time, you become emotionally mature,

you become less reactive.

You become more grounded and more attuned to yourself

and you become more understanding of other people

just by virtue of the practice.

And it's not just relationships about any relationships.

It's not just romantic, everything.

Everything is relational.

Everything is relational.

And it's how we heal.

Your relationship to money, your relationship to food,

right now I'm working on my relationship to food.

This is my next kind of frontier is my relationship

before, boom, I get triggered.

And now I want to go have a cookie

or I want ice cream or now I'm eating.

And then I'm eating and then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait,

whoa, whoa, what am I doing right now?

I'm just eating like a madman and then it's like, wow.

Yeah.

What pain am I trying to avoid?

What need am I trying to soothe to get from this?

And I'm pausing and it's an inquiry into the body.

It's a somatic, the trigger proof methodologies

is a somatic inquiry into finding the parts

of ourselves that are hungry for love.

And we all have that.

We all have it.

And it's an ongoing thing.

So there's no finish line to the practice.

You just become more, it's like golf.

It's like why is when Tiger Woods

that is peak in 2000, finish around?

Why is he still practicing?

Isn't he good enough?

And so it's a mastery.

This is the cool part about it is that there's always

a new refinement, it's a spiritual practice.

Part of being now and more embodied human being on this earth.

Where do people find you?

Where's your website?

Where do we learn more about this?

My team will give you the link, the best place to begin

is the attachment style quiz.

I give the link for the quiz.

I'll put it in the show notes.

And become triggerproof.com.

Amazing.

The website is right there.

And the quiz is the best place to begin.

And I have an experience that I do every month

called the trigger proof experience.

And it's a three day event that when COVID hit,

and I canceled all these events all over the world,

I was like, I wonder if I could turn this into a six hour zoom event.

A three day event condensed into six hours.

People could do from the comfort of their home.

It worked amazing.

And what I teach is this, you bring the biggest conflict

that you're going through.

And I teach you the methodology, how to become triggerproof

to the worst conflict that you're going through.

People have incredible healings with ruptures

that they've had with their parents, with their children.

Within one day, it's like 30 years of therapy and one I believe it.

I believe it.

You're doing great work, man.

You're doing great work.

And I know talking to you, I just wish that every practitioner

had your wisdom injected into them,

because then we'd look at health and wellness completely different.

We didn't even talk about physical health issues,

because we know upstream, upstream, like you said in the beginning.

And this is what we need.

This is what we need.

Like you said, everything is relational.

And we step out of our door if we live alone.

And we're going to be relating to someone or something very fast.

Yeah.

And so I do want to mention about that physical health

as a your naturopath is that my physical symptoms

become the boundaries that I'm not able to express.

It's got to hit on something.

Well, it could be an organ.

Exactly.

You say yes.

You say yes to the, you say yes, you say yes.

And you keep abandoning yourself.

And finally, the tissues go screw you.

And now the symptoms, you now are forcing you to say no without the guilt.

Because if I were to say no to you, then I'd have to deal with guilt.

And I can't deal with guilt, because it evokes this toxic shame

like I'm a bad person.

So I will say yes to you until my body breaks down.

Now I can blame the symptom.

And now I can say no to you without the guilt.

So yeah, we could have loved you.

We got to hold on to the podcast of physical health and diseases.

Yeah, you got to be, you know, next time you go to Disneyland,

or you hit, okay, yeah, awesome.

Man, such, such important wisdom and viewers and listeners.

Think about it.

Connect to this.

Feel it and rewind it some, there's so much wisdom.

I wrote down so many little cut downs we're going to use on social media.

It's because everyone can benefit from this.

Go to the website, take the quiz, and join the live event, you know,

and make your relationships better,

make your, help your body be better.

Ultimately it's the relationship with yourself, isn't it?

That's what it is, man.

Thank you, Doc. I appreciate you.