Relational Life Therapy with Audrey Schoen

Audrey Schoen joins me to talk about Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy

Transcript:

James: My guest today is Audrey Schoen. Audrey is a relational life therapist. I'm a crucible therapist. And relational life therapy (RLT) and crucible therapy are cousins. In the world of couples therapy, the most common approaches are Gottman and EFT. They are similar in many ways. And then RLT and Crucible are similar in many ways. They're not that similar to mainstream couples therapy.

Audrey: That's right. There's some really important differences.

James: So what do you think the most important difference is?

Audrey: I would say that the biggest thing that's different is that Crucible and RLT really focus on a sense of personal responsibility for managing yourself, managing your regulation, and how you show up and being reflective on that. That's the core of how things get better in relationships.

James: One way that I've expressed it is that it's a focus on separateness rather than togetherness. Why does that matter so much?

Audrey: Oh man. I think a lot of other couples approaches focus on how we manage our partners, how we regulate our partner, how we act depends on our partner. With RLT in Crucible, the rule is how you behave isn't dictated by the people around you. And there has to be a level of separateness or differentiation to be able to do that. There will be moments in marriage where you'll be disappointed, you'll be lonely, you'll be upset, you'll be unhappy with what's happening. And in order to stay regulated in those moments, you have to have a sense of separateness from your partner.

James: One way I think about it is if we don't have a healthy separateness, then we create unhealthy separateness, which often comes in the form of fighting or distancing or stonewalling.

Audrey: Well, and conversely, we also will have an unhealthy togetherness if we don't have a healthy separateness.

James: And sometimes you get a back and forth between the two where you're bouncing between, "we are so close together," and "now we can't stand each other".

Audrey: I think there's something kind of addictive about that. It's very dopamine centric. Like, it's exciting. Both sides of it are exciting. I remember a therapist I saw a long time ago. I was talking to him about this problem that I was having in my relationships that it was either great or horrible. And he's like, "Well, you can have a relationship where it's either great or horrible or you can have a relationship where it's good a lot of the time. Which one do you want? Because you can't have both".

James: If I feel like my relationship's amazing right now, it might just because I'm in a repair cycle. I'm coming up off this period of time when we were actually really being mean to each other. And so what you're talking about is a relationship where we don't ever do that thing where we're just really mean to each other for days or weeks or months.

Audrey: Right. It's like the honeymoon phase essentially. That is so small and so truncated. You're gonna have conflict, you're gonna have disrepair, you're gonna have moments. Everybody does. But they're not big, they're not explosive, they're not harmful. They're moments. And then you find yourself back in. You have a mechanism to repair those moments quickly.

James: What has surprised you most that you've learned? You've been in RLT training for over a year. What has been most surprising to you?

Audrey: Actually, it's the personal, personal work. I knew going in that that would be part of it. That's probably why I put it off a little while, if I'm being honest. What's been surprising is just how much I've learned about myself. And how much it has shifted how I show up in relationships.

James: Okay.

Audrey: I thought I was doing pretty good. I knew I had some places to grow, but it really pointed to places where I wasn't differentiated. I wasn't individuated. I wasn't taking personal responsibility for how I was perceiving, reacting, experiencing moments. That's been probably the most profound shift.

James: That makes me really happy to hear it. It's been my experience as well in crucible work is that in the end, all of my growth as a therapist has been my individual growth as a person. Me learning to handle myself better in my own marriage is 90% of becoming a better therapist.

Audrey: I agree. We get to show up to our sessions and say, "I'm doing this too. I'm doing this with you. By the way, I didn't do it very well last week because I'm human too". That always gets a bit of a laugh.

James: So how do you address the personal work in RLT training?

Audrey: Directly. It is absolutely directly spoken to. One of the principles of becoming an RLT therapist is that you do the work yourself in your own marriage and in your life.

James: Are you working with an RLT therapist?

Audrey: It's a combination of things. Right now it's been mostly self work. I do work with a therapist. She's not an RLT therapist, she's a brain spotter, but I bring my curiosities and the things that I'm working on in my RLT training to the brain spotting and I work on those pieces. I have a group of other RLT-in-training therapists. We consult with each other and we talk about the personal ways that it shows up. My husband and I went to the RLT bootcamp together, and did that work, a whole weekend of work together.

James: So you did go through a whole process of having this work in your own marriage?

Audrey: The coursework required to get certified is self-work. It's specifically courses that are intended for self-work, where you have exercises and reflections that you have to do.

James: That to me is one of the big differences. I did Gottman training back in the day. Gottman training is like, "let's learn these skills, let's learn these principles," and at no point did it ever address who are you as a person? And what makes you think that you're qualified to teach someone else how to have a better marriage? Especially when your own marriage sucks.

Audrey: Absolutely. I've done some Gottman training. I've done some EFT training. My husband and I went to an EFT therapist. We went to a Gottman-based therapist. And it helped some. But we kept hitting these walls in our own work. That's kind of what clued me into like, there's something missing in those approaches. They work for some folks, but there's something really essential missing that was creating a barrier to actually getting where we wanted to go.

James: What do you think of the idea that, if I hurt my wife's feelings, I probably did that on purpose?

Audrey: Sometimes. That happens. Some people are, essentially, "if you hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you". It's angry victimhood. Some people do hurt on purpose. That does happen. More often, it's not usually the case. If my husband says something that I perceive to be critical, there's a good chance he's not actually trying to be critical.

James: Since I don't see it that way at all. I've been married for 24 years. I know my wife so well that the chances of me accidentally hurting her are very slim. It happens very occasionally, but when it happens, it's the exception. And this has been transformational for me because we really want to give ourselves that pass: "Oh, I didn't mean to". I've spent so much time with this person. I know her emotional responses so well. I'm not saying I should never say anything that hurts my wife's feelings. That's gonna happen sometimes. Sometimes it's important to say things. Sometimes there's things that are so important that need to be said regardless of how she feels about it. So the things I'm talking about is something that's not important and hurts her feelings. And then this idea, "Oh, I didn't know that I was gonna hurt your feelings." My experience, it's rare.

Audrey: I've worked with a decent amount of folks who struggle with that level of awareness. They don't see it. They have a hard time perceiving how someone might feel when they say that thing. And this, again, not a pass, but it's a skill deficit.

James: So it's something to learn.

Audrey: It's a skill deficit. Someone might say something that they don't think is critical, they just think it's obvious, it's factual. Like, "I don't understand how that hurts you". And maybe the spouse is sensitive to criticism also. It's kinda like Terry will say, "Am I crazy or is my husband a jerk?". "Is it my trauma or is my spouse being a jerk?". It's both. I think there's a skill gap sometimes. Of self-awareness of how might this feel to the person I'm saying it to. That needs to be learned and that's part of the work.

James: Two phrases that come up a lot in couples therapy are, "I don't feel safe," and "I'm getting triggered". What do you think of those words?

Audrey: Ugh. They are. I think they mean similar things. What's happening right now is activating and I am not regulated. Or I perceive my partner is not regulated and I don't know how to handle that. In a way that feels okay. To keep myself and my nervous system safe. I think that's probably what is being said when those things are being said.

James: But the way you phrased it was in terms, again, of personal responsibility.

Audrey: Right. If I'm feeling unsafe, then I might not have the capacity or the tools or the framework to know how to handle what's happening over there. That doesn't feel okay. If I'm feeling triggered, then whatever is happening is bringing something up in me that feels too much. Either way, I need skills, framework and understanding to be able to cope with that and do something different with it.

James: The key here is that you're not going to outsource that to your partner.

Audrey: You're not gonna outsource that to your partner. Exactly. You're gonna do the work yourself.

James: And that's the fundamental difference. I might ask my wife to treat me differently. But that's never going to be my primary focus.

Audrey: No. And I can't do that until I'm regulated. If my husband is raising his voice and he yells at me. I need to take a breath, take a beat, and then I can say, "I want to hear you, but I can't hear you the way you're speaking to me. Can you bring it down?". It's not until I can actually regulate myself that I can say that in a way that's more likely to be received.

James: Otherwise you're saying, "I want you to be a lot calmer than I am".

Audrey: Right. "You can't yell at me, don't yell at me". Well now you're yelling at me. That's not how this works.

James: "This is a thing that I can't do, but I definitely want you to do". It's really easy to hold people to a certain standard that we don't hold ourselves to.

Normal Marital Hatred & Sadism

James: There's a concept in crucible, which is normal marital sadism. The idea that it's normal for most people in most relationships to at least a little bit enjoy hurting each other.

Audrey: I could see that. I think Terry says it somewhat differently in RLT. Normal marital hatred.

James: That's the phrase. In a normal relationship, there's both love and hatred. If we try to pretend otherwise, we're never going to be able to face the reality.

Audrey: Absolutely. In the course of a single conversation, you can love your partner, like your partner, hate your partner, think they're disgusting, can't get enough of them. That can happen in a matter of 10 minutes. To deny that that's there. I think as humans, there's some element of gratification, sort of poking back.

James: It's very deeply ingrained in our brain. Very natural. I think there's a tendency. We have this cultural idea of relationship or marriage that there should only be love. There should only be kindness. I should feel good about my wife all the time. Then I get this idea that if I'm not like that, I must be a bad person.

Audrey: I'm a bad person. My marriage is flawed. There's something wrong with them, there's something wrong with me. We start to question the whole fabric of it.

James: When in reality it's completely normal. It's so normal. I think that marriage is the hardest thing that we do as humans.

Audrey: I would agree with that.

James: It's also one of the most rewarding. I see it as the primary driver of human growth. If I want to have a good marriage, it's going to require me to really deal with myself.

Audrey: Absolutely. There's a great phrase in RLT: "If you wanna do what you wanna do, be alone". The moment you bring somebody else into your world, you have to start considering them. Part of considering other people is having to reflect and grow yourself. Relationship is the seat of personal development and growth. We can do some personal development individually, but relationship accelerates it. It fosters it if you're willing.

Dealing with Uncertainty in Marriage

James: How do you handle a situation where one partner is on the fence about staying?

Audrey: In RLT we call it leverage. We have to figure out what's the leverage, why should they bother? We look at what's path A and what's path B. And why bother? Why bother trying? Do you have enough reason to stay? Is what you stand to lose and what you stand to gain important enough, good enough, matter enough in your body, at a visceral level? To be willing to do the work to make it work? That's sort of the first question we have to answer: do you have enough reason to do the work and what is that reason? When we can find out what that reason is and amplify it enough in the person. It has to be there to begin with. But if the person can really connect with why bother staying, what's in it for me? Then we can get buy-in to giving it a go.

James: So you're looking for motivation?

Audrey: Exactly. Because it's hard work. The payoff has to be worth it.

James: And you have to be aware of what the potential payoff could be. Why would it be worth it for me to do this very difficult thing when I could just leave and start over?

Audrey: Exactly. For a lot of couples, it's their kids. Some people are like, "I don't know if that's the right reason." I don't care. That's a good enough reason for me. Is that enough of a reason for you to try and love your partner again and be open to being different?

James: I love how you frame it as a choice. Like, I could choose to choose this person and try to make this work. It really is a choice.

Audrey: It is every day.

James: Two things I talk to people about in this situation. We're talking to people who married and have kids. That's when the pressure is highest. Because it's such a huge decision if I'm going to leave a marriage with children. Number one: The most important question isn't whether you stay. The most important question is how do you handle yourself as you stay or you go? Over here you have good marriage, good divorce. Over here you have bad marriage, bad divorce. And the thing that matters is are you moving this way and how fast?

Audrey: Regardless of whether you stay or go.

James: Focusing on "do I stay or go" isn't the most important question.

Audrey: No. It's what do I need to do in order to make whatever path we go on the best possible one?

James: The other thing I often ask people is this marriage, say you've been together 15 years, is a rich environment for you to deal with some very rough parts of yourself. If you leave before you've dealt with those rough parts of yourself, you're gonna have to deal with them again in five years.

Audrey: Absolutely. I've told people that over and over again. You're gonna do this again with somebody else. It might look a little bit different, but it's gonna be about the same thing. You're gonna have to confront these same problems.

James: Alternatively, you could deal with that now. Then you could in a few months decide whether you want to stay after you've dealt with this problem.

Audrey: Exactly. When people are starting with me, I'll tell them, "Let's give it three months and if it's going enough in the right direction, we keep going. If it's not, we change course". Either way you'll have done great work.

James: The other thing sometimes I say is that the work we do here actually makes it easier for you to leave a bad relationship. It makes it easier for you to leave. You'll feel more capable of leaving. You'll feel better about leaving. You'll be much better off afterwards. The work you do is just about personal growth. It unlocks a better divorce. It also unlocks a better marriage. You end up with two better choices instead of two really bad choices.

Audrey: Exactly.

James: I knew that we would see eye to eye. I literally haven't talked to you since you started RLT training. I know people who've trained in both Crucible and RLT. They're just so close. They're very close cousins. It's such a beautiful model.

Audrey: It is.

Divorce Rates and Gender

James: What percentage of your clients are couples?

Audrey: I would say it's hovering right around 30% right now. That's starting to increase more as I market it more. I would say that probably 60 to 70% of my work is relational work. An individual coming because of a relational problem that they aren't ready either to ask for change, they're not ready to insist on couples work. They're needing support prior to getting ready to do that. So it's a lot of the work that I do.

James: Do you ever invite them to bring their partner in?

Audrey: Absolutely. I'll either transition into couple's work if it's appropriate. Or some of my clients want to keep me for individual, and then I'll send them out to somebody else. A very large percentage of my caseload, if they're individuals, end up in couples work because so much of what they're struggling with is relational.

James: That's my experience too. Most of the distress in our lives is related to relationship. If I really just want to live alone, that's not that hard to do, as long as I'm okay with that. Most people aren't.

Audrey: We're relational beings. We're made for connection.

James: There's very few people who really want to just have an apartment and a pet. Most people want to have a person in their lives. That requires so much work. I'm a big fan of marriage because it drives us to deal with the parts of us that don't work with other people.

Audrey: Exactly.

James: Before we started recording, you said 70 to 90% of divorces are initiated by women. Tell me about that.

Audrey: I've been thinking about this a lot, especially because a lot of the people that do come are women. They come to me individually first. And we work towards couples work. A lot of them are really at the end of their rope with the marriage. They're really wondering about leaving. And it's been years that they've been wondering, and they don't feel like anything they're doing is making a difference. I don't want to sound like "men are bad" because they're not. We're all part of this cultural shift in what is expected of modern marriage. In hetero marriages, both men and women are contributing to how it's going wrong. Based on the research, men benefit greatly from marriage: health, finances, social emotional wellbeing. Whereas for women, it's either neutral or it's actually detrimental to our physical, mental health and our financial career wellbeing. There's a gap here. I believe that gap has to do with the disparate expectations of modern marriage. Women are asking for something that men don't know how to deliver.

James: Or don't think they should have to. So there's a cultural problem here. Which is a low expectation of investment in marriage, especially for men.

Audrey: Absolutely. That's how they were taught. I don't fault that part, but that doesn't take away the responsibility to do something about it. When your marriage is failing, you gotta start showing up different.

James: How many times have you heard a man say, "I show that I care by earning money"?

Audrey: That's frequent. Some version of that is very frequent. "I earn money. I take care of this. I do that. I mow the lawn. Here's all the things I do". It's not to take away from that, but it's to say, there's a lot that you're not doing that needs to be taken care of.

James: And there's an implication there that it's not fair for you to ask more of me than just a paycheck.

Audrey: The expectations that women have of marriage have shifted into a much more equal, egalitarian, shared mental responsibility. The expectations for men of marriage have maintained a bit more traditional standards. They don't mix. The data on domestic labor, childcare, and leisure time supports that. Women do 2.2 times more labor at home than men. When a woman earns more than a man in a marriage, she's still doing 1.5 times more labor than him. Even in marriages where both partners say it's pretty fair.

James: I think there's cultural problems here. I often find myself in a hetero relationship encouraging the woman to be more courageous and more assertive about what she wants and what she sees.

Audrey: Absolutely. I tell a lot of my clients make the invisible visible. A lot of women take care of a lot of stuff. They don't let their partners see that they take care of it. They just do it because it's easier. I help them understand, "how do you start making this more visible? How do you be clear about, here's this thing, you're doing it"? Or, "Hey, here's this thing I did. It took me two hours and I had to do this and I had to do that. Can you believe it? Summer camp signups, pain in my rear". My husband wouldn't have any clue if I didn't tell him. I'm sitting in front of the computer for two hours clicking, hoping that I don't get shut out. Freaking out to make sure we have summer care. If I didn't tell him, he'd have no idea. Am I going to sit there and be resentful that I'm doing it and he doesn't know without telling him? I don't have the right to do that.

James: You don't strike me as a person who struggles with being assertive.

Audrey: Not anymore. That's a change. I overcorrected it. We all take different paths. What I ended up doing is I was not assertive. And I played the same game that a lot of women play: hinting and suggesting and asking and requesting, but not really following through. Then doing it anyway because it's not happening on the timeline I want it to, even though I wasn't clear about that.

James: You're just reminding me of a woman who sat right here on this couch. I think I saw the first time she had ever spoken that new language. She told her husband at the beginning of session, "There's something I want to say". She very calmly, with majestic power, said three things and then stopped. She was never the same after that.

Audrey: Exactly. When you learn how to do that and sit with whatever happens on the other side, it's transformational.

James: It was different after that. It does come down to being able to hold onto yourself enough to do that.

Audrey: It does. That takes so much, if you've never learned how.

James: It takes trial and error. Like you said, sometimes you have to go past the 50-yard line to find the 50-yard line.

Audrey: I had to. That was my path. I had to overcorrect and then bring it back down again. Which is okay. I'm on the other side now. The idea that I'm going to find the middle point on first try is probably not gonna happen. If 90% of the time I can be in this wise place, this regulated place, then I think I'm doing great. I'm a human being. Marriage is disappointing sometimes. If my husband and I each can be in our wise adult self as we call it in RLT 90% of the time. Hopefully that 10 percent's not overlapping. Then we're doing pretty damn good. Everybody gets to go crazy. You just can't do it at the same time. You have to take turns.

James: It is better.

Audrey: It's better if you take turns.

James: That requires that separation. I have to be a separate person if I'm going to be okay when my wife is not okay.

Audrey: Exactly. We can take turns doing that some of the time when it does happen. That's actually fine.

James: We call it a regression in crucible. That's when my brain stops working very well. If my wife regresses and I immediately regress, then everything's 10 times worse. If she regresses and I can hold onto myself, we're gonna be okay.

Audrey: In RLT it's mutual triggering.

James: Same thing. We just have different words for all the same stuff.

Audrey: Different language, but same thing.