[SPEAKER_00]: You snapped at your partner over something small, and you already know it wasn't really about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've gotten defensive with your mom, shut down with your boss, pulled away from a friend, and each time, there's that same moment afterward, where you think, why did I react like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: The shame of it is exhausting and the confusing part is that you can't always explain it even to yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, today, I'm giving you a new lens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a replacement for everything you already know about yourself, but something more precise, because there's a difference between knowing you got triggered and knowing exactly which need just got threatened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that precision, it changes what you do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: So stay tuned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Relationships Made Easy Podcast, where I give you the exact steps to create connection, joy and ease and all your relationships, whether it's with your partner, your family, your friends, or most importantly yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Abby Medkath, psychologist, bestselling author, TEDx, speaker, and the bossy Jewish mom you didn't know you needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each week you'll get no nonsense, research back strategies, serve with humor and love, so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start having the relationships you deserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll always leave knowing exactly what to say and do to shift your relationships for the better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the podcast, you know who I am, Dr. Abbey Metcalf.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is, I think, going to really help you today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited about today's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you've done any work on yourself,
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably already have some language for why you react the way you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you know you have an anxious attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you've done trauma work and you understand that certain situations activate, you know an old wound, you know about
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, maybe you know your nervous system gets overloaded and your quicker to snap when you're already depleted.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that is real and none of it stops being true today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to say that first.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what I have found in, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: 40 years of work and with folks, I hate saying that because, you know, it means I'm so old, but it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my 40 years of working with people in relationships, knowing that you got triggered is only the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tells you that something happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't usually tell you what specifically got threatened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And without that specificity, you end up in the same argument over and over,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, convinced it's about the parking spot or the tone of voice or the way they phrased a text when it's actually about something that's been accumulating quietly for a really long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what this episode is about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a, let me just get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a well researched, really well researched.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, me, I give you all the research psychological framework called self determination theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was developed by Edward, I always say Dechi, but I wonder it's DECI, maybe it's Dechi, maybe it's Dechi, I always say Dechi and I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I heard it that way before, but anyway, self determination theory was developed by Edward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deci, Deci, and Richard Ryan, and it identifies three core psychological needs every human being has, and when those needs are being consistently met, people thrive, you thrive, you're great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they're chronically threatened, even just one of them,
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't just feel bad, you react.
[SPEAKER_00]: And often in ways, this might sound familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And often you react in ways that feel disproportionate to the moment, but are actually perfectly proportionate to the pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: understanding which of your three needs is being threatened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really gives you a use that word precision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used it with a client the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a level of precision that I got triggered just can't, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really helps you hone down what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are the, you know, next question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are those needs, Abby?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the three?
[SPEAKER_00]: core psychological needs, what I've ate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dechium Ryan called these needs, there's three of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I explaining them really well for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're autonomy?
[SPEAKER_00]: competence and relatedness sometimes called belonging, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Autonomy, competence, and belonging or relatedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think of them as you need to feel free, you need to feel capable, and you need to feel connected to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can use whichever language you want, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the research is clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: that these aren't personality preferences or nice to have, they are universal psychological needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you're listening in Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, if you are, you know, Sweden, Canada, Australia.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter, but here in the US, these are universal psychological needs as fundamental, really, as food and water that operate in every relationship you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just throw a manic one, so I'll be really clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go, Abby.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about autonomy first.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your kind of what I call your need to feel free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your need to have agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we use that word a lot, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your autonomy as your need to feel like the author of your own life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not it not independence exactly and not
[SPEAKER_00]: being alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this, you need to feel like the choices you're making actually reflect you, that what you do and say comes from your own values and your own sense of who you are, not from someone else's agenda,
[SPEAKER_00]: for who you should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see why that can be really problematic, depending on the kind of family you come from, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Every family that we come from, even if you were in foster care, does it like any family, any place you come from, there were rules, there was ideas about this, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and so you, and if you come from a really controlling household, you know, maybe you wanted to go to college to be an art major, and your mom or dad was like, no, well,
[SPEAKER_00]: you to be a chemical engineer or something, you know, like there's a lot of ways and it doesn't mean you couldn't have chosen differently and paid for your own college, but you may be felt forced into this thing, whatever that was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So an autonomy threat doesn't have to be even that dramatic though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say that big.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be as subtle as a partner who always has a better idea about how you're doing something, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, those helpful suggestions,
[SPEAKER_00]: A parent who frames every suggestion as a concern, a boss who checks in so frequently, it implies they don't trust you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That friend who gives you unsolicited advice every time you share something.
[SPEAKER_00]: individually, any one of these, you know, it can roll right off your back, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if your autonomy is quietly being chipped away across multiple interactions with the same person or across multiple people at once, your nervous system is keeping score even when your conscious mind isn't and you'll find yourself popping off in small ways, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: So the second need, so that was autonomy, second freedom, agency, the second one is competence.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're need to feel capable.
[SPEAKER_00]: A competence is really your need to feel effective in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: To feel like you can do things, you can influence your world, you can handle what comes at you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about being the most talented or successful person in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about not feeling helpless or inadequate and about having your efforts register as meaningful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So threats to competence, they're really among the most, I would say, psychologically destabilizing experiences, people face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is why if someone's being gaslit, this is why that really screws you up.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in a relationship with someone who's always gaslighting you, and it's destabilizing in part because it tends to activate shame,
[SPEAKER_00]: and shame moves fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you, shame moves fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a confidence threat can look like being corrected when you didn't ask for input, being given feedback in front of other people in a way that you don't like having someone take over a task, you were handling, you know, just give to me, I'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just finish it kind of thing, you know, that probably happened when you were young, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being compared to someone else, why can't you be like so
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a subtle one, I would say, being on the end of so many quote unquote helpful suggestions that the underlying message starts to land as, you're just not doing this right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do anything right, you're not doing this right, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm trying to have a concrete example, I keep coming back to the parking in my head, like, because I mentioned parking before it, you know, your partner suggests where you should park this this comes up for me and this came up for a client actually recently and that's why it's in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, I'll be parking at the grocery store, you know, and Gary, my fabulous man, will, and I'm the one, I do all the grocery shopping.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sort of, I, I, I kind of enjoy it in a weird way, but I, I have gone with him to the grocery store, you know, he's in the passenger seat and I'm driving for, you know, whatever reason, and he, he'll, like, start to direct me, like, why are you parking here?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want it to park closer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, there's a spot right over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a threat to competence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it sounds silly and nothing, but the reason you would get upset about that is because you feel like, you think I can't park here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I come here a hundred times more than you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think I, like, maybe I have a good reason for parking in this particular spot because I come here so much and I know that it's easier to back out of that spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I can pull through over here and it's easier to pull out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever, but why should I have to explain myself why we've been commenting on the parking, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at me, I'm getting all hot under the collar, just talking about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: on its own it's nothing but if that same partner regularly comments on how you load the dishwasher or how you responded to that email, how you're handling something at work or how you're talking to your kid, that's when that parking suggestion doesn't land as a parking suggestion anymore, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It lands as another entry in a long list of evidence that you don't think
[SPEAKER_00]: That I'm sorry that they don't think you're confident and your reaction to the parking spot you might blow up will look wildly out of proportion to anyone watching Really is actually kind of perfectly proportion it to what's been accumulating not to that specific thing right and by the way I do not go off on Gary when he says those things because I usually feel very confident around him so doesn't usually bother me that much but sometimes it does sometimes he's mansplain and too much and I can't handle it
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three is relatedness, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's our belonging relatedness connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really, again, your need to feel connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your need to feel genuinely connected, I should say, to the people who matter to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and not just proximity, not just spending time in the same space, but really a felt connection, the sense that you're seeing your herd, that you matter, that you're valued, that you belong to each other in some real way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's again, you're sensible longing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, one of my favorite researchers, Roy Balmister, who I, I mentioned a lot here on the podcast and Mark Leary did this landmark landmark landmark research on what, um, what they called the belongingness hypothesis, uh, it's like one of the seminal pieces, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: like sweeping effects, huge effects on emotion, thought, behavior, everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when relatedness is threatened, when that sense of belonging is threatened, you don't just feel lonely.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel unsafe, and the response is that come out of that, you know, clinging, monitoring, neediness, reassurance seeking, jealousy with draw, emotional shutdown,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're not irrational given the bigger picture right there there what happens when you're trying to protect or restore a connection that feels at risk that that's what that's all about so a relatedness or belonging threat can be You know obvious like a partner who's been cold and distant for a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it can also be really quieter than that, you know, a friend who's been hard to reach, a parent who asks questions about your life, but never really listens to the answers, right, we feel like you're repeating and I told you this already, I already said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: a partner who's technically present, but is on their phone, you know, all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: These all accumulate too, and the reaction that eventually comes out, you know, the snapping, the shutting down, a surge of jealousy, it's really carrying a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: then the moment that triggered it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I always mention every time is that anytime I mention the research, the research says, the research says, have a great free download for today, any downloads I have, any past episodes that I link to, everything can be found below the video if you're watching on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please like and subscribe if you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Leave a comment, say hi.
[SPEAKER_00]: or go to the website, go to episodes, find this episode, which will be super simple, and you could always do a keyword search to on the website for the title or however, topic you're looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will find the episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I write a full blog for every single episode with all like a blog blog, not like a transcript.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like
[SPEAKER_00]: a real blog so that you can later go back and read the article or if this is really hitting, you want to take notes, but you're driving, you can just go later and copy and paste.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I make it easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, what do I want to go next?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does one small thing set you off?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is usually the question I get asked the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's the piece that most confuses people and I'm going to spend time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worth spending time on here for just a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone asks you why you reacted so strong, it is something relatively minor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The honest answer is almost never because of that thing because you did this because you said that right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because of what that thing represented, given everything that came before it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it's about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system doesn't evaluate each moment in isolation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tracks patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps a running tally, a running account of how your needs are being met or threatened in a given relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: depleted enough for lack of a better term, even a small withdrawal tips it into a reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're, you're, you're a couple overflows.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, and not because of the last drop, but because of everything that filled it before the last drop.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why just, you know, simply identifying which need is being threatened is so useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it really is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It shifts the questions from why am I reacting to this, you know, parking suggestion to what has my nervous system been tracking about how my competence is treated in this relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, wow, those are completely different questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second one really leads somewhere actionable, leads somewhere where you're not the crazy person,
[SPEAKER_00]: It also, importantly, changes how you talk about it, of course, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's probably the most important piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of trying to defend the intensity of your reaction to something, right, that seems small, you can say, you know what, it wasn't, it really wasn't about the parking spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: The parking spot just lands it on top of something that's been building.
[SPEAKER_00]: I notice I feel like my judgment gets questioned a lot and I want to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a conversation that can actually go somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you only about the parking spot as you already know does not because your partner has just decided you're crazy and you overreact and you're too sensitive and too this and too that and it gets dismissed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you put it somewhere else, it's different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to give you action steps later, but you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people have one need, I do want to say that, like you have a most vulnerable need.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people have one need that's more sensitive than the others, a kind of primary wound that gets activated more easily and more intensely.
[SPEAKER_00]: it doesn't mean the other two needs don't matter to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that when life gets hard or a relationship gets strained, one of the three tends to get threatened first and most deeply, right, because we're all different people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, where that hits and how we grow up and what our attachment style is, you know, there's tons of pieces that go into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people are exquisitely sensitive to autonomy threats.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can handle criticism reasonably well.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not particularly anxious about connection, but the moment they feel controlled or overridden, something in them rises apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are often the people who were raised in environments where they had very little agency where choices were made for them, where their voice didn't count for much, you know, that's what I see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people are more sensitive to competence threats, you know, criticism hits them in a way that bypasses logic, like entirely, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And goes straight to shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: They probably grew up in a family where performance mattered more than presence, where, you know, love felt conditional on achievement and being a good girl or boy, or where mistakes were treated as character flaws, you know, instead of, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and then some people are really vulnerable to belonging threats, to threats to relatedness, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for those people, that fear of disconnection, that's the loudest signal.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the one that sets them off.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll tolerate a lot of autonomy erosion, a lot of maybe implied incompetence, if the connection still feels intact.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the moment the connection feels uncertain, everything else gets destabilized too.
[SPEAKER_00]: This often shows up in people I think whose early attachment experiences were unpredictable or inconsistent.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I see.
[SPEAKER_00]: So knowing your most vulnerable need isn't I'm not looking you know for you to label yourself or build a case about your past.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, to me it's practical.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, again, an explanation not an excuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tells you where to look first when you're reactive, and it tells you something important about what you actually need from the people in your life, which is great.
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you use this in real time?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, great Abby, thanks for all the information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now what?
[SPEAKER_00]: So knowing the framework intellectually, to me, of course, is one thing using it when you're activated is another, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that gap is very real for so many of us, because your threat response is fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: That shame response is fast, so is the threat response.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time you're
[SPEAKER_00]: usually by the time you're consciously aware that you're reactive, your body's already been in it for several seconds, so I'm a minute so the work happens in layers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me just say this and I'm going to give you steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let me just say the first layer is drum roll, please, what do I say every mother, ethin episode?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first layer is mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I...
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, you're not going to get through another episode with me without me bringing up friggin mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why be specific about why it matters here?
[SPEAKER_00]: you can't identify which need is being threatened.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can't slow down enough to notice that something is happening in your body before you act on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, mindfulness builds that capacity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It builds that ability to be a fly on your own wall, to see we call this metacognition, to see what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't gotten my free mindfulness starter kit, yeah, I don't know what you're waiting for.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't been, if you already downloaded it and haven't been using it, I don't know what you're waiting for.
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, that's really your starting point, and I'll link in the article blog post and below the video to past episodes I did online from this so you can go look and to the free start of getting all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now once your mindful, there are three steps you can focus on, okay, so let me give you those.
[SPEAKER_00]: So step one is to catch the body signal before the reaction, and this again is a biggie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your body knows before your mind does, that's the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tighten this in your chest, heat in your face, your stomach dropping, your jaw clenching, sudden urge to say something cutting, an urge to go totally silent or run away.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are your signals that a need has just been threatened.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to understand it yet, you just have to notice it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much do I talk about the research on affect labeling, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, I'll link to some more, but it's the affect labeling is the clinical term for naming what you're feeling your affect naming your feeling that's your affect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and it shows the research shows over and over that simply putting a feeling into words reduces a miglilla activation in the brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reduces the fear, the activation in the fear center of your brain, and improves your capacity for emotional regulation, just naming the feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even saying yourself, I notice I'm activated right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: creates that kind of small window between what just happened and what you do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: That window is everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your pause button.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Step two is
[SPEAKER_00]: really to ask what I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like asking the one precise question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you're in that window.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to ask yourself which need just got threatened, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not what did they do wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's what you want to ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not
[SPEAKER_00]: a statement like why are they always like this?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, no, no, that's not where we're asking like which need just got threatened, which need and run through the three really quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I feeling controlled dismissed or like my choices aren't being respected, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the autonomy one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I feel criticized corrected or like I'm being told?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing it right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the competence, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I feel unseen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Unimportant devalued or like the connection between us is
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it!
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not diagnosing the other person, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're locating the wound, the tear in your psyche.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're locating that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a completely different exercise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have no control over them, but you have tons of control over you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the beauty of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: step three.
[SPEAKER_00]: The third step is to respond to the need, not the trigger.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to say that again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Respond to the need, not the trigger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you know which need is threatened, you can actually address something real.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's autonomy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The question becomes, okay, what do I need in order to feel like I have agency here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's asking you to be consulted before a decision gets made.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's simply naming out loud that you'd like to handle something your own way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's recognizing that the other person's suggestion isn't actually an instruction, and you can take it or leave it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any of those things, do you see how that happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's competence, if you answer it's competence, then the question becomes, is the story my threatened brain is telling me actually true?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the story is almost never accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they think I'm incompetent, they think I'm stupid, they think I'm an idiot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very different thing from they offered a suggestion I didn't ask for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your brain is constructing a narrative about what that trigger means.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's defining it, and that narrative is colored by everything that came before this moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: slowing down long enough to reality test that story is one of the most useful things you can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if it's relatedness or belonging, the question becomes something like, what do I actually need from this person right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: And can I ask for it directly instead of
[SPEAKER_00]: either, you know, pursuing them anxiously or pulling away, you know, fight or flight, you know, connection is usually more available than your activated nervous system believes it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you how many times I've just asked for a hug.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, can I have a hug right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: People usually want a hug, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have to ask for what you need in a way the other person can can hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that requires you to be regulated enough to speak from the need
[SPEAKER_00]: not from the reaction to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm laying down some parals of wisdom today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're picking up what I'm laying down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're there with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're getting where I'm going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me say this, so what if you don't catch in time?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, sometimes you catch it, you notice the activation, you identify the need, you respond with some version of clarity and intention that's fabulous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes you don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot expect to be perfect at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not perfect at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of us are perfect at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've already snapped, you've already shut down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Conversation has already gone sideways and you're both defending positions that have nothing to do with what actually happened, right, you're both in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: When that happens, the most useful move is repair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And repair, it really doesn't have to be complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swear it doesn't have to be complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the moment, it can sound like, I need a few minutes, or just, hey, I got activated and I don't want to keep going from here, you know, someone, I'm going to end this right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the fact, when both of you have had time to regulate both of you, it can sound like, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, when you suggested the parking spot, I know that seems small, but it landed on something that's been building for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been feeling like my judgment gets questioned a lot by you and I want to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to talk about the parking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: that kind of repair does something that defending your reaction will never do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It explains what actually happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives the other person something real to respond to, and it really opens a conversation about the pattern, which is where the real work is, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than that specific moment, which is just almost always just the surface of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's put it all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may already have language for why you react the way you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, attachment patterns, trauma responses, a nervous system that gets overloaded, you know, more easily than you'd like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that language is useful and that language is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's framework, again, doesn't replace any of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it adds precision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna keep using that work, because I think it's a good one here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that one of your three core needs, you're need to feel free, you're need to feel capable, you're need to feel connected, has been threatened, tells you something specific about what's happening and something specific about what you need.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it moves you out of, I got triggered and into, here's exactly what got threatened and here's what I can actually do about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you can bring that level of, again, precision of time, of the right there to a conversation instead of you triggered me or I overreact it again, you get to say something that's really true, something the other person can actually work with, something you can work with, something that can finally address the pattern instead of just
[SPEAKER_00]: really litigating the moment, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a really different kind of conversation, and it starts with knowing which need as yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it really starts right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's everything I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always have a lot I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about the free download for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one I created for this episode, I'm calling it the need threat identifier.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really is walking you through all three needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a threat to each one looks and feels like across different relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I know it's not just romantic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the one question to ask yourself when you feel
[SPEAKER_00]: actually use and not just read once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I am saying all this and you are just sitting there nodding your head like Abby, preach like this is me and this is something I've been working on for a while or this is something I want to work on now in a more in a deeper way for every episode I also create a therapy to go bundle.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I call them therapy to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a little, you know, a little bundle to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you work with a therapist, it's a great
[SPEAKER_00]: And what did I call, I think it's like, why you react the way you do, I think I call this bundle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it gives you tools to identify your most sensitive need to map the patterns in your specific relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, journaling prompts, there's a practice responding to the actual need instead of just, you know, surviving the reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can find it, again, everywhere I mentioned below the video on YouTube, you can find it on the podcast or blog page, the episodes page.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's $10.
[SPEAKER_00]: $10 for a little therapy to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: The free download is always included in the therapy to go bundle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you know you just want the bundle, you don't have to download things twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're not sure, you know, or if maybe for some listening to me or something,
[SPEAKER_00]: go listen, go get the free download, see if that feels really like it's helping, and if then you want to go deeper, you can always come back and get the therapy to go bundle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just, I'm always trying to think of ways to help you do the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of you can't access therapy, don't have money for therapy, and most most people have $10, and you know, hopefully, and you can find that to help yourself with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is everything for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: As always, thank you for hanging out with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a topic you'd like to see on a future episode, I'm still laying out the rest of season eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: We end that in July.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is coming out sometime in March or April.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I do these earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I record them earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so, uh, you know, if you have ideas or for season 9, I don't know, just, you can email me at AbbeyAdabbyMecF.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can comment below the video, any of those things, DM me on social media somewhere, go follow me on TikTok or, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: IG or somewhere like that and I'm happy to hopefully answer your whatever burning desire you have about a question if I can do that in a podcast episode and I think we'll help a lot of people I'll definitely do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right have an amazing week and I'll talk to you real soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for spending time with me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're loving what you're learning here, come join my one love collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my private community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be take these conversations even deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get a ton of bonus content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Live Q&As with me, guided visualizations, journaling prompts, scripts, and an incredible community of like-minded people ready to support you as you create more ease and joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: in all your relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all waiting for you at AppieMedCraft.com or right on Substack.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.