210. Breaking the Habit of Criticism in Marriage

Transcript:

  Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let’s get started.

And we are live. Welcome everyone to the Connected for Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, and today Leora Mandel is with me and she’s an awesome guest. She’s been here before but a very long time ago, and I’m very excited to have her back because the topic is all about criticism and marriage.

And this is Leora favorite topic. So Leora, introduce yourself and then we’ll get right into it. Okay? Nice to. See everybody, meet everybody. You get to see me more than I get to see you, but it’s nice to be here with you. So I’m a friend of Bat-Chen and I love giving Torah classes. I love giving self-help classes.

I am a marriage and family therapist. I love helping people help their lives get better. I’m always working on myself and I have so many tools that I noticed have really enhanced my life. It’s very exciting to get to share those tools with others and see how lives change for the better. Yes. I love it. I love it.

You are a marriage uh, counselor, therapist, what do you, you have marriage and family therapist? MFT an individual counselor, but my favorite is working with couples because it helps. When you’re working on your relationship, you’re also working on yourself. You’re also working on the dynamics in your family, and it really just can be so life changing for yourself, but then all those around you, within your own concentric circle.

Yes. So let’s talk about criticism because it doesn’t feel nice to be criticized and it’s very easy to criticize others. Yes. One of the reasons why this is one of my favorite topics. It’s not a pleasant topic, but it’s my favorite because it’s so central. It’s at the core of why so many relationships we’re talking about marriage, but I’ll say relationships oftentimes suffer.

And I just wanna even go back and start with a point that’s gonna seem so obvious and yet I think it’s so important to say because I think we often forget it in real time. And the point is that your husband is not you. You’re different people. Therefore you’ll have different views, different perspectives, different ways of dealing with things, different strengths, different challenges.

And as of course, I know everyone’s out. This is not some epiphany I’m giving you. And yet, I think a lot of times, especially on this topic of criticism, we sort of forget that, oh, well he’s not me. So he will have a totally different perspective than I do on many issues. He is not me. So he’s going to handle situations maybe very differently than I do.

He’s not me. So he’s going to speak to me maybe differently than I would speak to him. And I think just remembering, first of all, that first point that we are different people and therefore we have different ways we respond to situations and handle situations when it happens. Instead of being like, I can’t understand why he doesn’t see what I’m talking about.

It could be like, right, he’s not me. He has a different way of seeing things. I, I just think it’s so foundational and even though we all know it, we forget it. And if we could remember it, I think it’s even one like pre-step on this topic into not running into as much of butting heads all the time. ’cause it’s like, oh, right, he’s different.

He’s not me. I love that you said this. It’s so important to remember that we’re all so unique and that just because I see something so clearly does not mean everybody else sees it this way. Of course I’m always right. Right. But also when you introduced yourself, you said something really fascinating.

You know, we both love working on ourselves and helping other people work on themselves because it improves your life and because you could see things differently and live differently and really enjoy and not have to suffer. And to us, this makes so much sense. People who are not into working on themselves do not know why we’re such obsessed people about working on yourself when life could just be so simple.

And to them they really have a different outlook. And it’s not because we are right and they’re wrong, it’s because there’s just different needs and different styles and different people and different personalities, and everybody is so unique. I was recently talking about this with my therapist and I was saying because I work on myself so much, I have a hard time with people who don’t.

And you know, I think this is a normal thing. It’s, I’m not some like, you know, special snowflake, but like, you really think you know better. And then you start criticizing other people in your head, or you start thinking, why don’t they know? Or why are they so stuck in their loops? Or why are they repeating the same thing over and over again?

Or why are they banging their head on the wall? And that’s just because you know that it’s possible to do it a different way. But they really believe that this is the only way. And so it gets into a very interesting situation where, again, like suddenly. It takes you back to having to move back and say like, wait, we’re different people, different situations, different personality.

Different, different, different and it’s a great reminder. Yeah, that’s for sure. Well, one of the reasons I think I, maybe both of us, but I’ll speak for myself. I like working on myself is because I see how life can change. I think sometimes we suffer more than we need to, or we stay in comfort zones and then have circumstances that really could be better.

Sometimes it’s not even huge changes. It’s small changes you work on over time and you can just see how it transforms your relationships. And so then that encourage us to say, wow, this is incredible. Let me, you know, take the next step. Let me learn more. Let me see how life can change if I try to implement something new.

And so, but what you’re talking about, we see other people. One of the things that I’m working on is let my own faults teach me mercy for the faults of others. I think it’s so easy for us, and this is our topic of criticism, to look outside and judge other people and have that critical, you know, criticism for others.

But at the same time, there’s plenty of other things that I, everyone has things they get stuck on. So let’s say even with spouses, my husband might get stuck on certain issues and maybe those are the issues that I don’t get stuck on, but I have my own issues that I get stuck on that are really hard for me to change.

Right. That’s part of the challenge and one of the things I’d love to talk about, but I do wanna get into even understanding the challenge of. Criticism and how do we stop it when we also still need what I call feedback in a relationship. But one of the challenges is that we get into habits and we’re not even always aware of the habits that we have.

And it’s very easy to be able to share with someone else. I don’t like when you say it this way. But then sometimes it’s a habit. And even if the person genuinely wants to change, it can be difficult. And I wanna give you an example. ’cause this happened to me recently. This is a familial example, but in relationships, I think we can apply so many things between parents and children, not everything, and also between spouses.

So my youngest is a boy and he’s nine. And one of my daughters used to have this pet name for him and he hated it. And so I would sort of be on top of her. You know, he doesn’t like it as someone expresses that they don’t like something, you don’t say it. And it would often come up and we’d go over this again and again and again.

Okay. Fast forward. I had little cute names for him. Because he was my, he’s my baby. And then recently he said, mommy, I’m nine years old now. I don’t like when you call me that you should call me by my name. And you know what, I totally respect that. That’s extremely reasonable request. And you know what happened?

Constantly he’d be saying, mommy, I asked you to call me by my name. And it wasn’t until when he remind me that I didn’t even realize I was still using those cute names. It’s just so automatic. It didn’t, even without him giving me that feedback, then I ask you and I’ll be like, oh yes, I’m sorry. I call him by his name and it’s, and it made me realize, you know, this is the thing I love working on myself.

’cause when we’re helping other people also work out difficulties in life, it really does help to have some personal experience to really understand it. But the situation, what it made me realize is I genuinely wanted to change. It’s just I had such a habit already. And this isn’t what I call something negative, but it’s something that bothered him.

So for him it was, and I wanted to change, but sometimes, and this is something to remember, we get frustrated with our spouses. We’ll say, if this bothers me, please stop it. And there is a time, right? Not always, but there are times where the spouse genuinely wants to change ’cause they don’t want you to be upset.

They want you to be happy. They understand what you’re asking, and yet we have to recognize that habits can be hard to change. So sometimes we can either be critical of it and then it just feeds it. Or we can say, recognize the habits hard to change, and let’s think of what we can come up with as a way to remind the person, how about trying it this way?

Again, I think that’s also another important point to put out there. Yeah, it makes me think of the, like, you know, you know, k’ilu in Hebrew like. My husband will point it out to people. You just said three kilos in one sentence, you know, and they say, I did, did I? I did not. I don’t use that word, you know, and it’s very funny.

I have to really be so on top of what I’m saying and so aware to say. A whole sentence without adding any of the add-on words. And sometimes when I’m just talking regular, he will tell me I said it and I will not realize. So it’s the same idea where it just comes and it comes outta nowhere. And by being aware and being, being, you know, there you go.

I just said it again. You know. We can become a little bit more intentional, but it really is a process. And I think it’s so important that everyone recognizes that because I think sometimes when we forget about the fact that if something’s become a habit and a lot of the things we complain about and criticize our bad habits or what, for us feel like bad habits from another person.

Okay. Right. And the subjective piece is important because it is same thing like with our kids. There’s nothing wrong with calling your little brother. The name was Teddy. It’s not a bad name. It’s not. But if he doesn’t like it for him, it’s a subjective situation. It’s a negative experience, and I think in marriages and relationships, it’s not always a matter of, but there’s nothing wrong with saying this.

This isn’t a hurtful thing to say, or there’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing. But if it bothers the other person, then that’s why it’s a problem that needs to change. But again, recognize that especially when these things become habits, they do take time to change and part of the change is.

Helping the person become more aware of they’re doing it, trying to fix it each time afterwards, so that slowly you’re retraining your brain because so much of what we say and do isn’t conscious. It’s sort of an autopilot automatic. We can’t hold conscious thought all the time. When we wanna work on something, that’s when we have to try to bring it more to the front of our brains so that it can become more conscious.

But it does take time to rewire the brain. The good news is it can be done. Yes, good news, it can be done. And when it’s done, you feel so good about yourself because you actually really broke something that was very solid. It’s really substantial, these habits that we have, and sometimes they’re years and years and years in the making, and we expect it to just be so easy.

I told you three times. Well, yeah, but I’ve been doing it a hundred times. So three times not, it takes time. It takes time. So on the topic of criticism, here’s the challenge. Every relationship needs what I call feedback. It needs positive feedback. So I’m going to, even though our topic is criticism, I wanna remind everybody how important positive feedback is.

What I like, comment on it. Stress appreciation, because you’re more likely to get more of what you like when the other person realizes that you like it, appreciate it makes you happy. Most men wanna make their wives happy. That’s more the norm. It’s just sometimes they get frustrated ’cause they don’t know how.

So the more I can notice the things that are going right that are being said, right, that I appreciate that I want more of, the more I express that, the more likely it is that I will get more of that. So that’s the positive side, which for some people, by the way, even though I’d say that’s the easy side, for some people that’s challenging.

But that’s an important part of people clip. Anytime I ask, most times I ask women, what do you really want? They will tell me, well, I don’t want this. Mm-hmm. Because it’s so easy to know. What you don’t want is very, very hard to find what you actually want, and that’s the work. A hundred percent. So that really is, to me, it’s like the foundation of how do you, when I talk about every relationship needs feedback, again, positive feedback, but when something’s not right, when you would like something to change, when if something changed, you could be happier, the relationship could be more solid and better.

That’s feedback that doesn’t need to be shared. And when a person steers away from sharing things that are upsetting them, that they feel need to change, and some people do shut down in these areas too. Usually, it’s almost like it’s like turning off the faucet. You may want warm water, but if you have to turn off the faucet, you’re not gonna get warm, more cold.

And when people are shut down and they’re needing to express what’s going on inside of them, maybe it’s the challenges and maybe they just got a lot of negative feedback from it, so they just shut down. Then you’ll also find in those relationships is oftentimes also not an expression of positivity, either love expression, it just sort of becomes numb.

So it is important to be able to express if something’s upsetting you, something’s bothering you, something you want to change. The question is, and this is the really million dollar question, is how can one express that without it coming out as criticism? Because this is what’s called marriage killers and criticism is one of the big ones, which means that if there’s an overload of that in a relationship, it’s one will not wonder why they’re feeling a major strain on the relationship.

So I’m taking all our attention because I feel like this is what everyone wants to know is Right. But I’m saying I assume you all can relate, right? Right. But how do you say those things that bother you, that need to change? And you just really touched on it that I just gave almost the introduction to what you just said.

There are a number of techniques that can be learned and have to be practiced, especially if they’re not necessarily natural to us. For each couple. It might be a little bit different how they apply these techniques, but one of the first ones is we tend to say what we don’t want. Don’t put your socks on the floor, don’t leave a mess.

Don’t come home late again. And we’re so clear oftentimes on what we don’t want, but whenever we say something we don’t want, it will typically come out sounding like criticism. You can turn it around and say, okay, what do I want? I want, would love to have dinner with the family together. I really appreciate when the socks are put into the hamper.

I’d really be happy if you can clean off the table and put all the dishes into the sink. I’ll wash them later. When you’re saying what you want, it comes up. First of all, I’m talking about myself close to you, which you automatically puts the people’s through defenses. Right? Right. It’s also more specific because a lot of times I just don’t like how you’re speaking to me.

Well, how would you like me to speak to you? Can you talk in a tone that’s softer like this? I mean, just let’s try it out. I’d appreciate if that word this, whenever you use the word, you’re so ridiculous. That really upsets me. Instead, could you just say let me understand what’s going on. You know, you can give, try to think clearly what do I want?

If I recognize what I don’t like, how would I like it to look instead and share that information? ’cause it’s specific, it gives someone a tool if they don’t have to become defensive, doesn’t mean a hundred percent that what you want will be done. But it’s definitely much more like. Yes. And I wanna bring our attention to the fact that so far the work has been done by us, right?

So we’re not even talking about him yet. We need to figure out what we want and when you know what you want, which is really the hardest part, and, and my calm method, there’s four steps to creating flow. Step one is connect to yourself. Because if you do not know what you want and you do not know what it is that matters to you, then it’s gonna be very difficult to go on to the next steps.

And they’re very easy steps. But this is the first one and it’s the crucial one. That’s why it really is what I call the foundation because I think part of criticism also. And again, this isn’t all relationships. We’re talking about marriage here, but really what we’re talking about applies to all of our important relationships to parents, to children, to friends, coworkers.

It’s so foundational. We’re so, when we criticize, we’re noticing what we don’t like about someone else, and our focus is totally on them. But this job that we’re talking about here is, and this is in the comment that the foundation of it is, I have to turn inside and say, what is it that I really want?

Many women find, and I’m sure you help women with this because it’s, it’s like an epiphany to realize that I think for some women it’s a real aha moment of it makes sense, but then it’s hard to do. It sounds simple. And yet I’ve worked with women. I for sure you have too. Where part of the work is it’s so easy to know what you don’t want, what you don’t like, what’s not working, and it’s sometimes so challenging to really, but what do I want?

You know, I just, I, I just had a, an example of this and it was one of my clients said she was having such a hard day. She was feeling so hormonal. She was taking it all out on her husband, and all she wanted was for him to say. I love you. I want you, you know, and not be, oh, go away push away and, and just come back when you’re normal.

And he wasn’t understanding. He really was trying to figure out like, how can I help you? What can I do, da, da, da. And none of the things he was saying, were filling this need of needing to feel wanted. And so after when she sent me a message, ’cause I have WhatsApp support in my program. So she sent me a voice note, this is what’s going on.

I’m really struggling. I’m having a hard day. Terrible. My husband’s not getting it. What do I do? I said, what do you want from him? So she said, I want him to say I want you, I need you. And I said, okay. So you say that. And it was so weird for her to suddenly be like, oh. Okay. And then afterwards of course the next voice note was like, oh my God, you dunno, you changed my life, you know, with this like one piece of advice.

Because as soon as she told him, I just want you to want me. I want you, I’m not rejecting you, just because I’m feeling bad. I’m feeling all over. I’m feeling like I’m a failure. Like that’s just my experience. But what’s going to help me ground myself is knowing that you’re very solid and you’re not changing your mind about me and you really still want me.

And as as quote unquote baby-ish as it sounds in the moment, because this is how it sounded to her as soon as she was able to communicate what she wanted as opposed to what she was doing the whole time, telling him what she doesn’t want. The whole thing changed. Then everything just sort of like deescalated and things started working out and he was able to help her and like support her through this very fuzzy time and then she was fine again.

You know, it is such a wonderful tool to be able to tap into. So this is such a great example you’re bringing, because I love that you’re bringing that the woman was able to share what she wanted and how it changed things. I’m just putting out there, because there may be many women listening who can relate to this, is that for some reason it seems very common that women, even once they get in touch with what they want, want what they need, which is already a big step, a really big step.

A lot of times there’s this feeling of why should I have to tell him? He should know this is actually very common and it upsets a woman that my husband should know what I need. He should know what I want. There’s often this frustration almost of, first of all, it happens even more so when we don’t know what we wanna need.

I don’t know what I wanna need in this situation, but he’s not doing it right and he should know how to do it. Yes. So that’s what people mind of us. And of course all of us married men who know how to read minds and are magicians, hold on. It really is true that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

The women from Venus have to educate the men from Mars. How Venus people function at work and the men from Mars have to explain to the Venus ladies how men, ’cause it doesn’t necessarily come natural to us. It’s very interesting that oftentimes what’s natural to me, and we all have different strengths and different interests, what’s natural to me is my default thought of what would other people would like and what’s natural to them.

And part of our work, especially for the now when it comes to people at large. It’s challenging ’cause you don’t always know, especially this comes up in painful times. You’re trying to bring someone comfort and it’s so hard to know, what do I say? Because different people need different kinds of things.

For one person, you physically being there and showing up is exactly what they need for another person that’s intrusive. They need space to send them a message, right? But we often think of what I would want in this situation is what someone else should be doing for me, and this is what other people would want.

The reality is, is that, again, going back to that first point, we’re different people and we have different, even women have different needs when it comes to what brings me comfort, what do I need when I’m stressed out? Right? We know. Same thing with our children. This really goes back to, I know you’ve spoken about this before, the five love languages, that we tend to speak to others in our primary language, but when we have to take a step back and remember, especially the people in our lives that are there regularly.

Part of our job is to get to know with curiosity and interest ’cause I care about you. You’re part important part of my life. What do you need when you’re stressed? What do you need after a hard day? What do you need when I’m upset? And how could you hear my upset without it becoming upsetting to you, defensive that you like?

How can you hear it? And that’s why there are tools and there’s more tools that we can talk about and share. Even with these tools, every couple and every individual are different. So part of our job is to take these tools that exist in the toolkit and see how do they apply to my spouse. Because for one person it’s immediately, it helps when we work things out for another.

That’s actually the worst thing because it always blows up and they, we need a little bit of time for things to settle down. Then, you know, the other person could be in a MySpace to hear what I have to say. Everyone is different, but part of my job in any relationship is with, again, I love the idea of curiosity.

Try to learn and understand even when things go wrong, this blew up. This came out as just a fight because he felt criticized or I felt criticized. Why did I feel criticized? How could he have said this issue or brought this up in a way that would’ve felt less like criticism? This is where the curiosity piece comes into individualize.

How can this feedback be given?

Yeah, you remember when I had my marriage breakthrough retreat, it was a virtual retreat, seven full days where I gave everything and the kitchen sink. And one of the things that we did was an exercise of what are the things that bring me joy and make me happy and give me comfort and, you know, ground me.

And I had people write down in the chat and. One lady said, oh, I love the Dead Sea. I go there and I feel so calm, and someone else says, I hate the Dead Sea. I, I just wanna go to a pool that doesn’t have anything that’s stingy or dirty or upsetting or hot, whatever. I just get in the water, it’s clean, I get out, there’s no sand, and I thought this is exactly.

What it’s about. You know, you tell the husband you should know. So the husband goes, okay. So he goes, you know, to the library, women like this. He gets a book and it says, bring her flowers, bring her chocolate, bring her whatever. He’s like, okay. He goes to the store, gives her flowers, give her chocolate, and she starts screaming at him.

What do I need flowers for? They’re gonna die anyway. You know, they’re not even in the ground. They’re cut. And, and which is, by the way, my grandmother, this is like the classic thing that people would bring her flowers and she would get upset with them because they just killed the flower to bring to her.

So it’s just gonna die in like three days. What am I gonna do with it? That was her thing. But she really liked plants. And then you bring chocolate and they’re like, you want me to, you know, get all these pimples and get fat and what’s wrong with you? And why are you bringing me sugar? Don’t you know what’s bad for me?

I don’t know why. Like every person is so unique. There is no way for your husband to know unless you know and communicate it. One of the things is really noticing. I think we get sometimes so caught up on. The energy of the emotion and the hurt, and we go over the story again and again in our head. How could he have and why again?

And he, and I’m hoping what those listening will take from our talk here today is to just, let’s start changing our mind space. We can’t really figure these things out if they’re not happening. So when something happens, and let’s say something goes wrong, let’s say I really felt criticized and I felt hurt.

So I could get so stuck in again, he said this again. He knows that all that. Or I can take a almost a step back and wonder again, remember, he’s different. Maybe this is a habit, but what about this was hurtful? Why did this bother me? And if there’s something he has to share with me that he feels like he needs to share, is there a way he could have said it

that I could have accepted it? Maybe it was the way he said it. Maybe it was the timing. Maybe it was by the way, tone of voice. It’s extremely important and timing. Those are two other pieces I wanna put out there that can make the biggest difference. If this feedback, what it needs to be given is perceived as like, again, criticism or more constructive feedback that I can actually process, take, think about, do something with, because the tone of voice makes such, sometimes we don’t even realize the tone of voice that we have and how it can make the biggest difference sometimes even without hearing the words that someone said.

Especially when we live with people, we really get in tune with our tone of voices. I’ve definitely worked with couples where I’m sitting there thinking, he’s saying, look, she’s criticizing me again, da da. And it doesn’t matter that objectively. I don’t necessarily say it as criticism. She’s trying to express how she’s feeling.

He just doesn’t wanna hear it. The fact is, it’s not, doesn’t matter as much as he is receiving this or she, it could go either way, has been criticized and immediately there’s like a shutdown. Then there’s a frustration on the other side, and sometimes when you live with someone, even a look, or there’s a certain tone of voice, that as soon as that tone of voice starts, the person won’t even hear.

What you have to say immediately is like, oh, there’s the criticism again. Oh, so that’s another thing sometimes to pay attention to is, what is my tone of voice? Maybe consciously, this is really important. I need to discuss this. How can I bring it up with a conscious soft tone of voice, a different tone of voice?

Maybe it’s the calm, maybe We always discuss things when we’re upset, and that’s when all the issues come up. That’s the timing piece. And then it gets frustrated that nothing gets resolved because the timing was always wrong, right? So there’s these elements that really come into, even when feedback is given, if it’s given in certain tone of voice at the wrong time, with also usually starting with you, as opposed to I, it’s gonna be unlikely to be received and it’s gonna become across a criticism.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t share what you need to share. It’s just again, with curiosity and you can start with yourself. If I’m feeling like I’m being criticized, how could it have been done differently? Going back to what we’re talking about that I could have maybe received it more and then at a calm time, share that with your spouse.

The other day we had this fight. You were saying something. I couldn’t, it was even hard for me to hear what you were saying, but I was, you know, that’s the other funny thing. A lot of times we remember that someone was upset with us and we had a fight. If you’d say, well, what was he trying to tell you? Or what was she trying to tell you?

That time that’s lost? Because we’re so caught up in just the energy of the tension of the emotion and the fight and the anger and the criticism. We may not even remember the content, but if you break it down into still what was the content, and then share, how could this be shared with me that there needs to be feedback in a relationship.

We need to, I can’t change something if I don’t even know it needs to be changed. How can I, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, in the, there’s a book called How to Talk to Kids, so they listen and listen, so they talk. Mm-hmm. And one of the strategies there is to leave notes. As if the object is saying it instead of you saying it.

So like, the coffee, please put me back. You know? Or like, oh, that’s the, whatever it is. You know, all these different things. And she’s basically stripping away all emotion, all tone of voice. Any other thing than just the statement, you know, put me back in the drawer, or whatever it was. And it was very cute because she was saying for children, like you were saying, your immediate response is, woo, defense

I hear it coming. There is something, you know, criticism. I don’t wanna hear it. And so you don’t even know what she’s saying anymore because your mother’s just like. It’s like a broken record. Talking, talking, talking about something that has to be put away. Something has to be fixed, you have to do something, or rather like who knows anymore, and then suddenly it’s like a cute reminder that this has to be put away and then next time it might just be a reminder and you’ll be fine.

So it just came up for me when you said that, like how do we strip away all of the. Emotion. Sometimes it’s just by writing and leaving it and trusting that it’s gonna be okay.

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  Something else that you put in there, which is, it can’t be great for certain couples. This is again, where there’s so many potential tools, but you have to see what works for you and your spouse.

Right? Is humor. Sometimes someone can receive something more when it’s humorous, like I was even thinking it’s almost funny. Please put me back. Right. That’s sort of humorous, and for some people that works for someone else. It might actually come across as you’re just trying to make light of this. So that’s where it really, that’s what I’m saying.

There’s certain tools that can be really helpful for one couple or one person. For someone else, they wouldn’t care and appreciate it, but that’s part of where you do yourself and your spouse the biggest service and favor, if you can really get an understanding of what do I need, what do I want? How do I want this to look like?

What would make things better if this wasn’t done right? How could I have received this in a way that I could have possibly heard the message to be able to share that you’re giving your spouse, it’s like, it’s like the key to the locked door. You’re giving your spouse the tools that they’ve been groping for because they want things to be better.

It’s just a lot of times, again, most human defaults is, criticism is more natural to us than the tool that we’re talking about. But then again. Think about it. Some people will be like, well, why do I have to work on something that’s just not natural? Right? But we all, most of us, I would hope we brush our teeth in the morning.

Naturally. We have really bad breath and we put on deodorant, not natural to smell pleasant throughout a day. We do it for ourselves so we can feel better and we do it. ’cause when you’re around other people, the way you know your bad breath will affect them too. And it’s not natural. But a lot of life is part of this.

How do I. Get to a better place. Right? Weeds grow naturally, but I, we wanna have a relationship with more weeds or more flowers. And part of life is noticing there’s a certain amount of work to be done, but the goal is not, oh, more weeds. It’s, wow, look at what a beautiful garden I have. So that mind space too, I think is so important.

’cause sometimes we get so stuck on the weeds and that we had, right. And as opposed to recognizing is that’s natural. There’s always gonna be things that come up in any human relationship, even in my relationship with myself, by the way. And that’s, I think another piece. I think a lot of times if someone tends to be very critical of others, there’s a very strong inner critical voice.

And when we can work on that, which I think, I’m not saying people can’t do it on their own, but it is very challenging and a person can make tremendous progress, can be sometimes much easier when you have someone to work with to really work on that inner voice. Helping it. That self critic, which can sometimes be so strong.

That’s then oftentimes when we’ll hear other people be so critical, just realize whatever you hear someone saying, that tends to be critical for every criticism they give. There’s probably a hundred more that they’ve given to themselves, unfortunately, or to ourselves. Yeah. And I love that you brought up, why do I have to work?

Because that was one of the things that I had to go through. Like I’m always the good one. I’m always the one going to the parenting classes and the marriage classes and the things and whatever and, and my husband is just, you know, living life. He’s doing his thing. And in the beginning of our marriage, I thought, it’s just not fair.

Why am I doing all the hard work? And he gets to benefit. Hmm. And I asked my, I was in a marriage class and I asked her this. I said, why do I have to do anything? Like, why is it fair that I’m doing all the work? And she says, well, it’s your marriage. You’re doing it for you, aren’t you? Like, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

I said, yeah, but I want to, I was like, okay, so do it. But because you want to, and a lot of times we’re doing it for them as if like, I’m saving your marriage for you, so you should be grateful. You know, and, and if without me doing all this work, maybe nothing would move, you know, properly or move along or whatever.

And, and that. It really is very critical. It’s like it’s the wrong attitude. It just forces you to suffer a lot because you’re constantly dependent on if he is seeing results or not. If he’s feeling better about it, he is whatever. It’s like, are you happy right now in the situation? Yes, yes. No, no. And if no, do something about it.

’cause it’s in your control that your relationship with anything and anybody should be good. It’s just taking responsibility for the thing that you want. And then as soon as she said that, I was like, okay, I, I want it. I’m doing it. And it changed everything because as soon as I wanted it, it wasn’t hard work anymore.

It was fun. And I got to do all the things that I always wanted to do. And I stopped doing things just because I thought that’s what I’m supposed to do or that’s what’s expected of me. And it, it really got much lighter and I, I wanted to bring that up. For all the listeners thinking, I’m always doing the hard work.

I’m always the one showing up. I’m always the one working. I’m always the one trying. Stop doing that. You know? Don’t be the one working just because he’s not be the one working. ’cause you want to, and you’ll see the things you don’t care about. He’ll pick up because you’re no longer holding everything.

You know what else? The greatest power I have lies in where I can make changes. We’re always noticing changes that other people need to make. We’re extremely limited because you can’t make anyone else change. And then we just feel so stuck. And I’ve seen this a lot and I’m sure you’ve seen this a lot too with working with women, men, is that they, it’s not uncommon that someone comes in really focused on all the problems of the other person.

I’m not trying to minimize what they’re saying at all because that might all be there. The challenge is, is that you can’t force someone else to change. Sometimes we can like put on the pressure, but at the end of the day, my greatest power is my ability to make the changes I need to make. And sometimes that’s just what am I going to do when X, Y, and Z happens?

How am I gonna respond? I mean, that’s also, but the more I can focus on what I can do, it’s so empowering. I see such a transformation when people might start out in the place of outward looking at the other person and all the problems that they’re not taking responsibility for and what happens when the person starts to go inwards and whereas, where can I empower myself in my life?

And you come out as a totally different person.

Yeah, I think we talked a lot about what happens when you’re critical of them, but another. Aspect of criticism and marriage, and this comes up a lot, is he’s so critical of me or whoever’s listening, right? A lot of women feel like their husbands are constantly showing them how broken they are, how messed up everything is, how big of a mess everything is, and how they can’t get it together, and why can’t you just do it right?

That’s really painful because they already feel this way from a very young age. A lot of women who are maybe, you know a lot of them will give me labels that they’ve labeled themselves ADHD you know, artistic, you know, I’m not really into routines. I can’t get my act together. My house is a mess.

They already have that self identity. So for the husband to go and make it worse by being so critical, it really, like you said, the things that kill marriages, this is a huge marriage killer, and they don’t know what to do about it because they’re already feeling so bad. It’s almost like they’ve just been squished down to the ground.

Mm-hmm. So. I’ll tell you, all of us have what I call emotional sunburns. And what I mean by that is like if you happen to walk past somebody, someone brushes past you. No. You brush past them, let’s say, and very common. And Israel, tell, excuse me, I’m sorry. And most people be like, no problem. You know, walk on.

But what if you brush past someone and they start like, what in the world were you thinking? Are you such a, you’d be like, whoa. What is wrong with that person? I mean, that’s an extreme reaction. But then you find out that they have an extreme sunburn on their arm, and so for them, it doesn’t necessarily mean they should have called you names, but they’re like jolting, like that.

You understand it more because their arm is very sensitive and you just trigger this intense response. So everybody has what I call emotional sunburns specific areas that we’re already very, very sensitive to and that anyone. Touching on that is gonna have a big response. Those are oftentimes their triggers, and that’s a lot of when we’re working with couples, we work on that together as a couple, but even on our own, when we can really own and recognize where do I have emotional nce as you were sharing, like things that I already didn’t feel good about myself in this area.

That’s an example to me of an emotional sunburn. It would be likely someone sort of presses on that triggers the response. So one owning up to say the reason why this is so painful is because I do have an emotional sunburn there. This isn’t just about my husband saying, why can’t I organize myself? I’ve heard this from my parents growing up, and I never felt like I could handle life because of that constant voice.

And now he’s just continuing. Meaning sometimes these things really do go way back. And so there is a certain amount of in individual internal work. We can do one, noticing it, recognizing it, and then going through some sort of a healing process from the inside out so that that doesn’t have to always be this emotional sunburn.

Now, one will often ask still, okay, but fine. She doesn’t organize herself. It causes challenges in our life, and he can be all upset about that, and how does one work on that when he’s always gonna be criticizing her? Some of this also goes back to what I was saying before is part of the internal work is he’s gonna talk about this.

Is there a way he can bring it up so I can give him the words to say of how we can have this discussion? Maybe it’s a, some, some couples, by the way, something that really works is there’s often this feeling that if we don’t discuss something now or when I’m feeling it, it won’t be discussed, has to be discussed.

Sometimes even just setting aside a certain time during the week, that we will both share things that housekeeping. Housekeeping meaning may be the things that need to be taken care of. Right. When you know there’s gonna be a time. And then also if you can give your spouse the tools of, I know you’re frustrated with this.

I’m trying to work on it for myself. How can he express it in a way that he needs to express it? That won’t be as painful while you’re trying to heal the process? Just having some of these conversations, which people often don’t have couples, it can really change the whole dynamic because usually people just fall into these negative patterns that don’t really help Anyhow.

Something upsets him. He criticizes her about her lack of organizational skills and then she feels worse about it. And so things discontinue. It’s the same thing over and over and over and over again. And it’s weird because we can go in both directions. How often do I know saying something’s not gonna make a difference?

Did I still say it? And I know it’s just gonna hurt the other person. We, unfortunately, I’m not saying there aren’t times where one spouse has more refined capacities of not bringing those issues up than the other, but unfortunately, it often goes back and forth. And so learning tips, tools, structure about how not to do that.

Knowing there’s gonna be a time when things can be brought up, but in a hopefully more productive manner, in a way that afterwards we can feel like, wow, we dealt with some tough issues, but we also you know, then there isn’t an urgency when it’s not as appropriate. But the other thing I will tell couples is afterwards, it’s always important to have some sort of connection ritual.

You may have to discuss certain things that are upsetting or that come up that aren’t pleasant, that are upsetting one of you, but then a connection ritual so it doesn’t have to end on this negative note. Some couples, if we have a cup of tea and drink something and we change, you know, we have another topic, we’ll learn something to get something to change.

I actually just read this week something about Henny Machlis and she talked about, she had this term, she said you have to sometimes change the channel. Channel two is where we’re talking about things that bother us about each other and that we need to work out, and this is our set time to do it. You don’t wanna end on channel two.

Before you go to bed at night, switch to channel three, which is, let’s think of something that we enjoy talking about or play a game or have a cup of tea or learn something together or something that switched to channel. I just love the idea of switch the channel sometimes, recognize you’re in channel two, which is all the negativity, right?

Even within ourselves, right? She was talking more about herself. Channel two is the things that are upsetting me right now. Give it some space, but at a certain point, do I wanna stay on channel two all day or do I wanna switch to channel three before I start, take out my gratitude list And that’s where I wanna be right now.

Yeah. Yeah. There was the exercise of, I’m glad. I’m glad, and you have to start thinking of something. I’m glad we’re outdoors, and the other person has to say, well, I’m glad you’re with me. Well, you know, and so sometimes just being glad about things that are present and in your face helps you get into the present.

Again, because we’re so much in our heads when you’re, let’s say we like walking and talking, so a lot of times it’s a great way to then catch some. Like some way of getting to a different channel where you just grab whatever is in your view and say like, okay, I’m done with that. But look at those flowers.

Aren’t they gorgeous? You know? And so it really noticing what is in the present really helps sometimes switch the channel. Hmm. That is so fantastic. But it has to be conscious. ’cause the channel doesn’t usually just switch on its own. You have to realize, do I wanna stay on channel two? All the things I’m upset about or do I wanna now, and it, it can take work, right?

But even recognizing, even if we can’t do it yet, recognize that there’s different channels and some channels are the disappointment, the frustration, the aggravation, the things that upset me. And then there’s a channel of what, where I’m glad the, I’m glad channel. I like that. I wanna add in, just make sure I added one other very important thing is that every relationship is going to have ups and downs.

It’s gonna have deposits, what I call deposits positive. Things, right? Influxes positive experiences, positive words, feeling cared for, loved thought, and it’s gonna have withdrawals, almost like think of a bank account. It’s just every relationship will have that. But what determines the health of a relationship?

That there’s more positives to negatives. And that’s why just sort of, I guess we can think of like the analogy of a healthy bank account, right? There’s usually ins and outs, but sometimes there can be a big withdrawal that happens sometimes. Sometimes it can take time to rebuild the reserves that were taken out.

So one thing to be mindful of, and this is so true in all relationships, I actually think about this a lot with my teenagers too. It’s true in all relationships, is if you, you really have to keep your pulse on the temperature of the relationship. I’ll call it. Just being mindful and do little check-ins of where, because each person in our life, right?

Especially if you, each child has its own relationship, your spouse, different people that in our lives, you gotta keep your finger on the pulse. And from time to time, check in, where am I holding? And if you notice, Hmm, I feel like our negative ratios going up, then you have to make a conscious choice to increase the positives if you want your relationship to stay healthy.

Sometimes that’s that choice is consciously thinking of positive things we can do or say, or I’m gonna go outta my way, even for the person or the child or the spouse to increase that. Sometimes it’s making a conscious choice. Right now we’re sort of in this negative place and maybe things that if we were in a better place, I’d bring up, it’s just gonna add to that negativity and maybe now’s not the time to bring up all the issues.

This is, I mean, I sometimes almost think it’s easier to think about this for kids even more than spouses, right. It’s important. The connection I have with my child is so crucial and important for will they listen to my advice one day and how are they gonna make choices that are based on my values? If there’s a lack of connection, it’s less likely they’re gonna be making healthy choices.

And so that connection is really based on, are there more positives and negatives? And yes, especially during some of the teenage years and couples go through this, sometimes it’s time periods we go through where there’s more withdrawals. If you wanna maintain the health of your relationship, you need to keep your finger on the pulse.

Again, sometimes prioritize what needs is crucial right now to, that has to be dealt with and what are the things that, write it down, put it on the back burner. It’s just the, the price to pay for bringing it up now is at the expense of the health of my relationship and it’s not worth it. Right. But again, consciously, what can I add into my relationship to keep it in a healthy place?

Yeah. And I think when people go into a marriage, they’re not always so. Realistic about what it means to be in a marriage, right? You go in, you think, okay, it’s great. We’re, you know, we’re signed up for life filled with love and, and all good things and everything’s just gonna go straight path. And obviously you’re here to grow and, and become somebody, and God has his plans and nobody is sitting around signing up for, you know, I don’t know, a minus in the bank account, not having enough money that, you know, that should be the biggest problem everybody should have, or, you know, some sort of health issue or death in the family or whatever it is.

There are things that are going to rock the boat that are just part of life. And because we don’t foresee them as part of the plan, we really get caught off guard. We get very upset that it happened to us ’cause it’s not supposed to. And then we’re almost like fumbling for this. Really like shook up my marriage.

Well, you could pretty much expect that something’s gonna shake up your marriage. Like my brother was saying, he was once told that you’re either right before something terrible is gonna happen, or you are in something terrible or something terrible will eventually happen to you, but like it’s just part of life.

So why don’t you just prepare yourself and be ready, like be really strong in your belief, be really in constant gratitude so that your brain is wired to be functioning properly during these very shaky moments. So, you know, I had my brother on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and this is one of the things that he said was, I’ve been practicing, you know, I feel like God prepared me for this moment by putting so much faith in me and I had so much surrounding me that I.

Sort of knew what to do when it happened, which doesn’t make any sense when we think about it. But if you can lower the pressure, lower the intensity of surprises, suddenly you’re like, okay, it doesn’t matter what happens. We have the ability to communicate. We have the ability to stay when something isn’t feeling right.

And I’m not afraid to tell my husband I don’t like something or I would like it differently. And these are. Very basic skills that a lot of people don’t have because it’s fine, we’re just in love and everything’s gonna be okay. And I think it’s really important to realize that just like you’re saying, there’s going to be the bank account ups and downs.

So too, your life is going to have its ups and downs and its challenges. And thank God, you know, they should all be good things. Sometimes good things are challenges too. Try to lower the intensity on them. And one interesting way, it’s almost like paradoxical, but I have this theme naturally, but we have to work against our nature.

But again, think of it like brushing your teeth in the morning and putting on deodorant. Most people actually relate to that and get that more than what I’m saying. Well, why should we have to change if it’s their nature? Naturally, we usually almost, there’s like an instinct to run away from anything that’s uncomfortable for us.

Avoid it. Or like we go into immediate tension, but in a certain sense, there’s almost an excitement when you’re consciously working on something. When the issue comes up, that’s your opportunity to see if you can work on it a little bit more to see if, find something different. Change. This thing is to learn about, you know, you try something different and it sort of work but not fully why.

And in a certain sense, what that does is instead of always being like, oh no, there’s that, that just that power struggle with my daughter or that has been said that thing again and now it’s gonna, you know. Once you start learning new tools and new ways of doing things and new ways of responding, and the curiosity of trying to understand what could be going on for him, what he’s trying to say, what do I need, what do I want?

How can I express that everything we’re talking about? It actually in a weird kind of way, can almost become exciting when the issue comes up. Just d is a different example, but I, I have a real fear of turbulence and even though in my head on planes, I know that accidents don’t really happen from the turbulence, it’s other issues.

My whole body goes into fear zone and I just can’t. And then the pa, I guess, I don’t know, two years ago, I’d say, give or take, I’ve been at a few flights since then. I made the decision of like, I always exactly what I’m talking about. I’m always afraid of it and the worry about it. And then when it comes up and then it happens and I’m in and I was like, I wanna work on this.

And I realized there can be some work ahead of time. Even with these issues, let’s say in relationships, you can try to think things different. You can play out in your own mind how you’d like it to look. What would you do differently? And that’s extremely important. ’cause especially at the beginning, we spoke about habits.

It takes time to change that, and you don’t have to have 10 real life experiences to totally work it out before the back. You can think, how would I want this to play out in a healthy way? How do I wanna sound different and how would I want the conversation to look different? Use your mind and imagination, not just to catastrophize, but to think through ahead of time how you’d like something to look.

Then the real situation comes up. Okay, so I’m on a plane. Now, you know, how am I gonna work on this if I’m not actually in the situation when normally I’d feel tense And it’s so weird ’cause my last plane ride was over the summer and I was like, the turbulent started that this put on your seatbelt line started.

And I almost got like this excitement. Oh my gosh. Okay. I can, I can go into this now. ’cause you can’t work on it in real time if it’s not happening. It was almost so weird how, what used to be this almost like this fear tense response was almost like this weird excitement and feeling the same feelings, but like really accepting them and letting them go through me and, and a totally different experience.

And I will say just like before the fact, you can work on something if you didn’t think it, don’t feel like it played out the way you would’ve liked to have played out. Again, there’s habits. You can go through after the fact. In your mind, how would you like to have responded differently when he said this or when or when you needed to address this or all the things that didn’t work out Right, because again, you don’t, on the one hand, yes, in real time is like this, is it the real show?

But before the fact and after the fact, you can actually save yourself. Maybe it’s gonna take 50 replaced. So instead of waiting for 50 times for this issue to come up, maybe half of them could be done In my own mind. Oh my gosh. So there was a movie when I was young. I don’t remember the name of the movie, I don’t remember anything about it.

I just remember there was a race and it was racing down like the icy slopes, you know, with the snow and blah blah. And you were supposed to go down as fast as you can and moved to the right, moved to the left and whatever. And this one team did not have enough budget to practice in real snow. So they all went into the bathtub.

In their, like, you know, whatever the, the canoe thing was. And they’re all like squished on top of each other and they’re going, okay now, right now, left now, right now left. And they practiced in their minds real snow, but it wasn’t real. It was static in the bathtub. And I remember so clearly how whatever, whoever the person who gave them advice was as long as you can imagine it, it’s real.

And of course they won ’cause it’s a movie and all this stuff. But I’ve heard, I’ve heard this so many times where they have actual split testing, one basketball team practices on the court and the other basketball team has meditations and they do just as fine because in your mind it feels real and your brain is getting the practice it needs.

So I love that you said this. The other thing that came up for me is that. Why does it help us so much when people say it’s a test because. You know, first of all, if it’s a test, then it’s not real. You know, like my, my teacher once said, if Rabbi Stern, the principal of our school, he says, if you’re watching tv, and suddenly that black and white thing says like, you know, this is a test.

This is a test, and you’re like, okay. I guess I’m not supposed to freak out, you know, like, because if it’s a test then it’s not real, you know? Or like when there’s a siren and then they say No, it’s just a test. We’re testing the sirens so you don’t freak out. ’cause whatever. It’s not real. There is something in our brain that does not respond the same way when we don’t give it as much weight or we change the meaning of the thing. So it’s just fascinating how our brain works and how it has so much to do with our responses and the way that our body reacts to different stimuli. So I’m I’m so excited about this. This was a good example. So in summary, I think criticism is one of those topics that normally we just almost wanna stay away from.

But I think, if you take some of the thoughts, the ideas, the perspectives, the tools, recognize. Again, a lot of internal work goes on and really getting to know myself better, right? What do I want? How can I receive this differently? How can I share this differently? Take tools, curiosity about the other person I’m in a relationship with.

What might be helpful or different if I try something different with them, but also realize that, again, feedback in a relationship is so important, but instead of being afraid of this, we can actually look forward to these opportunities that maybe sometimes were unpleasant. But they really are learning opportunities to really be an opportunity to make things so much better.

Yes, and I’m going to add to this if anybody is interested in learning more about the work by Byron Katie, I think that is a place where you can take an conversation or an experience or some situation that really happened and really hurt your feelings. Or you know, your husband is this way, or you know, you feel very criticized and put it on paper and within an hour you’re gonna feel so much.

Better because you turn the whole thing around. And so just Google the work by Byron Katie or the judge, your neighbor worksheet. It’s such a powerful thing that when I learned it, and by the way, you could just learn so much on YouTube just by watching her do it with people. It, I think it’s so powerful because of the mirror, the mirror image where it’s like you hear him saying this.

And it’s an attack on you, and now you get an opportunity to turn it around and be like, wait, what does it actually mean? What’s what? Why is it here? Even, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s very powerful. Very much so. You get to learn a lot more about yourself too in the process, and I think that’s part of this work is we’re so focused outward, but all of the power for change, so much of it relies inside and we have so much more power when we focus on what can I do in this situation?

Yes. Yes. And that is why it’s so important for you guys to be listening to this podcast and other places that give you these tools. And it’s, it’s, I am so grateful and so blessed to be here. Leora, how can people find you? How can they be in touch with you? So you can always send me an email? Leora d mandel@gmail.com.

I can back send the email. I see couples and individuals in Jerusalem. I live in Israel and you can feel free to send me an email. Yep, I will put it down in the show notes below. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for coming. Don’t forget to come back and don’t forget to be connected for real.

And that’s it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn’t it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode.