Speaker Ads [00:00:00]:
You did you know that breast pumps are covered by most insurance plans? Edgepark works with more than 1500 insurance plans to help moms order a new breast pump that is covered by insurance and they offer some of the leading brands on the market. Place your order anytime during your pregnancy. Then Edgepark handles the paperwork and sends it to you with free shipping. Visit www.edgepark.com slash Spotify to learn more.

Speaker Ads [00:00:24]:
You directv Stream has the most local MLB games, which means it’s never been easier to so whether you’re rooting for aura or even aura, root for your home team with DirecTV Stream, the most MLB games period claim based on total games carried on sports networks. Sports availability varies by zip code and requires choice package.

George Faller [00:01:02]:
Going for your first.

Speaker Ads [00:01:03]:
Ever run round the park, literally running.

Speaker Ads [00:01:08]:
Errands all over town.

Speaker Ads [00:01:11]:
Running for the.

Speaker Ads [00:01:12]:
Finish line and your personal best. If you run, you’re a runner.

Speaker Ads [00:01:18]:
Find the shoes and clothes to run your [email protected]. Slash running new balance RunYourway the following.

Joe Davis – Announcer [00:01:26]:
Content is not suitable for children continuing.

George Faller [00:01:29]:
With our school of love, we’re going to talk about attachment history. What do you think?

Laurie Watson [00:01:36]:
Laurie I’m glad we’re trying to make sense of this in an orderly way for people. So today we’re asking you to look at how you grew up, where you came from, how that impacts how you love. Welcome to sportplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.

George Faller [00:01:56]:
And I’m George Faller, your couple’s therapist.

Laurie Watson [00:01:58]:
We are here to talk about sex.

George Faller [00:02:00]:
Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate their body, their mind and their hearts.

Laurie Watson [00:02:08]:
And we have a little bit of fun doing it.

George Faller [00:02:10]:
Right, G, listen, and let’s change some relationships.

Laurie Watson [00:02:14]:
So G, tell me about the SV live that’s coming up.

George Faller [00:02:17]:
Yeah, super excited, Laurie. We’re going to bring Laurie Watson onto the SV platform. So yeah, we are sex expert. We’re shipped. We’ve spent the last couple of years really covering the EFT model in a really thorough way, breaking down the process moment by moment. I mean, some great learning, some great feedback as we just try to get clear. I mean, I think most therapists, they want help with the decision tree. They want to know in the moment, like what are my options if I choose this one, what happens if it works and doesn’t work? And what else could I do? I mean, it’s those moment by moment that the best in any field, that’s what they can do.

George Faller [00:02:54]:
They can slow the process down. So we’re really trying to help therapists to do that. And all this focus has really been on years on the emotional cycle. So we’re finally doing our module now on the sexual cycle, really trying to empower therapists to harness the power of this, to learn how to work with it, with the emotional cycle, to learn the timing and how to assess. And there’s so much here. So of course we’re bringing Dr. Watson on.

Laurie Watson [00:03:19]:
I am so honored. That’s going to be exciting. And that is going to be on March 27. And how do we get in contact for that so that they can register? This is free, right?

George Faller [00:03:29]:
Yeah, this is a free training. This is SV live. If you just go to successandvulnerability.com website and you’ll see the sign up for that. But yes, that’s SV live. We’re just going to start talking about it, but the next module will come out afterwards. That will be for therapists to study in their own homes, under their own timeline and just try to get a little bit more comfortable practicing with the sexual cycle.

Laurie Watson [00:03:53]:
Success and vulnerability is George’s online training, and along with several other trainers who are great and they do teaching, they do several exercises you practice. It’s an awesome thing. I have been a member as well, so thank you so much. That’s successinvulnerability.com.

George Faller [00:04:14]:
And as we’re talking about the whole extended network of connections, we want to give a shout out to our patrons and ask for new patrons. I mean, this is a ton of work. I never knew. When I said yes, Laurie, you said I would just do like a half hour a week. I thought that’s always going to take, and I do a fraction of what Laurie does behind the scenes. I never knew the undertaking, the commitment that it takes to kind of launch a podcast. And I know we’re super passionate because this isn’t about just getting our names out there, though. That’s always fun.

George Faller [00:04:47]:
But it really is about a message and a mission, and we think it’s desperately needed, and we do need support. We need people’s help. So if people are in a position to help us out and become patrons and just in whatever capacity you can, sometimes it’s just spreading, it’s given reviews, it’s spreading the word, or it’s financially supporting us. So we could continue to develop this process and find ways of getting that message out.

Laurie Watson [00:05:16]:
Yeah. And we just want to thank all of you who have been patrons for so many years. We’re really grateful for that. And also, some people ask me, how do I give just one time, because I don’t want to give on a continuous basis. And basically, at this point, you do have to give once, wait and for a cycle. Maybe you can send me a note about that and I will remind you to stop being a patron at the end of that so that you only have one gift. That might be a way to do so. But we are thankful.

Laurie Watson [00:05:46]:
George and I do spend a lot of time on this on our own, and we have other projects that we would like to do and collaborate together on, but that takes a lot of time. So if you feel like you want to support us, you have the means. We would be so grateful for that. And thank you very much. Back to emotional attachment history in the school of love.

George Faller [00:06:11]:
How do you go wrong going to the school of love? Laurie? I think everyone should be looking into the school of love, right?

Laurie Watson [00:06:17]:
I think so, too. I think we need a little jingle that identifies these episodes. The school of love.

George Faller [00:06:23]:
lor

Laurie Watson [00:07:11]:
For me, knowing my partner’s history gives me so much compassion for him, especially the parts that I don’t like. It’s like I know where they come from, and I know why those protective mechanisms exist in him, how they served him earlier in life. And so when he uses it with me, I understand that it’s coming from this deeper place of fear or whatever. I’m married more to a withdrawal, and so I know that that was his survival in childhood. And when I understand the stories and I understand why this developed, why these protections developed, it helps me a lot.

George Faller [00:07:48]:
Yeah. And I think it’s great to understand your partner better. But I think so many of you are going to be surprised at how you start to understand yourself better, because we never really intentionally do this kind of exploration. And so many of us are sleepwalking. We’re responding today, like we were as a little child. And then once you could recognize that, you could start making a choice. Like, do I need to keep responding this way, or can I start finding a new way to respond, right?

Laurie Watson [00:08:14]:
And then can I be vulnerable about what gets triggered in me? Like, okay, maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe this is old stuff in me from X, Y, and Z memory and my partner, then they have compassion for me. And I understand myself. I think understanding the self gives us that moment of a pause where we have that choice. It’s like the slower we can go with ourselves and understanding why is my body, my heart beating so fast? Why is my stomach hurting? Why is this happening? Why am I getting triggered over something that doesn’t make sense even to me to be so upset about? But then it’s like, aha, okay, this is what’s getting triggered in me. Then I can slow down. Like you said, I can have a choice about how I respond to my partner in this relationship.

George Faller [00:09:00]:
Exactly.

Speaker Ads [00:09:01]:
Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more.

Speaker Ads [00:09:06]:
Botox anapachalinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It’s not for adults with migraine with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo.

Speaker Ads [00:09:19]:
Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don’t receive botox if there’s a skin infection, tell your doctor your medical history. Muscle or nerve conditions including ALS, lugerics disease, myosthenia gravis, or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

Laurie Watson [00:09:56]:
Ask your doctor and visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call.

Speaker Ads [00:10:24]:
In the world.

George Faller [00:10:25]:
Blinds.com is the ghost the ghost?

Speaker Ads [00:10:27]:
Go to blinds.com for up to 40% off. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply.

George Faller [00:10:32]:
And we’re going to look at multiple circles. We’re going to start, obviously with a family of origin the first way, but not just a family of origin. We’re all in extended families, and we have relatives, and then we have communities and we have neighbors and we have friends and we want to look at that, and we want to look at the influence of spirituality on a lot of people and their pets and their animals and certainly past romantic relationships. How did we learn to do intimacy and to kind of expose or take risks? So all of this combines to kind of paint a clearer picture of what informs what we’re doing currently today.

Laurie Watson [00:11:12]:
Okay, so start us off. Where do we go first?

George Faller [00:11:15]:
G. When we’re trying to kind of ask these questions, I always want to remind myself, the goal is for people to have success telling their story. Some of this stuff is risky. So if you’re listening to your partner before, you’re like, let’s get to the next one. Just get to the information. The goal of the information is to connect around it, to be more seen and be more understood, to be responded to. So just please, to just take the grace as you listen to some of these questions to give your partner, allow it to impact your heart. Because to me, that’s the most important part of doing attachment history.

Laurie Watson [00:11:50]:
Exactly. We don’t want to just get the story. We want to feel with our partner in what they’re saying. That’s what’s healing is, right? When we bring somebody who loves us into the story, it actually heals us outside of time. Time is this false construct. Even the scientists these days are saying they don’t know if time is real and our hearts don’t recognize time. So when somebody now loves us in places that we were unloved, it doesn’t change the event, but it heals how we feel about things in the past.

George Faller [00:12:23]:
Yeah, that’s the whole theory of change, of redemption. By going back to the old memories, if you could add a new ingredient, and oftentimes it’s the partner’s empathy or learning to be more compassionate to yourself. But you need to introduce what was missing back then for the brain to rewire some of those memories from insecurity to security. So some of the questions that we’re just going to start off with is we’re asking general questions, but we’re really hoping to get vivid images and details because that’s what will make it become more alive. So one of the first things I start with is, like, what did you learn from your family about emotions, about vulnerability? Right. Is that something you were fluid in? We talk about the five basic emotions. Anger, sadness, fear, joy, shame. Some of us, my family of origin, we did anger pretty well.

George Faller [00:13:17]:
We really didn’t do sadness or fear. That wasn’t really talked about. We did Joy really well. We didn’t really do shame. So I came into my marriage with only two out of five. Really well developed. Right.

Laurie Watson [00:13:29]:
Anger and which one?

George Faller [00:13:30]:
Joy. Those are two ones.

Laurie Watson [00:13:32]:
Anger and joy. Yeah.

George Faller [00:13:34]:
Very expressive in my family, but the other one is less so. I remember when I was a little boy and I was crying about something, I remember my dad saying, if you keep that up, I will give you something to cry about. Boys don’t cry. And I got that message early on, so it shut down my tears. And you can see how later in life, when my wife starts to cry and we’re newly married, what do I want to do with her tears? I want to shut them down. How do you think that worked for Kathy?

Laurie Watson [00:14:04]:
Yeah, not so well. We were set up not so well.

George Faller [00:14:07]:
To miss each other because of how I was informed early on.

Laurie Watson [00:14:12]:
And let alone your own tears, let alone your own tears of sadness. Right. Like Kathy’s tears, certainly. But what happens when you feel mean, you know, that shuts you down, too.

George Faller [00:14:26]:
And the feeling is still there. It just doesn’t get processed, it doesn’t get expressed. Your strategy, kick in and push it aside and it’s still there, though. That’s why I want people to. It’s impossible not to have these emotions. It’s just a matter if you’re going to listen to them or you’re going to not know what to do with them.

Laurie Watson [00:14:45]:
Yeah. My family did anger very well, too. We were ragers, all of the family. One of the things we didn’t do well was joy. So laughter, like when we would tell jokes, we were actually kind of a funny family, but nobody laughed at each other. It was almost like if you laughed at them, you gave them a point or something, and so all these funny things would be said, but nobody enjoyed it with each other. When I go back to my family of origin and I hear that one of the things I focus on is laughing when they say something funny, like freeing myself to let the funny in. And I think for myself, too, it kind of blocked being funny.

Laurie Watson [00:15:32]:
All of that. You didn’t do that. And certainly was really good at anger, too. That was a definite protective strategy. I think every one of us, you’ve corrected that one.

George Faller [00:06:27]:
You’re a pretty funny person, so you’ve done some work in that area. Laurie, I see you outside a lot of the times, and I’m always laughing at some of your comments. You’re sweet.

Laurie Watson [00:15:57]:
Okay, thank you.

George Faller [00:15:58]:
With that and vulnerability, I’m always surprised. We talk about the high road, great sex, great fun, the middle road, the grind of life and the low road is sharing vulnerabilities, insecurities. I’m always amazed at the majority of people that grew up in families that did not do the low road, that did not talk about their fears and insecurities. So, again, think about that. If our attachment system gets activated when we’re threatened, if we can’t learn to talk about fear and threat, we got to develop all these strategies early on to navigate that environment. So, really, that question is critical. How did your family do vulnerability? And usually when I’d ask that somebody be like, well, we got along great, but, yeah, we didn’t really talk about that. There wasn’t that much of a need.

George Faller [00:16:48]:
I’m like, okay, all right. So we could see what had to develop during that time.

Laurie Watson [00:16:56]:
Yeah. And did your own family do vulnerability at all?

George Faller [00:17:00]:
No, but I think we had eight kids. So there was always kind of incidents or things that happened that caused kind of some drama or some scenes that forced some of these conversations. So it wouldn’t be the natural thing to feel scared and talk about it. But your brother gets locked up, or this person does that, it causes some of those conversations. So somehow, at an early age, I remember being, like, a mediator in my family, trying to kind of get people to listen to each other. So I guess at some level, I was doing a little bit of that.

Laurie Watson [00:17:31]:
Yeah. Your calling started very early, the mediation. It sounds like you grew into your calling, too. My family processed a lot. We were involved in a church that did small group work, and so they were always asking deep questions. And so we actually talked about our family dynamics quite a bit. I think the difficulty was we would get caught in a loop talking about the problems. We didn’t really know the way out.

Laurie Watson [00:18:00]:
We didn’t know how to. What we know in Eft, to kind of receive the vulnerability with empathy and care that then moves you to the next step. And I think that processing, that was something that I knew to do, but I really didn’t understand the next place. It would be overwhelming. We would just keep processing, kind of in this loop about all the things that were wrong and how we felt about them, but we didn’t know how to move beyond that.

George Faller [00:18:28]:
Yeah, super important, right? If you can’t have success, it’s super important. It’s tough. All right, let’s come back and just go through a lot more of these questions.

Laurie Watson [00:18:40]:
Y’all. Eating better is so easy with factors. Delicious, ready to eat meals. I eat them. They are fresh, and they’re never frozen, and they take just two minutes to pop in the microwave and they’re hot and ready to go. And trust me, I am so busy. It is so great to be able to choose from anything I want, whether it’s calorie, smart, protein plus keto, whatever. I’m in the mood for whatever my diet preferences are.

Laurie Watson [00:19:07]:
There are at least 60 add ons that you can choose to stay fueled up. Listen, two minute meals fuel up fast with factors, restaurant quality meals that are ready to heat and eat whenever you are. There’s pancakes, smoothies and more. Discover a wide variety, which is important to me because I cook the same old thing of easy options like for an entire day, breakfast, midday bites, dinner or whatever. There’s no prep, no mess, no grocery shopping factor. Meals are ready to heat and eat. I love them. Factor is the perfect solution if you’re looking for fast, premium options with no cooking required.

Laurie Watson [00:19:45]:
Trust me, sign up and save. We’ve done the math. Factor is less expensive than takeout, and every meal is diet.

Speaker Ads [00:19:51]:
This episode is brought to you by indeed, we’re driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn’t to search at all. Don’t search match with indeed. Use indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more [email protected]. Auto terms and conditions apply petition approved.

Laurie Watson [00:20:20]:
To be nutritious and delicious, head to Factoremealsals.com Fourplay 50 and use the code FOURpLAY 50 to get 50% off. That’s our code FourplaY 50 at factormals.com fourplay 50 to get 50% off delicious, fast, nutritious meals. I love Uber lube. It is my goto lubricant. For the last 25 years, I have recommended it highly. I’ve used it myself. There’s no taste, no smell. There’s nothing to interfere with your intimate moments.

Laurie Watson [00:20:51]:
It washes off easy with soap and water. Listen, it doesn’t contain any water. It doesn’t have a pH. Your vagina will be happy. It doesn’t disturb your delicate balance. You can use it for sex in the shower. Go ahead and explore all those mermaid fantasies. Seriously.

Laurie Watson [00:21:06]:
You can use it with condoms. It’s okay with latex. You can even use Uber lube for chafe protection against sports. I’m serious. You can buy little travel packets and take it on your summer travel so that you can have sex whenever you’re away. And it’s easy peasy. It is in the classiest glass bottle with beautiful writing. You can keep it on your bedstand.

Laurie Watson [00:21:25]:
Honestly, nobody would even think that it’s lubed. They would think it’s like a perfume bottle. It is beautiful. Trust me. Go to uberlube.com. Use the code foreplay. Uberlube.com. Foreplay.

Laurie Watson [00:21:38]:
Get your 10% off. I’m telling you, it is skin friendly. It is quality. It is my favorite.

George Faller [00:21:48]:
All right, so some other questions. We invite you. Close your eyes as you’re listening them. Try to get as specific as possible. What do you remember growing up? What happened when you got hurt? Were you able to turn towards people? How did people respond to your pain? Do you remember feeling safe at times growing up? What happened in your family when other people got hurt? How did you respond? That safety and hurt word is, again, something I want to get a flavor for, for how this family interacted.

Laurie Watson [00:22:25]:
And I’m reminded of Ryan Reyna, his big word on comfort. Who comforted you, who put their arms around you, picked you up or listened to you? Yeah, that is really tough. I think that there was in my family some comfort and some picking up. Certainly there was physical comfort. My parents, my mother particularly, was actually very affectionate. I think that saved my bacon. It saved my life to have a mother who was touching and warm and things like that. I think there was kind of a twist because my mother was also so broken that eventually she would kind of take that vulnerability, that thing that I was hurting over, and then twist it up a little bit, and it would be about her and me.

Laurie Watson [00:23:14]:
So she was my first go to, but then it became unsafe because those messages, it was like, well, that’s what you do to me. And I’m like, whoa, I’m talking about my girlfriends. And suddenly we were in our stuff. It was really weird. I would say, in my relationship with my husband, I have found somebody who is very comforting. He really listens to me and tries to offer comfort. So that’s been a good thing. And I think in his family, they didn’t do vulnerability.

Laurie Watson [00:23:49]:
They didn’t talk about hurt. And I think the consequence in our marriage is he’s had a hard time bringing things to me. I’m starving to want to hold him and comfort him and love on him, and that’s pouring out of me. But he has such difficulty bringing that to me. And it’s really in more recent years that he’s gotten better at letting me in just a little bit on the things that hurt. What? It’s all the podcasts that he listens to. Right. What about for you, G? Where did you get comfort?

George Faller [00:24:27]:
My mother was really good at responding to moments of hurt or fear. Even though there was eight kids and she was super busy, she found a way of making me feel like that was super important and everything would stop if needed. That and my faller didn’t know what to do with that, but he did a really good job of protecting us, of making us feel like somebody messes with you, he’s going to crush them. Right. So it’s like I always felt safe on both ends. I had this physical protection from him and I had this emotional protection from her.

Laurie Watson [00:25:00]:
So it’s like, oh, lovely.

George Faller [00:25:02]:
Despite the craziness, safety was definitely something I felt growing.

Laurie Watson [00:25:07]:
That’s. That’s really a good thing. That’s so nice to know. Know your father was the shield against everybody else. That’s a good feeling.

George Faller [00:25:18]:
Yes.

Laurie Watson [00:25:19]:
Good feeling.

George Faller [00:25:20]:
And as you were talking about Derek and my father was a withdrawal, too. And they don’t realize that what feels like protecting themselves by disengaging it really does leave the people around them with not a lot to engage with. It can’t bring out the best sides of them. Right. So if I didn’t let my mom comfort me, she wouldn’t feel that good about herself either. Right. That’s the mutual part of vulnerability and how it can work so well.

Laurie Watson [00:25:47]:
Yeah. Nice.

George Faller [00:25:48]:
So moving on, just, again, some more of these questions. How did you know when your parent or a sibling was angry in your family? How did they express the anger? Was it rage? Did they just walk away? What did they do? What did you do with your. In your.

Laurie Watson [00:26:08]:
Yeah, that’s a good one. I think it was the dishes that were flying around in my house that was kind of the first clue that people were know. It was kind of the wild west.

George Faller [00:26:19]:
Well, my household, too, had a lot of fighting. And when you have a lot of fighting, you do get somewhat comfortable with anger.

Laurie Watson [00:26:28]:
Yeah.

George Faller [00:26:29]:
My wife grew up in a family that didn’t talk about and kept anger to themselves. So again, that’s what she learned to do. So you can see, my anger wants to. Let’s deal with this now. What the hell is the problem? Her body wants to walk away from it. And again, how we learn forms what we wind up doing. So let’s just try.

Laurie Watson [00:26:51]:
I, my husband and I joke a lot. Like, I grew up in hell and he grew up in sort of like the North Pole. It was so icy, so cold. And anger was not expressed. And so it was a really big deal. When we first got married, I was like, you. It’s like, well, that’s. That’s not scary to be know, but it was really scary to him.

George Faller [00:27:12]:
How did your family do with building trust? Was that something that was natural, always there, dependable? Or were there lots of betrayals? People didn’t come home. They yelled you one day, didn’t talk to you the next day. Did you grow up in an environment back to that word, safe? Safety builds trust. You have a lack of safety. There’s going to be a lot of mistrust and a lot of vigilance. So I kind of want to see how the family does around trust.

Laurie Watson [00:27:42]:
Yeah. And again, my family, my parents divorced, and my mother was very chaotic, so the rules always changed. But my father was more orderly, so at least eventually I went and lived with my father, so I knew what to expect, and it was normal expectations, whereas my mother, because of her own internal chaos, it wasn’t. So. I have practiced my entire life trying to be orderly. That was really important to me, raising my own children to have rules that made sense. Everybody knew what was expected, what to happen. I mean, this has been a huge work of my life to tamp down the chaos of my mother’s world.

Laurie Watson [00:28:28]:
What about you?

George Faller [00:28:30]:
Yeah, I think we have similar families. There was a lot of chaos where people threatening divorce and leaving. So that created some mistrust, but they always came back together, always came back to protection, talking about it. So I did feel a sense of trust and how they’d respond to me. I just didn’t know how they respond to each other, even within different siblings. Some siblings were more trusting than others. Some of my older brothers would be acting out. And when you’re acting out, you get negative responsiveness from your parents.

George Faller [00:29:03]:
And the more negative responsiveness, the less safe you feel, the more mistrust there is. I was like the good child a lot of the time, so I got more of the trust of my parents than some of my siblings. So again, it’s not all equal playing field. We all have different responses.

Laurie Watson [00:29:19]:
Yeah. I think one thing that did feel reliable in my childhood was I did experience my mother as honest. She was very chaotic, but as a child, she would always tell the truth. And my brothers overall told the truth. My father, he was more of a placator, so he would defer the truth. Perhaps it wasn’t like he would lie, but he did his own thing. He was a withdrawal, so he withheld information and things like that. But I always knew that’s different than dependability like, she wouldn’t necessarily do what she said she was going to do, but there was a part of my mom that was very good and kind of honest to the core.

George Faller [00:30:05]:
Nice.

Laurie Watson [00:30:06]:
Yeah.

George Faller [00:30:06]:
Again, you can see the chaos pushes for a need for structure, but the honesty creates a safety and a trust that you can still lean on today. I mean, that’s the thing. We carry this forward.

Speaker Ads [00:30:19]:
While no one knows what tomorrow may bring, Bridgestone is working toward a more positive outlook with innovations like developing a tire using 75% recycled and renewable materials. It’s just one of the many ways Bridgestone is making a difference today for generations to come, because that’s what really matters. Bridgestone solutions for your journey, visit what reallymatters.com to learn more. The largest number of green spaces of any U. S. City. Stunning views of sparkling rivers, award winning restaurants and world famous chefs. A vibrant, dynamic theater scene and the nation’s first modern art museum.

Speaker Ads [00:31:08]:
You knew we were talking about Washington, DC, right? There’s only one dC. Visit washington.org to book your trip today.

George Faller [00:31:19]:
Another thing I really want to check in with is like, how did your family handle loss? Sadness was trauma that happened. Was there abuse that happened? How did the family respond to the negative events of life?

Laurie Watson [00:31:34]:
Yeah. What about you?

George Faller [00:31:37]:
First, I think our family did a good job of rallying around traumas that would happen, pull ranks. But in pulling ranks you couldn’t express your own different thoughts. It was like group kind of thing that had to kind of develop there. But certainly I didn’t experience molestation. But you can see in families where you do have traumas like that, or sibling died in a car accident, you were molested by a cousin. You try to talk about that and nobody believes you. I mean, these are pivotal moments that inform our emotions when bad things happen. It’s when we need the people around us the most to keep the focus on us.

George Faller [00:32:27]:
But if the bad thing happens, like if you lost a sibling, but both of your parents are so distressed, it’s like you lose both your parents along with your sibling in that moment.

Laurie Watson [00:32:36]:
That’s so true.

George Faller [00:32:37]:
See how people’s lives just change in a heartbeat when you have one of these traumatic moments.

Laurie Watson [00:32:42]:
Yeah. And I think about divorce as a huge loss for children, particularly. My parents were divorced. But beyond that, I think what is so difficult about divorce in a family is the parents themselves are so disrupted and so they don’t necessarily have anything left over to comfort the children with what they’re going through as their family kind of breaks apart. And so it’s just a really disruptive time. And I think a lot of people have experienced that. And there was confusion. I mean, I’ve talked to so many clients who have lost a sense of continuity of their family because of divorce, and nobody was really there to comfort them, deal with it, let them have their own voice and their own opinion about what was happening.

Laurie Watson [00:33:32]:
Right. Their anger. That can be another huge loss that needs to be processed.

George Faller [00:33:39]:
Exactly. And I work with plenty of families where the parents handled divorce really well, and they made the kids feel safe, and they didn’t put the kids in the middle right in it.

Laurie Watson [00:33:48]:
That’s nice.

George Faller [00:33:48]:
Feel how that makes a huge difference in how the kids process it. And we don’t want to get so limited to that immediate family. A lot of people, they don’t have secure attachments. They didn’t have safety at home, but on weekends they’d go to grandma’s house. Grandma was the one place on this planet where the world stopped and you were the center of attention, and you know how much you mattered. And this was the person that taught you a lot about emotions and safety. Or maybe it wasn’t anybody, extended family, but it was your best friend’s family that you spent a lot of time in. Or maybe it was a teacher at school, or maybe it was a leader of a youth group.

George Faller [00:34:28]:
Right. I mean, there are so many other attachment figures that might come along at a critical time that teach us some really good lessons about health and connection and what to do with vulnerability.

Laurie Watson [00:34:40]:
Yeah. And they keep us good and whole. In the midst of whatever loss is happening in our families, they still see us and process with us, perhaps our feelings and things like that. Absolutely.

George Faller [00:34:54]:
And we’re going to do a whole episode on the sexual history, but we do want to know about significant others. Sometimes the first time you have ever take emotional risks is in a relationship with somebody for the first time, your first love or your first sexual partner or that crush. You can see how that primes people to have to do emotions. What happened when you broke up? This is where we get our fears of rejection or failure, know really understanding how we connected and how things ended. Endings are so important for understanding people’s protection.

Laurie Watson [00:35:31]:
I always think of Cheryl Crowe’s song, the first cut is the deepest, because when you fall in love for the first time, your soul is tender. And when that breakup happens, it can feel like the day is gray, the world ends, and it’s so painful. And I think that especially as adults, we need to recognize our teenagers when they experience that first cut and that first heartbreak, it’s so real. We may look at it and think and say, well, you weren’t going to marry them. There’s other fish in the sea. All these kinds of platitudes that don’t recognize just how painful it is. The first time you have risked your heart, you have let yourself love somebody outside of your know, in a deep way and how painful that is. So there’s a lot to an assessment that we’ve kind of speeded you through it today.

Laurie Watson [00:36:31]:
Many questions. I think what we should do, George, is post these questions on our episode so that people can walk through with their again, you know, we just ask you maybe to ask detailed questions, too. We’ve given you a general question, but you can also ask each other, how did that make you feel? What about this? What happened when you were know Susie died? What happened when you were told your parents were divorcing? All of those really specific questions so that you can kind of see with your partner them in those stages and ages I think are important and will help you bond. I mean, going through an emotional assessment with your partner and learning about who they are, it’s so important not only for who they are in your relationship, but just who they are in general. And then telling that story can be so healing.

George Faller [00:37:21]:
Exactly. And I don’t want to leave out your relationship to God or your relationship to a pet. I had a client where she had a horse and it was really the only safe place in the world that she would go to. And how many of us in places of brokenness, we feel God’s presence and that becomes our safe attachment figure. And it helps explain the areas where we trust or if we feel God’s not listening, why we mistrust. So this is, we’re going to give you these questions. Take the time to just give it the space. It always makes sense why we wind up doing what we do.

George Faller [00:37:58]:
And it’s a gift to listen because so many of us have not had people listen to us in these places. So hopefully we enjoy the tenderness of these moments.

Laurie Watson [00:38:08]:
Thanks for listening.

George Faller [00:38:09]:
Keep it sweet. Not a hot moment.

Laurie Watson [00:38:12]:
Okay, so tell us about your cutting edge training that you’re doing on success and vulnerability, Laurie.

George Faller [00:38:19]:
We just keep pushing it. Coming up with a new module on the playbook of a pursuer, playbook of a withdrawal, really practical moment by moment moves of what a therapist can use. We’re so focused on what’s happening in session enough. There’s 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 [00:38:44]:
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 [00:39:04]:
No. We try to emphasize to 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 [00:39:22]:
Find George and his [email protected] call in.

Joe Davis – Announcer [00:39:27]:
Your questions to the foreplay question voicemail, dial eight three three my foreplay. That’s eight three three my the number four play. And we’ll use the questions for our mailbag episodes. All content is for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for therapy by a licensed clinician or as medical advice from a doctor. This podcast is copyrighted by Foreplay media.