Dr. Vitz talks about visibly strengthening while doing the work.
Seeing the Process Unfold
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Seeing the Process Unfold
Season 10/Episode 54
March 19, 2025
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This is Levelheaded Talk, a discussion on radically upgrading personal and professional relationships with emotional sobriety. This is a podcast brought to you by expert and speaker Dr. Andrea Vitz and is not intended to replace the advice of your medical professional.
0:29 Jon
Welcome to Levelheaded Talk.
0:32 Andrea
What's up, Jonny?
0:35 Jon
We're talking about the opportunity to strengthen relationships through the experience of a conflict. This is not unlike things that we've talked about before or things that it really parallels something that we talked about on our brother show, the Ted O'Neill program, about how training setbacks, somehow, when viewed as an opportunity, can be a catapulting event, and the same is true with relationships. So you mentioned yesterday that the vulnerability in the repair of a conflict can be something that strengthens.
1:17 Andrea
It always does. I've not seen it not work.
1:22 Jon
All right, everybody, see you tomorrow,
1:25 Andrea
Period. Yeah. I mean, this is how I fundamentally know when, like married couples or certain groups that are working together in emotional sobriety aren't doing the real work, is because there's their relationship isn't strengthening with the work. Yeah, it's actually just staying the same when you're doing the work, not just reading the book, watching the videos, talking about the concepts, when you're actually doing the work in the moment you're strengthening that relationship, because you're not thinking, you're not coming from a place of, listen, Jonny, you did this wrong. You did this wrong, you did this wrong, which hurt me in this way, and did all these things. You're coming and saying, or I should say, I would be coming and saying, Jonny, here's what I've experiencing like, here's what I've done. Here's where I can be responsible. Here's what I keep doing that isn't helping our relationship. And here's what I'm doing that's not affecting change. Here's what I'm going to be doing going forward. I'm giving you this vulnerable experience of not saying everything you do is perfect, Johnny, and you don't have to change anything for us to get better. It's here's what I need to do to get better for us and for me, when people are really doing that, their relationships not only strengthen, but I'll have messages from people saying, We've never been more in love, we've never been closer, and we've been together for 30 years, or we were going to get a divorce. This is one of my favorite stories. I had a man contact me, him and his wife were getting a divorce. They were gonna move out of the houses all the things they told their daughters they were gonna get divorced three weeks into m so I knew they were really doing the work. And I only knew because of one thing, he messaged me. He said we started kissing again. Not that was such a sweet thing to say, but it's true. He's like, we hadn't kissed in like, a year. Wow, because they were so they had so much resentment and hate and animosity that just kept perpetuating now they're kissing in three weeks just by doing the actual work. So what do I actually mean by that? I mean they're not just again, they're not just reviewing, they're not just reading, they're not just talking about it. They're getting so deep moment to moment, they see so clearly what sobriety truly is, and we're going to talk about that tomorrow. But what's really going on within them in those moments of conflict and actually doing everything they can to find what's real in them, yeah, instead of having all the all of their attention on what the other person's not doing their little needs.
4:13 Jon
When you can present with authenticity, and be vulnerable about helping the other person instead of trying to win an argument.
4:26 Andrea
Yeah. what I used to do with with Ted would, if I would say something like, this is in the infancy of my training. Where am I currently sucking right now? Like, where do I suck at this? Yeah, what am I doing to contribute to this? It doesn't matter what's happening over here? What am I doing in reality? You can sit and feel justified in your victimhood. You can sit and say, yeah, but he did this, yeah, but there's all these old patterns. But if I'm not just focusing on me and bringing that to the table, then. I'm not even in the relationship. His behaviors are the only thing I'm that are making up our relationship. Does that make sense in my mind? And my behaviors are the only thing that late that are labeled in his side. So it's a very ugly unattractive relation. No one would want to be in that room.
5:20 Jon
Yeah, now that you put it like that.
5:23 Andrea
It's like my marriage is defined by the way my husband doesn't meet my needs every second. That would be a really uncomfortable so for me, I have a whole I think next week we can talk about needs, but when there's conflict and we approach it with the real work that that moment, I've had people tell me, they'll say, okay, Andrea was talking to my boyfriend, and then it started to get weird. You know, when the energy changes, you're about to have a fight. You know that feeling? It's very thick energy. So she calls me, she's like, the moment happened. And I'm like, This is the moment. So what Andrea talks about. This is where I do the work, yeah, and I'm like, yeah, that's called a squeeze point. That's the point that the training actually affects you, that it changes you. That's when you're doing the rep, when it's hard training in the physical, if it's not hard, you're not going to get stronger. So it's the same and emotional if you're not in a really yucky experience with your partner or with your boss or with your co worker, whatever, your child, and you don't notice those moments and take them as an opportunity. Okay, what tool am I going to use right now? How can I find out what's real? How I'm going to apply the EMSO formula right now. I'm going to say, hey, let me take a second. I just want to figure something out. Do your EMSO formula and then share it.
6:44 Jon
This is why we exercise, by the way. Because first responders will tell you that you always in in emergency situations. In a crisis, you will revert to your training. So in other words, when the shooting starts and things get loud and there's all the noise, the actual noise, and the noise in your head, all of the things that you have practiced are what you will do, and all of the things that you have practiced to administer CPR when somebody is in the midst of dying in front of you, that's a crisis situation that takes all of the conscious thought opportunity, and just shoves this thing right in your face, so that if you have been doing the you know, if you're journaling, if you're doing the work, you not only do you recognize the event as the Earth, as the opportunity to do the work, but the muscle, muscle memory kicks in.
7:41 Andrea
They're not thinking, I'm gonna do another pump on the chest and another pump on the chest. No, they just do it. They're not thinking, I shoot now the person who's shooting at me like I they just do it. And so that's the reason that we have any emotionally triggered behaviors, because we've trained to be defensive. So you're not thinking about it. You don't even notice it.
8:00 Jon
You have so many reps in.
8:02 Andrea
Yeah, if you hadn't, and it feels so right and so justified and so much like you and everyone in my family does it so we don't even notice it. Like we've talked about being nose blind. So I've had so many people that can see the defensiveness in their in their other party and their other party, saying, Listen, you're so defensive too. And they're like, No, I'm not.
8:24 Jon
Uh huh, you're defensive.
8:26 Andrea
But it's like, if I were to say, like, record that conversation, yeah, so you can see where you're also defensive and childish and unfair, if you want to call it that, like, where you are thoughtless, where you're just, like, discarding somebody else. And in those moments when you truly do the work, when you don't just sit in the suffering, but you use levers to change it, and you share that with the person in front of you, you are creating a bond that is unbreakable. And when you do that 10 times a day, you're earning and establishing new trust which is going to make you have a totally elevated experience with that person or with that group of people. So I really look forward to everybody actively seeking to turn their conflicts into the greatest bonding experience that they've ever had.
0:29 Jon
Welcome to Levelheaded Talk.
0:32 Andrea
What's up, Jonny?
0:35 Jon
We're talking about the opportunity to strengthen relationships through the experience of a conflict. This is not unlike things that we've talked about before or things that it really parallels something that we talked about on our brother show, the Ted O'Neill program, about how training setbacks, somehow, when viewed as an opportunity, can be a catapulting event, and the same is true with relationships. So you mentioned yesterday that the vulnerability in the repair of a conflict can be something that strengthens.
1:17 Andrea
It always does. I've not seen it not work.
1:22 Jon
All right, everybody, see you tomorrow,
1:25 Andrea
Period. Yeah. I mean, this is how I fundamentally know when, like married couples or certain groups that are working together in emotional sobriety aren't doing the real work, is because there's their relationship isn't strengthening with the work. Yeah, it's actually just staying the same when you're doing the work, not just reading the book, watching the videos, talking about the concepts, when you're actually doing the work in the moment you're strengthening that relationship, because you're not thinking, you're not coming from a place of, listen, Jonny, you did this wrong. You did this wrong, you did this wrong, which hurt me in this way, and did all these things. You're coming and saying, or I should say, I would be coming and saying, Jonny, here's what I've experiencing like, here's what I've done. Here's where I can be responsible. Here's what I keep doing that isn't helping our relationship. And here's what I'm doing that's not affecting change. Here's what I'm going to be doing going forward. I'm giving you this vulnerable experience of not saying everything you do is perfect, Johnny, and you don't have to change anything for us to get better. It's here's what I need to do to get better for us and for me, when people are really doing that, their relationships not only strengthen, but I'll have messages from people saying, We've never been more in love, we've never been closer, and we've been together for 30 years, or we were going to get a divorce. This is one of my favorite stories. I had a man contact me, him and his wife were getting a divorce. They were gonna move out of the houses all the things they told their daughters they were gonna get divorced three weeks into m so I knew they were really doing the work. And I only knew because of one thing, he messaged me. He said we started kissing again. Not that was such a sweet thing to say, but it's true. He's like, we hadn't kissed in like, a year. Wow, because they were so they had so much resentment and hate and animosity that just kept perpetuating now they're kissing in three weeks just by doing the actual work. So what do I actually mean by that? I mean they're not just again, they're not just reviewing, they're not just reading, they're not just talking about it. They're getting so deep moment to moment, they see so clearly what sobriety truly is, and we're going to talk about that tomorrow. But what's really going on within them in those moments of conflict and actually doing everything they can to find what's real in them, yeah, instead of having all the all of their attention on what the other person's not doing their little needs.
4:13 Jon
When you can present with authenticity, and be vulnerable about helping the other person instead of trying to win an argument.
4:26 Andrea
Yeah. what I used to do with with Ted would, if I would say something like, this is in the infancy of my training. Where am I currently sucking right now? Like, where do I suck at this? Yeah, what am I doing to contribute to this? It doesn't matter what's happening over here? What am I doing in reality? You can sit and feel justified in your victimhood. You can sit and say, yeah, but he did this, yeah, but there's all these old patterns. But if I'm not just focusing on me and bringing that to the table, then. I'm not even in the relationship. His behaviors are the only thing I'm that are making up our relationship. Does that make sense in my mind? And my behaviors are the only thing that late that are labeled in his side. So it's a very ugly unattractive relation. No one would want to be in that room.
5:20 Jon
Yeah, now that you put it like that.
5:23 Andrea
It's like my marriage is defined by the way my husband doesn't meet my needs every second. That would be a really uncomfortable so for me, I have a whole I think next week we can talk about needs, but when there's conflict and we approach it with the real work that that moment, I've had people tell me, they'll say, okay, Andrea was talking to my boyfriend, and then it started to get weird. You know, when the energy changes, you're about to have a fight. You know that feeling? It's very thick energy. So she calls me, she's like, the moment happened. And I'm like, This is the moment. So what Andrea talks about. This is where I do the work, yeah, and I'm like, yeah, that's called a squeeze point. That's the point that the training actually affects you, that it changes you. That's when you're doing the rep, when it's hard training in the physical, if it's not hard, you're not going to get stronger. So it's the same and emotional if you're not in a really yucky experience with your partner or with your boss or with your co worker, whatever, your child, and you don't notice those moments and take them as an opportunity. Okay, what tool am I going to use right now? How can I find out what's real? How I'm going to apply the EMSO formula right now. I'm going to say, hey, let me take a second. I just want to figure something out. Do your EMSO formula and then share it.
6:44 Jon
This is why we exercise, by the way. Because first responders will tell you that you always in in emergency situations. In a crisis, you will revert to your training. So in other words, when the shooting starts and things get loud and there's all the noise, the actual noise, and the noise in your head, all of the things that you have practiced are what you will do, and all of the things that you have practiced to administer CPR when somebody is in the midst of dying in front of you, that's a crisis situation that takes all of the conscious thought opportunity, and just shoves this thing right in your face, so that if you have been doing the you know, if you're journaling, if you're doing the work, you not only do you recognize the event as the Earth, as the opportunity to do the work, but the muscle, muscle memory kicks in.
7:41 Andrea
They're not thinking, I'm gonna do another pump on the chest and another pump on the chest. No, they just do it. They're not thinking, I shoot now the person who's shooting at me like I they just do it. And so that's the reason that we have any emotionally triggered behaviors, because we've trained to be defensive. So you're not thinking about it. You don't even notice it.
8:00 Jon
You have so many reps in.
8:02 Andrea
Yeah, if you hadn't, and it feels so right and so justified and so much like you and everyone in my family does it so we don't even notice it. Like we've talked about being nose blind. So I've had so many people that can see the defensiveness in their in their other party and their other party, saying, Listen, you're so defensive too. And they're like, No, I'm not.
8:24 Jon
Uh huh, you're defensive.
8:26 Andrea
But it's like, if I were to say, like, record that conversation, yeah, so you can see where you're also defensive and childish and unfair, if you want to call it that, like, where you are thoughtless, where you're just, like, discarding somebody else. And in those moments when you truly do the work, when you don't just sit in the suffering, but you use levers to change it, and you share that with the person in front of you, you are creating a bond that is unbreakable. And when you do that 10 times a day, you're earning and establishing new trust which is going to make you have a totally elevated experience with that person or with that group of people. So I really look forward to everybody actively seeking to turn their conflicts into the greatest bonding experience that they've ever had.
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