- Wow.
Oh no. People do this now.
Wow. Wow.
That is a good heart.
Hi everyone.
- Hello.
- Welcome back. Today, I am joined by my fantastic husband.
Oh, thank you very much.
And we are back
with our annual relationship video for you guys.
- We are just sharing some key breakthroughs
and lessons that we've learned
throughout the three years we've been doing therapy.
- Yeah, about three years now. Wow.
- Happy three-year anniversary.
- Happy three-year therapy anniversary, babe.
- Honestly, therapy has helped us tremendously
and it's been an incredible way
for us to just be on the same team.
And before we get started,
I would love to thank our sponsor.
Thank you Better Help for sponsoring today's video.
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Scheduling time with your therapist is super simple.
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But there's a couple of perks.
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If you go to my link betterhelp.com/jenn,
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So, please click it if you're interested
or you can scan the QR code, which is on the screen.
And with that said, let's get into our lessons.
So, our first lesson we have
for you is Our Reds Look Different.
- And by reds we mean you know, the emotions.
And for us,
the easiest visual we use is like traffic lights.
When you're good you feel green,
when you're feeling a bit iffy, amber.
And then red is when you know you're just, you're raging,
you're not feeling good, you've gone over that line.
It's that stressful point. Right?
- Right. Yeah.
I feel like the red emotion is anything that's challenging.
It's like an emotion that makes you feel hot.
Like when you're stressed,
when you're angry, when you're uncomfortable.
I tend to verbally process a lot when I'm stressed.
Like it's this syndrome, kind of
like verbal diarrhea where I have to literally
communicate everything that's in my mind.
- Yeah.
- And I think it stems from a place
of me not wanting to keep the other person
in the dark on how I'm feeling.
- But you're over verbalized
to get the other person informed.
- Yes.
- And my red is like the total opposite.
I actually avoid a situation when I'm feeling stressed
or overwhelmed.
I tend to want to remove myself.
Sometimes that's good
because you remove yourself from a situation.
You can have space and when I'm alone,
I can recharge myself.
But that can also be avoidant, right?
Sometimes you have to walk
towards a problem and I kind of retract.
I go in my hole a little bit.
Sometimes that takes away
from the awareness to be like,
hey Jenn, like I hear you.
You know, you're struggling right now.
You know, and kind of verbalizing how you are feeling.
- Right. So, I think the solution is it's to define
what our reds are and communicate that.
And then once the event has passed
and you guys are both in a more calm space,
I think talking about it and debriefing is really important.
So, this segue is very nicely to our next lesson
which is that We Problem-solve In Different Ways.
And the key tip for this is to recognize
that there is no "better" way to solve a problem.
They both have their values,
they both have their cons as well.
- They do.
- The way I problem-solve is that I am very action oriented.
The second that there is conflict or there's a problem
I roll up my sleeve and I just march towards it.
The pro is that it's resolved.
However, a big con is
that sometimes a problem doesn't require fixing.
And sometimes a solution
to a problem is to simply just wait.
The reason why I confront problems so directly is
that I feel so uncomfortable that the only way
to soothe that is to try and fix something.
- Well, I think mine, again, the opposite.
I think it's an element of I'm definitely more observant.
I will kind of just experience the situation
and be more relaxed and kind of slowly make my mind
up about how the solution be.
One of my favorite sentences is the key to growth
and happiness lies in the gap between stimulus and response.
And the stimulus is the stressful situation.
The response is how you react to it.
- Right.
- It's that gap.
And I think I've been really working on that gap.
If something stressful happens,
my intuition now is to have a deep breath
and try and be calm.
But again, I can sometimes lead into avoidancy with it.
- One great example of us just really like synergizing
the way we problem solve is, for example, Lennon,
this is when he got his first fever.
And it was rough.
When I saw the conflict, I immediately called
our pediatrician.
I'm like looking through Reddit forums of like what to do
in this situation.
And once the doctor got ahold of us, the only thing
he said was like, okay, you gave him the Motrin
and now you just wait.
You let Lennon heal on his own.
And I think this is where Ben really shined
because he was able to comfort Lennon
with just this calm, nurturing presence.
- Like that's a perfect time to think
I can't fix this right now.
All I can do is fix my emotions and try
and be calm and do whatever you can to make that happen.
- Right.
- So, the next one is
It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It.
- When you have something to say, there is validity to it.
However, it's how you say it,
it's the tone in which you say it.
Washing produce is something that I can be very
just particular about.
Like I wanna make sure that the food that we're eating is
well washed.
And this is something that Ben and I have,
- Sometimes it's not, you know, I'm coming from Europe.
Our produce is a bit cleaner than,
- It is. Yeah.
It's a cultural difference.
But in America you have to freaking scrub it.
And once Lennon got here, I became very just strict about,
- Yeah.
- Washing the produce.
- Yeah.
- Or I realized that every time I said,
hey, like did you wash the produce?
I think it was because I was saying it
in such a harsh tone that Ben just kind of just heard.
He just felt, he just felt,
he felt the emotion.
My request didn't sink in.
- How you say something determines
how someone's gonna receive that.
If you say something that's gonna make them feel less than
or their walls are gonna go up.
If you're gonna say, hey, you did this wrong.
Bam. Walls up.
- Yeah.
- You're defensive straight away.
Sometimes in those situations when it might come
across like nagging or something like that, straight away
I'm subconsciously the walls up or,
- Right.
- I'm not able to be like, yeah, fair enough babe.
Okay. You know, I'm just like, here we go again.
You know?
And when you ask in a calm manner and how you say it,
it's easier for me to not have the walls up.
You know, we all have these situations, relationships,
whatever it is.
- I think this is even a great lesson when you have children
because you're gonna need to educate them
in different systems that you have in the household.
And if you are just constantly nagging at them
and speaking to them in a tone that is abrasive and harsh,
then they're not gonna receive that message well either.
- And it's any relationship.
Think about how your parents will speak to us, right?
If your mom was telling you to do the washing or whatever,
we forget that.
It becomes a subconscious trigger
for us to react in a certain way.
- The next tip we have is to diversify the playlist
in your head.
Your mind is kind of like a washing machine.
There are maybe a total of like five
or six reoccurring thoughts that keep going up and down
up and down.
And I think it's so easy to get
into the trap of just blurting out anything
to your partner as if they're an extension of your own mind.
- So, you know, it's easy to get just carried away
with something we're learning about whatever that is.
You know, we are who we surround ourselves with.
So, if you're just constantly telling your partner
something negative or something that's just, you know
they are soaking that in, they're receiving that.
So, is that awareness, isn't it?
- Absolutely. And I think there's like one example
that we kind of conquered was
when I was really going through my postpartum anxiety,
I started looking
at all the potential risks and looming disasters
that could possibly happen.
So, anytime Ben came to the room, actually if anyone
anybody that month, all I was talking about was earthquakes,
potential earthquakes that are gonna happen in California.
- You'll be going to bed listening to a podcast
while someone's saying,
well, there's multiple ways we can dive in extinction.
I'm like, this isn't gonna make you feel better.
Is this?
- I know.
And I think, I didn't realize at the time
because I was just learning all this new information
and since Ben was there, I would just verbally
like I would just dump all this out for him.
- A while ago I was doing the same thing.
I was learning about, you know, animal rights stuff
when I stopped eating meat and that became the playlist.
I get some repeating and you know, it's easy to,
we all have different things that we are passionate about,
or that we feel just in the world.
And I think that was something that I was like
why is no one else as angry as me?
And with this why isn't anyone else is worried
about the future?
There's so many ways they're all valid, they really are.
But obviously if you're just constantly talking
to the other person about all these different reasons
why slaughterhouse is are bad
or the world's gonna end, no one's gonna feel happy. So,
- Exactly.
- It's a balance.
- It's 100% a balance.
- Yeah.
- And again, I think this is where therapy kind of opened
our eyes of like, oh crap.
Like let, like maybe we can process this in healthier ways.
And for me, that was journaling.
Just kind of dumping out all the things I was learning,
all the things I was feeling.
And if I still felt very compelled to share
that information, then I would.
You gotta like kind of read the crowd.
- Yeah.
- You know, if Ben is loving this, then you know
I'll go in and just hit him with some more facts,
you know?
But if he is just kinda like, oh
you know, then you just kind of dial it back and,
- It comes down to that awareness in the moment,
you're about to say something
is what I'm about to say, serve this conversation.
Is it gonna serve me?
Is it gonna serve the other person?
And it doesn't always have to be positive.
- Right.
- That isn't life.
But it's important to have that awareness.
And for me, the things that help are meditation,
breath work, things to kind of center me,
so I'm aware when I go into a situation to make the decision
of what to say and how to say it.
- Right.
- As opposed to just going in a subconscious manner
which we do most of the day. Right.
- So, the final topic we wanna touch
on is building emotional trust.
So, if you have been with your partner for several years,
then chances are they've seen the good, the bad
and the ugly.
And when it gets ugly,
I think that's like a breeding ground for triggers.
- Yeah.
- And as you grow as people and as a couple,
I think it's important to kind of like make sure
that you need to give time
for your partner to understand that you have changed.
- Yeah.
- We've almost been together for like a decade.
- Yes. Yeah.
- That's crazy.
So, it's almost like we have to recognize
that we are not who we were when we first got together.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Like in my early twenties, I definitely had a temper
and I didn't know how to properly regulate my emotions.
And unfortunately Ben got
the grunt of that and like therapy, meditation, journaling,
that's all helped me to just step into maturity
and I had to recognize
that it's gonna take Ben some time
to be able to emotionally trust me
that it's not gonna escalate into something crazy.
- Something that helped me be patient
with your emotional growth is empathizing
with the fact that, you know
when you're stressed you want to fix a problem
and you're not feeling good,
it's because you want to fix a problem.
- You're trying.
- You're trying,
you're literally trying so hard that it's too much.
And I think that's, but also our conditioning, right?
Like we are why we are because of our parents.
We can't blame our parents.
'Cause they're why they are because of their parents
and understanding people's conditioning.
And that's why they are.
I think that's a really important thing to register.
For me versus 10 years ago, you know, I've told the story
that I was in a band and I didn't have a life
that was had organization and things like that.
But that's also the story I told myself.
And I think, but I've learned and grown a lot
from the things I've experienced from you.
And I think that's why opposites can work really well
because you can learn and grow from each other
when you're open, when you're aware, when you communicate,
when you synergize.
And I think that's the emotional trust is something that
it's something you always work on.
You know, you always wanna communicate and there's always
something to be improved on, but it's about registering
and appreciating where you are
in the moment, not where you have to be.
- Ooh, that's a good one.
All right.
So, those are all the little lessons that we'd like to share
with you today.
I think a really fun question to ask the public,
- You guys.
- You guys is what does your red look like?
Like how do you behave when you are stressed?
And then how does your partner behave?
- Yeah. Or your best friend or family member,
whoever's close to you
that you sometimes might have conflict
or someone that you just have a big relationship with.
Think about or ask them what their red is as well.
- Yeah.
- Because once you can understand each other's,
the best way to start empathizing
with each other and understanding.
- Exactly. Exactly.
All right, if you guys are still here
and you'd like to watch more videos
with us discussing the topic of love.
- You can't get enough of it. There's some more here
- Or right over here.
- Whatever you want.
- We've been here
for a minute talking about these topics, right?
- Yeah. So if you want any more, you know where to go.
Thank you guys so much for watching
and we'll see you guys in Jenn's next one.
- Bye.