00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 282, "What We Are Really Fighting About." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:20

All right, hello there, my friends, and welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you. It's good stuff going on. Life is good. I love coaching. I love the work that I get to do with you here on the podcast and creating this content and helping us to increase our awareness around how we can live into our relationships with more purpose and with more intention, and how we can have better relationships. I know that these tools have really, really helped me in my life, moving from a pretty dysfunctional marriage into singleness and then into my current marriage and the relationships I've been able to create with my husband and with my adult children as we moved on from the divorce. I'm just really proud of the work that I've done and so glad to have this platform to be able to share with you tools that have made a huge, huge difference in my growth and my journey. So here we go.

01:19

Today we are talking about what we are really fighting about. So sometimes in our relationships, we find ourselves fighting a lot. I know that in my previous marriage, although there wasn't yelling or slamming of doors, that just wasn't our thing, there were a lot of fights where we accused and blamed, and we attacked. There was a lot of pain. There was a lot of fear. Basically, there was a lot of fighting even when there wasn't fighting. It was a space of choosing not to see each other, not to acknowledge the other person's pain because our own pain was so looming, and not having the humility to step into forgiveness and vulnerability, and sometimes not even knowing that we needed to step into forgiveness or vulnerability. And a huge piece of this is because it didn't feel like a safe place. After years of hurting each other and looking away from each other's pain, there wasn't much safe about our relationship where we could step into the kind of openness and vulnerability necessary to begin healing and to be able to create a meaningful relationship. And it also seemed that as years progressed, we became more and more vague about what we were fighting about. When it did come up, it seemed that it was often focused on past hurts and "you never" and "you always" statements. After a lot of years, we just had so much data to draw from. And as I've worked through this concept since my divorce and tried to figure it out, and as I currently work through this with a lot of my clients, I see that so many of our disagreements of our fights are not really about what we think they're about.

02:54

So let me explain with an analogy. I want you to imagine that you're in a forest and you walk past a cave and all of a sudden a bear charges out at the cave toward you and the bear is on full on attack mode. And through the grace of God you are able to escape the attack with non-life-threatening injuries. You get healed up and sometime later you find yourself walking toward the same cave. Your brain recognizes where you are and goes into protection mode because that's what our primitive brain is programmed to do. It is there to keep us safe by whatever means possible. So when your brain notices where you are, what happens to your body? Well your brain has the thought that we're in terrible danger. It creates a feeling of fear and our body goes on high alert. We might feel edgy and panicky and we pull out the knife that we've grown accustomed to carrying since the last attack. So we're walking past the cave. All systems are on high alert. The knife is pulled out and we're ready. So this could happen even if we're walking past a different cave. Right? Because our brain is just recognizing there's danger in caves. So we might even at this point be on such high alert that even if the bear comes sauntering out of the cave, not in attack mode, we might even attack it because we feel so threatened. Our preconditioned response to walking past the cave, or any cave, is to be on high alert and ready to attack, and it makes sense. Our primitive brain perceives danger and wants to protect us. And to further the analogy, once we attack the sauntering bear, it will turn and attack us.

04:39

Now, let's use this analogy to apply it to why we fight in our relationships. Most of us aren't going to be walking past bear caves on a regular basis, but there are a lot of other things that our brains perceive as dangerous. For me, not feeling as good though I was being seen or heard felt very dangerous to me. It threatened my sense of self and my sense of feeling accepted. And even though this sense of danger started with one person in my life, my brain started to apply it to every person who dismissed my thoughts and talked over me. And pretty soon when I would go into a situation where my brain might think it could be dangerous in this way, I would figuratively have my knife out, and have all my protective behaviors on high alert ready to pounce. And then if my brain even started to perceive that I wasn't being taken seriously, I could attack quickly and easily and most often without grounds. And what am I fighting about? I'm not fighting about the fact that the bear sauntered out of the cave. I'm fighting about my need to protect myself rather than the fact that I was being protected. We're fighting about protection. We're not fighting about other things. So learning how to pay attention to the cues in our bodies for when we feel we're being attacked can help us to start to understand what is really going on for us.

06:12

So what if I get really upset with one of my children for not calling me on my birthday, or on Mother's Day? It's really easy to think that I'm upset because they didn't follow the rules of what children should do. Children should call their mothers, right? But if I can learn to dig a little bit deeper, I can begin to understand the protective mechanism kicking into gear underneath that. Why is my child not calling me a problem? Answer my brain comes up with: because that's what kids do when they respect their parents. Dig a little bit deeper. Why is my child not respecting me a problem? And my brain answers because that means they think I did something wrong as a mom. Okay, let's dig a little bit deeper. Why is it a problem that they think I did something wrong as a mom? Because I worked really hard and I sacrificed a lot and they should appreciate it. Notice the should, right? They should appreciate it. And why is it a problem that they don't recognize and appreciate the hard work and sacrifice? Because I often feel insecure about how I messed up as a mom and I want them to validate what an amazing person and mother I was and am. And therein lies why my brain thinks it needs to protect me: because I can tend to beat myself up or feel insecure about my parenting and I am seeking their validation and when they don't call me, I'm not getting that validation. It's not about them not obeying the rules in this example. It's about me wanting validation to secure up my insecurities.

07:49

Now, this can play out in so many different ways, but when we learn to dig deeper into our thoughts and what's going on in our head, we can see what is really fueling our discomfort. And sometimes what's fueling it is the thing that needs to really be addressed. Let's say we get upset about our spouse not unloading the dishwasher and instead just stacking their dishes in the sink and waiting for us to unload. Why is that a problem? Honestly, unloading the dishwasher and loading a few dishes is not hard and takes max, what, five minutes, right? There really isn't anything to fight about when it comes to dishes. But it's really not about the dishes. It's about what we make the dishes mean. Very often we will start a fight about the dishes. We'll say something like, you never unload the dishwasher, you're so selfish and never think about all the work that I'm doing, you want me to do all the work. But let's dig a little bit deeper. What are we really trying to say when we make that argument? Our initial response to that may be something like, "well, I'm not the maid around here." Okay, dig a little bit deeper. Why is that a problem? Why don't I want to be the maid? Because what I really want is to be seen as an equal partner. And when I interpret your behaviors as a one-up move, meaning that I'm the maid and you're not, it doesn't feel equal. Dig a little bit deeper. Why is it important to me to have an equal partnership? Because that is when we will respect one another and have a healthy, functional, happy marriage. Dig a little bit deeper. And what if we don't respect one another and have a healthy, functional, happy marriage? We might end up miserable and hate each other and end up getting divorced. So the real problem is not the dishes. It's the fear of losing the relationship and our brain wants to protect us from this potential problem. Once we understand this, the discussion can be so much more productive. Rather than blaming or accusing or attacking about the lack of respect and responsibility that I always have to unload the dishwasher, we can have an "own your own moment" saying something like this: "When you generally leave the unloading of the dishwasher for me, I feel scared because I'm thinking that I'm not being seen as an equal partner and that this is going to impact our relationship negatively over time." So we stop having a superficial fight about who should be unloading the dishwasher and we start having a meaningful discussion about what partnership means in our marriage and why it's important to us.

10:32

This process of digging deeper is to really discover what is going on and it takes some practice and the capacity to slow down our thinking, our fight and flight response when our brain goes into protective mode. But it's really necessary if we are to have the discussions that connect rather than fights that disconnect. Here's something that Sione and I discovered early on in our relationship. One of us would be sauntering out of the cave and the other person would attack with their knife. There was nothing wrong with sauntering out of the cave, but the other person would associate that behavior with something from our previous marriage and that caused our brain to go into protective mode. For example, my brain goes into super protective mode when I feel that someone doesn't think I'm smart enough to do something when they question my capacity, especially if it's something that I feel like I'm good at doing.

11:32

So a few weeks after we got married, Sione and I were driving from Kentucky to Indianapolis and I was the one driving the car. So Sione would occasionally make a statement about my driving and things that I could do differently or be aware of and I noticed myself pulling out the knife. I was getting hot under the collar and defensive and getting ready to attack, right? And for you, you know that feeling. It's like for me my chest and my neck start to get a little bit hot, I feel this buzzy inside that says "Don't you be telling me what to do," right? And if you've been listening for a while, you know this is always a problem for me, somebody trying to tell me what to do, right? So luckily at that time I was able to notice my overly sensitive response to some kind suggestions that he was making and we were able to discuss right then and there in the car my sensitivity to having it inferred that I was doing it wrong and we came up with this phrase that we started using then: "Oh, that's a (previous spouse name) response issue not a Sione issue," meaning my response to this has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with my protective mode from my previous marriage. And when we can start to recognize the signs of us pulling out the knife and getting into protective mode, we can slow down the process a bit and discuss rather than fight in that situation. Sione really was trying to be helpful because that's how he interprets it and he wants somebody to point out things when he drives. So he thinks it's helpful and I was interpreting it as him attacking my driving skills and intimating that I wasn't doing a good enough job. The fight could have been about him being a side seat driver and how he could just keep his mouth shut and Instead we had a discussion about my insecurities of not being seen as good enough. Fascinating, right? It wasn't about him giving me suggestions, it was about my insecurities, And when I can understand my fears and why my brain was seeking to protect me and when he could also understand these things because we talked about it, we could work out a way to communicate about driving in a way that was helpful. So in that instance, I really needed to understand and trust that him pointing out the slowing traffic up ahead or the big semi with his blinker on wasn't him not trusting my driving or thinking I wasn't a good driver. It was him really trying to be helpful. So I needed to manage my thoughts better. I needed to change my thoughts from "he's criticizing my driving," which would make me what angry defensive and we know the actions that come from that to...I needed to change my thoughts to "he's being helpful," which would create more of a feeling of gratitude. Right? Here's one of those encyclopedia of experience moments in his brain. If he's driving and I point out things, he's always really glad and appreciative. So he thought that doing the same for me would cause me to see him as loving and having my back. We're partnering up here, right? "I'm helping you." My encyclopedia of experience was thinking that he was being critical. So, understanding our different perspectives of giving driving feedback was important. So now I think, "oh, he's just trying to be helpful." Okay, and I will say, lest you think that this has been an easy thing for me, we've been married a year and a half, and now when he gives me a head up, I still feel myself starting to get a bit hot and like pulling out the knife and then I have to remind myself, he doesn't think I'm incapable or he doesn't think I'm not a good driver, he's just trying to be helpful. And it's something that I just continue to work on nudging my thoughts back to where I want them to be.

15:34

And someday that's going to come a lot more natural than it still does. But it's a process of me being aware of my thoughts slowing down enough to recognize the heat that's building in my body and calling it out for what it is. It's my insecurity. It's not him giving me suggestions. So, here's another interesting piece of this. Because of my own sensitivity in this area, I still have a huge tendency to not point out things when he's driving because I don't want him to think that I don't trust him. So if he's in the far left lane and an exit's coming up that I know we need to take, my go-to is to keep my mouth shut and expect that he knows what he's doing. He's a good driver. He can handle it. He doesn't need me telling him what to do. Okay? And that's where my brain goes because that's what I wanted in the past. But I'm learning that he actually likes it when I point out things when we're driving. So if I say, "you knew that this was our exit, right?" He'll go, "oh," right? And if he didn't recognize it, he'll go, "oh gosh, thanks for the heads up. I was not noticing it," right? And he's grateful for that kind of stuff. And I am too when it's right. And when I needed that help. But how do you know when you need it? it. You don't. And so I've really needed to work on my ability to manage my thoughts around him helping rather than him being critical.

17:06

But here's the thing, if we just fought about being a side seat driver, we wouldn't have this understanding of each other and what the other person wants and why. And me being able to identify my insecurities around being told what to do has given him a huge insight into who I am and how he can respond to me in ways that are going to feel loving and kind. And it creates a greater intimacy because he knows me more. But for each of us to create the awareness about the way we feel like we're walking past a cave and the need to be on the defensive has helped us a lot in having some intimate discussions surrounding what triggers us and why. And learning to say, "I'm sorry, that's a (previous spouse) issue and not a you issue" has been really helpful for both of us because our brains have these protective modes on them. Even though we are now married to a different person, we both have triggers surrounding our previous spouses and our brain triggers it even now that we're together. And so we have to have been aware of this. So hopefully that helps you understand this space where what we're really fighting about often is our brains trying to protect us, not the actual thing that's going on.

18:32

So let's talk about another thing then that we fight about. We will fight about things that we have resisted fighting about, meaning back burner issues. And I know we've talked about this before. If you have not listened to the "Back Burner Issue" podcast, go back and check that one out. But have you noticed that if you don't talk about something small, if you decide it's just not worth the effort to discuss it, you still hold on to it, even if it's a little bit subconscious. These are the back burner issues that we've talked about so often here on the podcast. Generally, they are small things that come up, that bring up some discomfort or some irritation, and we just throw them in the pot on the back of the stove. We don't address them. We just pretend they don't exist. But they do. They're just in that back pot simmering almost imperceptibly, but simmering nonetheless. And we just keep adding stuff to the pot and eventually we add one more small thing and it boils over.

19:41

And that's the small thing that happens in the relationship when we blow up, right? We lose our cool and we have a big fight about something that really does not warrant that big of a response. Now, I know that everybody out there knows what I'm talking about because this is such a human, human thing to do, right? Something small happens and slowly over the course of time, all of those small things have started to create resentment in our hearts and then we blow. So here's how I look at this resentment. Let's say that our heart has 100 units of capacity and we generally like it to be filled with 100 units of love. But if we allow some resentment into our heart, say 10 units, then we only have space for 90 units of love in our heart because the other 10 are taken up by resentment. And if something else happens and we add another 20 units of resentment because we don't talk about things, then we're down to 70 units of love. Do you see the problem that happens here? Our heart has a hard time with that. And the less love we have, the less patience, the less kindness, the less compassion, all of that stuff, right? So eventually, this pot, as we continue to throw little things in it, on the back burner, it's going to boil over. And all of that resentment will show up in one small situation. The small things that we've gotten accustomed to just putting in the pot don't seem like a big deal. But suddenly, one more and one more and one more small thing is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And we blow up and we treat it like it's a huge deal because at that point, it's 50 small things added up and not just one small thing. This is why back burner issues are such a problem. Since it's currently just one small thing, our brain needs to find a reason to have such a strong reaction to something small. So it starts pulling out all the things to validate our anger or frustration, right? And if you think about these times that this has happened for you, something really that should not trigger you throws you over the edge, right? And that's what's happening here. All this stuff is built up, but our brain is like, "well, they just said this one small thing. It's not a big deal," but we're having this, this huge reaction. So now our brain needs to justify the huge reaction.

22:08

So we start using phrases like, "you always do this" or "you never do that." And we move really quickly into accusing and blaming and attacking. And when our brain feels like it needs to validate a big reaction to a small impetus, it will create a huge emotional response that can flood our prefrontal cortex and shut down our ability to think and process clearly. And then we end up fighting rather than discussing. Fighting is an emotional response. Discussing is a thoughtful response. Our brain gives us a huge emotional response because that can feel very powerful. It can make us feel strong and in control. At least when the emotion is big and our prefrontal cortex is flooded and offline. But once the emotion settles down and our prefrontal cortex gets back online, then we start to see our behavior as out of alignment with who we want to be and then shame can start to set in.

23:12

So look at this cycle. Shame sets in. What does shame create? Shut down. So shame causes the shutdown that feeds into starting the back burner cycle all over again of not talking about things that come up. We shut down and just start throwing more stuff in that back pot because of the shame. So notice we have this big emotional response. We feel the shame. We shut down. We start the cycle again of putting things in the back burner. Okay. And because we're not talking about all the back burner issues, we are not feeling seen and heard. The fascinating part of this is that we're not standing up or speaking up when we're throwing back burner issues in the pot. So of course we're not going to be seen or heard. This is our culpability in this situation. And most of the time we don't even see that we're doing it. We just feel threatened by not being seen and heard. And we blame the other person rather than taking responsibility for standing up and speaking up. And what we're fighting about in this circumstance is not usually the small thing that tipped the scales. What we're fighting about is feeling shut down, feeling as though we aren't being seen and heard. Our primitive brain is seeking to protect us from the pain and fear of feeling insignificant, of feeling unseen, of feeling unacknowledged. When we continue to nurture the back burner issues, we are feeding the thoughts of us not mattering, of not being seen, of the other person not caring. We're thinking thoughts like, "well, they just don't really care." Right? We are one-downing ourselves in an effort to keep the peace. But what we are doing long term is creating a hostile environment where we are not showing up as equals. To show up as an equal partner, we are not showing up as equals. We cannot be fondling our back burner issues. We have to bring them out in the open. We have to discuss them with kindness and compassion. Remember, not with blaming, accusing, or attacking. That means that we are owning our own and addressing the small things. So next time you feel a pull to start a big fight, stop for a minute and connect with yourself.

25:43

I have a friend who says, "drop down into your body." I love that phrase, right? What is under the thing that you're so upset about? What fear or pain is your brain trying to protect you from? And when the other person in your relationship picks a fight, stop for a minute and seek to understand what their brain is trying to protect them from. You may not know, but understanding that things are more complicated than they seem can help. Ask yourself what this person needs right now. What they ultimately need right now is to be seen, to be heard at a deeper level than the surface issue that is being brought up. This gives you the opportunity to check your own defenses and ask where is the truth in what they're saying. It may just be 2% truth, but guess what? That's a gold nugget of information for you. This gives us the opportunity to step into curiosity and really seek to understand their point of view and why they feel so strongly. We have a chance to practice some really clean love in how we give them space to share their thoughts and feelings without being judged and without being attacked.

27:01

Now, this is not generally easy because if you feel attacked, your primitive brain goes into full on protective mode and wants to attack back. So take just a second to take that extra breath and ask yourself, how do I want to show up? What kind of person do I want to be in this relationship? Ask yourself what this person needs to feel seen and heard and understood. Ask yourself, if you genuinely love this person, how can you show up right now to best understand them? What would love do in the face of this person's fear and pain and protective mode to help them feel safe? And then, my friend, courage up and do it. It can be hard to be vulnerable, especially if your relationship has been difficult and you have a lot of dysfunctional behaviors and patterns built around fighting. But vulnerability and curiosity is what creates intimate relationships and that is what will start to heal painful relationships as well.

28:19

You've got this. Remember, we're almost always fighting about fear and pain and protection. Rarely are we fighting about the dishes or the fact that they are side seat driving. Acknowledge the pain, whether it's your pain or theirs, and you start to set the stage for some real healing to happen and some real relationship building to occur. I love growing up. These are concepts that just were not available to me when I was younger. Middle age is the perfect fertile ground for this kind of stuff to start to take shape. So step into it, my friends. Okay, good, good stuff.

29:11

All right, if you want to dig into this at a more personal level, If you feel like it's time for you to start working with a coach because you need to see things, now is the perfect time. I know that it's holidays, a lot of people are like, "my holidays are so busy" and I'm like, "yeah, and this is the time that you most need an hour a week to help get yourself on track and to see dysfunctional behaviors that are breaking down your relationships." This stress is often much higher during the holidays. This is a good time to jump in and get some coaching done. I work with my clients for 12 weeks at a time and I have some clients who come in and they're like, "okay, this is my issue" and we work for 12 weeks and they go, "what? That was amazing" and at the end of 12 weeks, "they're like, okay, I'm back online with this issue, I'm where I wanted to be" and they're done. And I have other clients who come in and for whatever reason, their situations take a little bit longer. Everybody's experience in life is different. I have some clients who work with me for multiple 12 session times. But whatever works for you. Like this is about you getting to a place where you feel strong and empowered in your relationships, that you are showing up the way that you want to. So if you wanna talk with me about coaching, see if it's a good fit, you can go to tanyahale.com, you can go over to the "free consultation" tab and click on that and you have access to my calendar. You can find a time that works for you. Coaching is amazing. What you can understand from some one-on-one time is just incredible stuff.

30:47

So that's gonna do it for me. I hope you all have a really, really amazing week. If this podcast is helping you, please, please, please share it with other people that you feel would benefit from this content. It's all free. This is good, good information for people and I just want people to understand that we can clean up our relationships. We can show up better. We can feel better about who we are and about the decisions that we're making in our relationships. It's a great thing. So please share this content with other people. You can also leave a review if you are on Apple Podcasts and write something there that can help other people to connect with this information and find it as well.

31:30

All right. And if you've not signed up for my "weekend win", what, what? Go to sameplace, tanyahale.com. You can go to the "contact me" and scroll down a little bit or if you go to any of the podcast pages and scroll down, you'll also be able to sign up for my "weekend win."

31:45

And one other thing I just remembered. I am working right now on getting transcripts of all of my podcasts done and it's going to take several months, I think, to get all of those completed and put on because not only we're transcribing them, but I have somebody listening to the podcast and cleaning them up as much as possible. So we're going to start with the most current ones and start working our way back. So if you want to check out a transcript of one of these podcasts, because I know they're that fabulous, then you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can click on the podcast, go to the individual number and scroll down just a little bit. And if it has a transcript, it will have a button that says "download transcript." So anyway, working on that, so that's something really fun and exciting that I'm adding to my website.

32:38

So a lot of information there at the end, but have an awesome, awesome week, my friends. Let's clean up our fighting and let's start discussing rather than fighting. It's a great, great place to be. Okay, have an awesome, awesome week and I will see you next time, bye.

32:52

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.