[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Doctor's Wig Show, where I show you how bad states of mind and difficult life issues aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen.
Alright, let's get into it.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: You.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Hey peoples. How are you feeling today?
I hope all is well in your inner life and in your relationships. But if not, no worries. There are lots of ways to process and transform what's happening.
I want to expand on what we did in episode 58.
In this exercise, we focused on your inner process. While you're in the midst of a conflict with someone. The method helps you access the more objective, wise part of yourself that can see through your own entanglements. And then it shows you how to bring this new awareness into your relationship.
It's difficult to be objective about yourself, but when you interact with someone, it can be daunting. You get caught up in the relationship process and it's easy to lose yourself.
This happens because a relationship is far more than just two separate human beings communicating. By sending and receiving signals and messages together, you and the other person form a system in which the contents of your psyches lose their borders as they interact, merge, morph, conflict, entangle, disentangle and behave as part of a whole.
Your personal history, present consciousness and future fate intertwine with the other persons and create a third entity called the relationship.
This is the meaning of the phrase the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If we could see into the invisible relationship world of two people's psyches, we wouldn't just see two separate entities sending information back and forth. We'd see one system with two sets of awareness.
Strange as it sounds, this means there are three minds present yours, the other person's and the mind of the system as a whole.
The system's mind contains the overall story of your unfolding relationship.
It's a process that's bigger than the two of you as parts of the whole. And it goes even further.
Have you ever wondered why people have weddings?
On the surface? If I want to marry you and you want to marry me, what's it got to do with anyone else? Why would our relationship be so connected to all these other people?
In fact, why would the whole society, including the legal system, have anything to do with our relationship?
Well, this could be a hot topic of discussion in itself, but the point is that an individual becomes part of a larger system in a relationship, which in turn becomes part of a whole group of people.
If you're a biologist, chemist or physicist, or a spiritual person, you'd go even further and say the individual, couple and group are all part of the larger system of nature and the universe.
You perceive yourself as an individual and you are. But when you relate to people, you also become part of these larger systems pairs, families, groups, teams, cultures, and also planet Earth and the whole universe. Your individual self becomes part of something bigger.
The way to become a more conscious, evolved person in your relationships is to wake up to how your psyche gets entangled with other people's psyches.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: And with these larger systems, this will.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Give you more freedom to be your true self. It's so easy to go unconscious and allow a relationship process to control your experience and behavior.
Think about those times when you felt great, started to relate to someone, and ten minutes later you were a hot, seething mess.
Your initial state of mind was suddenly gone because you entered into a different system, another realm, a set of psychological.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Forces that changed you.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Of course, it also works the other way around. You might feel like crap, and then your lover or friend immediately changes your.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Mood for the better.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: The mystery is, why couldn't you do.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: This on your own?
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Is this other person some sort of magician or shaman or god?
They might be. But more likely than not, they or the relationship system simply represents a positive, supportive part of your psyche you aren't that conscious of yet.
Now, a relationship, by its very nature, is designed to throw you off center.
This can be a positive or a negative experience. It might be euphoric, fun, uplifting, ecstatic, creative, peaceful. Or it could be severely challenging for you, expose your unconscious corners and get you where it hurts.
Either way, this is the purpose of relationships. They wake you and bake you.
Your subconscious perceives people's psychologies and says, hey, there's someone with the perfect psychology to liberate me, free me, compliment me, or mess with me, irritate me, drive me completely nuts so I have the opportunity to wake up to the changes I need to make. Call her.
Call him.
When you get into trouble in a relationship, you're also in trouble with a part of yourself. But it's tough to see this because the other person can be so upsetting. It takes all your awareness just to deal with them. You don't have any energy left to realize that they're mirroring something in you.
The exercise aims to break this kind of trance we get into when we're.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Caught in a conflict.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: The method takes you out of the fight, the blame, the web of accusations, and helps you access a more wise part of yourself that can navigate what's happening. It's a simple method for disentangling yourself from your unconscious projections, which in turn can help you see clearer and change yourself in a way that helps heal the relationship.
I used to supervise clinical psychology students working with their clients, and one of the common issues I saw was that as therapists, they wanted to keep the relationship process in the interactive mode. He said this, she said that. Oh, how does that make you feel?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Tell him what you feel, and so on.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: This is the communication level, and it's important but focusing exclusively on this is also a way to cycle around and avoid the deeper process.
To get to that, you have to do some kind of inner work self reflection, personal processing in the moment when you're together with the other person, not.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Just individually, on your own.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: If you're in a relationship, it's important to learn how to work on yourself in front of the other person.
Of course, this takes a lot of humility and courage, as well as some processing skills, but it's essential work to do. Catching what's happening in real time is.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: The way to make true change.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: When couples go to therapy and talk about what happened last week, it gets into a lot of interpretation.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: I always bring it back to the.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Present moment to see where the conflict they're talking about is happening right now. Then you can work with it organically.
Now, this breaks a fundamental rule in.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Western culture about relationships you aren't supposed.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: To close your eyes, go internal, and work on yourself while you're talking to someone.
Quite taboo.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: But it's easy.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: You can just say, Wait a minute, I have to go inside for a minute to find out what I'm feeling or what's going on that I'm not seeing.
The exercise shows you how to do this together with someone else. You can spend ages cycling around the same disagreements, amplifying your own positions on.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: An issue, or you can both work.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: On yourselves in the moment and raise your awareness to the level where transformation can happen.
The method involves sitting together with someone and videoing yourselves having a conflict.
Just this alone has the potential for helping both of you become more objective about what's going on, although it depends on who in each of you watches the video. Like, if it's just the same part that's in the conflict, or if it's.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Your inner critic or whatever, if you.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Watch it purely from your side of the conflict, with no attempt at seeing further than this, you'll just use the video to confirm your position.
This is why the method helps you access your inner wisdom. It helps you to embody a different perspective while you're watching the video.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: It's like becoming a different person and looking at these two other people in a conflict. Ever watch people arguing?
[00:10:23] Speaker A: It's not hard to see what's happening from the outside, but it can feel impossible from the inside.
The more the other person does A, you have to do B, or at.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Least it feels like that.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: This is why you need a way to get outside your usual way of perceiving. In fact, changing your perceptual framework is the key to making any kind of change in yourself, your relationship, your job, your spirituality, your health, or anything else.
And if you've been following this podcast, you know that changing your perceptual framework isn't just a matter of changing how you think about things like the notion.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Change your thoughts, change your life type of thing.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: That can certainly help you, but it's not going to change deep seated, viscerally, emotional existential core processes stirring in your subconscious and influencing your relationships.
To do this, you have to learn to process your experiences. If you don't have any tools for doing this, the most you can do is try to analyze your relationship, in which case you'll probably end up arguing with the other person about what's going on.
I've had clients in couples therapy who couldn't even agree on what their issue was. They'd come into my office and one of them would say, we're here to work on X, and the other would shake his head and say, what? That's not why we're in therapy. Then they'd waste half the session arguing over why they're arguing, each with his or her own analysis of the situation.
I've even tried offering my own analyses to couples like this, and one or both will say, no, doctor, that's not what's going on. And they're right, because at some point, ideas are useless. Even if you can see clearly from the outside what's going on, it's not.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Going to help that much.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Couples will often go along with what their therapist tells them because she's an authority figure. But when they get home, the craziness starts all over again. Then they argue over what the therapist said or meant.
Improving your relationship requires both people to experience a new state of mind, an.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Altered state in a sense, that changes them.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Sometimes a revelatory thought can zap you into a new state of being and give you an AHA moment. But more often than not, just thinking about things only tinkers around the edges.
There's also a danger in taking on ideas that don't arise organically from your own experience.
You can superimpose them over your relationship and make yourselves follow them because you believe or want them to be true, even if they're not.
Following general relationship dogma programs and set ideas of how you should be tends.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: To work against you.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Relationships are meant to be fluid, not static. The way it is today isn't necessarily the way it's meant to be tomorrow. This is why the exercise focuses on the present moment in your relationship, not on general ideas about what you should do.
Give me a second. I'm thinking about something about music.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I just got the connection between.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: The exercise and music.
This might take us off the deep end for a moment, and hopefully it does.
No, wait. Actually, I'm going to jam on my guitar for a minute so I can get a clear sense of what I.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Want to tell you. Back in a flash.
Yeah, I got it.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Using your inherent wisdom to transform a relationship issue is a process that's mirrored in music.
There's a hidden wisdom that governs your.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Relationships, and the exercise helps you tap into this.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: There's also a hidden wisdom that governs.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: The relationships between musical elements in both.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Cases, it's an underlying intelligence based on mathematical structures.
Now, don't get scared because I said the word mathematical. Math is just a language.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Like words or music, it's a language.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: That describes the shape and arrangement of patterns.
Numbers are its currency. But you can do math without using numbers. Numbers are just symbols that represent things. We can use other symbols to express mathematical patterns, too. For example, we could do math strictly through visualization, although it would be limited to three dimensions, since that's all we can see. We could also do math purely through hearing. For example, if we listen to music as auditory processes that reveal solutions through harmony and errors through discordance.
In fact, that's what your brain does.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: When you listen to a song.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: You know when someone sings a flat note and it makes you wince?
That's because you hear that the mathematical pitch frequency of the offending note isn't in the correct proportion to the notes.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: That come before and after it.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Music is based on the mathematical relationships between sounds.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: That bad.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Note by itself isn't bad. It only alerts your brain to a math error when you relate it to a series of other pitch frequencies before and after it.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: The same is true for rhythm.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Without the mathematical structure of rhythms, which consist of a regular arrangement of pulse, repetition, accent, phrase, and duration, music wouldn't work. It would sound like a bunch of trash falling down the stairs, and your intrinsically mathematical mind would reject it. For music to sound right, the numerical relationships between pitches and between beats have to be internally proportionate and correct.
The wisdom is in the numbers. But you don't have to be a music theory expert to know any of this. Your brain does the calculations all on.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Its own, for your relationships with people or with yourself.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: To work, the mathematical relationships between needs, desires, and goals has to be internally proportionate and correct.
When discordance presents itself, we either notice that something doesn't add up and we try to recalibrate, or we pretend all the equations work and imagine everything's okay. This, of course, is the math formula.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: For problems and conflict.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: What I teach are really just methods for solving the equations of your life.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: And helping you adjust to them.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: The equations aren't numerical, but they're mathematical in the sense that they're structured and logical and can be used to predict, analyze, and solve problems. Just like when we listen to music, we do relationship math all the time without realizing it. But instead of using numbers, we use feelings, words, and actions to make calculations.
Sometimes we're genius mathematicians, but most of the time we have trouble just adding and subtracting.
What occurs between you and someone else doesn't happen randomly and without meaning. It's not like a song without a.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Melody or a rhythm.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: It's got a precise and often predictable pattern. If you analyze a relationship process, you can express it in mathematical terms as an observable pattern of events. You can say person A has this inner complex which interacts with person B's inner complex, which is mediated by these communication signals between them, both perceived and unperceived, which in turn are influenced by the overall story of the relationship as a whole, as well as the culture and physical environment. You can deconstruct it and see all.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: The logical patterns and processes in play.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Now, unless you're obsessed like me, you probably won't get this involved in your process calculations. But any recognition of patterns can help.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Make you more conscious.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: You can identify the equations in play and strive to solve them. The exercise uses your intrinsic inner math whiz to solve the equation underlying your relationship issue.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: There's a mathematical structure behind everything in life.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: To get into the flow of your health, happiness and success, you have to identify the underlying mathematical patterns and use them to awaken you to your process.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: And that of your relationships.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: You can understand and express this hidden intelligence through images, sounds, feelings, words.
You could probably even dance.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Math you and your relationships are the.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Same as a song. They alternate between mathematical harmony and dissonance or have both present at the same time. When you interact with someone, practice taking momentary breaks like in the exercise, so you can check in with yourself, do some inner math, and bring your deeper awareness into the relationship.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: See you next time.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Stay aware.
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