In Episode 442, “The Ouch,” hosts George Faller and Dr. Laurie Watson delve into the dark corners of insecurities and isolation, exploring how these experiences affect emotional and sexual relationships. They discuss the profound impact of rejection and criticism, which can lead to self-despise and shame, often creating a cycle of loneliness and withdrawal.
The episode offers a therapeutic approach to these challenges, emphasizing the importance of shining light on emotional pain to foster healing and stronger connections. Faller and Watson advocate for open, vulnerable communication between partners, encouraging listeners to address difficult topics as a pathway to transformative relationships.
Listeners will also learn about George Faller’s new training modules for therapists, focusing on practical tools and strategies for addressing these issues in real-time during sessions. Future podcast episodes will continue to explore overcoming negative emotional states and building robust bonds.
Engage in this heartfelt and insightful conversation about understanding and responding to “ouches” in relationships to turn pain into a source of connection and growth.
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Show Notes
Insecurities and Isolation:
George Faller describes insecurities as “really dark” places that often lead to feelings of self-despise, shame, and isolation, equating it to a personal form of ‘hell’.
Therapeutic Approaches:
Faller and Watson emphasize the importance of therapists shining light on these dark areas to foster healing and enhance relational connections by understanding and addressing pain and insecurities.
Connections through Pain:
Listening to pain and being present for partners can transform relationships. Effective communication and support can break negative cycles and bring about positive changes.
Encouragement to Address Insecurities:
Facing and discussing insecurities can strengthen relationships, fostering deeper bonds and love.
Transcript
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Joe Davis – Announcer [00:01:29]:
The following content is not suitable for children.
George Faller [00:01:32]:
Let’s talk about the ouch, the raw spots, the hurts, what happens underneath those defenses that so often people don’t know how to talk about. What do you think, Laurie?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:01:46]:
I think this is part of our school of love, and we’re going to talk about the vulnerability underneath. Welcome to foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.
George Faller [00:01:59]:
And I’m George Faller, your couples therapist.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:02:01]:
We are here to talk about sex.
George Faller [00:02:03]:
Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate their body, their mind, and their hearts.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:02:11]:
And we have a little bit of fun doing it. Right, G?
George Faller [00:02:14]:
Listen, and let’s change some relationships. School is in session. Here we go. This is gonna be a little sad one, Laurie. This is… as a withdrawer I often want to avoid these conversations, right? But there’s so much this is where we need love the most.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:02:30]:
I’m so curious, G.
George Faller [00:02:33]:
Maybe I’ll talk about it in another session. That withdrawer is well entrenched.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:02:41]:
I think we should tell people what we go through together. Like I ask questions and you’re like, no, I can’t talk about that. We’re not going to get anything done if we talk about that.
George Faller [00:02:53]:
I love that imagery. I forget the comedian. It’s like a pursuer’s brain. It’s like a bowl of spaghetti. Withdrawers brain is like a waffle and everything is in its compartment. And my brain’s on next episode of what we need to talk about. And let’s hit that mission in your brain. Well, by the way, what’s going on with that? This leads to that and no right or wrong way. It’s just a lot of fun trying to make, put those together right.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:03:16]:
I like chitchat in the beginning. And George is like, he answers chit chat with two words. How was your trip? It was good. But you know what? Have you noticed, wait, wait. Have you noticed that I have become so much more accepting of this? Like, I don’t get my feelings hurt. I, like, I understand that you are in work mode, and in work mode we’re not doing social stuff. That social stuff is categorized for you.
George Faller [00:03:43]:
I’m such an ogre.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:03:47]:
But have you noticed that I’m so much more accepting…er.
George Faller [00:04:12]:
and, well, and that’s the irony here. These are those different love languages, different ways of processing. There’s no right or wrong. It’s not wrong because I want to be focused on a mission. Or it’s not wrong that you want a small chat and feel good and connect. I mean, they’re both important, right? And sometimes they miss each other and there’s, I hope you notice at times, why do you see the importance of chitchat and just kind of seeing how things are going.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:04:17]:
And you do, and you ask a lot more these days and you volunteer a lot more, too. So I appreciate that we’re both growing and stretching.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:04:21]:
We are.
George Faller [00:04:22]:
Who knows what we’re capable of.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:04:23]:
We are. We might become friends.
George Faller [00:04:28]:
So I’m not going to bring up anything until you do. So I just chitchat the rest of this episode, if you’d like. I’m going to show you I could do it. Let’s get to talking about this episode, will you?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:04:42]:
Okay. Okay. I think people appreciate a little bit of insight into us, but, okay, we’re going to talk about what happens on the inside, the places that we have to access in order to change the vulnerability underneath and how we feel about ourselves. So should we start with the withdrawer? Since you opened us up so beautifully, what does the withdrawer go through?
George Faller [00:05:06]:
No. Me, I like my overview first.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:05:08]:
Okay, go with your overview first.
George Faller [00:05:10]:
She’s rolling her eyes again, everyone.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:05:12]:
No, did not. I did not. I smiled and I smiled, but on.
George Faller [00:05:18]:
The inside you were criticizing, which was good.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:05:21]:
I was not. This is your experience. You’re making that up. That’s what you tell yourself, that I’m criticizing inside. What I really say is, that’s right. George is really good at structure and it helps us. That’s what I’m saying inside.
George Faller [00:05:35]:
All right, well, I was wrong. Sorry for my faulty alarm signal. That often interprets things. Right. Which. That’s what yellow brains do. But I do think it’s important to focus in. This is the heart of what we do in this school of love.
George Faller [00:05:54]:
In a negative cycle and people caught in protective moves, there’s no safety or space to really talk. What’s at the heart of the problem, which is this. The only reason they’re protecting themselves is because there’s a threat. There’s something that’s scaring them or hurting them. If you can get couples to actually listen to these places and ask for help and partners help each other here, you don’t have not only a negative cycle, you create a positive cycle. So again, this is so critically important to really try to slow down, to try to get clear about these places of vulnerability. There’s a reason why it’s not chance. I call my training program success and vulnerability.
George Faller [00:06:33]:
I mean, this is the key. Couples that do this can repair. Couples that do this have secure attachment. Couples that do this have high levels of engagement. I mean, this is the target that we’re aiming for all the time. The timing has to be right. You have to know how to work with defenses to get there. But being able to kind of learn this place well is so, so damn important.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:06:54]:
Yeah. Okay, so how do we get there?
George Faller [00:06:59]:
Ouch. What do we do?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:07:02]:
When you see a look across my face that looks critical, you go, ouch.
George Faller [00:07:07]:
Again, this thing moves in less than a second, right? There’s that trigger that sets this whole thing off. That trigger always hits a physiological response. We all have sensitivities through past experiences, messages we’ve gotten, that we’ve done something wrong, we’re failing, we’re being rejected. It hurts, right? Sad, lonely. All that kind of vulnerable emotion lies in this place. But the problem is, once we get hit and it hurts, that hurt produces an action tendency, a protective move that then triggers the other person, and they get lost in the protective moves, and there’s no space to actually talk about the ouch. Which is what we’re going to try to talk about here. So what do you want to start with? The withdrawal.
George Faller [00:07:47]:
You said, Laurie.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:07:48]:
I do. I do. And might I just add that sometimes the cycle gets triggered by things that we expect, not necessarily our partner’s actual actions.
George Faller [00:08:01]:
Mm hmm. Yes.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:08:03]:
Without a doubt about criticism.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:08:07]:
Yes. Defenses anticipate. That’s their job. They don’t want to get it wrong. They’re vigilant. So, yes, sometimes we read something into our partner’s behaviors that’s not accurate, and that’s the cost and the price of these defenses.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:08:22]:
Okay. Go withdraw. Help me understand you.
George Faller [00:08:27]:
Withdraw is in the. Let’s talk emotional cycle first.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:08:32]:
Okay.
George Faller [00:08:33]:
All right. I think the sensitivity for a lot of withdrawers, because they’re performers and their fixers and their doers, is getting the message that they’re failing or they’re doing something wrong. So criticism actually causes. Like, for me, if I see you shake your head or if my wife makes a comment, there’s, like, a clenching in my stomach. Like, my body says, oh, fuck, here we are. You know, we were good. We were sailing along, and now I’m back in the doghouse. And that’s kind of how quick it is.
George Faller [00:09:03]:
So it’s this sense of failure. It’s this sense of helplessness. Like, you don’t even know how you got there. There’s some confusion with that. There’s some kind of loneliness there. There’s this trying to. Then the pressure to try to figure out what you’re supposed to do to kind of get out of that place. And there’s so much emphasis on what you need to do to fix it that you don’t actually stay in that place.
George Faller [00:09:27]:
So that’s why a lot of withdrawals don’t have words. But the words, when you can invite them to kind of linger a little bit longer, is typically a sense of failure, a sense of helplessness, a sense of loneliness that they feel defeated, they feel discouraged, they feel beaten down, they feel hopeless. They can feel despair. There could be a sense of shame, of unworthiness in that place. So there’s lots of layers to this.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:09:54]:
What an awful place. Just as you say all those words. It’s terrible.
George Faller [00:10:01]:
Well, it’s definitely lonely. On the outside, it looks like nothing, but in the inside, man, no wonder why they wanna run away from it.
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George Faller [00:12:15]:
Because, you know, I mean, to me, you know me with my levels, I mean, what they’re looking for is the good stuff. So it starts off with, they don’t get the good stuff, which already sucks, right? They’re not getting the affirmation, the positive, the celebrate, the stuff that they really want. They’re not getting on top of that, they’re getting criticism, the very thing they don’t want to get right. Messages that they’re failing. They’re coming up short. That sucks. And then they get blamed for why they’re failing. It’s kind of their fault.
George Faller [00:12:45]:
They should have done something differently. They kind of believe, part of them, that it is their fault. This is where shame is. So there’s so many layers to this that are pretty nasty.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:12:56]:
They are nasty and if you could.
George Faller [00:12:58]:
Get away from it by focusing on the problem or focus it on your partner, what? Did it make sense? Why? That’s what their body says. Go, go, go. Get away from this place.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:13:07]:
Yeah, go away. Absolutely. Get some relief. Get some relief from these. This, this toxic place inside.
George Faller [00:13:16]:
Yeah. And they don’t recognize, though, in getting away, they’re also getting away from the solution. They’re dooming themselves to nobody helping in that place. Right. It’s another failure and co regulation. And they’re just gonna. No wonder. Why.
George Faller [00:13:32]:
Not trust co regulation, not trust these emotions. They don’t have success with them.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:13:36]:
Yeah. Why would I tell my partner about this shitty place? They’re just gonna. They’re just going to affirm that I am shitty.
George Faller [00:13:44]:
Yeah. I’m going to give evidence for people to tell me more of the same.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:13:48]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:13:49]:
So.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:13:50]:
So what about pursuers? No. No. Are we going to do the sexual withdrawal how they.
George Faller [00:13:56]:
Whatever you want to do, Laurie, you’re in charge. I’m just going along for the ride.
George Faller [00:14:00]:
I really like being in charge, I got to say.
George Faller [00:14:05]:
You want to go with the sexual withdraw now? You want to go the emotional pursuant. I’m leaving my waffle braid and I’m showing my flexibility. Whatever the hell you want.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:14:15]:
Okay. Okay. No, I’ll do it your way. Okay. Let’s do the emotional pursuer in the terrible place that they end up in.
George Faller [00:14:25]:
Do you want to speak to that?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:14:27]:
I think so. I think that the emotional pursuer goes to this place of basically, I’m too much. I need too much. I want too much. I am too much. And then that creates this terrible sense of shame inside of, you know, something is really broken in me, that I’m this hungry, that I keep needing and wanting. And I’m told that this is inappropriate, this is a bad thing. And it hearkens back to all those times in childhood, right, that I was too much, like, twirling in my dress, and they’re like, you know, stop showing up.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:15:05]:
Stop wanting attention or tugging on your parents clothes saying, you know, would you give me some attention here? Come play with me. And it’s like, stop it. You’re a bother. And that gets internalized, right? Is something or another is I keep wanting more than is available. And my parents says that I’m, you know, I’m a bother. And so all of that comes flooding back when my partner doesn’t respond to me. You know, just the shame piece and the feeling of, God, you know, I am really broken here that I want.
George Faller [00:15:39]:
This and you’re also introducing the trigger, which is often the rejection. Right? It’s. That’s the move that sets this thing off, right? Your body’s pushing because it wants connection, it wants co regulation, and instead, what it gets is rejection. And so just in that, what does it feel like to be rejected? Right? It hurts. We know that rejection lands in the brain exactly the same place as physical pain. This is just not some mushy feeling. It’s physiological. We’re bonding creatures who were designed to be in relationship.
George Faller [00:16:09]:
When we’re reaching for it and we don’t get it, it freaking hurts. Right? So that’s that hurt, that loneliness, that sadness, that pain, that’s all part of these layers of kind of nasty stuff that’s lurking for the pursuer.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:16:24]:
So true. And I think one of your stories about, you know, how you’re checking your phone for the text back, you know, you can feel rejected as a pursuer when something is not happening, when response is not coming. Maybe it’s coming in a day, but when it doesn’t come in an hour or 2 hours or 5 hours or something, each one of those hours is another rejection. So it compounds inside of I am being rejected. I heard a story this week with an emotional pursuer who said they took three days to get back to me after I was vulnerable, and then they are surprised that I’m hurt and don’t want to be in relationship with them. You know, go through that again. It’s like. Exactly.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:17:11]:
Yeah, it’s another nasty place.
George Faller [00:17:14]:
It’s another. You got the failure in the withdrawal, an emotional cycle. You got rejection and that pain for the pursuer and the shame for both of them. Let’s come back and talk about the sexual cycle of pursuer withdrawal.
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George Faller [00:20:31]:
So let’s talk about the sexual cycle here, Laurie, about these positions. Pursue withdrawal again, we all do some of switch emotional sexual, but the more we can get a bit clearer. So I like to zoom out first. It just helps me to kind of organize it, you know, as you were talking about the sexual, the emotional pursuit just helped me like say, you know, there are two important parts of this. There’s the. The primary emotion, and then there’s how we make sense of that, the meaning making in it. Right. So these are the two parts.
George Faller [00:21:01]:
Right. So there’s the rejection, the message of failure, and what that does to the body. It makes us feel alone and scared. And then there’s the view of self, like, how do we make sense of this happening again and again, which is all these kind of unlovable, broken, nasty, shameful places. So all of these are the two parts that seem to be lurking. So let’s talk about that in the sexual cycle. Where do you want to start with the withdrawal?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:21:27]:
Let’s start with the withdraw.
George Faller [00:21:29]:
All right.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:21:30]:
Okay. So the withdrawer kind of the message they get. And what they feel is the message they get is that they’re failing. And so that kind of makes them feel like, I think, broken, not good enough, or is that how we make sense of it? Actually, that’s.
George Faller [00:21:51]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that they’re both there. I think the feeling is that, you know, what does it feel like to fail? What does it feel like to get a message from your partner that you’re letting them down? I think there’s guilt. I think there’s a sense of helplessness. They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, how to get their body to respond. I think there’s a sense of deflation, a sense of just, like, they don’t know how to get out of this place. I think it’s lonely. I think it’s, you know, and to feel like a powerless. Powerless.
George Faller [00:22:22]:
We all like control, and you just don’t know what to do to stop this. It just keeps happening again and again and again. It’s just like, you just gotta ride this storm out. It is. Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:22:32]:
I wish so much I had a body that responded so quickly and that I was up for it, like, my partner and I don’t. And I don’t know how to get there. And it just. That can make you feel helpless and powerless.
George Faller [00:22:44]:
Yeah. And it’s not even in that moment. It’s like that moment then carries over into the future. That’s the pressure that they start to feel, that sense of vigilance, that, like, when are they going to be asked to do it again? Right. It’s. We had sex last week, and we have a couple more days of not have the pressure. I mean, you can feel, you know, how. And then that view of self, like, it’s not only have I’m failing, but you start to believe I am a failure.
George Faller [00:23:10]:
My body’s broken, I have low desire. There’s something wrong with me, you know.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:23:18]:
Exactly.
George Faller [00:23:19]:
You wonder why they don’t want to have sex. That’s not a great environment to want to have sex.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:23:24]:
Yeah. Not like I’m an exciting partner, but I’m a really. I’m a dead fish. My partner thinks I’m a dead fish.
George Faller [00:23:32]:
Or my body’s not going to work, it’s going to fail me. We know this with a lot of, you know, men as they get older, it’s. They’re the ones that stop having sex. They become the sexual withdrawers because they don’t want to feel that sense of betrayal in their body, a sense of letting their partner down, of feeling like they let themselves down. That’s, that’s a tough place. It’s a lonely place, too. I mean, these are some of the loneliest moments when you suffering, but you don’t know how to talk about it. You don’t want to make your partner feel bad or you don’t want to bring it up.
George Faller [00:24:04]:
So you just, again, to me, that image of like just weather in a storm, you don’t know when this tornado is going to end or the lightning is going to stop and you hope it’s not going to get you, but you just kind of sit there in a corner and hope it passes you by.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:24:17]:
Yeah. And no wonder sexual withdrawers don’t want to talk about sex with their partners, right? It’s like they’re, they’re already feeling like I have nothing to offer here. I’m getting poor marks. My partner is unhappy with me. Why would I enter a conversation where I let my partner know? Yeah, I am feeling guilty and helpless and lonely and powerless and they’re not going to get that. They’re going to just see that I’m controlling and trying to withhold from them. They’ve already judged me. They don’t see what’s going on inside me.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:24:51]:
Why would I talk about this?
George Faller [00:24:53]:
And anything they do talk about usually gets brought back at a later date against them. Right. It’s like, well, I feel stuck. Oh, you always feel stuck. Like anything they use comes back later. So it’s, they learn that, they learn it’s wiser in the short term not to, but again, they don’t see that destined stem to just be alone. I mean, we wouldn’t want to leave our kids alone in pain and fear. And yet so many of these maturers have resigned themselves that this is just the way it is.
George Faller [00:25:22]:
This is what life looks like. Eventually it’ll pass and you can come out again and have some fun. But they just, they don’t trust in co regulation because it’s so failed, right?
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Dr. Laurie Watson [00:26:31]:
Should we talk now about the pursuer and what they get? They never get attention. I’m just kidding. They’re all like, please go to the pursuer. Yes, we got enough time. Don’t get about us.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:26:45]:
Well, I think partly why we’re doing this episode is to help people see into what their partner is going through. You know? So we’re trying to expose. Right, what the withdrawal, the sexual withdrawer actually feels on the inside. Cause on the outside, it looks like they’re being, they’re stonewalling, they’re controlling, they’re withholding. But on the inside is this terrible place.
George Faller [00:27:12]:
And in the school of love, we’re following this model of EFT. You know, the nine steps. This is that third step. Right. We’ve talked about building an alliance. Step one, understand the defense is step two. Now, this is access. And what’s underneath the defense is the primary emotion, the ouch, the vulnerability.
George Faller [00:27:32]:
Right. The more that we see, it’s pretty universal. Cuts across cultures and genders. Like, this is a fight or flight response. There’s a threat, and this is the threat. These fears, these insecurities hurts. So, yes, let’s talk about the sexual pursuer. What does it feel like?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:27:49]:
Yeah, why do I get to answer all these? I need to answer what the sexual pursuer feels like.
George Faller [00:27:57]:
This one, it’s similar to the emotional pursuer. Right? The trigger tends to be rejection. I want this healthy thing. This is my love language. This is how I feel safe in the world, and I’m not getting the good thing that I want, right? So that the immediacy, the rejection is the hurt, the loneliness that’s kind of imposed upon you. Not getting what you want. The sense of helplessness that you don’t know how to get to.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:28:23]:
The sense of unfairness, the sense of disconnection. Right? I’m longing for connection, and all I get is disconnection. Yeah.
George Faller [00:28:31]:
I love when you use the word hungry. It’s like, I’m hungry, and I got this beautiful meal in front of me, and I can’t access it. I can’t get a taste of it.
George Faller [00:28:40]:
It feels like.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:28:42]:
You can’t eat it.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:28:47]:
Right.
George Faller [00:28:48]:
Slip those in.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:28:49]:
Oh, gotta, gotta. Just to make a little lighter.
George Faller [00:28:54]:
Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:28:55]:
Right. You want your partner and you have this desire for them and you see them as so enticing and intoxicating, and then they reject you, and it’s just like, ah, you know, it’s so rejecting and it feels so bad. I mean, I know for me, you know, I can feel it in my gut. I can. And this is the pursuer of the frantic place, the frenetic place. I can imagine asking for sex and worrying about rejection and feeling that in my stomach, you know,
George Faller [00:29:26]:
I can feel in my chest. Right. I can feel it even before I ask as my body’s preparing for it to happen.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:29:36]:
Right.
George Faller [00:29:37]:
It’s anticipating. You gotta be ready for it to hear the noise.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:29:40]:
Right? That’s the frenetic pursuer piece. Right? Anticipatory of anticipation, of rejection.
George Faller [00:29:48]:
So you have the anxiety, you have the hurt when it happens. You got the loneliness, you got the pain, and then you got to make sense of that. So you got that view of self, which is, you know, you either angry at your partner for triggering or you wonder, what is it about me that’s the vulnerable place? Am I. Am I attractive enough?
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:30:05]:
Attractive, right, right. I mean, in sex, it’s even more complicated because our body is involved, the judgment of our body, and also kind of the loss of touch, which our body is craving and needing in order to be soothed and connected. And it’s like, it’s literally a physical sort of withdrawal that happens when our partner goes away or doesn’t respond to us. Right, right.
George Faller [00:30:34]:
And as we try to make sense of that withdrawal, we, you know, we start to think, am I not a good lover? Do I kind of deserve this rejection? That’s it. At worst, it’s not only you reject it, but you start to think, I kind of deserve this. This has to be me because it keeps happening. I know my track record. I know what happens to me in relationship, and this is it. All my work is to not be rejected. And I keep finding myself rejected. This is where it slips into the shade that starts saying, I’m unlovable, I’m too much, I’m broken.
George Faller [00:31:04]:
This isn’t a whole person. This is just the insecurities. But when you listen to these insecurities, they’re really dark. And usually this is the place. No one comes, no one helps, right? It’s really totally isolation. To me, this is hell. You are cut off from relationship that is healthy, that you want, and you don’t like yourself in that place. You kind of despise yourself, you think you deserve it.
George Faller [00:31:26]:
I mean, no one does well in shame. And yet this is often what’s lurking underneath the sexual cycle.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:31:33]:
So true. So true. Okay, I’m really depressed. Are we going to do an episode next about how we get out of these places?
George Faller [00:31:44]:
That’s what gives us, this therapist, the courage to go and shine lights into these dark places. Because the good news here is if you can listen to the pain and the insecurity, there’s always a longing there that’s going to be the solution to these problems.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:31:59]:
If you can listen, okay, but yes, as a therapist, we can go in there, but what about me is just the average bear, you know, like, same thing.
George Faller [00:32:08]:
If you, as an average bear, have the courage, if you see, and that’s what this podcast is trying to do, that the wisdom is listening to your pain is because in that pain is the new moves. Pain is the need. What you need to not feel the pain. And if you can send a clear signal to your partner who often doesn’t know your pain and caught up in their own stuff, right? If. If people can help each other with this pain, you don’t have a negative cycle. You actually have a positive cycle. What leads to disconnection can lead to.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:32:40]:
Connection right underneath it. I can say what I want, what. Would make me feel better.
George Faller [00:32:47]:
Make us feel encouraged when you think like, wait a second, if we’re not destined for these dark places, if we can learn to go there and speak about them and kind of get our partner to help us here, all of a sudden, that leads to, I think, the strongest love on this planet. This is where we need it the most, and we never get it. What would it be like in your relationship if you actually learned to get it.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:33:09]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:33:10]:
That’s a love worth, worth. It’s priceless.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:33:14]:
Yeah. Okay. You said it was going to be a hard one, a sad one. But there’s good news coming. So thanks for listening to our school of love. We’re hoping to organize you and help you think through in an orderly way, like how to get through these issues and how to get through a negative cycle. Form a strong bond.
George Faller [00:33:38]:
Thanks for listening and keep it hot. Keep it hot, Laurie. Nice.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:33:45]:
Okay, so tell us about your cutting edge training that you’re doing on success and vulnerability.
George Faller [00:33:51]:
Laurie, We just keep pushing it. Coming up with a new module on the playbook of a pursuer. Playbook of a witcher. Really practical, moment by moment moves 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.
George Faller [00:34:15]:
So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:34:17]:
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 [00:34:36]:
No. We try to emphasize the teach it, show it, do it model of learning. You need to have some ideas. So we try to teach those, and then we try to show what it looks like implementing those ideas. But most importantly, you now got to practice it. That’s how they become yours. And that’s what we want our listeners and watchers to do, is become their own moves.
Dr. Laurie Watson [00:34:54]:
Find George and his teaching at successandvulnerability.com.
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Call in your questions to the four play question voicemail, dial 833 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.
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