#747: Seth Godin and Dr. Sue Johnson | The Tim Ferriss Show

Okay, this is going to be partconfessional.

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Lead to FerrisShow. Hello boys and girls ladies andgerms.

This is TimFerris, welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show where it is my job to sit down with world class performers from every field imaginable to tease out thehabits,routines, favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your ownlives.

This episode is a two for one and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and past one billion downloads tocelebrate.

I've curated some of the best of thebest, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the lastdecade.

I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to yes and enjoy the householdnames, the super famousfolks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I considerstars.

These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many ofyou.

Perhaps they got lost in a busy newscycle.

Perhaps you missed anepisode.

Just trust me on thisone.

We went to great pains to put these pairings together and for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at Tim.log slash combo and now without furtherado, please enjoy and thank you forlistening.

Next up SethGodin,entrepreneur, speaker and author of 21 International BestSellers, including PurpleCow,Lynchpin, thedip.

This is marketing and his new book The Song ofSignificance, a new manifesto forteams.

You can find Seth atS-E-T-H-S.blog.

I've been very impressed in some of our conversations by the rules that you've established for yourself for saying yes or no to certainthings.

Perhaps we could start if you're willing to talk about it with speakingengagements.

Speaking engagements as you'veexperienced, if you have a successfulbook, I went from kind of zero to 60 very quickly unexpectedly and said yes to everything and it just turned into a parody of up in theair.

Imean, I felt like a traveling salesman or Jack Lemon and Glen Gary Glen Ross ishorrible.

What are your rulesfor, forinstance, speaking engagements to whatever extent you're comfortable talking aboutthem?

Oh, I'd be happyto. And then I'll scroll back a little bit and tell you why I have to have rules for things likethat.

For speakingengagements, I don't want to do more than 38 years because they are at least for me not additive to the joy of my day except for the hour I'm onstage.

So I am prepared to do an unlimited number of speaking engagements in ZIP code10706.

Monday I'm going to Carnegie Hall to talk for free to 25 music students who have devoted their lives to doing what theydo.

And it's a privilege to do something likethat.

If I have to get on anairplane, it's a whole otherproject.

So I think really hard about what impact am I trying to make and will this help me move thingsforward, which is where this nest isinto.

My mentor and latefriends, Ziegler used to talk about theidea.

He used tosay, I've never changed anyone's life with a speakinggig.

But sometimes I do a speaking gig and they buy mycassettes.

And if they buy mycassettes, I got a shot at changing theirlife.

And forme, my mission and has been for a long time is to make a certain kind of changehappen.

I want to help people see the worlddifferently.

And if they choose to make a different choice after they see the worlddifferently.

I want to help people connect to each other and to use that connection to make thingsbetter.

And I don't want to be a TVpersonality.

So the questionis, how do I bring that teaching topeople?

And what I found is it's a very unique situation when you have 500 or 5,000 high powered people in a room who didn't expect that you were going to bethere.

But now that you'rethere, are eager to hear what you have tosay.

And they set aside their Twitter account and they set aside theirpreconceptions.

And for 45 minutes or anhour, you have a screen that's 30 feet by 20 feet and you have a microphone that'samplified.

And maybe just maybe you can get under theirskin.

And if youdo, maybe just maybe they go back to their office and get 10 copies of your turn and hand them out to theirteam.

And then I can do that practice that Iseek, which is to change theconversation.

So that's why I do it atall.

And the further away itis, the less likely is that fair tosay?

Oh,yeah.Well,yeah, what I did was having studied a little bit of economics is I changed theprice.

Los Angeles costs three times as much as NewYork.

And if you don't think that'sfair, then don't make me go to LosAngeles.

You said you're going to elaborate on why you need rules and maybe you justdid.

Maybe that was theanswer.

But because the phonerings,right?

And lots of people want athing.

And if it doesn't align with the thing that is your mission and you sayyes, then now it's theirmission.

And there's nothing wrong with being a wandering generality instead of a meaningfulspecific.

But don't expect to make the change you seek to make if that's what youdo.

Youknow, the thingis, andDerek, I thought your interview with Derek was one of the best ones you've everdone.

Oh,thanks. Derek makes it quiteeasy.

Derek has scissors isamazing.

I adorehim. And he talked about offense versusdefense.

And if you think hard about one'slife, most people spend most of their time on defense in reactivemode, in playing with the cards they got instead of moving to a different table with differentcards, instead of seeking to change otherpeople, they are willing to bechanged.

And part of the arc of what I'm trying to teach is everyone who can hear this has more power than they think theydo.

And the questionis, what are you going to do with thatpower?

Because it comes with responsibility right out of spiderman, but that responsibilityis, you're going to make change happen or you're going to ignoreit.

And if you make changehappen, that's onyou.

This is maybe going to turn into a therapy session formyself, but I've foundmyself, Imean, we're just talking about books and their place andculture, feeling like I'm in a transitionpoint, you've been so consistent and so present for so many people for solong, yourreaders, etcetera.

How do you navigate big transitions in your ownlife?

And that's a very generalquestion.

But forinstance, I findmy, the reason the podcast started is because I was burned out onbooks.

There's after the four hourchef, 670 some oddpages, I just felt so battle weary and run down by publishing that I wanted to take abreak.

And the podcast was a side project that then became its own entire thingaltogether.

But when you find yourself wondering maybe what to donext, Imean, how do you navigate some of those largertransitions?

And Imean, if you have any examples that come tomind,I,well, the good news is you did exactly the right thing and I applaudit.

It's not easy to do that because it means going from a place where by outside measures you are about to succeed again to a place where by outsidemeasures, you mightnot.

Hence themotto, this might notwork.

And so on a goodday, my story to myself is this might notwork.

That's my job to do something that might notwork.

And the number of projects I'vedone, big and small exceeds most people's and the number of failures I have dramatically exceeds most people's and I'm super proud ofthat.

More proud in the failures than the successes because it's about this mantra of is thisgenerous, is this going toconnect, is this going to change people for thebetter, is it worthtrying?

If it meets those criteria and I can control myself into doingit, then I oughtto,right?

And the transitions aren'teasy.

I regularly spend months telling people that I'm unemployed and in betweenprojects.

How did youdecide, or what is the thinking behind daily blog versus say a longer blog post once a week or at some otherfrequency?

So the daily blog evolved and it's one of the top five career decisions I've evermade.

In terms of having a practice that resonates with the people who I need to resonate with that I can do forever and have been doing for more than eight years now and that leaves the trailbehind.

I don't need anyone'spermission.

I don't need to go out and promoteit.

I don't use anyanalytics.

I don't havecomments. It'sjust, this is what I noticed today and I thought I'd share it withyou.

And for awhile, it was an intermittent blog and then it was a five times a dayblog.

I do write five posts aday.

I just don't publish five posts aday.

But it became clear that I could get the appropriate amount of mindspace.

Do you draft by hand in word in a particularprogram?

I type right into typehand.

So I learned this from ChipConley.

Have you had Chip on theshow?

Ihaven't, but I loveChip.

He's a greatguy. Greatguy.

So Chip and I went to business school together and he was the third youngest person in the class and I was the second youngest person in theclass.

So he got five of us together and every Tuesday night we met in the anthropology department for four hours and we brainstormed more than 5,000 business ideas over the course of the first year of businessschool.

It wasmagnificent. It wasn'tofficial.

It wasn'tsanctioned. It was just Chipsaid, let's do this and wedid.

And he picked the anthropology department because he knew someone there and could get the conference room and hesaid, this is the only place we will ever dothis.

And the reason is when you walk into thisroom, you will associate this room with what we dohere.

That'sall. And I feel the same way about myblog.

If I am in the type padeditor, I know exactly what my brain needs to feel like and then the writinghappens.

What is your writing warm up look like and when do you typicallywrite?

One of my fans said that you at some point this could be a misquit but said that you had an elaborate or extreme mental warm up forwriting.

Do you write in the mornings or what time do you typicallywrite?

Okay. Now I need to tell you about Stephen King'spencil.

Yes,please. Because I feel very strongly aboutthis.

Stephen King often goes to writer's conferences and there will be this question and that question and the next question and inevitably someone raises their hand andsays, StephenKing, you are one of the mostsuccessful, revered writers of yourgeneration.

What kind of pencil do youuse?

I won't gothere. It doesn'tmatter.

It's a way tohide. It's not interesting to me to talk about how I do it because there is no correlation that I have ever encountered between how writers write and how good their workis.

So we should just move on because it doesn'tmatter.

Allright. I'll make a confession then which is when I feelblocked, which does happen with writing and I take a long time to get to the point where I feel like I have the balls in the air well enough to put piecestogether.

It just takes me a long time to synthesize but not unlike some coders Iguess.

But the point I was going to make is that I went to a conversation between PoeBranson, writer and anothergentleman, and I asked Poe during Q&A what he did when he felt blocked or couldn't figure out what to do next in writing and hesaid, right what makes youangry.

Right about what makes youangry.

And I found that veryhelpful.

It was a very helpful way to at least get the hand or the brain moving to break theice.

I totallyagree. That's not thequestion.

If you said to PoeBranson, how do you write these books that are remarkable and thoughtful andgenerous.

I don't think his answer is every morning I get as angry as I can and then Itype.

Agreed.Agreed. I could list 25 tricks that help us get past the resistance and start the flow ofwriting.

But that's different than saying I need to do it like those other people doit.

Agreed. I guess in the buffet of things that have been helpful along thoselines, if for whatever reason didn't get a good night's sleep feelingoff, you sit down towrite.

Right. This iseasy. Allright.

Right, rightpoorly. Continue writingpoorly.

Write poorly until it's not badanymore.

And then you will have something you canuse.

People who have trouble coming up with goodideas, if they're telling you thetruth, we'll tell you they don't have very many badideas.

But people have plenty of good ideas if they're telling you thetruth, we'll say they have even more badideas.

So the goal isn't to get goodideas.

The goal is to get badideas.

Once you get enough badideas, then some good ones have to showup.

What are some of the top business decisions that you'vemade?

We'll go wayback. And I would say the firstone, which is useful toeverybody, is sell something that people want tobuy.

My friend Lynn is abrilliant, brilliant thinker anddesigner.

And foryears, she was in the business of designing toys and soft goods for moms withtoddlers.

And every toy company in America was mean toher, rejectedher, had nothing to do withher.

And Isaid,Lynn, it'ssimple.

Toy companies don't like toydesigners.

They're not organized to do business with toydesigners.

They're not hoping toy designers will come tothem.

Isaid, come with me into the book business because everyday, there areunderpaid, really smart people in the book business who wake up waiting for the next great idea to come across theirdesk.

They're eager to buy what you have tosell.

And within twomonths, she did the decks ofcards, the 52decks, and sold more than 5 million decks ofcards.

And that's because they appreciatedher.

So if you think about how hard it is to push a businessuphill, particularly when you're just gettingstarted, one answer is tosay, why don't you just start a differentbusiness, a business you can pushdownhill?

This is a goodlesson.Yeah, sometimes there's a fetishizing of the sort of rolling of the stone likeCisophus.

And youknow, it's SiliconValley.

There's just like fetishizing of it of thepain.

And I'mlike, maybe your model's just toodifficult.

Maybe you should choose a differentbusiness.

Okay, that is a goodlesson.

Anyother.Well, so then the other lesson happens all thetime, which is knowing when I'm wrong is a youthfulskill.

And lots of people who do good work have trouble knowing when they haven't done goodwork.

And they think they should stick withit.

Other people have done goodwork.

Don't think they have and they pivot toosoon.

So figuring that momentout,1994, I'm running one of the first internetcompanies.

We invented commercialemail.

And Mark Hurst shows me this thing called the WorldLightweb.

And Isay, that'sstupid.

It's just like Prodigy except it's slower and there's nobody to pay usmoney.

And for sixmonths, I persisted in pointing out that the World Lightweb made no sensewhatsoever.

And then one day just woke up andsaid, wait aminute, let me look at thatagain.

And we completely changed how we decided we were going to do ourbusiness.

The same thing is true with the cover of all marketers or liars because the cover and the title was super clever andwrong.

It was not a matter of me persisting in persuading people that they needed to get thejoke.

It was merely a matter of persuading thepublisher.

We should make the paperback have a different cover and a differenttitle.

That if you're going to try a lot ofthings, you're going to fail a lot and figure out the difference between the failures of your judgment versus the failures of not persisting long enough is a usefulskill.

And I'm still not great atit, but I'm better at it than Iwas.

You've interacted with many more entrepreneurs than Ihave, I would say at thispoint.

One of the questions that I get constantly that you might have a better answer for because I don't have a great answer for it right now is how do I discern between an idea that I should keep persisting with despitemany,many, many rejections versus a bad idea that I should abandon that is getting the same type of rejection that I'm equally enthusiasticabout.

And that's a very wordy way to putit.

But I get some version of that question all thetime.

How would you answerthat?

Well, first we have to scrollback.

There's a difference between freelancers andentrepreneurs.

Most people who are independent arefreelancers.

They get paid when theywork.

They do good work and get paid forit.

A few people are entrepreneurs building a business bigger thanthemselves, a business that makes them money when theysleep, a business where they don't actually do the work that the customer is buying and a business that they can sell oneday.

So we look at LarryEllison.

Larry Ellison doesn't code at a workcall.

Larry Ellison doesn't make most of the salescalls.

What does Larry Ellison doactually?

His job is to think about something that needs to be done and hire someone else to do it over and overagain, building something bigger thanhimself.

So the first thing I would say to the person who's confusedis,well, are you an entrepreneur or afreelancer?

If you're anentrepreneur, then you have signed up for a series of choices andchallenges.

Andagain, start with selling something people want tobuy.

There's no reason to try to invent a need when there are so many needs and wants that areunfilled.

So people didn't wake up 10 years ago andsay, I need anUber, but they did wake up 10 years ago andsay, I need an easy and expensive way to get from A toB.

Correct. Once you could go to someone andsay, I havethat, people wouldsay, I wantthat.

But if you're justsaying, I'm reallyclever, I know what you shouldwant.

And when you tell people what itis, they don't wantit.

You're either talking to the wrong people or you made the wrongthing.

The blog post I point people to the most is called first10.

And it is a simple theory ofmarketing.

Itsays, tell 10people, show 10people, share it with 10people, 10 people who already trust you and already wrote likeyou.

If they don't tell anybodyelse, it's not that good and you should startover.

And if they do tell otherpeople, you're on yourway.

So the reason I don't use Twitter is I saw Twitterearly, which is unusual forme.

And Isaid,wow, I could do this and have a lot offollowers.

And then Isaid,well, what would thatmean?

A, it would mean less time spent writing myblog.

B, it would mean exposing myself to anonymous comments from people who want me to pay attention tothem.

Will either of those two things make me better at the things I want to be goodat?

No. Will it be a thrill in the sense that there will be a little fearful edge to it every time Iinteract?

Yes. But I have conservation offear.

And I have to be really careful because if I'm busy sorting through morestuff, the cognitive load goesup.

And I can't do what Neil Gaimandoes.

Like Neil famously has said that the way he writes a book is he makes himself extremelybored.

And if he's boredenough, a book's going to come out because he needs to entertainhimself.

Well, theproblem, most people don't understand about socialmedia.

Social media wasn't invented to make youbetter.

It was invented to make the company'smoney.

And you are an employee of the company and you are the product that they sell and they have put you in a little hamster wheel and they throw a little treats innow.

Andthen, but you got to decide what's the impact you're trying tomake.

And this still comes back to the fear ofthing.

And one of the biggest misunderstandings of the people who are into that whole quantified self thing is they are confusing quantifying the self with dancing with thefear.

And they're completely different things to do in a givenday.

That one isterrorism. It's scientificmanagement.

It'sproductivity. It's we need to move these widgets from one place toanother.

What's the most efficientway?

And I'm glad we got good at industry because it makes our lives way morerich,right?

But, oureconomy, our world and our soul aren't fulfilled bythat.

They're fulfilled by people who do something that has never been donebefore.

And if it's never been donebefore, you can't quantify it because it's never been donebefore.

And so to be good at it doesn't mean you quantify your way toit.

To be good at it means you clear the decks so that all that's left isyou.

And themuse, you and thefear, you and the change you want to make in theworld.

I can't think of something that's more productive for the kind of people who are lucky enough and blessed enough to be rich enough to be listening to this to focus their energyon.

We don't need folks like that to go from 90 words per minute to 105 words per minute when theytype.

It's not afactor. What we need is for them to type something that's worthreading.

What opportunities were you offered doesn't have to be specific that you're glad you turneddown.

Are there any particular examples that come tomind?

And ifnot, I can moveon.

But I'm just curious if there are any opportunities that you've turneddown.

Forme, forinstance, one of them would be every reality TV show invite I've everhad.

I'mthrilled. And I was extremely tempted earlyon.

But inretrospect, extremelyhappy.

I said no to all ofthat.Yes.

That was a greatpoint. TV runs deep in ourculture.

So they wanted me to be on that super famous one and then that otherone.

And I never hesitated in saying no because that's the moments when you decide who you want tobe.

And so I paid extra careful attention to the question and extra careful attention to myanswer.

And itresonated. I would say the biggestshift, which is for Silicon Valleypeople, hard to get your arms around because there's a game being playedthere.

And it's just a game I've opted out of is when I was at Yahoo during the Renaissance in1999, BillGross, who's a super niceguy, came to me and asked me to be head of marketing for the company he wasbuilding.

It had Steven Spielberg on theboard.

It was teed up to be the seventh nextIPO.

And there were a billion dollars in stock options on thetable.

And I said tomyself,well, if I say yes tothis, I've decided what I do for the rest of mylife, which is say yes to the next one because I don't need to say yes to this to buy cilantro andvodka.

Why would I sayyes? It's because I like thegame.

And I didn't sayyes. And even those that billion dollars in stock options never camearound, I think I'd be even more proud of it if they had because money is astory.

Once you have enough for beans and rice and taking care of your family and a few otherthings, money is astory.

And you can tell yourself any story you want aboutmoney.

And it's better to tell yourself a story about money that you can happily livewith.

Could you elaborate on that a littlebit?

What is your story aboutmoney?

Is it what you justsaid?

Because this is a really importantpoint.

It's something I've been trying to mull over in the last year or so inparticular.

Well, let me start with the marketing story aboutmoney, which is take a ten dollar bill and go to the bus station and walk up to someone andsay, I'll sell you this ten dollar bill for adollar.

And you should actually dothis.

No one will buy it fromyou.

And there are a few reasons forthis.

The first reason is no one goes to the bus station hoping to do a financialtransaction.

The second one is only an insane person will try to sell you a real ten dollar bill for a dollar and dealing with insane people'stricky.

So it must not be a real ten dollarbill.

And you should just walkaway.

Now let's try a differentthing.

Put a ten dollar bill in your neighbor's mailbox when he's not home and runaway.

Do it the nextday. Do it the thirdday.

On the fourthday, ring your neighbor's doorbell andsay, I'm the guy who left three ten dollar bills in yourmailbox.

Here's anotherone. You want to buy it for adollar?

You'll sell it because your neighbor knows you'recrazy, but you're crazy in a very particularway.

And you've earned the trust that it's a real ten dollarbill,right?

So we assume that ten dollar bills are worth tendollars, butno, it's a mutual belief and if the belief isn'tpresent, there worthnothing.

Now we get to our internal narrative aboutmoney.

There'smoney, thatnumber, it's not even pieces of paperanymore, it's a number on ascreen.

Is that a reflection of your worth as ahuman?

One of the things that Derek said on your podcast that I sort of disagree with is that being rich is a symbol that you've created a lot of value for a lot ofpeople.

I think lots of times that's actually nottrue.

And there are lots of ways to create value for people and most of them do not involvemoney.

So what we have todecide, once we'reokay, once we're not living on three dollars aday, once we have aroof, once we havehealthcare, is we have to decide how much more money and what am I going to trade forit?

Because we always trade something for it unless we're fortunate enough that the very thing we want to do is the thing that also gives us our maximumincome.

And I don't think that merely because some blog decides that people with big valuations are doingbetter, that doesn't mean you should listen tothem.

A lot of the questions from my fans on Twitter and Facebook were related toeducation.

And they generally came in the form of in a number ofthemes.

Onewas, youknow, could you have him elaborate on his educationmanifesto?

The otherwas,hey, I have a kid who's in fourthgrade, I have a kid who's just going to be enteringschool, what would Seth do in myshoes?

And you don't have to tackle those right off thebat, but as that iscontext, could you tell us more about what you're upto?

This is a rant and it's not about what I'm upto, it's about what I was upto.

And the rant isthis, sooner orlater, parents have to take responsibility for putting their kids into a system that is endeading them and teaching them to be cogs in an economy that doesn't want cogsanymore.

And parents get todecide, I'm a huge fan of publicschool.

It's at my kids to publicschool.

I think everyone should go to public school because it's a great mixed master of ourworld.

But from three o'clock to 10o'clock, those kids are getting homeschooled and they're either getting homeschooled and watching the Flintstones or they're getting homeschooled in learning somethinguseful.

And I think we need to teach kids twothings,one, how to lead andtwo, how to solve interestingproblems.

Because the fact is there are plenty of countries on earth where there are people who are willing to be obedient and work harder for less money thanus.

So we cannot out-obidance thecompetition.

Therefore, we have to out-lead or out-solve the otherpeople.

I don't care what country they livein, Wyoming or across the world who want whatever isscarce.

The way you teach your kids to solve interesting problems is to give them interesting problems tosolve.

Andthen, they'll criticize them when theyfail.

Because kids aren'tstupid.

If they get in trouble every time they try to solve an interestingproblem, they'll just go back to getting an A by memorizing what's in thetextbook.

It's so importanthere, and I spend an enormous amount of time withkids.

I produced the Wizard ofOz, the Musical in FourthGrade.

I used to help run a summercamp.

I think that it's a privilege to be able to look at atrusting,energetic,smart, 11-year-old in the eye and tell them thetruth.

And what we can say to that 11-year-oldis, I really don't care how you did on your vocabularytest.

I care about whether you have something tosay.

And we can teach our kids from a young age to be the kind of people we want them tobe.

And anything that's worth memorizing is worth looking upnow.

So we don't need to have them spend a lot of time getting good grades so they can go into a famous college because famous colleges don't workanymore.

Famous college isn't the pointanymore.

The pointis, is there an entity that will have trouble living without you when you seek eternalliving?

Because if thereis, you'll be able to make aliving.

If on the otherhand, you're waiting in the placement office for someone to pickyou, you will be persistentlyundervalued.

You talked earlier about writing daily as apractice.

Listening to the audiobooks as apractice.

Are there any practices that you would suggest to the kind ofoverwhelmed, busy parent who wants to start to be more proactive in thisdepartment?

They have an 11 yearold.

Are there any practices or exercises that you wouldsuggest?

Well you know super well that busy is a trap and that business is amyth.

So what could possibly be more important than yourkid?

Please don't play the busycard.

If you spend two hours a day without an electronicdevice, looking your kid in theeye, talking to them and solving interestingproblems, you will raise a different kid than someone who doesn't dothat.

And that's one of the reasons why I cook dinner everynight.

Because what a wonderful semi-distracted environment for the kid to tell you thetruth, for you to have low stakes but super important conversations with someone who's important toyou.

Right? So thisidea, get home fromwork, put on your sneakers and go for a walk with yourkid.

My friend Brian walks his daughter to school everyday.

That'spriceless. Well how can you be too busy to dothat?

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to theshow.

This episode is brought to you by LinkedInJobs.

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Andnow,Dr. SueJohnson, who was a leading innovator in the fields of couples therapy and adultattachment.

And the primary developer of emotionally focused couples and family therapy orEFT.

Sadly,Dr. Johnson passed away in April of thisyear.

Her impact on the field of family therapy will be felt forgenerations.

To learn more about how her work can improve yourrelationships, check out her best-sellingbook, Hold MeTight, and visitDr.

SueJohnson.com.Dr.Johnson, welcome to theshow.

Hey, I'm delighted to be withyou,Tim.

Thank you for invitingme.

I am also thrilled to haveyou.

And we have an abundance of questions in front ofme.

We may cover some ofthem.

I don't get too attached to trying to cover them all because we'll run out oftime.

But I thought we would start with something that was mentioned in the intro and that I know will interest myaudience, and that is the peer-reviewed clinical research or research depending on where you happen to be in theworld.

Could you speak to the actual science and research related to yourwork?

There's now over 20 outcomestudies.

Outcome studies in psychotherapy are very hard todo.

And there's a lot of noise in thesystem.

There's lots of things going on in people'slives.

Youknow, life gets in theway.

So you have to work very hard to get results and the follow-up is the real thing thatmatters.

And we are the only coupleintervention, as far as Iknow, that has the size of results weget, the impactspeople, the way wedo, that knows why we get theseresults.

I can tell you exactly what needs to happen in therapy to get theresults.

And that gets fantasticfollow-up.

We can work with a couple of 14 to 20sessions.

We can look at them at the end oftherapy.

We can see that they arehappier, moresecure, more securelybonded.

Their sex life isbetter.

They feel less depressed asindividuals.

And we follow them up three yearslater.

And the resultshold. Which is just so that everyoneknows.

Astounding. The latest one we're doing is we've got a great big one with the heart institute in Ottawa because the cardiologists have realized that actually if their patients have good relationships with theirpartners, they're much less likely to have another heartattack.

They take theirmeds, they go to thegym.

So then theysaid,well, could you dosomething?

And wesaid,oh, are youkidding?

We'll design a 16 hour program for you and we'll researchit.

So we're doingthat. But to behonest, I do the research because we learn and because it's our way of testing what we think weknow.

But it's not what really turns me on in theend.

What turns me on is watching these couples learning from them and watching them make these huge changes in theirlives.

I've been doing it for 35 years and it turns me onlike, I dance Argentina andtango.

It turns me on like the best melonga ever and dancing with the best partnerever.

So I have many follow ups ofcourse, asquestions, just as a sidenote, I lived in Argentina from 2004 to 2005 and went to melonga probably five or six times a week and did a lot oftango.

So we have that incommon.

And if we focus just for a few more minutes on theresearch, because this will be a way of backing into defining EFT forfolks, Ithink.

So I've read that EFT has something like a 73 to 86 percent success rate in studies with distressedcouples.

Yes. I would love to know what or how success is defined in thesestudies.

I think that would be helpful for peoplelistening.

Okay. And later will return to the durability of effect because that's incredible that you're doing follow ups three years later and seeing that persistence of effect is reallyincredible.

But how do you define success with distressedcouples?

That's a good question and it depends on thestudy.

But ingeneral, we define it with a measureof, it's called marital adjustment and it basically looks at the couples take perception of their maritalsatisfaction.

It's a bit more than satisfaction because it has different elements toit.

So we use a scale that's been used in all kinds of research that's got all kinds ofvalidity.

But we've also used all kinds ofmeasures.

The one that I think is the most interesting is that we did a big study a few yearsago, looking not just at whether we can help you change your maritalsatisfaction, youradjustment, the way you see yourpartner.

He can help you change the security of your bond with yourpartner, which for me is much more significant than satisfaction orsaying,yes, we have an adjustedmarriage.

We have a goodmarriage.

I trust this person in this marriage to be able to say we have a more secure bond and we know how to create that bond ongoingly in thefuture.

That still amazes me that we know that because we've talked in our society forever about how romantic love is this great mystery and it just sort of comes and hits you in thehead, you fallin, you fallout, there's nothing much you can do aboutit.

Well actually that's rotnow.

Andpersonally, I think it should be all over the front of the New YorkTimes.

We've cracked the code oflove.

But the New York Times doesn't agree withme.

So I think that's real big news forpeople.

And we can show in our study which we did that we can takepeople, very distressed people who don't trust eachother, who can't talk to eachother, who aren'tintimate.

And we can in 20 sessions create a bond where they can turn and be vulnerable with each other and they cansay, I trust thisperson, I'm close to thisperson, I can be open to thisperson, this person is my specialone, I trust thisrelationship.

And they can do the things we can see it ontape, they can do the things that securely attach people do inloving, lastingrelationships.

That's verysignificant.

We also find things like depression goes down when people are more securely connected with eachother, anxiety goesdown, people deal with traumabetter.

We see a lot of folks withPTSD, when you face dragons to recover from thatexperience, you need to find comfort in the arms ofanother.

And that's just the way we'rewired.

And if you cannot find comfort in the arms ofanother, you are hard pressed from my point ofview, no matter how many times youmeditate, no matter how many tips you'velearned, no matter how much insight youhave, if you can't find comfort in the arms of another to heal fromtrauma, it's badnews.

So we have a lot of differentresults, but they're all on measures that are accepted by the field asvalid.

They've all been in peer-reviewed journals and believeme, reviewers are brutal topsychologists.

They'rebrutal. Let me ask a few questions if I may jumpin.

Then we're going tocontinue, ofcourse, on the path to defining what characterizes or describing what characterizesEFT.

What scale do you use or scales do you use when assessing marital satisfaction andbond?

And just for those people listening who may not know what we're talkingabout, they're different questionnaires and scales for different types ofconditions.

Forinstance, you might have the Ham D fordepression.

You might have Cap 5 or Cap 5 forPTSD.

I'm sure some people will be curious if there are any particular scales they could find themselves just to look at theirown.

I believe I put some of those scales in my book LoveSense,actually.

We use the Diadic AdjustmentScale, which has been used in marital research for decades foradjustment.

We use various things for things likedepression, like the Beck DepressionScale.

Forattachment, we use something called the Experiences in Close RelationshipScale, which is used in adult attachment research as only been going for the last 20years.

So it'syoung. Attachment research was really confined to mothers and children fordecades.

The belief was that once you hit12, you were supposed to becomeself-sufficient.

So attachment didn't matter verymuch.

That'schanged. So now we have a whole field called attachmentresearch.

The Experiences in Close Relationship Scale is the measure weuse.

However, we have also used observational measures like coding couples interactions as theytalk.

And we can talk aboutthat.

We talk about something called a whole me typeconversation.

We can code the behaviors are totally different when they come into therapy and when they'refinished.

And my favoriteone, which I can't resist talkingabout, is that we did a brain scan study with a wonderful colleague of mine from the University of Virginia called JimCohen,neuroscientist, where we put thewomen, we hadn't got enough money to do bothpartners.

So we had tochoose. Soyes, Iknow.

So we put women in an MRI machine at the beginning when they were distressed and insecurely attached and didn't believe that their partners loved them or cared forthem.

We put the women in an MRI machine at the beginning of therapy and then at the end of therapy when they had these hold me tightconversations.

And we were a bit brutal when I think aboutit.

We put them in the MRI machine and wesaid, when you see an ex in front of yourface, there's a good chance you're going to be shocked on your ankles and it's going tohurt.

And it did hurt because we tried it on my research assistant and she told us veryclearly.

I didhurt.Okay. It turned the machine down abit.

But what was interesting is at the beginning beforetherapy, beforeEFT, we showed these women this ex and their brains went into immediate alarm on theMRI,high, high alarm state because they're expecting theshot.

And once we delivered theshot, we asked if it hurt and they said it was painful or extremelypainful.

This is in a journal calledPLUS1.

And after sessions of therapy afterEFT, when they'd had these bondingconversations, by theway, we put them in andwe, central interested inresearch, I'll tell you a bit ofdetail.

Basically, they saw the ex when they were alone in themachine, when they held their partner'shand, when they were in the machine and when a stranger held theirhand.

And before therapy in all threeconditions, their brains went berserk and they said that the shock is extremelypainful.

Aftertherapy, we put them in the machineagain, did the samething, they saw the ex when the stranger held their hand or when they were alone in themachine, same thing asbefore, their brain went berserk and they said it was extremelypainful.

This time after EFT and the bondingconversations, when their partner held theirhand, reached into the machine and held theirhand, their brain stayed completelycalm.

It looked like a restingbrain.

It looked like they were just restingthere.

Their brains didn't completely calm and if you asked them if the shockhurt, they said it wasuncomfortable.

And so I'm not aneuroscientist.

So I saw these brain scans and there was some blue lighting up aftertherapy.

And I said to mycolleague,Jim, what does the bluemean?

I can't see any red for alarmanymore, but what does the bluemean?

And he said it means they're not deadsoon.

Oh,okay, sothat's, so he said that's just a restingbrain.

Oh,okay, jollygood. So that spoke to me amazingly because psychology is often dismissed as a sort of softscience.

And indeed we deal with manyintangibles.

But for me that was incredibly neat because you could see it and you could see that we're talking about biologyhere, but we're talking about the biology of a socialbeing, a being whose brain is wired for connection with otherpeople.

And who needs this connection with other people to thrive andsurvive.

Love is anancient, wired in survivalcode.

We have all these silly misinformation in oursociety, silly what we call lovestories.

There's still out there psychology puts out a lot of misinformation about love is some strange mixture of sex andsentiment.

No, romantic love is about bonding and it's anancient, wired in survivalcode.

And you could sure see it in theseMRIs.

These women's brains when they had this secure connection with theirpartner.

These women's brains were completely different than in the beginning when they felt no safe connection with theirpartner.

So it wasvery, veryinteresting.

I would love to dig into what sounds like the glue involved in some of the bond enhancement as demonstrated in the follow upFMRI.

Yeah. And that is the hold me tightconversation.

Yeah. Maybe this is a way also of coming in sideways to basically demonstrate what EFT is or at least a component ofit.

Could you walk us through what a hold me tight conversationis?

A hold me tight conversation very briefly is a bondingconversation.

The tricky part is that asadults, some of us have never seen thisconversation.

So it's a dance that is foreign tous.

We've never had it with our ownparents.

We've never had it withsiblings.

We've never had it with previouslovers.

We get married or we get committed to apartner.

And it's reasonable that we don't know how to go there because many ofus, it's just not a drama that we've ever seen inactive.

A hold me tight conversation is where one person is able to open up and reach for the other person and sharevulnerabilities, talk about their needs and fears in a way that pulls the other personclose.

It helps the other person reach back andrespond.

Do you give any examples of freezing or questions orguidelines?

I know I would love to know and I suspect others wouldtoo.

Well when you don't trust and you don't feel safe and you've never seen a hold me tightconversation, the way it usually goes just naturally as humanbeings, I catch myself doing this with my husband if I'm upset about something like he's been going to bed veryearly.

And that means that we don't have our snuggletime.

We don't have our little chattime.

It doesn't seem to bother him atall.

It doesn't seem to botherhim.

This is nothappening.So, this will go on for a couple of weeks and even though I'm doing thiswork, there's a certain point where I start to get self-protective and I start to blame him in my head and Isay, he's always toobusy, he's got hislists.

He's gotlists. That's what he and he's a man and he's got lists and all he cares about is his list of tasks and he's just into problem solving and he doesn't think about me atall.

And this dialogue will go in myhead.

So I turn to him and Isay, you're going to bed veryearly.

Thesedays, listen to myvoice, it's the emotionalmusic.

Hesays,no, I'mnot. Because he hears the threat in mytone.

Isay,yes, youare. And you've been going to bed for weeks and I guess it doesn't matter to you that we're not having those closemoments.

And listen tome. Imean, I'm on the attack and we are a hugely sensitive as human beings to some of the signs of rejection or abandonment by the people welove.

Acutelysensitive. That's how we'rewired.

So he hears that he's blownit.

He hears it that I'm rejectinghim.

I'm telling him he's done somethingwrong.

So hesays, I don't want to talk about this rightnow.

Isay,oh, let me guess you have to go to bed because you're sotired.

Right. So we'reoff,right?

Okay, that is the typical demandwithdrawal, demand-defend dialogue that you'll see in a distressedcouple.

And it's totallypredictable.

You can also have it with yourkids.

I can remember a glorious argument I had in Starbucks with my address at Sun that was just a perfect example of the way distressed couples talk to eachother.

So I'm blaming and pointing fingers and he's rolling his eyeballs and basically telling me what a dreadful mother Iam.

So you can have it with anyone but withpartners, it's very predictable and it has everyone feeling completely threatened and unsavered and unable to dancetogether.

If you shift that into a whole me tightconversation, the way it would go is that I would be more able to tune into my ownneeds, more aware of my ownneeds, accepting of my ownneeds.

And I wouldrealize,oh, I'm really missing those conversations withJohn.

We've been married for 32years.

We're both very strong people so it's been quite anadventure.

So Ithink,oh, I'm missing those relationships with John and maybe he doesn't missthem.

Andoh, that makes me feel really somehow anxious and uncomfortable if he doesn't miss them because the big question in love relationships is are you there forme?

Do I matter toyou? Can I count onyou?

Maybe those conversations don't matter to him but they really matter tome.

So I am aware on a different level of me and I'm specifying that scares me a bit that maybe these conversations don't matter tohim.

I can tune into my ownemotions, then I take the risk and reach for him and say tohim, I'mopen, I say tohim, you knowwhat, we haven't been having our usual talks late at night and somehow it doesn't look like you miss them and somehow that makes me feel kind of really sort ofuncomfortable.

Youknow, it almost feels like I'm not sure that that closest matters to you and so I could get angry about it but actually what's happening is it sort of scares me a bit because I need thoseconversations.

Now I've talked about my fears and myneeds.

I can only do that if I have some sort of model that it's okay to do that that doesn't mean I'm a wimp or mentally ill or weak orpathetic.

From my point of view it's strength to do that and that's what we teach and it's strength to do that and that's what security attached people cando.

They can reach for a position ofvulnerability.

So I say that to him and that pullshim, hesays,oh, you'reright.

Yeah.Yeah. I really likethose, Ireally, Ido, I do all thoseconversations.

I've just been so exhausted and I've been doing this and I haven't wanted to tell you how stressed out Iam.

So then it becomesreciprocal.

Isay,oh, I didn't know that you were so stressed out about this decision we've made and that it's taking up all your energy and you're worried aboutit.

So then we start to have anopen,responsive, engaged conversation where we can sharevulnerabilities, come for each other and you're literally better at tuning in to eachother.

And I think that's because when I feelsafe, I can tune intoyou.

When I think about the people I can dance with in Tango reallywell, it's the people I feel emotionally safe with and I know that there's no mistakes because mistakes don'tmatter.

We're justplaying. Then Irelax, I'm in mybody, I tune into their cues and we move togethernaturally.

So that's kind of what happens and it's a hold me tight conversation and it's sort ofcascades.

Each time you have thisconversation, it's your nervous systemgoes,oh, this iscomfort, this ishome, this issafety, this is what I need and you see your partner as aresource, you see your partner as somebody who can provide thissafety,comfort,caring,reassurance, socialsupport, if you want to use a psychological formal term forit, you see your partner as this person and your partner connects and you know how to do thisdance.

This dance is innatelyrewarding.

It creates joy inpeople.

You don't have to persuade people to keep doing it like going to the gym or meditation or their communicationskills.

People will dothis. Once they know how to doit, they'll keep doing it and that's why I think we get good follow-up results because once you start having these conversations and it's very moving sometimes to see people's response like people will start to cry and say things like when they discover these home-y typeconversations, people willsay, thinking of one man whosaid, I never knew that you could talk to somebody likethis.

I never knew that you could ask for these things and that she wants me to be vulnerable toher.

I never knewthat. I never saw that growingup.

I didn't know people did that and then he wept and he turned to the therapist andsaid, I've been alone all mylife, haven'tI?

Andthat, what attachment science tells us is that emotional isolation is toxic for humanbeings.

Imean, we found out that in the pandemic but we still don't getit.

I wish we would get it on a differentlevel.

It's toxic for humanbeings.

It's not who weare. And when people start to have these home-y typeconversations, what kinds of amazing thingshappen?

They don't just understand how relationships can be and how you can shaperelationships.

They don't have to just have them happen toyou.

You can shapelove. They understand something very deep aboutthemselves.

Couples grow each other in samerelationships.

Couples grow eachother.

I watch severely traumatizing people learn to trust another human being by having these home-y type conversations with their partner and it changes everything because they have a secure place in life for the firsttime.

They feelseen. They feelaccepted.

They feelheld. And once you feelseen, accepted and held is a natural human growth process thathappens.

Attachment of science is all about development of thepersonality.

There's a natural growthprocess.

So we tune into that natural process in the home-y typeconversation.

And those conversationspredict, over study after study after study afterstudy, those conversations predict success inEFT.

They predict more securebonding.

They predict bettersex, more sexual satisfaction incouples.

They predict any sort of measure of good positivefunctioning.

You can imagine those bonding conversations predict all the good results we get in EFT and they predict results followup.

So I would love to ask more about the hold me tight conversations and I'll share a bit of the context from which I'm askingthis.

So we don't necessarily have to get into details wecould, but I had quite a bit of a severe early childhoodtrauma.

I could chew tofour. And have not only felt largely alone my entire life but have createdisolation.

It's been constant forme.

And so what you're saying about theseconversations, helping to create the feeling of bondiness and sort ofcounterweight, perhaps someone's historical tendency to isolate or feel isolated is reallyappealing.

I would love to hear if you're open to sharingit.

Perhaps another hypothetical hold me tight conversation or other phrases or questions that are helpful for people who want to get a better understanding of what this might look like in reallife.

Where we start withcouples, many of whom have experienced being alone most of their lives traumatized ornot, where we start is we help couples see the dance their court in love is adance.

We help couples see the dance their courtin.

We help couples see the negativepatterns.

The most popular one of all is I become aware of the disconnection between the two ofus.

I get worried aboutit. It makes me anxious and I don't feel safe enough to turn and really share myvulnerability.

So Idemand, Iblame, I tellyou, where areyou?

What I'm really saying is where areyou?

Where areyou? I can't find you and that alarmsme.

But what I say is things like you don't talk to me enough or youknow, you never tell me how you feel or youknow, if you're aman, you'll say you never tell me you want to makelove.

You don't ever show me you wantme.

What's wrong withyou? I said we turn to our partner and we say what's wrong withyou.

So we help couples see how they scare the hell out of eachother.

And create even more insecurity and stop each other from being able to be vulnerable andrisk.

When they start to see that it's the pattern that's theproblem, the dance that'sproblem.

And the fact they don't know how to do a more positivedance, they start to blame the dance rather than eachother.

And they start to be able tosay,hey, we're stuck in thatthing.

We're stuck in that thing we do where I shut down and shut you out and you must be getting alarm right now and the other personsays,yes, I'm started to freakout.

And theysay,oh, let's not dothat.

Let's try and help each other feel a bit moresafe.

So we create that platformfirst, but then you have to start where peopleare.

And sometimes we the whole me type conversation with somebody who's been very traumatized and has all the reasons in theworld, not to trust another human being with the softness of theirheart, all the good reasons in theworld.

You have to startthere.

I've worked with lots of traumatized folks and you have to start with somebodysaying,well, I understand now the patterns and how we've been caught in thisdance.

And I understand that you're always trying to hurt me or have me prove myself to you or prove mewrong.

But I want to tell you the idea of really opening up to you and showing you who I am just feelsimpossible.

I don't know how to doit.

It'simpossible. I don't think I can doit.

So you start with people are you don't get people to do it in spite of how theyfeel.

You get them to trust theirfeelings.

My experience is someone will say that and I willsay, could you turn and tell your partnerplease?

I don't think I can doit.

I don't think I can risk letting you really seeme.

I'm so sure that you won't want me or that you'll find some way to hurtme.

Then I don't know what wouldhappen.

I don't think I could tolerateit.

I don't think I can doit.

Could you turn and tell her what I do is I hold the person and I help them speak their emotions and say their emotions clearly and I hold them inthere.

I support them inthere.

So Guy Transan tells his wife and his wifesays, and this is the amazing thing aboutbonding.

This is who weare. We are empathiccreatures.

That empathy is blocked by all kinds of otherthings.

We are empathiccreatures.

My experience is the partner willsay, I never knewthat.

I just felt that you didn't want to share withme.

I never knew it was sohard.

I never knew that it was scary foryou.

I never understoodthat.

I can'tbelieve. Iunderstand.

I understandthat. Now you've helped me understand how scary thatis.

I can't believe that you're even here telling methis.

And I love you for taking thatrisk.

Thank you for taking thatrisk.

And then the door openswider.

And then Isay, usually Isay, because we always have this catastrophe in ourhead.

When we'reafraid, we create catastrophes in our head to try and prepare forthem.

So Isay, what is going to happen if you really show her who you are and you show her how scared you are to really open up and show yourvulnerability?

What is going tohappen?

And hesays, she'll tell me what I've alwaysknown.

She'll tell me that I'mweak.

There's something wrong withme.

And the reason that I've been alone all my life is because there was something wrong withme.

And the reason I was so hurt when I was little was because I wasn't a good enough kid or a special enoughkid.

I didn't do it right when lady broke myheart.

Shesaid, I was so careful when I asked my mother forattention.

I wasso, socareful. I planned it and planned it in the dark forhours.

No matter how I didit, it neverworked.

It neverworked. She was always angry atme.

So I said tomyself, it'sme.

It must beme. There's something wrong withme.

I'm just notlovable. Then sheweeps.

When she doesthat, her partner reaches for hernaturally.

Her partner reaches for her andsays, thisvulnerability, when you really help people move into it withsafety, evokes caring andcompassion.

It justdoes. So then the partner moves in and supports andgradually, gradually the other person's able to openup.

It's not something that you doonce.

It's not something that you can domechanically.

You have to be involved init.

And for some ofus, if we've been desperately hurt when we were niddle and we learned that kind of openness was desperatelydangerous, it's like jumping off a cliff and you have torespect, you have to respect emotions are in no waylogical.

That's one of the big mistakes we made inpsychology.

There are no waylogical.

They have their ownlogic.

They're a supreme information processing system that wires us to see the world in a particular way to move in a particular way and we haven't taught people how to understandthem, how to listen to them and how they makesense.

They always makesense.

If someone's terrified of that kind ofopenness, it's because they have very good reasons tobe.

And often they haven't told theirpartner.

They haven't told their partner anything about it so their partner has noidea.

The partnersays, you just don't want to be close tome.

You just don't wantme.No, I do desperately wantyou.

Just terrified to let you seeme.

In psychology we're very good at looking at the behaviour and the problem and sometimes I feel like we're not so good at what we are supposed to be the experts in which is looking underneath the behaviour and the problem and seeing the emotional realities that push that problem forward and keep people stuck in thatproblem.

And don't be afraid to answeryou,Tim.

There's so much to talk abouthere.

I tried to answeryou. I think youdid.

No, youdid. And I mean the examples are justheartbreaking.

And I think they'reheartbreaking.

Imean, I was like feeling myself getting really emotional is because they resonate I think with so manypeople.

They resonate withme, I shouldsay.

But I suspect that these types of situations arereally, reallycommon.

But when you're experiencingthem, I think it's so easy to view yourself as uniquely flawed in someway.

Yes.Yes. But it's socommon.

It's socommon. It seems so common atleast.

Imean, you'd be more qualified to speak toit.

I think it iscommon. And I think the power of attachment science is it tells us who weare.

It tells us that we are social beings wired forconnection.

We need safe connection with others to survive andthrive.

Dependency became a dirty word somewhere through ourhistory.

And we all fell in love with the image of the lone cowboy riding over therange.

The eaglesong,Desperado, I love thatsong.

It's my favorite song because it basically takes the image of the lone cowboy and basicallysays,buddy, you better find someone to love you because you're in deeptrouble.

So it takes this strong image andsays,no, you're introuble.

And dependency became this dirtyword.

And I think what attachment science says is we are interdependent human beings wired for connection with others from the cradle to thegrave.

And when you present that topeople, not the way I just saidit, which isabstract, when you move people into that reality and you accept it andsay, ofcourse, this is who we are as human beings and we all get stuck here and we all needthis.

We allgo,oh,oh, you mean I'm notcrazy,bad,deficient,defective,unlovable.

No,no, you'renot. You're just a human being who needs that connection with another human being and who is terrified of rejection andabandonment.

And the reason you're terrified of rejection and abandonment is because those are pure danger cues to your mammalianbrain, danger cues are a young or vulnerable for longer than any otherspecies.

And while our brain isdeveloping, we know perfectly well on a visceral level that if we call and no onecomes, wedie.

And that's thetruth. And that reality of our long term vulnerability has wired our nervous system in particular way and creates these socialdramas, wired our socialdramas.

What the father of attachmentscience, JohnBolby, who was an Englishpsychologist, reallydid, which isbrilliant, is he linked biology and who we are and how our nervous system works to our social interaction patterns to the way we dance with other humanbeings.

He linked within andbetween, he linked those two together in anelegant,beautiful, testable way that gives us a map to loverelationships, how to shapethem, how to fixthem, how to repairthem, how to keepthem, and to who we are as humanbeings.

And this map is the way human beings have survived through the centuries is through tuning intoothers, reading theircues,collaborating,cooperating, movingclose,supporting.

That's the way we'vesurvived.

And if you look at the problems facing our world rightnow, we better be learning from this science because we better be able to do that or we're not going tosurvive.

We've got to be able to cometogether.

You mentioned the childcrying, so I must ask you a question to scratch my own itch and satisfy mycuriosity, but I may accidentally invite you into a religiouswar, not withme, but because I've seen very heated debatesbetween, and we don't have to spend a lot of time onthis, but I would love to get your opinionon, and the backdrop of this is that I'm hoping to begin building a family and the nearfuture.

And I have two camps offriends.

One camp is they're devout attachmentparenting, thedevotees, and then on the otherhand, you have sleeptraining.

And there are many different types of sleeptraining.

Do you have any thoughtson, because the people who are in the sleep trainingcamp, and there's arguments makesense, the arguments on both sides make a lot ofsense.

In so much as what I hear is attachment parenting the way they would position it is this constant contact and sleeping nearer with the baby is mostnatural.

It is in the baby's bestinterest.

If you look atevolution, that is what'ssupported.

The people in the sleep training camp would say that'sgreat, but if you're not sleeping and we're no longer living in avillage, we don't have the type of support that wehad.

If I don't get any sleep and my partner gets nosleep, we're going to be terribleparents, and ultimately that is going to be bad for thebaby.

So I don't know what to make of this and would love to get yourperspective.

Well, my perspective is that what attachment says is that emotional balance when you're securely attached and you feel safe in the world and you know you can count on others forsupport, you have your emotionalbalance.

And sometimes when we take onhuge, complexissues, we lose our emotionalbalance.

I don't think to create secure attachment in your kids that you have to sleep withthem.

Okay, I don't thinkso. You're kind of you want and I think you have to balance things like if you sleep with your kid in between you all the time for three or fouryears, what does that do to your couple relationship and what your kid needs is a good couple relationship in the parents who cancooperate.

Believeme, that's what your kidneeds.

So that's an issue I think people sometimes go over thetop, they take the good sense and the science of attachment and they turn it into rigid liferules, which I think you have to make your own rulesthere.

I think being emotionally responsive to your kids is thekey.

And for them to know that you're there for them is thekey.

It doesn't mean you have to always show up in the same way and you have to be constantlyavailable.

Okay, I don't thinkso. On the otherhand, I do have a visceral reaction to sleeptraining.

I would like to suggest that when you do sleeptraining, your child does not calm down and learn to rely onitself.

What your child does is numbout.

What your child learns is that no matter how Icry, nobody willcome.

From my point ofview, that's a bloody disastrous lesson for any child tolearn.

So I have a huge biasagainst.

Nowagain, it depends on how it's done and it depends on what else ishappening.

So let's not get too judgmentalhere, but whynot?

Let's getjudgmental. I think itstinks.

So if that's a religiouswar, I'm on the attachment side because it seems to me that the sleep training thing feeds into a myth that we have that is sodangerous.

The myth is about self-sufficiency and regulating our ownemotions.

And the bottom lineis, the only self-sufficient human being is either numb down on some drug ordead.

We're not wired forself-sufficiency.

And shutting down a numbing out is a fragilestrategy.

You can't keep it up for your wholelife.

It shatters under any kind ofpressure.

So I'm saying it glibly because this is aninterview.

Well, I just said toyou, I can give you research studies to back thatup.

OK, I'm not just sayingit.

Sono, I don't think sleeptraining.

On the otherhand, I canremember.

I adopted myson. He was apremature.

And he camehome. He was the tiniest littlething.

He scared the hell out ofme.

He was sotiny. And he had something wrong with his digestivesystem.

And for the first 18 months of hislife, he would wake up every two hours atleast, but maybe sometimes 90minutes.

And the only thing that would help is that one of us would go in and sing to him and talk to him and rock him for10, 15 minutes and put himdown.

And we got into the habit of that and we did that and we accommodated tothat.

We thought about having him sleep betweenus, but we usually slept at thatpoint.

We adopted him very soon after we gottogether, which we were incrediblylucky.

So we adopted him about a year after we gottogether.

And so we slept prettyentwined.

So we didn't really think itwas.

And also he was so tiny atfirst.

I didn't think putting him in themiddle.

I thought I'd call him going to crush him if I turnit.

So my husband's a bigman.

Oh, we're going to crush him this littleone.

So we didn't dothat. And then it changed and it wasfine.

My daughter was totallydifferent.

Very shortly after she wasborn, she went to sleepregularly, went to sleep at the same time atnight, slept through after a few months and providing you gave her all kinds of hugs in themorning.

She was this happy littleclam.

So it wasdifferent. So I understand that parenting can behard.

I think forme, it's the hardest thing I've everdone.

For onething, parenting is a movingtarget.

You accommodate yourchild.

Then your childchanges.

Youthink, wait aminute.

Like I just figured itout.

And now you'rechanging.

You pickup. GoodLord, you've become anadolescent.

I don't know what to do withthis.

Youknow, my son turned in from thiswonderful,bubbly,charming, delightful little being into thisdropping,judgmental, moral person who was pointing out how wrong we were abouteverything.

Ithought, youknow, who is thisperson?

When did this guy comefrom?

So parenting ishard. And if you take the social implications of attachmentscience, we should be supporting our parents likecrazy.

We should be teaching people how to havegood, securerelationships.

We should be teaching them aboutrelationships, educatingthem.

We should be having more leave forparents.

We should be supporting the basic unit of oursociety, which is ourfamily.

We don't seem to be that keen onthat.

We seem to be more keen on supporting economic security orcorporations.

So I don't think we support parentsenough.

And maybe that needs tochange.

Maybe our understanding of supporting human families needs tochange.

Imean, attachment has changedparenting.

It's changed the way we see ourchildren.

It's changed the way we see their emotionalneeds.

We understand that to be emotionally alone traumatizes achild.

We need to apply that to adults because in thatsense, we never growup.

Attachment goes from the cradle to thegrave.

It's very basic things like I talk in one of my books somewhere about that I think it lovessince.

There's a movement called Nobody DiesAlone, where people get together in certain cities and their commitment is to go in with somebody who's dying and who has no human figure to be there with them and simply be withthem, but their most vulnerablemoments.

And forme, that speaks to the fact that maybe one day we could have something called a civilizedsociety.

Civilized society would not let anyone diealone.

A civilized society would support families and supportparents.

Help us learn how toparent.

So I don't think it's just the couple who arestressed.

I think it's the demands of oursociety.

You have to go back to work at a certainpoint, whether you're a parent ornot.

There's no accommodation in most workplaces forparenting.

Was it the Prime Minister of New Zealand who bought her baby into theparliament?

Ithought,yay,lady.Whoa.

That islike,yay. She bought her baby into theparliament.

Thattakes, Ithink. So good forher, butboy, I can't even imagine thathappening.

I'mobviously, you can hear I'mEnglish.

I was going tosay, I've heard Struppey from my friend from NewZealand, but you don't seem to have a Kiwiaccent.

Nor do you seem to have an Ottawa or Canadianaccent.

No, I'm fromEngland. I came to Canada and Rob's22, but you never kind of lose theaccent.

But I cannot imagine even today a woman Prime Minister walking into the British parliament with a baby and holdingthat.

I would lovethat. I think that would be progress for Britain for meanyway, but nevermind.

Sorry. I got off trackthere.

No,no,no. The whole podcast is about freely going off track whennecessary.

I would like to ask a very specificquestion, and it may be a deadend, I don'tknow, but I was doing a bit of reading onEFT.

And there was a phrase that stuck out tome, which related to microinterventions.

So the wording of this is micro interventions from Rogerian models oftherapy, such as asking evocativequestions.

Now, I like evocativequestions, so this drew myattention.

What would be an example and what are micro interventions from Rogerian models oftherapy, suchas...

Evocativequestions.Exactly.

Evocative questions focus on the process of how you'reexperiencing, not thecontent.

So I would say toyou,Tim, what happens to you when you sit and do interviews with crazy people likeDr.

SueJohnson? And she tells you stories that have you moved into your own softerfeelings.

What is that like foryou,Tim?

And you mightsay,oh, I don'tknow.

Yousay,well, what happens in yourbody,Tim?

Can you tell me a moment when you felt that rush ofemotion?

Yousay,oh,well, it was when you saidthis.

Oh, so that's thetrigger.

Well, and I'll help you put your emotions together with evocative questions andreflections.

And I'll say so when you heard me saythis, that was important foryou.

That stood out and you started to feel a lot offeelings.

Can you help me what happened in yourbody?

So,oh,well, I felt this tightness across my chest and I felt like I wanted tocry.

So,ooh. And then what did you say toyourself?

I said tomyself, mygoodness, that's just how I felt when I remember feeling that way when I was three yearsold.

And Isay, Iunderstand.

So I'll reflect itagain.

I'll hold it foryou. I'll specifyit.

I'll ask evocativequestions.

I'll get you to stay with theexperience.

And then I'llsay, what do you want to do when you feel thatway?

And you mightsay, I want to stopit.

I want to getout. I don't want to feel any more of that rightnow.

I want to shove itdown. I want to stop thefeeling.

Isaid,okay, so you want torun,yeah?

And we've put your emotion together in asafe,specific, safeway.

Welcome deal with emotions that when they makesense, when they'reacceptable, when there's another humanbeing, they're accepting them and when they're madespecific.

We can't deal withbig,vague,huge, overwhelmingproblems.

We just want to run away fromthem.

So I'll use evocativequestions.

I'll usereflections. I'll use repetition to help you stay with thatfeeling.

I'll use animage. If you said tome, this fireacross, I can remember oneclient,said, it's like walking into afire.

When you asked me to turn and open up tohim, I can tell you that I'mafraid.

I can look into your face untilyou, because you're just a sillytherapist.

You don't matter to memuch.

Actually, that's what Isaid.

Isaid, that's because I'm just a sillytherapist.

I don't matter to youmuch.

Yousaid,yes, that'sright.

So Isaid, so I can tell you about myfear.

But when you asked me to turn and tell him about myfear, you're asking me to walk into afire.

And I knew that thislady, she was atrucker.

There was an accident in front of hertruck.

And she got out of her truck and she walked into flames to pull out the trucker who was trapped underneath the truck in front ofher.

I realized that this is an enormously powerfulimage.

If I want her to move more intoit, if she can handleit, if she can't handleit, I'llstop.

But if I want her to move more intoit, and I think she can handleit, I'llsay, let's stay with thatimage.

It's likefire, fireburns, fire isterrifying.

You're telling yourpartner, it's too hard forme.

Ican't, I can't do this rightnow.

It's toohard. It's like walking through fire to turn and open up toyou.

I just can't doit. Shesays,yes, that'sright.

Isay,good, tell himthat.

Nowcreate, I'll clarify the emotionalmusic, help her withit, help her acceptit.

And then I'll help her move this into a drama with anotherperson.

And by theway, when we do individualtherapy, we've just started to really teachEFIT, which is emotionally focused on individualtherapy, there's a book coming out nextmonth, September onthat.

When we do individualtherapy, we still dothis.

But we use the representations inside people'sheads.

So you have a cast of characters inside yourhead.

So doI. I verythankful.

My main attachment figure when I was a child was myfather.

And I'm very aware that all through my adultlife, especially to moments offailure, moments ofjoy, keymoments, I can hear my father'svoice.

My father's still a reality forme,right?

He's, I carry him inside ofme.

And that's what we do with our lovedones.

And we talk to them and we have these dramas withthem.

So if I'm doing individualtherapy, I might use these same reflections and evocativequestions.

Instead I'llsay, you planned every interaction with yourmother, you planned it forhours, you planned how to go and ask her for ahug, youplanned,right?

Right. So can you see that little girl who always got smacked and taken back to her room and left in thedoor?

Can you see that little girl sitting on the bed byherself?

What would you want to say toher?

What would you like to have been able to say to yourmom?

And she says somethinglike, I tried sohard,mom, I tried sohard, but I could never reachyou.

Was it really myfault? Was I really such a bad littlegirl?

I just think you weren't amom.

You weren't a mom tome.Say,good.

What does it feel to saythat?

She says that feelsdifferent.

I've never said that before tomyself.

I've alwayssaid, I didn't planenough, I wasn't a good enough littlegirl.

So can you say thatagain?

Can you see yourmom? Was your mom look like in thechair, close youreyes?

She closes hereyes. Shesays,yes, I seeher.

Say,oh,what? Do you see on herface?

Shesays, she tells me she'stired.

She doesn't havetime. Youknow, she's tired and she's working threejobs.

And I should just bequiet, go to bed and stop mygrizzling, stopme.

That's where she's tellingme.

And what do you want to say toher?

I want to tellher,mom, that's notfair.

I'm justlittle. And I can never reach foryou.

I can never reach foryou.

You're not amom. You're not a good mom tome.

I need amom. And Isay, how do you feel aboutthat?

Shesays, I feelfine. That feelsgood.

That feelsdifferent. Then she emails me after the session andsays, you knowSue, the sessions with you arehard.

So I don't understand why I sing all the wayhome.

And it's because she moves in thesession.

She moves out of herobsessions, addictions with not eating addictions forplanning,anxiety, shemoves.

And so she gets exhilarated because she starts to feel more whole as a humanbeing.

Some of the cliches we have about love are reallyawful.

Misinformation. One of the cliches that's really true and that this is true in most religions is that when we'reloved, we grow andexpand.

Wegrow. We find more resources insideourselves.

We find more strength insideourselves.

We're better at problemsolving.

When we're safe and secure and we feel we matter to others and that they have ourback, our potential and our resources comeout.

Nowagain, I'm having such fun talking toyou.

I'm not sure I answered yourquestion.

Oh,yes, it was about micro interventions and things like reflecting and evocativequestions.

You gave you gave a number ofexamples.

And I like to think of it as much conversation asinterviews.

So even if the interview is just a cue to take us in a differentdirection, that works forme.

I want to come back to some of your evocative questions though because I wrote them down becausethey, Ithink, will be helpful forme.

And they were follow-ups to the question of what someone isfeeling.

So when I saidthat, the hypothetical was asking me how I felt when you said certain things in theinterview.

That was anexample, which could be a realone.

And then I would answer that and then you had follow-ups such as what did you say to yourself when you felt that or what did you want todo?

Yeah. I felt thatway. But I want to go to the initialquestion, which is how did you feel and what did you feel in yourbody?

And I have a little bit of experience as a client with something called the Hikomimethod.

Yes. The question of how you feel and what you're feeling in your body comes up alot.

And I feel for reasons known and unknown that I have a verypoor, just surprising tome, very poor vocabulary when it comes to identifying bodilysensations.

And I'm not aware of much outsideof, forinstance, almost every time I would be asked what I was feeling in mybody, whether it wassadness,anger, you nameit, it would be tightness in the throat or tightness in thechest.

And that was really all that would come up for me were these twooptions.

Maybe some tension in the forehead and I'm curious what you do when you have a client who really can't come up with more than one or two answers to thatquestion.

What do you feel in yourbody?

Maybe that's not aproblem, but I felt kind of ridiculous because when I've done some couples work with my girlfriend who's extremely kinesthetically aware and very selfaware, she always has this rich landscape she can describe and she closes her eyes and she's so specific and I'mlike, you knowwhat, it's just the throatagain, tightness in the throat and I feel kind of ridiculous and I don't feel like it gives me much to workwith.

But how would you respond to that word salad that I just threw atyou?

Well, you have to put it incontext.

Imean, the point is when I go in to something likethat, there's always a specific thing that'shappened, a client's told me a story or is feeling something in the moment or is having a specific emotional reaction or if I'm working withcouples, there's a piece of drama goingon.

So there's usually a specific trigger and the thing about attachmentsciences, it gives us a map to our emotionalneeds,vulnerabilities,feelings, it gives us a map and what I think is a relativelysimple, elegantmap.

So if you say tome, I hear you that you have a more limitedvocabulary, there's a good reason forthat.

You were brought up as a man in an North Americansociety.

You weren't taught to look inside and pay attention to your emotions and develop avocabulary.

Your girlfriend was taught to dothat.

It was acceptable for her and so women have morelanguage, the bottom line isthough, you are humanbeings.

So you have the same basicemotions.

We talk about six basic emotions and you have the same basic physiologicalresponses.

So if you said tome,Sue, I don't know how to talk aboutthis.

That'sgreat.Sue, I don't know how to talk aboutthis.

All that happens to me is when and then it'sspecific.

When I hear that tone in hervoice.

But what's thetrick? When I hear that tone in hervoice, all I know is that I just gotight.

I just go tight and I just stay there with you and Isay, so helpme.

What do you hear in hertone?

Well she's irritated with me and youknow, she's going to be irritated with me and nothing I say is going to make anydifference.

But Isay,oh, so inyour, in you hear her tone and yousay, I've already blownit.

I've blownit. I've blown itagain.

And when is thatright? Hesays,yes, that's what I say tomyself.

I've blownit. She's irritatedwith, oh myGod.

Now we're going to get stuck in thatthing.

I've blown itagain. Hesaid, and you feel thistightness.

Hesays,yes. I'm alittle, you help me with thetightness.

It's like you shutdown.

Because thisis, is it shuttingdown?

Yousay,yeah, it's like shutting downsoon.

So Isay,oh, it's like shuttingdown.

Of course there's something here that'sdangerous, isn'tit?

Then if you're a regularguy, you say somethinglike,no, it's notdangerous.

Imean, youknow, I'm not like really worried oranything.

Yes youare.Okay. You're just bigger than theguy.

Right? So Isay, allright.

It's notdangerous, it's just abit, this gentleman saidto, I lovedhim.

Hesaid, it'sdisconcerting.

Isaid,oh, Isaid,oh, it'sdisconcerting.

It'sjust, it's verydisconcerting.

Iunderstand. So Isay, so let's go over thisagain.

So then I go over it again when you do thishappens.

You hear this in hervoice.

And then your bodydoes.

And it'sdisconcerting.

And there's somethinghere,disconcerting.

Could you helpme? It'slike, you don't know what todo.

No matter what youdo, it's not going to beright.

Hesays,yes. Hesaid, when I show thatway, it's a little bitalarming, isn'tit?

Hesays,yes, it'salarming.

Isaid,oh, so when you feel this tightness in yourchest, it's alump.

You lead peoplein. The pointis, you lead them into theiremotions.

The pointis, I know where I'mgoing.

And so does every good eftytherapist.

I know where I'm going because I've got amap.

And so attachment gives us a map to how we dance together with the people welove, where those dances go in terms ofoutcome.

It gives us a map to our own vulnerabilities andemotions.

It tells us how supremely sensitive we are to signals of rejection or abandonment by otherpeople.

And that this sensitivity is wiredin.

There's nothing weak or strange or we've framed these vulnerabilities in very strangeways, very unexceptingways.

Some of the ways we've talked about love have been somisleading, but when you help people have thewords, and there aren't that manywords.

There aren't that many coreemotions.

There aren't that many ways to dance with a lovedone.

You can basically reach from them when you'revulnerable.

You can shut down and numb out and shut themout, or you can up the ante and get anxious and demand or kinds of responses fromthem.

That's aboutit. There are the main moves in the dance oflove.

And they can all be useful attimes, but if you get stuck in one of the negative ones like blaming and pushing and demanding and upping the ante to try and get the other person to respond or shutting down andwithdrawing, that generates a dance that ends up in disconnection and more anxiety and more problems for both ofyou.

What would be an example of upping theante?

I understand the phrasing as it applies to thepoker, but could you give us an example ofthat?

Upping the ante is what I did with my description of my husband andme, where instead of turning andsaying, I'm missing ourconversations.

Isay, I guess you're tiredagain.

You're tired and awful lot of thesedays.

I guess you're reallytired.

So listen tome. I'mpushing.

Andfoolishly, what I want is for him to turn andsay,oh,well, have I left youalone?

I'm sosorry.Yes, I do want theseconversations, but of course I'm using aclub.

So I'm smacking him to get him torespond.

And the trumpet that one is the smacking pushes him furtheraway.

And that's one of the ironic things as human beings that sometimes when we lovepeople, we're so unable to really reach for them or know how to reach for them the way wedo, try toreach, we push them furtheraway.

How do you work with or help someone work withanger?

So you have a couple and you're working withthem.

One partnersays, whatever theysay.

And then you ask the other partner how that makes them feel when they hearthat.

They'relike, it pisses meoff.

I've heard this a hundredtimes.

God damnit. Why don't we open a shut case or whatever itis.

It could take a millionforms.

Well, most people startthere.

So Isay, so could you help me when your partner saysthis, that's hard for you tohear.

That doesn't really make sense toyou.

And you justsay, he would go again and you getangry.

I'msaying,hmm, and then I'll stay withthat.

Because underneath theanger, before theanger, there's some sort ofthreat.

There's some sort of a threat goingon,right?

It pisses me off because that's not what Ido.

That's just the way she seesit.

I don't dothat. Youknow, she tellsme, so Isay,okay, so it pisses you off because from your point ofview, you're tryingreally, really hard to be a goodhusband.

Yes. And from your point ofview, she somehow picks on this one thing and it kind of proves that you're not a goodhusband.

Yes. And that makes youreally, reallyangry.

Itdoes. And that must bevery, very difficult tohear.

Yes. Itis.Well, then what happens to you when you hearthat?

I don't want to hear that I'm a failure all thetime,okay?

Oh,no. So in the moment before theanger, what you hearis, you hear your wifesaying, you'refailing.

You're a badpartner. Did I saythat?

Well,yes. Lots of therapies teach that emotions have to be controlled and contained and gotpassed.

We don't dothat. We honoremotions.

We take people intothem, listen tothem, help them hear the key messages about survival and what they need that are in them and then take them throughthem.

And if you look at a couple at the end ofVFT, they're much more emotionallybalanced.

And when they feel vulnerable orhurt, they're better at dealing withit.

Security attached kids in all the researchstudies.

There's thousands of studies on infant motherattachment, child parentattachment.

There's hundreds and hundreds of studies on adult attachmentnow.

When you look at themall, they all basicallysay, we need this connection with otherpeople.

We need it and we have these incrediblesensitivities.

And there's only so many ways of dealing withthem.

And there's only so many emotions that comeup.

The main one that people are dealing with when they get stuck in fights or incredible distance isfear.

Fear ofrejection, fear ofabandonment, fear ofdisconnection.

Fear that I don't really matter toyou.

I'm really on my own inlife.

And that intimidates usall.

We all know that that is disempowering forus.

We all know on some deep visceral level how much we needothers.

And strongest among us can accept there and learn how toconnect.

One of my most fascinating characters in history is WinstonChurchill.

I find him completelyfascinating.

I read all these books on WinstonChurchill.

Winston Churchill had the most horrible childhoodrelationships.

He had a father who was mean and blaming and rejecting anddistant.

And he had a totally distant mother who was too busy having affairs with the king and having wonderfulparties.

They sent him to boarding school and he would write these letters that just brought your heart like dearmummy, which could you possibly possibly make it to the one this big event once a term and come and she wouldn't even reply to hisletter.

So Winston Churchill grew updeprived.

But I don't know how he managedit.

Sometimes human resilience isamazing.

But what he did as an adult was he created a bond with his wife and all the evidence is all through his life he relied on that bond and that when they got into a fight thisman, this powerful man who sort of took all these impossible stands in hislife.

Imean, and what he would do apparently is if they got intofights, he'd go and he'd sit down outside her bedroom door and say thingslike, are you mad at yourwife?

Are you mad at yourwife?

Do you have any favorite books or if you were to recommend a resource or a book or a place to start for people interested in learning more about WinstonChurchill?

Do you have anysuggestions?

There's awonderful, but I think it's called The LastLion.

It's a biography in three volumes of WinstonChurchill, but it takes it from childhood until him dying and it'sfascinating,fascinating.

I loveit. In terms of books I just read what happened to you with Oprah Winfrey and BrucePerry.

BrucePerry, both of them aresplendid.

I love BrucePerry. He's a child and adolescentpsychiatrist, so he comes at attachment science in a slightly different way thanme.

His work dovetails with us totally brilliantly and he says all the same things about how emotional isolation is traumatizing and how sensitive we are and how to grow humanbeings.

He says all the samethings.

That's one recent one that I justread.

Youknow, it'sfunny. I just came home and literally that book is sitting on one of thedressers.

So I think my girlfriend just bought thatbook.

It seems like she and I are having complementary explorations at themoment, which isgreat.

And the book that younamed, you actually got itright.

The Last Lion by WilliamManchester.

The Last Lion boxset. It is a three volume set and has average of five stars out of five on Amazon 260reviews.

So it seems to be wellliked.

What I love aboutit, I think I love Winston Churchill because from my point ofview, he was a successful human being in that he was always honest tohimself.

He was alwaysWinston. He wasalways, he took hugerisks.

Even though some of those risks made him massivelyunpopular, there were periods of time when he was hated in the House ofCommons.

Youknow, his peers despisedhim, criticizedhim.

He wascreative. He was alwayshonest.

He was always who hewas.

I love that he used to go up in theblitz.

Everyone else used to go into theshelters.

He used to go up on theroof.

And on watch theblitz, it washappening.

In the first worldwar, all his upper classcolleagues, if they were in the battle atall, they were way behind the lines in a nice hotelsomewhere.

Winston gave up being a member of Parliament and asked to go into thetrenches.

He said he wanted to seethem.

He wanted to see what they werelike.

He wanted to be there in thetrenches.

And mindyou, he took his butler withhim, which most of the men in the trenches did have abutler, butnevertheless.

Man, I would love to hear the conversation with the butler on thatdecision.

Yes. So probably the butler didn't want to go into thetrenches.

But he was a risktaker. He had hugeintegrity.

He waspassionate. He stayed with thatpassion.

And though there were a lot of periods oftime, and he was completely rejectedsocially, he was true to himself and he waspassionate.

And I think he was one of the few human beings who could have led England through the second world war and madeit.

I don't know who else could have come forward to dothat.

So I find himfascinating.

I find figures like him that have courage and stand forsomething.

And even when the prevailing winds are going the otherway, I always find thatfascinating.

Do you still dancetango?

Is that something that you stillpursue?

I still dancetango. And COVID has been soawful.

And ofcourse, the parallel with couple relationships isobvious.

Youknow, when I first started to learntango, my tango teacher would be teaching me and I suddenly say thingslike,stop.

I got to write thatdown.

Because it would be relevant fortherapy.

Imean, tango is about attunement and so islove.

Tango is about standingup, moving withsomebody, changing weight withsomebody, tuning intosomebody, and there's a safety checkthere.

There'sa, can I findyou?

Are you going to respond tome?

Are youthere? Can I feelyou?

And then if the answer isyes, if sometimes you go through themotions, the answer isno.

And you go through themotions, you do thesteps.

But if it's a gooddance, you find the other person and it'slike,oh, there youare.

There youare.Oh, I can feelthat.

Oh, and we tune into the music at the same time when we start toplay.

And there's a synchrony there thatis, happens in hold me tightconversations, happens in goodsex, happens in its play andsynchrony.

And it's two human beings impacting eachother, responding to eachother, sendingcues, tuning into thecues.

There's something intoxicating aboutit.

So when I realized theparallel, I was not good atit.

I want to tellyou, my teacher who was not big on empathy said somethinglike, why do you want to teachtango?

You'reuncoordinated.

You don't have anybalance.

You're not22. Isaid, thanks verymuch.

I'm in my late50s,actually.

So thanks very much for thatcomment.

At the time I learnedtango,right,said,you're, this is going to be very difficult foryou.

And Isaid,well, then shut up and stop teachingme.

Because I'll just work hard around it than everyoneelse.

That'sall. Hesaid, why didn't you want to doit?

Isaid, because there's somethinghere,these, I get these little tiny moments where we're both moving together to this beautiful music that are justjoyful.

He just looked at me andsaid, allright,then, but you're going to have to work reallyhard.

There's so manyparallels.

I can remember one lesson when I said tohim, I got angry and Isaid, you're not sending me anycues.

It's a bit like acouple.

And just for peoplelistening, this happens all thetime.

These arguments between tangocouples, they get into these bickering fights all thetime.

So pleasecontinue. So thisis, so this is myteacher,right?

And hesays, he's trying to teach me this newmove.

And Isay, you're not sayinganything.

You're not sending me anycues.

Hesays, the cues I am sending you areenormous.

Isaid, what are you talkingabout?

You're not sending me anycues.

You'll belike, you'll be just beingridiculous.

So bless hisheart. He does what we do in theFT.

Hesays, feelit. He moves his shoulders slightly to the right about amillimeter.

Can you feelthat?No. Hesays, do itagain.

Feelit. Can you feelit?

No. He does it 20times.I,oh.

Andsometimes, this is what you have to do in a couple ofrelationships.

You have to slow everything down and give people time to listen to a new thing they're not used to hearing or can't takeit.

You have to slow itdown.

Youknow, and you can't just do all this stufffast.

So then Igo,oh, I gotit.

And then hesays,right.

They saysnow, followit.

And I turn this hand all thetime, the parallels inrelationships.

And they were thesame. So I'd go to Tango lessons and get completelyenthralled,intellectually,emotionally,physically, I adoreTango.

But I have tosay, I probably shouldn't say this onair.

Oh,no, you're allowed to pleasedo.

Ifind, mostly I find it's easier to dance withwomen.

And there aren't many womenleaders.

And I can't figure out why thatis, but I think it's because women have had to learn to tune into other people in order to survive socially over theyears.

They've had to dothat. So maybe it's a little easier forthem.

But I find with women leadersoften, or maybe I just feel a little safer with womenleaders.

Maybe that's what itis.

I don'tknow. But often I find it easier to dance withwomen.

Although I've had some amazing male partnerstoo.

One of the big arguments in my marriage was that we started dancing Tango and then my husband said he wasn't going to doit.

He didn't likeit. So I won't tell youwhat, Sue Johnson said tothat.

It was not positiveevening.

It waslike, you can't do that tome.

Youknow, I mean thepartner.

And he basicallysaid, it hurts myback.

I'm not going to doit. And so that was verydifficult.

But we got throughit. He goeshiking.

And I don't particularly like it when he goes hiking up mountains or byhimself, it scaresme.

And for quite awhile, he didn't particularly like it when I would go off to theMalonga.

Youknow, and as he putit, insist on dancingvery, very close to other men forhours.

So I don't sayTango, it just affectsvery, veryclose.

It's just the way itis.Anyway.

One of my close friends does notdance.

He does notdance. But his wife loves ballroom dance and dances a variety of differentstyles.

And I remember oneSaturday.

It might have been aFriday.

It was aSaturday. Hesaid, here's my wife'sevening.

And he sent a photograph that she'd senthim.

That she's in this reallysleek, super sexydress, all doneup, lookinggorgeous, dancing with this Latinguy.

They're face toface. Youknow, sweating all over eachother.

And then hesaid, here's myevening.

And he sent aphotograph.

And it was a table with arts and crafts with like a half a dozen kids going totally bad shitcrazy.

And he painted quite a picture forhimself.

And I just want to backstep into what you were saying aboutTango.

It's making me really want to danceagain.

I haven't danced in avery, very longtime.

But for people who don'tknow, so a few things on the gendersplit.

InArgentina, a lot of the Tango began in the port town of Buenos Aires with men dancing with othermen.

It was actually verycommon.

Right.Very, verycommon.

And even now you can find an eye trained because oftentimes in the classes when I wasthere, we wouldn't have enoughwomen.

Or you wouldn't have enoughmen.

So women would dance withwomen, men would dance withmen.

And there are twobrothers.

I can't recall theirnames.

I know who theyare.Yes.

They'reincredible. Do you know thename?

Do you remember thename?

No.No, but they'reamazing.

No,incredible.Yeah. If somebody goes to YouTube and justsearches, youknow, Argentinedancing, Tango brothers or something likethat, you'll see the two of themdancing.

It's a very aggressivemasculine, almost violent type ofTango.

It's incredible towatch.

And you're bringing back so many memories forme.

I remember being at differentmilongas, like Niño Bien orSundarland, Sunderland and all these differentmilongas.

And what struck me so much when I went to some of my firstmilongas, which for peoplewondering, start really late and end really late inArgentina.

They often don't even really get going until midnight could be aTuesday.

It doesn'tmatter. And I went in and I noticed that many of the best female dancers danced with their eyesclosed.

Oh,yes. And the complexity of the movements were onething.

And you watch and youjust, you just can't understand how it's possible for someone to dance so definitely with suchsubtlety, so quickly with their eyesclosed.

But on top ofthat, as a beginner you walk in and you think toyourself, these two must have been practicing for months and months andmonths, years and yearstogether.

And then you find out it might be the first night they evermet.

It's all cues andimprov.

It's just mindblowing.

It's soimpressive. And it's thesynchrony, that kind of physical and emotional synchrony moving with themusic, that synchrony inthis, it's joy in humanbeings.

The reason why birds have matingrituals, swans move their necks inunison, they do thisritual, they move intosynchrony.

Youknow, it happens with mothers andchildren.

They move intosynchrony.

The little child opens hiseyes.

The mother leans forward and opens her eyeswider.

A synchrony intango, synchrony in love making betweenlovers, synchrony in hold me tightconversations.

This is our nervous system buzzing andsay,yes, this isbelonging, this issafety, this is joy and our nervous system buzzing withthis.

And it's sorewarding. I tried to explain to my husband why I needed to keep tangering at onepoint.

And Isaid, when I dancewith, I was used to woman as anexample, youknow, when I dance with Mary Ellen in 12 minutes ofdancing, I'll have four straight moments of this incredible synchrony when my brain is out sitting in a chair looking andsaying, how are you doingthis?

I don't understand you doingthis.

You don't know any of thesemoves.

And what happenedthere?

I don't understand how this is going because your prefrontal cortex isn't subtleenough.

You're it's like you're picking up on a tunement and moving withsomeone.

And this is what human beings cando.

We can read these cues incrediblyfast.

We have these mirror neurons in our brains that kick up the cues from somebody and feel them in their own body and uses the basis ofempathy.

And it's a beautifulthing.

And soyeah, when I first went to amelonga, I stood there andsaid, how do they dothis?

This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and it'simpossible.

I don'tunderstand. I want to doit.

I want to doit.So, but it takes a longtime.

And in away, it's kind of the same discovery that our couples go throughwhere, youknow, somebody will say tome, I never felt thisbefore.

I never knew you could feel thisway.

I never knew people could have these kinds ofconversations.

I never knew that I could talk about my feelings likethis.

I never knew that I would talk about my feelings and I would look up and see in the other person's face that they wanted me and that they wantedthis.

And youknow, someone willsay, you don't have to keep problem solving or taking care ofeverything.

You don't have to keep solving all theproblems.

What I want isyou. If you tell me you're overwhelmed by thisproblem, that's what Iwant.

I want the connection with you and the other persongoes, I've had peoplesay, what did yousay?

And the person has to repeat it like fourtimes.

Itsays, when they look at me with this blank look and Isay, you can't take thatin.

You've never imagined a drama with another human being where somebody might say that to you and theygo,no.

And then they weep because in theend, what none of us can bear is the feeling that we're alone and that we don't matter to another humanbeing.

That's, youknow, in ourworld, doesn't talk much aboutthat.

Youknow, when I first heard that you wanted to talk tome, Ithought, why does he want to talk tome?

He's into business and he's into teaching people how to make money and then somebodysaid,no,no.

He's into success and what helps people feelsuccessful.

And Ithought,oh,well, that's okay because from my point ofview, success is about being really alive and being really alive is about being connected with others and knowing that they are our greatest resource and that that's where we are mostalive, whether reducingtango, makinglove, responding to ourchild.

It's such fun to talk toyou.

You'refun. So what questions you'regoing, sometimes you ask quite intricatequestions.

That's reallyfun. You're funtoo.

You're funtoo. And I only have a few more questions because I know we're getting not necessarily twotime, but we're definitely covering a lot ofground.

You've mentioned sex a number oftimes.

Good sex and this is important tomany, if not allcouples.

And I'd love to pose a situation and hear how you might approachit.

And that is couple who love each otherdearly.

They actually do not seem to be shuttingdown, at leastobviously.

They've been together a long time and maybe thepassion, the fire has simply died downsomewhat.

There aremore, I don't want to say roommates because that has a purge of sound toit, but they're goodparents.

They love eachother. They maybe still go on dates and soon.

But for whateverreason, that sexual spark is not as strong as it used tobe.

How would you approach thatsituation, thatcouple?

Once it was interesting to me about sexuality and sexual conversations is that our worldarguably, Imean, sex is everywhere now compared to evensay,20, 30 yearsago,theoretically, more open and we're more accepting aboutsex.

We're not so restrained and allthat.

So what's fascinating to me is it seems to me thatpeople, couples have an incredibly hard time having a conversation about their sexlives.

And that's still true and it was true 30 years ago and it's still truenow.

And I think it's because in sex people are literallynaked.

They arevulnerable. And they don't know how to even begin thatconversation.

So what we do is we create safety in therelationship.

We have them look at the relationship and we walk into thatconversation.

One of the big conversations about that one is there's a lot of evidencenow.

I think it's really good research about the difference between male and femalesexuality.

And there's a lot of evidence that women respond differently to physiological to sexualcues.

A woman can be physiologicallyaroused, forexample, by a sexualcue.

If you look at her in an MRIstudy, I think this was by a man calledGillath,Basel, Canadian researcher also talks aboutthis.

There's quite a fewpeople.

I think Chisim talks aboutit.

So the evidence is a woman can be physiologically turnedon.

If you ask her if she's turnedon, she'll tell youno.

Whereas where theman, physiological arousal and experience just goes together likethat, they have an erection they say I'maroused.

The woman is something else that seems tohappen.

What seems to happen is that the woman's physiologically aroused and then her prefrontal cortex cuesin.

And her prefrontalcortex, the theory now is from these studies that her prefrontal cortex basically checks out the safety of therelationship, which makes sense because womenare, Imean, let's faceit, if you look at the sexact, women arevulnerable.

Thenaked, they're going to open theirbody, they're going to be penetrated by a strongeranimal.

This is a basicthing. So it's almost like women check out the relationship and the connection and the safety before they thenfeel, they actually let themselves feelaroused.

And so women take longer often to bearoused.

Somebody said tome, what's the best for play I can do with mywife, Isaid,well, have you heard of talkinghere?

I think what she's telling you is the best for play you can do with your wife is to talk to her and share with her and turnup.

Well,basically, I didn't say turn upemotionally, but that's where I wasgoing.

Youknow, like show who youare, stand out on the dancefloor, open yourarms, youknow, it'slike, and so women have a slower paceoften.

Women have responsivedesire, they don't start off fromlast.

They start off from being open to their partner or beingcurious, they don't start from the same place as men and people haven't known how to talk aboutthat.

And so men and women miss each other and alsomen, men talk about how the classic story is that men start talking about how they wantsex.

But time and timeagain, when we're dealing with a couple of sexualrelationships, if you really go in and you really staythere, it's not just about orgasm because let's getreal.

If it's just aboutorgasm, men can give themselves an orgasm very efficiently and so canwomen, there's amazing vibrators outthere.

So that's not anissue. So it is not just about orgasm because if you listen to the man who says who's always badgering his wife forsex, what it comes down to is on an emotional level and he has a hard time gettingthere, he wants to feelwanted, he wants to feeldesired.

And inthat, men and women are thesame.

And when that's somehow a couple of give each other themessage, I don't particularly desireyou.

One way of dealing withit, if you have other good things in therelationship, is to just shut that part of your relationship down and numbingout.

But you can bring italive, but you have to be able to beA-R-E, you have to be able to take some emotionalrisks, you have to turn andsay, you love this kind ofsex.

Well, I want to tell you that for 20years, I've hatedit.

I hateit. When the ladysaid, you think it's the sexiest thing in the world to come up behind me and bite myneck.

I hate it when you dothat.

And hesays, what are you talkingabout?

And she just didn't feel safe enough to turn andsay, I hatethat.

And here's why I hateit.

People hangback, they shutdown.

But youknow, passion is about feeling safe enough to be completely absorbed in the experience and that it take youover.

Passion is about fullengagement.

And we talk aboutit, and that he's all aboutnovelty.

He's not all aboutnovelty.

Nautilate can turn passionon.

But the research is clear from people like Laumann at the University ofChicago.

The people who have the best sex have it most often and who feel mostenthralled, find it most thrilling are people in what you would call safe long-termrelationships.

Because then you can letgo, you can passion is about eroticplay, you can let go andplay.

And lots of couples have sort of put that part of their relationship off to theside.

They haven't known how to tune into eachother.

They haven't maybe accepted their own emotionalneeds.

They haven't known how to talk aboutit.

So we simply create safety and we open it up forthem.

And they start to share and talk and find itagain.

They have to haveacceptance.

Somebody has to be able tosay, I was brought up aCatholic.

There's some part of me that can never quite accept my ownsexuality.

And some part of me just needs you to bedominant, demanded ofme.

And then I can get turnedon.

Well she needs to get to tell that to herpartner.

Because he's always comes ontoher, considerate andlow-key.

He doesn't want to offend her in anyway.

But it doesn'twork. So people have to be able to examine the way they dance together andshare.

Then they can find eachother.

And it's the same with sexual problems who hold metight.

One of my favourite stories I've got in the book of the man who has a rectaldysfunction.

And the troubleis, not that he has a rectaldysfunction, the troubleis, it freaksout.

Every time he has a rectal dysfunction and shuts down and withdraws from his wife and then she gets upset and feels rejected andabandoned.

So the whole relationship starts to go tohell.

And they can talk aboutit, connect withit.

And I suggest that sometimes I think we call his penisGeorge, I can't rememberno, that I say sometimes George goes for a nipplenap.

And it's no big deal if they can stay connected with eachother.

And she can help wait George up and she knows how to dothat.

They laugh and theyplay.

And there's no problem after awhile.

Because they deal with it differently because they have this safeconnection.

But the trouble was the sexual problem was interfering with their safe connection and everyone was playing it safe and being nice to each other and keeping everythingcalm.

The thingis, what we've learned about attachment science can help us shape our emotional relationships and our sexualrelationships.

It gives us a map for how to dothat.

And it really challenges the old cliché that love and passionate love has a best beforedate.

It really challengesthat.

Love has to be remade and passion isn't the same over 30years, but it can still be made andremade.

And there are times when people are more tuned into that thanothers.

Butanyway, we could talk about sexforever.

So that's a huge topichere,Tim.

Theyare. We may have to do around two or three andfour.

There's a lot of stuff to talkabout.

Let me ask a followup, which is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum with respect to one example yougave.

So one of the examples you began with was that of female physiological arousal often preceding psychologicalarousal.

And I'd be curious to know because this seems to becommon, at least among many men that I know and many men who write to me in somefashion, that they're extremely attracted to their partner for a period oftime.

And they see this in relationships one after the other forsix, ninemonths, whatever itis.

And then it's not that they stop being attracted to theirpartner.

They still can objectively and subjectively look at their partner and find them sexy andattractive, but they just do not have as much sex drive as they would like at a certain point in theirrelationship.

Do you haveany, not necessarily advice forthem, but could beadvice, but thoughts on how to approachthat.

So not a situation where the male is demanding or hoping for moresex, although that might be thecase.

But infact, a situation where the woman has more sustained sex drive than themale.

Well, that's an interestingone.

I don'tknow. Imean, we condition men to think about physiologically their sexual need and their sexual response is very available to them compared towomen.

And it seems to be immediate and we condition men to accept their sexuality and to accept sort of last and to expect a certainamount.

So I don'tknow, I think itdepends, and I may have been prejudiced because the cases that I've seen in that situation have usually been that there's another whole element goingon, which is that there's a certain point in relationships where people realize that they're vulnerable and that this person holds their heart in theirhand.

And for somepeople, beforethat, the infatuation and the excitement and the novelty and all that stuff can carry themforward.

And then there's a moment when it's kind of like the bonding scenario kicks in and they realize they'revulnerable.

This other person can hurt them and that they need thisperson.

They need certain responses from thisperson.

And for somefolks, that is exceedingly difficult and they can't even really put their finger on what that's about and they start to shutdown.

And I can remember one very dramatic case of this with this guy pursued this woman and adored her and everything was great and then they gotmarried.

And literally they got married and she became immediately pregnant and was very ill with the pregnancy so she was kind ofwithdrew.

So from his point ofview, he took the ultimate risk which he said he was never going to do and gotmarried.

And the minute he didthat, from his point ofview, this person becameunavailable, he completely shut down hissexuality.

Tocompletely, he numbed itout.

Except in hismind, in hismind, she was still the most attractive woman in theworld.

He still had all kinds of activefantasies.

Imean, he still hadlust, he just shut it all down and that was all about the emotional reality of him suddenly coming up against this reality that he neededher.

He'd risked and suddenly she wasn'tthere.

And ofcourse, that was a very familiar experience for him from hischildhood.

And then she gotangry, ofcourse, because hewouldn't.

He shut down and the whole relationship wentbad.

So these emotional scenarios can becomplex.

You have to ask what's goingon.

I think there's also a point incouples'lives, especially in our present world where they get caught up inparenting, caught up intasks, caught up in what we've decided issuccess, which is working longer and longerhours, being on your devices all thetime.

Literally, they don't pay any attention to the relationship and to the emotional music and to theconnection.

And then they suddenly expect it to be their ownbed.

Well, it's not because it all sort of goestogether.

So we don't find it that difficult to help people if they want to go through thoseblocks.

We don't find it that difficult to help people deal with their sex life differently with problems or to reawaken thatpassion.

Infact, what we find is when people start having hold me tightconversations, we don't even talk aboutsex, they tell us their sex lifeimproves.

Because they start to be able to play and take risks with each other and tell each other things they'd never been able to tell each other before and accept their own sexual desires or sensitivities in a new way and sharethem.

So then thisopenness, this emotional openness and responsiveness turns into physiological openness andresponsiveness.

It's hard to be open and physiologically responsive when you're afraid and guarding yourself all thetime.

Yeah, those two sounds almost entirely mutuallyexclusive.

Well, I would liketo, if you're open to a few moreminutes, just to hear your description since people will want to explore this more of hold me tightonline, the relationship enhancementprogram, what brought you to develop that and what can people expect if they engage withthat?

To develop it with insanity becauseit's...

The story of mylife,mostly.

Yes, it was insane out ofwork,okay.

And Ijust, I got obsessed with the fact thatwe, from my point ofview, this science and all our work had created this enormous possibility for people to have much betterrelationships, much more securefamilies, better mental health and somehow people weren't getting themessage.

I just became so disconcerted by that that Isaid, we got to do a holdmeet, we got to do an onlineprogram, this is the only way it's going to reachpeople.

So mycolleagues, bless theirhearts, I seem to have this ability to go in and say insane ideas and then people pick them up and suddenly we're working for about four years on this hugeproject.

So we createdthis, the online program is it's got littletalks, it's got three couples going through theprocess, when you see the three couplesworking, it's got little bits ofmusic, littleexercises, it'scustomized, we put a huge amount of work intoit.

I don't know of any other program like it outthere, especially not based on tested interventions and a clear science of what love relationships areabout, we get very good feedback onit.

I'm very encouraged by the fact that themilitary, the US military I believe and the Canadian military are using it now and the government of British Columbia where I live on the west coast of Canada has just bought a number ofthem.

I think they're going to give them to first responders whose relationships are having a wholetime, the heart institute is talking about creating an online program because they haven't a live program in their hospital now inOttawa.

So I'm very encouraged by the fact that institutions are picking itup, but it's supposed to take the hold me tight book and turn it into a live engaging online program that you can do with yourpartner.

And there's some research on the educational program based on hold metight.

There's no research yet on the onlineprogram, but we're still working onit.

We wantto, forexample, the three couples who agreed to be filmed throughthis, we just took the first three couples that came into the studio in Ottawa and did it withme, did those conversations with me in a very snowywinter.

So when I look at themnow, it looks middle dated those threecouples.

There's a youngcouple, a couple that are facing all kinds of other difficulties and an oldercouple.

They're stilluseful, you can stillsee, but we'veadded, we started to add conversations like we have a black couple right now with a black facilitator talking about that and talking about issues with racism and how that impacts yourrelationship.

We're trying to put new conversationsin.

You can see a couple go throughit.

You can hear me talk aboutit.

You can learn aboutit. You can hear the stories aboutit.

You can doexercises. Imean, it's really designed to lead you into being able to have your own hold me tightconversation.

And Ithink,well, I'm a bit crazy about allthis, but we need books and we need onlineprograms.

We need to educate people aboutrelationships.

It's insane that we have all this science and understanding and that we are not sharing it and putting it out so that we can have morepositive,loving, cooperative relationships and more secure families from my point ofview, it'sinsane.

So we created the program and we're going to keep adding to it and hopefully institutions will keep picking itup.

And for awhile, we did it and online wasn'tpopular.

And so it just sat there and Ithought, what do I have to do to get this stuff outthere?

But it has picked up quite a lot of people are hearing aboutit.

I think this conversation will help at least with a handful ofpeople.

Yes. So that's thehope.

And this has been so muchfun.

Dr. SueJohnson, you are blessed to talk to and I will of course add show notes with links to everything and people can find you atDr.

SueJohnson, DR SU EJohnson, J-O-H andS-O-N,Dr.

SueJohnson, dotcom. They can find the hold me tight online program at hold me tight online dotcom.

You're on all thesocial.

I'll link to those in the show notes and people can find you on Twitter atDr.

DR. That's at DR underscore SueJohnson.

Is there anything else that you would like to say and closing comments and requests of myaudience, anything at all that you would like to add before we close this first very enjoyable conversation for me at least I don't want to speak foryou.

The only thing that caused me is to say on a personal level that one of the enormous realities of my childhood was that I understood that my parents loved each other and they forkedcontinually.

That was something that distressedme, puzzledme, alarmedme, freaked meout.

And I think way back theresomewhere, sitting on the stairs in thedark, listening to thefight, I somehow felt that there had to be a betterway.

There had to be a betterway.

And I think the other thing was I adored my father and in theend, the fact that marriage didn't work destroyedhim, whereas the Second World War didn't destroy him or because of other things didn't destroyhim.

But the fact that that marriage didn't work destroyedhim.

So I knew how important relationships were and forme, when I started to see couples and I started to see patterns and then I started to link it to attachment science and I suddenly realized that there was a way that we can understandlove, that we can understand and shape our most preciousrelationships.

That is just something that I just feel like we need sodesperately.

It's so important on so many levels that I just want people to know that you don't have to fall in and out of love and that even if you've never seen this kind ofbonding, you can findit, we can show it to you on avideo, we can tell you a story aboutit, you can doit.

It's wired intous. But there's incredible hope for relationships because more and more people are livingalone, more and more people are giving up on loverelationships, more and more people are saying things like monogamy isimpossible, doesn'twork.

This just brings up despair in me because it's like we havethis, we have the way forward and we're not usingit.

So that's why I do things like make crazy online programs that take me four years andanyway, it's been amazing fun to talk toyou.

Thankyou, it's been a great time and I'm so glad that you were able and grateful that you are willing to carve out the time to have thisconversation.

I really think it's going to help a lot ofpeople, this has been incredibly helpful for mepersonally.

I've taken a ton ofnotes, I have a lot of things to follow upon.

I'm going to have somevery,very, I think some very bonding and engaging conversations with my girlfriend and this has inspired me to further seek out the tools that help us to shape the love that we need and want instead of just waiting for some miracle to fall from the sky or a disaster to fall from the sky and it's very enabling to hear you speak and to get a better understanding of your work and certainly I can only imagine to engage with the work that you'vedeveloped.

I'm very grateful to you for the time and for the work that you'redoing.

I think these tools are invaluable and never more needed certainly than rightnow.

I think that word despair that you mentioned is something that a lot of people have become intimate with in the last year but that the last year has really just magnified I think an underlying despair that many people alreadyfelt.

Iagree. I'm so glad that we were able to take the timetogether.

Thank youvery, very much and perhaps if you have time in the future we'll do around two butwe'll,we'll, we'll no need to rush that butreally, really tremendously enjoyed thisconversation.

So thank youagain. You'rewelcome.

Lovely to talk toyou. Lovely to talk to you and you asked wonderful questions so I appreciatethat.

Thank you somuch.Oh,my, my pleasure entirely and for everybodylistening, I'll have links to everything in the show notes as usual at Tim.blog forward slash podcast and until next time thank you forlistening.

Heyguys, this is Timagain.

Just one more thing before you take off and that is five bulletFriday.

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[Tim Ferriss: Insights on Life Transitions, Relationships, and the Science of Attachment]-[#747: Seth Godin and Dr. Sue Johnson]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Evolution of the Tim Ferriss Show

Seth Godin: Navigating Transitions and Finding Meaning

Embracing Failure and Change

Entrepreneurship vs. Freelancing

Dr. Sue Johnson: The Science of Attachment

The "Hold Me Tight" Conversation

Redefining Intimacy and Sex

Conclusion: The Importance of Connection

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript