229. What It Means to Be Flexible 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. I’m a marriage coach for women in business. I am all about helping you find that balance between being in a marriage and this being your top priority, and also having things that are calling you and that you are showing up for that are outside your business. And we wanna make sure that you’re doing both. So that is what I’m all about. And in this podcast, we have four pillars, God, marriage, business, and you. And as you guys know, this month is all about flexibility. And very ironic because as I just recorded an episode yesterday about the war and the flexibility that we’ve been having around here this is so perfectly timed. So today we’re talking about marriage and flexibility, and with me today is Shoshana Schwartz. Shoshana Schwartz. Introduce yourself. Okay, thanks. I am an EFT practitioner and I specialize in addiction and codependency, and I help women break whatever automatic coping patterns they’ve been dealing with so that they can regain their control and regain their calm in their choices. I’ve written five books and the most recent one is grab the reins. The others were fiction. This is nonfiction. And it’s actually about the work that I did as I was learning to become an addiction specialist in return, where I did my training. And the work that I did through there and with women privately and it was actually originally serialized in Mishpacha Magazine. I’m a writer from Mishpacha for, I don’t know, like 15 years or so. And oh, there it is. See you soon. Hi. Hello back. That was fun. And here we’re again. Here we’re again. Oh my goodness. That was fun. Did you hear the boom? I did not. Ooh, there was a big boom this time. So I’m trying to think of how I would transition just to make sure that it makes sense. There’s no transition. We just had, We just had a siren and we’re back. So we were talking about what you do. You were in the middle of introducing yourself. I want to hear more about the patterns because these are things that are working in the background. They’re default programming. It’s so fascinating. I love talking about this also. So tell me more about that. Let’s use what just happened. Okay. Because it’s like the perfect example of patterns. So the siren goes off and whatever comes next is automatic. It’s not like we’re thinking about it and processing it and saying, how do I wanna react to the fact that a siren just went off? That’s not happening. It’s what there’s like this I actually call it the express train. There’s like express train that that takes you to this destination and. We don’t choose to go there logically, consciously we just end up there. So in this case it would be like before you even know what you’re doing, you’ve just said, okay, bye. And you’ve left the room and you’re halfway down the hall on the way to the safe room. And that’s a good, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. So if you’ve had experiences in your life, especially when you’re very young, that you have experienced a lot of unsafety, you felt unsafe often. So that’s going to bring all of that back up and depending on what the circumstances, it’s going to bring up different aspects of it or different moments or different experiences or patterns. For example, somebody who learned, let’s say really early on that, my world is not such a safe world ’cause things happen and nobody supports me. Or in, in a worse case, it’d be like. Things happen, and I get blamed for those things that happen in even a really simple, like a kid who’s clumsy and falls down and like a parent would say you’re so clumsy. Get up. We’re not talking about abuse, we’re not talking about anything extreme, but a kid who always feels like, wow, I don’t have it together and it’s my fault. I don’t have it together. So as soon as something happens, somebody sticks their foot out accidentally at the Shabbos table, and you trip over it, right away you’re like, oh, I’m clumsy. What does clumsy mean to me? It means I’m gonna get yelled at. It means I’m not gonna even more subliminally I’m not gonna be accepted. Something’s going on in that express train. So in real life that looks like stimulus boom, you’re at, I shouldn’t use the word boom stimulus, and you’re, you’re at your destination. So it’s like you trip at the chaves table and all of a sudden I’m worthless. So in order to change that. You have to go to the root. You can’t just, you now you of course you can work with it consciously and cognitively and you can say, oh, here’s what’s going on. And that makes so much sense. And definitely you can make inroads there, but if you really want to get to a deep change, to be able to affect a deep change, you have to work deeply. And I love that you say express train because it really is that quick. I don’t know if our editor was going to be able to like, the second there was a siren, we both just like, okay, bye. And I didn’t even pause the video. I just got up and left. I didn’t think twice about, I did have the split second of like, should I pause, nevermind, goodbye. But it’s just really fascinating how quickly things worked. Also very cool. Because I had to go downstairs and around to my house, because it’s like a different apartment. And by the time I was going down the steps, my kids were already bringing down the shutters, so I had to go all the way around to the front door. And I thought, isn’t it cool that we all just know what to do? Whoever’s home knows to bring down the thing and say close over here and close over there. And the whole thing is just like automatic. And that’s what I think is so fascinating. The automatic, the, I’m pointing to the back of my brain because I know that’s where all the automatic stuff is happening, but it’s the stuff that you’re not conscious about. And so I feel it, and you brought this up also, I feel like fixing it is not going to be conscious either because it’s all automatic. You know how they say like, your, your body keeps score, your body keeps score subconsciously automatically default in, you know, those levels of non access to you, so for you to fix them, it would be a lot more helpful and productive if you went like around the consciousness. Absolutely. Let’s talk about that a little bit more. So let’s, I example I often give is, let’s say you’re afraid of dogs, there’s no specific reason. You’re afraid of dogs, but you’re afraid of dogs. And, maybe your friend has a dog and you don’t go to her house because of it. Or maybe if you’re outside and there’s a dog barking and it doesn’t have a leash, like you’ll run back home. Like it affects your life, not in a, you don’t leave the house kind of way, but it affects you and you really have no idea. Why. Why am I afraid of dogs? You have no conscious memory. So what? Let’s paint a picture, right? What happened, what possibly had it happened? You’re two years old, you’re playing in the park, and a boy who’s a little bit away from you, he’s playing with his puppy, and his puppy gives him a little tiny nip on the finger. And the boy, a little boy starts crying. Nothing happened. There’s no blood, there’s no trauma, there’s no anything. But in your 2-year-old brain, you’ve learned, oh, dogs are dangerous. And you’ll never remember that because it was very un. Big deal. Like it was really, it wasn’t trauma, it was just something that happened. And then let’s say, let’s fast forward a couple of years. You are seven or eight, you’re going up the steps to your house and a little dog chases or a big dog, doesn’t matter. Chases you up the steps and you get inside. Nothing happened, right? But you safe place, assuming it was your safe place, has now become not a safe place. So your, what you learned at two has now become absolute undeniable, certifiable fact to see dogs are dangerous, right? And when you’re 25 or 75 and you’re trying to figure out why am I so afraid of dogs, you are never gonna remember something so unbelievably unremarkable as what those two incidents. But you have learned early and honestly dogs are dangerous. So what do we wanna do? We’re going to go back into that child and we’re going to. Help that child understand what happened. Now, the tool that I love for this best is EFT tapping because it really it gets to the unconscious. Instead of just talking about things, you can actually get to them on a much deeper level, even if you don’t remember it, even if you’re just working metaphorically. Which is one of the things I really love about a FT. Like, you know, if the memory doesn’t come up, which it often will I’ll say to somebody like, m make up a story about why this happened. No, I don’t remember. That’s fine. You’re making it up. You’re not, I’m not telling you to pretend something’s true. Make it up. Okay. So a kid was playing in the park and like the unconscious is gonna bring you the memory that the conscious doesn’t have. And it doesn’t matter if it’s not true ’cause that’s how the child experienced it. So using so while we’re doing this process, while we’re tapping, and you are not just remembering, you’re actually, you’re tapping on certain meridian points on your face and hands and. The tapping clears whatever is stuck like energetically in your body. So you’ll still have, that experience didn’t go away. There’s no magic here, but you just, you can clear the learning you did from it. So instead of dogs are dangerous, it became, little boy got bit by dog, I got chased up the stairs. Those things don’t happen, but they don’t carry this huge emotional charge anymore. I call it neutralizing because you just took away the positive negative. It just is. Exactly. And think about the applications for this. It’s amazing. I’ll tell you one thing that you said that really stuck out to me is it doesn’t even have to be true because a lot of times it’s not true. It’s the story we told about the reality that stuck. And this is so appropriate right now, like people are. At war, an entire country with a lot of visitors, and everybody is talking about their experience. And I just talked about it in the podcast, which at this point is a couple of weeks behind. But how different our unique experiences are because each one of us has a different situation and a different story and a different bunch of different details that make it completely different. And it throws me back to the stories my grandmother speaks about the Holocaust and how she feels like, oh, no big deal. It wasn’t so bad because I experienced things that were terrible. But then when I came out and realized other people had it worse, then I minimized my own story. And so it, it was something that. I got to speak to her about. And also when I brought my daughter in to speak to their class, she got to be that grandmother. You know, Our school is very very Sephardi. There’s a lot of families that are not from Eastern Europe. And so there is suddenly this one grandmother who’s willing to come and tell her story. And on her way, she said to me, I just don’t feel like I have anything to tell because no big deal. Like I didn’t have it as bad as other people. And that was the point where I actually found like, wow, what a belief. You went through six years of Holocaust and you’re minimizing your story because other people had it worse, or because it’s not the same type of story. That’s the same thing that’s happening right now. One person could be in a house with a safe room, they sleep in it. They don’t even have to wake up in the middle of the night for a siren. It goes over their heads, but they have their own story about other things. And then some other people are with young kids and they’re running around and they have to go out and whatever and then there’s a woman who’s, six children are at war and she’s worrying about them. Every single person has a story and it is so different. And then you say, oh, the dog ran after me. But like it, the situation that you just created is like neutral. When we have the stories about it, it can go so many ways because it’s so amazing what our brains can do. Totally. And that’s why the child’s experience is the experience that we need to get into. And often what happens is that we judge that child like, that’s so stupid. Why are you scared? And we’re talking to that part of ourselves that’s still alive and kicking. I’m talking to my 6-year-old at the same time I’m talking to myself and I’m criticizing her and I’m judging her. And that is actually not helpful to her ’cause she’s experiencing what she’s experiencing. Could you imagine how that’s how you would talk to yourself even as a 30-year-old? Okay, get over yourself. It’s just a dog. But no, that’s how you feel. I love that you’re making that so legitimate. And these are the women that I come across as like. It’s the norm, not the exception, because we’ve been trained that’s how you motivate yourself, motivate yourself by being harsh. And it’s not called that, it’s called motivating. It’s called, being I don’t know what else to call it, but we’ve been trained to expect more and just be tougher. And the truth is that often backfires. Like we really just need compassion, right? We really just need to be kind to ourselves and stop judging ourselves. It doesn’t mean we’re not accountable. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to be responsible and do our part. Of course we do. But wouldn’t it be better if we could motivate ourselves with kindness and with you’re right, you made a mistake. Let’s think how we could do it better next time. Because, you want this, whatever great result you want, right? You want that? Great. Let’s think, let’s, how can we help you get there? Not you little, dummy, whatever. Names we call ourselves. It’s not motivating. But that’s something else we learned to do, and that’s actually part of a deeper process, is learning that I’m not stupid. I’m not flawed beyond repair, I am not broken. I just learned, oh, the best way 📍 to motivate myself is putting myself down. What if it’s not? What if there’s a better way? Where did I learn that’s the best way to improve? Maybe I could unlearn that also, I hope, and that’s a game changer. Yes, please, everybody. Raise your hand if you need to reprogram the way you motivate yourself is so powerful. I think one of the things that was the most meaningful for me was reprogramming that. Instead of beating myself up to, okay, come on, get outta bed. You need to get outta bed. You know, I, I saw my husband how he talks to himself, and I was like, why? Why does he have that positive attitude? Where did he get that from? He just like talks to himself, but like in a really good way. Okay, come on Grossman, you could do it. I’m like, I don’t, what do you mean you can do it. You’re not supposed to say things like, why are you not doing it? No, it was so different and then it helped me reprogram. I think one of the biggest blessings for me was getting married ’cause I got to hear a different way of speaking, just in general, in life. A different way of doing things, A different way of being consistent. My husband is super, super consistent and he grew up with like routines and rhythms and it is so helpful. So it was a gift. So yeah, it’s, I agree with you that this is life changing and that’s why I have you on this podcast, by the way, because all my listeners need to hear it too. It is so doable. It’s so doable. It’s not something that you have to, wait for one day when I have all this time and all this money, then I’m going to fix the world or fix myself or fix the problem. It’s like right now, if I just had the right tools, then I could do it right now and then from here on I won’t have to deal with that again. And the tool set is really varied and vast and rich. And there are tools that are going to, let’s say, behavioral tools that will address it from this direction. And then there are like the deeper tools that will come in from a different direction. And they’re both valuable, but sometimes people only do the behavioral parts and they’ll say they’ll do affirmations. Now, I’m not against affirmations in any way. The problem with is that when you do an affirmation and you hear. If the backtalk and you just you’re stuck with it. For example, you could look in the mirror and tell yourself you’re, you’re beautiful. You’re a princess, you’re whatever. And you look in the mirror as instructed and you say, wow, you’re beautiful. And there’s this, a voice that says, no, you’re not, or you’re smart and capable. And then you, afterwards you hear the echo say, no, you’re not, you’re lazy and incompetent. And so then we’re just echoing that voice stays in your head. So by all means, try that. But then listen to what comes next and address that. And yes, sometimes you’re going to need to address again that inner you Who says, who’s who’s saying, no, you’re not. You’re incompetent. Who’s saying that? Where did I learn that? And then go and resolve that. Yeah. I love it. So powerful. So powerful. My experience with EFT is that after my brother’s wife was murdered you guys can look up tze’ela Gez I have a podcast episode all about this, but one of the things that helped me the most was one of my friends, Hillary from South Africa, she like sat me down and was like, okay, we’re doing it now. Let’s go. And we did EFD tapping on the experience, just like it was. It’s such an, it’s a gigantic thing and it’s so overwhelming and I feel like even if you try to illustrate it with your body, it’s like this thing that overcomes because your body is so small and the experience is so big and so it was so helpful to process it with someone. First of all, someone who is not me. ’cause I’m obviously there for helping other people. And I can do this. I don’t do ft, but I do other things. I do guided meditations. I do a lot of really amazing things. I know how powerful it is to have someone on the other side and also just the fact that I didn’t have to talk a lot. I just had to go through the motions, allow it to flow because it’s not. It’s not up here in the frontal cortex where you could like talk about it and dissect it and really get into all the details. It’s not even necessary. It’s not part of the conversation because it’s body work. It’s just like, let it flow through you and let it release, don’t allow it to just sort of cling. So that was my experience. I’ve also had other experiences also with rev, Yael, what was her name? Yael Rivka jaffe. She’s also from South Africa. Apparently the South Africans are really good at this. No, but those are two really good friends who I’ve worked with in different capacities and. It was helpful in both scenarios. So I am very excited when you started talking about EFT. I’m like, I didn’t know you’d do that. I just thought you’d do other things with the patterns and things. Let’s talk about marriage. ’cause this shows up in marriage a lot, and especially since our episode today is about marriage. I want to definitely tie it up. There are so many patterns that we build even within our marriage that are just automatic reactors to what’s happening. He says something and then you automatically react. The express train has left the building and you can’t really catch it and be like, what? I shouldn’t have said that, or, I shouldn’t have reacted this way. I recently, I had this experience where I made a face, right? Like my automatic reaction was a face, and I was like, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even mean that. It was so automatic. I don’t know why that came out. It’s, so what do we do about it? The first thing you do is notice it. And it’s amazing that you were able to like, Ooh, what did I just do? But often it’s natural to us our reactions and they happen so fast and they seem so perfectly normal that most of the time, until we start looking for it, we’re not even aware that we’re doing it. We’re just not aware. So the first thing is just awareness and sometimes that comes from feedback. Like somebody will say, why do you keep making that face? And if we’re open to it, which is really so helpful to us when we’re open to hearing other people’s feedback. And of course we’re not often, not everybody is and for good reason. But if we can be open to that, so that’s oh let’s be curious. Why did I make that face? Or why did I feel insulted? Or why whatever it is. So the first thing is really just pause, pause, notice what just happens, and then try to. Identify, try to label it. It’s actually a tool that I teach in my course, which is called Plate, which is Pause label, acceptance tap. So I’m pausing and then I label what’s going on. Oh, I’m feeling scared, I’m feeling insecure, I’m feeling, or a need to eat, for example, right? I, whatever’s coming up for me, and then I want to learn to accept it. This is the hardest part. ’cause accepting. What do you mean accept it? I made I just yelled at my husband. That is not acceptable. I cannot accept that. Okay. Can you accept the fact that is what you did? It doesn’t mean approve, it doesn’t mean, I, I love what I did, but I’m just acknowledging this is what happened. Oh, I also have an anger issue. This is something I need to work on. It means not fighting reality. Oh, I love that. We do a lot of that fighting reality thing. We do a lot of fighting reality because we think that by accepting it, especially if it’s somebody else’s thing, it’s somebody else’s thing. Like I cannot accept the fact that he he walks in the door and he doesn’t make eye contact. He goes straight to, I dunno, make himself a coffee. I cannot accept that. Unacceptable. That’s not acceptable. I didn’t ask you to approve it. I’m saying, can you just inhabit the space that this is what he does? And maybe it’d be better if I could accept it. ’cause really there’s another thing I say all the time is there are two categories in life only. Two, there are things that I can accept and there are things that I can change and I get the most, most frustrated when I try to put things in the wrong category. All people say, but I can if I just nag him enough and ask him enough times. So we call that wishful thinking. If he’s gonna change, he’s gonna change because he wants to. And nagging is not generally the best way to make somebody else change. I’ve never ever, I’m a marriage coach, okay? I’ve been in this for a long time. I have never ever seen any man change thanks to his wife nagging ever. And if you are a man who has changed because your wife nagged you two, please raise your hand. Send me an email. I would love to meet you. I have not seen it. It just does not work. I think I’m gonna replay that section when people say no, but if I just tell him like this, I’m just gonna press play and let them hear that message. Yes. And you know what’s amazing, and this is one of the parts that’s so magical about the work we do, is when you go from trying to change him, to accept him. Then he chooses to change himself, but you cannot accept him. In order for him to change, you must get to the point where you are, ah and that, that is still resistance. I made like a sound that still was full of resistance, but like, eventually after a couple of breaths, I might get to a place where I’m like, okay, this is just who he is, and I can either choose to accept him or choose to fight it. And those are just, like you said, those are the only two choices. It’s am I fighting reality or am I accepting that this is my husband and this is what I got? And I think I come across this all the time you let go of something and that’s when the change happens. And I don’t wanna oversimplify, but I think one of the reasons that happens is because when we’re trying to change somebody else, we’re holding responsibility for it. It’s like. You’re not a good enough father. You don’t talk with enough, you don’t do the parsha sheet. So really, I am holding responsibility for the way he does the parsha sheet. So he has absolutely no reason to change it, to do anything about it. ’cause I’m the one who’s holding the responsibility for it. Once I let it go, now he has to look himself in the mirror and say, maybe this isn’t the best way. And it’s amazing because the root of not accepting your husband is spoiler, is not accepting yourself. And a lot of times when I have women come to me and say, I just can’t, I can’t deal with him, I can’t accept this way, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, what are you not accepting about yourself? What is, there is something that we’re not willing to accept just in our own experience that we’re then mirroring onto our husbands. And it’s so helpful to pause and really look at it. And like you said, step one is awareness. Most of us are walking around blind because we don’t wanna take responsibility because we’re not ready to do something about it, because we don’t wanna hear that there is something to be done. We would rather think that it’s out of our control. And most people are walking around giving away their power to everyone else because it’s so comfortable and it’s so convenient that I am just helpless. But this podcast is all about creating that awareness that like, it’s okay. No judgment. If you don’t feel like it and it’s not the right time and space for you to, take responsibility. But as soon as you want your power back, you are welcome to take it. It is yours. It is. Okay. It’s so freeing. It’s so freeing to know that this is possible. Yeah. And also, I don’t work with couples. But, since one of the things that I work with mainly is codependency, right? So there is this strain in the marriage because there’s this unhealthy dynamic between them. And in order to change it, they say well, I wish my husband could just well, why can’t he just do this? And why can’t he do that? And maybe he should be the one talking to you. And maybe, or he’s got all these behaviors and maybe she’s right, maybe he does, and maybe his, maybe he’s he’s an alcoholic or workaholic or whatever his issues are. Maybe he doesn’t speak nicely. They think there are gazillion reasons why, you know what’s wrong with what a woman could think is wrong with her husband, the same way, obviously reciprocal and. What can you, okay, let’s talk about you though. No, but he no, we’re not gonna talk about him anymore. We’re gonna talk about you, but he, but you have to just hear the rest of the story I call that swimming. I call that swimming in drama, swimming in the story. It’s if I could just continue swimming in the swimming pool, then I won’t have to get out and look at it from outside, from a place where I’m dry and I’m able to help the other person. If you’re swimming in the store, then you’re not helping anybody. You’re not able to help yourself. You’re not able to help the other swimmers. I love that. I also don’t work with couples. I only work with the wife, and I think that husbands love me for it because I free them to go be husband, go do you, you are fine. You’re off the hook there. There’s so much more able to contain their wives process when they don’t feel attacked, when they don’t feel like they’re under, like they have to get defensive, it’s fine. Everything is safe. I’m doing my work, and you just you’re doing fine. You keep doing your thing. It’s beautiful because then the only person who gets to communicate with her husband is the wife. And I find that to be the most natural thing, and so then the wife takes responsibility for her relationship with her husband and how she speaks with him and how she helps him understand what she needs. And it’s so beautiful to see that. And I believe that there’s something that breaks in that intimacy and that. Quality of relationship that you have with your husband when you bring someone into something that is between you and when the wife can go and take care of herself and actually work with someone and go through the process that she personally has to go through, that has nothing to do with him. And then she creates this space to be able to bring back what she has learned and share and have these conversations. It’s very powerful and there’s often a learning curve involved. So there’s a lot of, it can be a lot of confusion for both of them in the beginning of that process. Of course. That’s why you have a coach. But when the husband’s not working with somebody and the wife is starting to make changes, it can be very confusing for the husband. Yeah. But husbands are. Made to figure it out. The way their brains are, are, I will figure out. Bring a man a problem and he will figure it out. Women, I think that it’s just, it’s so different and we’re made so different on purpose, but the way I see it, I feel like if a woman does the work really and honestly because she wants a better life, she, and she’s doing it for herself. I want to feel good. I want to be more successful. I wanna have a better marriage. I want things to work. It’s no longer like you talk about codependency. It’s no longer attached to the husband doing or not doing the right thing. I will have a better marriage no matter what, and my husband’s going to be accepted the way he is, but like things are going to have to shift in ways that make my marriage better. I’ve seen it in my own marriage. I’ve seen it in all the marriages that I’ve helped. It’s mind blowing how amazing men are at being able to do that dance naturally. It’s just built into the way that their brain is wired. I, it’s interesting I’m like trying to apply that to the people, to to the husbands of the women that I see. So it depends on how, it depends on the husband because if the husband, let’s say, really is, he’s an alcoholic, so it’s gonna be a very different picture than just a husband and wife who they, they don’t yet know how to make space for each other or how to communicate or how to express themselves or how not to get on the express train. Those are all things they can learn, but when the husband really has a more serious issue, so she can a hundred percent do all those things you just said, and that’s really the process. The process is how I live a full happy life without, even if my husband is still doing his thing. So here’s the thing. At a certain point, the husband is a human too, and he also has to take responsibility for himself. But if the wife is the one pushing him to go get help, you are addicted and you need help and you need to go to this thing, and you, if you don’t go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she’s still holding it. And so he has no way to pick it up and take it and own it. She needs to be able to put it down. And it’s very hard because she thinks that without her, he’s a nobody and he will fall apart. But in reality, when she’s able to put it down, he’s going to be able to take care of himself, to pick himself up to, to know what’s going to help him to figure out something. And the beautiful thing is that he has her to always, she did all the research. She knows where all the help is, right? He knows that, but he gets to ask her for those numbers, or he gets to lean on her in a very different way than it was before when she was shoving it down his throat. There’s, so that’s the dynamic thing that changes. So that’s exactly what I was saying earlier about, when you’re holding responsibility, the other person never has to, and that is exactly the dynamic that I see so, so often just with the caveat that um, you know, somebody who really is addicted to something and is not interested yet. In doing any recovery work, you being married to him, you absolutely have to figure out how to set healthy boundaries so that you don’t get hurt and your kids don’t get hurt like that is on you and you have, whatever you need to do like you have to have a zero tolerance policy for violence, for example, or, other things.  Yes. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. We were talking about red lines, and this is so fascinating that it’s coming up here and this is a very interesting conversation, but I talk to my girls a lot. I have four teenage daughters and so this, you know, I as a married coach and a mother, I talk about these things openly all the time, but I really believe that there is, there are red flags. The red flags are to wave at something that’s, a red line. And it’s really important while dating, while meeting people just by living, that you pick up on these red flags and you say, oh, this is something that isn’t, okay, this is something that I need to look into. This is something I need to question or run away from, or whatever. So red flags are really important for obvious reasons, in dating and teenage hood. But then there’s also red lines, which are the things that you have to have very clear that you do not tolerate. And the biggest problems that I see. Within marriages that got to a place that is so terrible. Like how did you let it get this bad was I put a red line down and then he stepped on it. And so I moved the red line and then I painted it orange, and then he stepped on that. And so then I was like okay, so what should we do now? Let’s move the line more. And so that what you just said, having boundaries be so clear and having your red lines be so clear that there is no tolerance for crossing this line is going to save you so much suffering, so much of this journey of ugh. Yeah, but it’s tricky. It’s tricky. Of course it’s tricky because these types of relationships and these types of marriages or situations are also custom made by God because you need to learn the boundaries, right? It’s not, it doesn’t work very well When somebody is very clear about their B boundaries and then the person bounces off that boundary very quickly, they’re gone. They’re not able to hold that space, but God put them together because she doesn’t have her boundaries very strong, and she needs to learn to strengthen her boundaries. And this is her journey too. And so it’s not that, how did God give me this husband, and why am I stuck in this situation? The answer is because this is the journey you have to go through and these are the tools you need to learn. And the faster you learn them and the stronger you can strengthen yourself and your backbone, the better it will be for you, not the better. You can fix some other person. It’s like back to you. Everything’s always back to you. I agree with everything you said and. The reason though, or one of the reasons that it gets so tricky is because part of that early training that I spoke about earlier, we’re also trained like, don’t either, don’t be too sure of yourself. And, you’re probably being unreasonable here and I’m gonna throw this one out. Isha Ra, so your husband, right? You have to translate. There’s a lot of non speakers around here. A, a righteous woman or a kosher woman will do what her husband wants. The will of her husband has to, so that, that gets taken really out of context. And look, I made supper and my husband didn’t like it. Okay, so I’ll make him another one. And if you do that with a happy heart, great. But most women don’t. Most women will say really? But they’re too afraid to bring their real self and say, you know what? I’m not comfortable with that. Please tell me how you prefer it tomorrow, and I’ll be happy to make it for you that way. But I’m not spending another two hours making supper tonight. But she’s afraid to do that. So she’s oh okay. Because she’s not sure of herself and that’s. Sitting on all her life till now, all her experiences till now, that’s where, that’s what she learned to do. And so until a person realizes how far things have gone, it’s usually a good few years into the marriage. Some people, it happens right away and their eyes are wide open and they can notice things right away and say, wow, that’s really not okay. And they have people to talk to, but they have a college teacher or they have a revon or they have their mother or they have somebody they can bring that to. And hopefully that person says, wow, that let me really hear about that. Saying, nah, you just new a newlywed, it’ll be fine. You’ll see. So assuming they have a supportive person who can actually listen to them, you could be saving yourself 50 years of real pain, right? It doesn’t mean that the person can’t learn it, it just means that there’s this, there’s things that have to happen. But what happens is when women stay in these relationships, and they don’t, in these marriages without saying, this is not, actually, I’m not comfortable with that. That’s starting. A big spiral of he’s gonna become more demanding and you’re just gonna keep giving into him, and you are not showing up authentically. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. Doesn’t mean you can be obnoxious but you are allowed to have an opinion. You are allowed to say, I’m not comfortable starting over now at 11 o’clock at night, making you a new supper. You’re, you are allowed to be you. And if you don’t, people say no, but it’s not nice. You know what? Or they or they’ll say, it’s going to ruin my relationship with him. The truth is, if that’s what you’re doing, you don’t have a relationship with him. He’s got this relationship with this mask that you’ve been wearing, and that’s who his relationship is with. So it’s true. You might have to grow and learn how to do this, but you’re going to have a real relationship or you’re gonna find out he’s not capable of having a real relationship, but you’ll be able to do what’s good for you and hopefully also for your marriage. Yes. So let’s talk a little bit about what codependency is. ’cause I’m not sure a lot of people know enough about it to understand and then also to be able to connect the dots. Okay. Yeah. So codependency actually looks like a few different ways. Most people what most people think it is somebody who can’t say no, can’t say no, you’re codependent. Now that might be true, but that’s not like the defining characteristic. Okay? It might be, I don’t have a sense of self, and so I don’t have to stand up for myself. That might be true. But really a more accurate description would be it’s when I live my life through the eyes of other people, I will show it to you. I love that definition. I love that definition. ’cause all the other definitions, I was like, that’s not the people I know. But yes, I live my life through the eyes of other people is so co dependen. So good, thanks. Yeah. So if I think you need me to be weak or compliant or whatever, that’s how I’ll show up. That’s how I will show up. If I think you need me to be the fixer and solve all your problems, that’s how I’ll show up, right? If you need me to be pathetic and to be the person that you can just dump on, that’s how I’ll show up because I only feel seen when people are treating me this way. Yeah. And then the problem starts by the fear, like you said, I’m afraid I’m going to break it if I do something different. If I show up in a different way. A lot of people use the word authentic. Just be yourself, be authentic. I can be myself in every situation except this one situation where I can’t because it’s a not safe, because that’s not what I’m expected to show up as because something is wrong. Because I was taught that you have to show up a certain way that’s scary. And then authentic goes out the window because fear, like we were talking before, express train, bye. I need to be able to stay safe or I need to be able to know that I’m okay. So let’s get, let’s hear more. I’m loving this conversation. I think we went so deep. I’m like people are like getting their oxygen masks. Wow. Okay. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, because of the fear. See, that’s the thing. It’s I. The fear is really driving this. The fear is what pushes people to become the helper, the fix or the savior at a very young age, right? And it’s so easy to happen. If your parents are the kind who just argue a lot and you know that by being like a little invisible or that good girl, or I’ll set the table for you, mommy. And all of a sudden mommy smiles. Like it’s just the easiest thing in the world to develop this again, belief, right? Like the, with the dog, you develop this belief like, oh, this is how to stay safe. ’cause when mommy and daddy are fighting, that is not safe. My world is not safe. So here it’s so easy to get to feel safe again. And when that’s reinforced over and over again, this is how your world stays safe. Yeah. You know what you said? Yeah. You were saying that’s not nice. One of the biggest things is being a nice girl. I think, one of the ways that I had to break out of. When I started my business, one of the first courses I took, the first thing that came up was like, but that’s not nice. I can’t ask people for money. That’s not nice. So classic. Yeah, absolutely. And so, um, wait, so what question were we answering here? Sorry. Codependency, the different types, the different ways that it shows up. So the classic way, like I said, is to show up as the people pleaser. Sure. No problem. Because and conflict avoidant and, and everybody loves a people pleaser who doesn’t wanna be friends with the person who said, like, when you say you know what, three o’clock doesn’t work for me. I just can we switch to five? And she always says, yes. Can we switch to this place instead of that place? And she always says yes. She’s always the one who does the extra errand. And she’s always, who doesn’t wanna be friends with that person or married to that person for that matter? Who doesn’t want a kid like that? They’re like so much fun to be around, right? So it’s so easy to slip into that. So that’s very common. Another type is the, so I’m gonna use this word carefully, like the victim, but I wanna clarify what I mean by that. It means I seek validation through, I don’t wanna say unworthiness. I think I’ll define it better with an example. I’m trying to think. It’s, I take a student, I’m just, she gets a 75 on a test. Yeah. I’m just so dumb. Why does she say I’m so dumb? Because she needs somebody else to say, no, you’re really smart. Or the only way she gets attention is by not feeling well or being poor, or by being rich or you don’t under, you guys don’t understand me. You don’t know what it’s like to have everybody always think that you can get everything you want. And it’s like this kind of poor me attitude. And I don’t mean it to sound condescending. It’s like it’s hard to be in this place. It’s hard, but it’s if I don’t feel like I matter as is I, it’s like I need other people to pour into me. So I need their validation and I need their compassion in order to feel like, hi, I’m seen, I exist. Yeah, I feel like when we defined codependency as living your life through other people’s eyes, what came up for me also is approval. I see this a lot with people who become religious and because they’re new to the religion, because they new to the whole culture, they need to make sure that they’re doing it right. So they’re constantly looking to see, am I doing it right? Is this approved? Is this okay? Is this, but then at a certain point you get to a place where you’re learning to just be yourself. Even if it’s a new culture and a new society, like it’s still really important to just be yourself and lean into what works for you, what doesn’t, how you’re doing for real, and not try to fake it. And I think those are the people who are the most successful, who are able to be themselves from the start. I don’t know if it happens at the start. I think it happens. You right. It’s like you try, it’s you learn a new language or a new philosophy, a new kind of training. You take a new training and in the beginning it’s like you just following the steps, what they told you to do, and it takes time to become comfortable with it. And then you make it your own. Exactly. But it’s so fascinating to see that a lot of people have their, like their breakdown from wait, what am I doing here? Because they were on a train, they were following the rules or following the things, and it’s like, how did I get here? What am I doing? What’s going on? And then, because they were constantly looking over the shoulder to make sure that, it was okay. At a certain point you, you own it and you’re like, oh, this is what I’ve chosen. This is what I’ve become. Am I okay with it? Suddenly you start looking for your inner approval and that transition is sometimes very interesting. I remember my father is a rabbi and we had a lot of really amazing people go through, our house when I was growing up, and my father was very open with them and said to them like, it’s really important for you to choose it step by step and not to jump in and to be really cognizant of how much value you bring to the table. Like you have not erased yourself and started over. You are a whole person becoming a wholer person. But don’t negate that. It was something I learned. I, there’s a lot that I learned from my father, but that was just a total tangent. Let’s get back into the codependency. Yeah. So there’s one more I say of view of codependency, which is somebody who’s. Let’s call them a persecutor, although don’t love that name either, but it’s a person, it’s like they’re always looking to, they, in order to feel comfortable with themselves, they have to be be either better than somebody or fixing somebody else. And the fixer could go either way. Where I could go at you with the rescuer kind of thing or with the persecutor. It’s you’re finding fault. And you’re not doing this right. There’s a better way to do this. Or just having that kind of critical eye and it often hides as, I just want you to be better. I love you so much and I’m just trying to help you, actualize, I’m trying to help you be the best you, but. If you only see yourself in that position, then you need people to always be correcting and fixing and doing and putting down, and, that’s, that, that’s not good. That’s not good for anybody. And Right. In fact, you have to find a person who’s willing to partner with you in that. So it’s not one person. See, if there’s one person doing that and a healthy person comes up against that, then that person will step back and say that’s not for me. I’m not interested in playing this game. But very often, they find the partner who says, sure, I’ll play that game with you because I need somebody to tell me my, to tell me my faults, my flaws, or how I can improve. ’cause that’s how I’m seen. And they make this match made in heaven and they make themselves each other miserable for many years until one of em says, I can’t do this anymore. I think of what you just described as instead of being equal, I’m above you all the time. And so there’s a real. Out of alignment thing that’s happening that can be fixed very easily by becoming equals and just being honest and vulnerable. But it’s very hard to do when your programming is to have to be up here all the time or to have to be down here all the time and of course, like you said there’s couples who, you know, one of the, I remember meeting this really sweet couple and they were so cute and so loving, but they were like cat and dog. It was crazy watching them for a couple of days, like over a weekend. And we just seeing them constantly getting on each other’s nerves about little things and you’re like, oh my gosh, these people have patterns that are so funny and that they’re both okay with. ’cause they obviously aren’t changing the way that they’re doing the thing, but you actually saw the pattern over and over again in different. Scenarios. It was hysterical. I remember as a teenager really? Wow. It blew my mind. Yeah. The patterns we do, we tend to do in o in many places, but sometimes when somebody says I am so not a people pleaser, and I can totally say no to anybody, and that could be true with 95% of the people, but there’s 5%. It’s let’s say, but authority figures, right? For them, anything. So the work in healing codependency might speak to you even though you don’t identify with it at all, because you don’t identify it, but you’re missing this pattern and sometimes you don’t like, so what, so it’s taking a 5% of your life. Who cares? When do you do something about it? When it is interfering with your life and your goals and your values, right? When you’re, and that’s really the bottom line. It’s when it’s interfering with your values. When you’re not able to live your life according to your values, that’s when any of this becomes a problem. When my fear dictates my actions instead of my values, I’m living in conflict with myself. And that’s the problem. And that’s why it’s going to get too much already. That’s when people come to a breaking point are like, I just can’t anymore because the conflict is too high. Yeah. So what could people do? Somebody, let’s say somebody is not codependent and I don’t think there are people who are in a hole and like their entire being is codependent. I think that we all have some sort of, piece of us that is codependent and we’re like, we’re finding like little crumbs here and there. Most healthy people have a little bit of what to work on and it’s normal. It becomes overwhelming when there are very strong codependent patterns that start to emerge. But even the people who have regular, normal, codependent moments or situations. You once you like you said, I, by the way, I wanna go back to hearing about the plate. ’cause I don’t think we went through all of it. But the first one was awareness or something like that. Was that the word? Pause. Oh, pause. Pause. Label, accept and tap. Yeah, exactly. So the first thing is like pause and be like, what just happened? Label it as I don’t think that was in alignment with my values. Something here is off. I don’t feel like I am okay with this label. Okay. What was the next thing? Accept. Accept and then tap. Yeah. We won’t get to tap it, but yeah tap. That’s what it was. But it’s accepting the things I cannot change. There you go. So yeah. So let’s get into what are people like now somebody’s listening to this podcast and saying wow, that’s really cool. I could become aware of these things and then do something about them. And now they wanna know what to do. I really think that for starters, it’s pause label and then for start there, start with pause label, because we rushing through life on autopilot and we don’t give ourself the luxury of evaluating. And that’s so important because we can’t do anything else until we’re saying, one second what’s going on here? And that goes with label, right? First, give yourself permission to pause. It’s really okay if I just evaluate what just happened, or I’ll set aside a minute. Before I get outta bed in the morning and before I go to sleep at night, to say to, to just take stock, pick one event during the day and say, why am I still uncomfortable about that? What about that made me uncomfortable? And then I can label, I can say, here are my feelings now in the beginning, we might get, glad, sad, mad but the more we do it, the more nuanced we can get and understand that there’s really a lot going on. Ooh, I’m noticing that. I’m fearful all the time. Huh? That’s interesting. Stay with curiosity, not criticism instead, which is our go to, which is I have nothing to be afraid of. That’s stupid. No. It’s, let me be curious about that. What is it that I’m afraid of? What do I think could happen? What’s the worst possible thing that could happen? And if that happened, then what? And if that happened, then what? Like really it’s exploring. And then, yeah, accept no acceptance is harder. And if we’re not used to it, it definitely takes a lot of practice. Sometimes we just need somebody to guide us through that and say here’s how you do that. And there’s exercises that you could do from the recovery world. There’s exercises you can do from, just breathing. There’s so many different ways to work on acceptance, but at least let’s understand that acceptance is really the key to happiness because it’s not the rain that’s making me unhappy. It’s the fact that I can’t go outside. It’s not my child’s tantrum that’s making me unhappy. It’s the feeling that I’m not a good mother. It’s not my eating, my out of control eating that’s making me upset. It’s the fact that I’ve, I’m upset with myself that I’m out of control. So when I dig down, like there’s things and if I so much is about just accepting my reality and then yeah, then there if I feel. That I wanna go further with it. Okay. So then, there’s ways and there’s resources to take it further. And everybody’s always welcome to contact me for any reason. But not everybody, as you say, is going to identify with wow, I really have a problem. But these are just basic things that everybody can do. I love that. Wow. This is so powerful. Okay, we can be talking about this forever. I don’t even know ’cause I lost track of time with the siren in the middle. How can people find you and what can you add to the conversation to pull it all together? People can find me on my website, shoshanaschwartz.com and the next thing that I’m doing is actually a free workshop. That would be at shoshanaschwartz.com/free. It’s a free workshop on April 19th, which is when this airs is gonna be just coming up. And I’m going to show you a practical way to. Find your next best step after the holiday, after. So that, whatever you’re feeling, whether it’s heaviness or guilt, or just like that thought oh, here we go again. So then you’re not pulled back into those old patterns that we’ve been talking about. So it’s like a practical way to find your next step instead of going back into your old cycles, your old patterns. I love that. And yeah and then after that I’m running a, a bigger course, the Satisfied Self, and that’s a 12 week course that helps women. Like we, we get into exactly what we’ve been talking today, like those automatic patterns that are gonna show up. Yeah, they’re gonna show up more when I’m stressed or some people at night or different things. But what is driving that? Because like when people think about my eating’s out of control, or I have a certain food that I crave or I eat at night, whatever their problem is, that’s something you learned. Guess what? It’s also something you can unlearn. And so I have a very specific tool set to help you do that. So to answer your question, that’s where they can find me. shoshanaschwartz.com/free. That takes you to the workshop and you can see whatever. Feel free to look around. That’s amazing. I think I’m gonna sign up for that. That sounds really fun. ’cause you can never learn too much about how to unlearn things. It’s so powerful because your brain is so powerful, because our lives are so powerful and because it just feels like such a waste to have to be on reruns when you can watch new things. There’s so much amazing life to live, and all we’re doing is just like repeating different things that happened, in the past and just stuck on a loop. I hate that. So I am definitely interested in signing up and I hope that all of my listeners sign up to. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. This was very exciting, especially since we had a siren in the middle. It’s this is my first time I’m recording when we had to stop and run. It was really fun. Thank you for the listeners and I hope you stay connected for real. I really appreciate being here. It was really fun to talk to you and let us be out of our, out of the need for our safe room soon. Awesome. And everybody man I second that. I’m cool with that. Thanks so much for coming.  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. Can you share it with them? I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman from connectedforreal. com. Thank you so much for listening and don’t forget you can be connected for real.