Let’s Talk Love Podcast Season 3 Episode #1 with Katherine Woodward Thomas | Transcript

22.01.19

This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.

Robin Ducharme | Welcome to Let's Talk Love. Today I was so happy to share a conversation with Katherine Woodward Thomas. She's the author of the national bestseller Calling In The One and New York Times bestseller Conscious Uncoupling: Five Steps to Living Happily Even After. Katherine is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and teacher to 1000s from all corners of the world. She walks us through her five-step process for consciously uncoupling. She says the goal of conscious uncoupling is not necessarily the restoration of justice, the attainment of restitution, or the vindication of being right. The goal of conscious uncoupling is to be free and to move forward from here empowered to create a happy, healthy, and fundamentally good life for yourself and those you love. If you are going through a painful breakup, separation, divorce, or even dealing with some negative feelings, or emotions around your ex years and years later, I really believe that this episode will provide some tools and skills, and hopefully some new insights for how to heal and move on in a very loving and generous and graceful way. Enjoy. Welcome to Let's Talk Love the podcast that brings you real talk, fresh ideas, and expert insights every week. Our guests are the most trusted voices in love and relationships and they're here for you with tools, information, and friendly advice to help you expand the ways you love, relate and communicate. We tackle the big questions not shying away from the complex, the messy, the awkward, and the joyful parts of relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharme. Now, let's talk love...

Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk Love. And I am just so happy to welcome our guest today, somebody who I have been following and learning from for so many years Katherine Woodward Thomas, Katherine, thank you for joining us today.

Katherine Woodward Thomas | Thank you so much. Thanks Robin, it's really great to be here.

Robin Ducharme | I really do love your work. And I've just I've seen the evolution and learned from you over more than a decade. And I really I'm a little bit starstruck, and I've listened to so many podcasts and read your books. And I know you've done a lot of work with Ariel Ford, who I've been following as well for so many years. And I'm just incredibly grateful for our time together today. And I just know that this is going to be an hour filled with just so much wisdom and grace and tools that we can all use in our relationship lives. So thank you, Katherine.

Katherine Woodward Thomas | Yeah.

Robin Ducharme | So Katherine, can I please, I know a little bit of your history, but I would love it if you could share with our community, your background and how you, specifically how you became a marriage and family therapist, and best-selling author and just what led you down this path?

Katherine Woodward Thomas | Well, I mean, I think like a lot of us who are here studying about healthy relationships. How we get here is we learned about love, you know, from unhealthy environments and unhealthy relating. And I think I spent my 20s and most of my 30s just kind of working on myself and sorting myself out. I had a lot of relational trauma, like so many of us do when I was younger, and I acted out a lot of really toxic patterns in love. I was very codependent, I had very low self esteem, I gave my power away as a barter for belonging. I tended to be fascinated with very narcissistic people, drawn to people with addictions, you know, I'm kind of a classic case of all the things that we've been studying what not to do, you know, for a long time. And I worked on myself pretty much full time for about 12 years. And I ended up becoming a therapist in a very organic way. I think I've always been a person who cares about people in general, and I have a strong ethic of giving back. And when I was in the 12 step program, that's one of the tenants of the 12 step program is you're sponsoring people, so you get a little bit of recovery, and you pay it forward. So that's really how I started as a teacher was kind of just sharing what worked for me. What ended up happening is I did become a marriage and family therapist, and I love therapy as a profession, but I was also doing a lot of transformational technologies. And I was doing a lot of studying of metaphysics, and I found that therapy alone was very good to heal core wounds, but it didn't necessarily help me to create something new. So what I like to say about therapy is therapy saved my life, but it didn't necessarily change my life, and I can hear the therapists cringing, so I apologize already. But what I mean by that is that therapy is mostly as it exists today and certainly when I was doing all of my own inner work, it's really largely a modality that's focused on past trauma, and clearing away trauma, you know, setting our bodies free from trauma, we're pretty advanced and hip about this now. And as a matter of fact, I would say that the predominant teaching that's in the psychological field is about how to deal with trauma, very important to do that. But when I was in my late 30s, turning 40, I still didn't have a husband, I still didn't have a family, and I still was acting out patterns as though it were bigger than me. They seemed bigger than me. I mean, I really didn't even meet people who were available. I just always met people who were kind of on their way elsewhere, a big pattern of unavailable people. Married men, engaged men, alcoholic men, I like to joke and say, gay men who wanted to explore, completely inappropriate.

Robin | Unavailable. 100%. Yeah.

Katherine | No ifs, ands, or buts about it. But of course, there's always the hope. And you know, I'm laughing about it now. But at the time, it was really painful. So here I am. At this point, I'm now in my intern years, and I'm helping people to have great relationships. And because I've done so much work on myself, and it's such an inside out experience. They're having major breakthroughs, their relationships are great, I'm coming home to my little kitty cat Clover every night, you know and it felt so unfair. But it was really inside of these metaphysical principles that I learned from Science of Mind. And also from Landmark Education, I do a lot of Landmark Education, which is really the transformative principles that Warner Earhart created, standing for a future that's unreasonable, and unpredictable, unprecedented, and beginning to lean in to discover who you need to be in order for that future to fulfill itself. So I started living that, and taking that on as my main practice. And I was cleared enough of trauma, I could see the trauma, I kind of knew my issues backwards and forwards, I could probably recite them in my sleep. But what I was looking for was the ability to create outside of my patterns. And that became really the basis of my first book Calling In The One because when I was 41, I set an unreasonable intention to be engaged by my 42nd birthday. And I played all out just like if you were a couch potato for years, and suddenly you said, I'm going to be in the Olympics, you know, just like what would that require of me, and you know, whether it's getting up at 5 am, and doing certain meditative practices, and I started visioning, and I started letting go of things and clearing away and almost like Michelangelo finding David, you know, Michelangelo describes David a David was always very interested to chip away, what was not David. So that became my orientation. And what I discovered is that when I started to source who I am from the future, everything changed quite quickly. And I did manifest a very beautiful relationship. And I was engaged before my 42nd birthday, married the next year had our daughter when I was 43, and wrote Calling In The One, which became a best seller because it worked for other people, too. I just created this course. And then 10 years into the marriage, we decided to divorce which was not the plan originally. Right? None of us.

Robin | Yes. And this is what you say in your book, Conscious Uncoupling, is you know, wrapping your mind, your heart, your whole life around this realization that you had come to know with the success, you know, and you're living and teaching, Calling In The One right for the for that decade,

Katherine | Even when I was separating from Mark I was teaching Calling In The One.

Robin | Yes. Yeah, because it works.

Katherine | Well, I had to look at our whole happily ever after, you know, the standard for the success of a marriage is really collectively that holding ourselves and each other accountable to that story. And if we don't live that story, we think we have failed, we make ourselves wrong. We think that the marriage wasn't viable to begin with. And we devalue the relationship. So when I was having that experience, the first thing I did was kind of research happily ever after. To see where that even came from. Whose, I remember the question when is it occurred to me, whose standard am I holding myself accountable to? And I found out that really when I researched it, it was that myth is only about 400 years old. First of all and it started Believe it or not in Venice, Italy, which is still kind of the romance capital of the world, right? But it really came, it came through. It came at a time when people were living with a lot of poverty, a lot of disease. There was kind of a locked-in social class if you notice, and happily ever after everybody marries up, and then they all live happily ever after, they married nobility. There was actually a law on the books at the time that forbid a commoner from marrying nobility. So they were a form of literature, it was post-renaissance, and people were literate, but they still had no money. So it really was the escapist fantasy of the day. It was like the Marvel movies that we all flocked to of the day. But it's so spoke to people that it kind of birthed something in the world. And it became, you know, very popular around the world. But now we live with it, like it's a fixed thing like God made the mountains, God made the sun and God made it so that, you know, real love is long lasting lifetime love. But here's the thing about that is that the reality is, is that most of us will not just meet one person and stay with that person for the rest of our lives. That serial monogamy is actually the new norm. And I'm not promoting that. I'm just reporting that. So what occurred to me was, we need to tell a new story about this, that holds a lot more complexity. And, you know, just as we might update our diets and our educational practices, we might update our exercise with new knowledge that's coming in, we also have to update how we part ways when we choose to leave a partnership for whatever reason. And I'm an advocate for long term love. But I'm also not an advocate of being miserable. And I'm, I'm really aware that many relationships will not last a lifetime. And so conscious uncoupling became a way of giving people a new alternative. I got lucky when Gwyneth and Chris popped it into the lexicon because it just immediately kind of went global and it and it changed the face of divorce. It was a very moving thing for me to witness.

Robin | I definitely did.

Katherine | Yeah.

Robin | And so can you tell us about conscious uncoupling? How would you explain that concept to anybody that hasn't read your book and doesn't know what that is?

Katherine | Well, so conscious uncoupling. I think when Gwyneth kicked it into the lexicon, there was an assumption that it's for two people who are probably going to do this pretty well anyway, two privileged people who have, you know, an untold amount of money. Nobody's, you know, losing their standard of living. The kids have care, the kids are protected. So it really occurred for people because it went out with Gwyneth as kind of celebrity fluff. I think that she and Chris have done that so well over the years that she has really demonstrated consistently what that is, so I'm very grateful to her for that. But conscious uncoupling, as I initially created, it, was really for the person who's brokenhearted and crushed by the end of a relationship kind of taken out by the loss of love and is obsessive, is brokenhearted, can't seem to get over it, is on that huge rollercoaster ride of rage and anger and self-hatred and despair. And, you know, I found that I didn't necessarily go through that when I parted ways from Mark or when I did, I never really parted ways from her because we share a daughter, so he's extended family now. But when we dissolved our marriage, I didn't go through that because we did that so consciously and so beautifully. But I remembered the suffering and the agony that I had been through, over and over again. So I wrote conscious uncoupling to kind of document and try and organize what Mark and I did differently. That ended up being so helpful, but I will tell you that even in a conscious relationship, what I discovered in my research, is that breakups are actually biologically based and they predispose us to going from soulmate to soul hate.

Robin | Yes, right. I would like to talk about that please, Katherine. How it's like that is even with a conscience, you're a conscious individual, you're loving, you are like in your boat, like, I can just think about people, like so like the people in our community, we are like this is our soul’s path our growth, it's about growth and betterment. And being such a great person and taking the high road, and you know, all these things, right?

Katherine | I've seen, I've seen spiritual teachers who are masters go right into the toilet with a breakup.

Robin | That's what I'm saying. But you're saying that this is biological, our minds will just go to that place. And you talk about, this is so important for us to understand that it's, this is not it's normal, right? It's something wrong with me because I'm having these hateful thoughts. And I'm just wanting, oh, I'm just you just want to revenge and all of these things that are so common.

Katherine | Across the board common. So one of the things I say to people is, look, if 1000 years ago, you wandered away from your tribe, you would probably die. So our biology has not caught up to our culture. Because we do feel like we're going to die, we feel like our life is being threatened. And many of us will go to war. And also we're so hardwired to bond. It's like nature has just hardwired us to stay together. That when we lose a love, that the obsession or this or the hatred, or the desire for revenge, all these things that people have to suffer through, and those of us who are conscious, or at least, you know, sitting on our hands, doing our best to not act out those feelings, or people who don't have the advantage of, you know, doing all of this work might just act up those feelings. And in fact, a lot of crimes of passion happen when someone's breaking up, so they're actually, the biology in our brain predisposes us to going into that place of hatred, because hatred is not the opposite of love. Hatred is just the shadow side of love. It's a very engaged emotion. You hate somebody, you are thinking of them all the time. So you're, you're substituting that positive bond, for now, you've got a negative bond. Yes. So so conscious uncoupling is about what's it going to take to actually neutralize the connection. Leave it in peace, do no harm. That's the number one tenant. Do no harm to yourself to the other person, to the children involved. I think one of the things that moved me the most when I was able to create conscious uncoupling is that I a lot of the suffering that I had in my teens, my 20s, my 30s Before I really sorted myself out, not that I'm, you know, I've arrived anywhere, but I was well enough to start to create a life that was reflective of, you know, what I needed to really be well and happy in life, and to stop acting out toxic patterns. It began with my parent’s toxic divorce, and how much they hated each other for decades. So you know, I mean, even my mother's third marriage, my mother was married four times. And her third marriage 25 years after she divorced her third husband, he was still suing her in court, because he still wanted money from her. So I know that you know, time does not heal all wounds we actually need to do that ourselves. And that so so conscious uncoupling is these five steps to being able to do that, well, you can do it alone. Or you can do it with a partner. It's beautiful when both people are willing to do the work, but most people are going to do it alone.

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Robin | And you can and the other thing that you can do is this, this is not time-sensitive. Like you said you could do his 10 years after your separation if you are still holding on to negative emotions related to your relationship. This could benefit you even 10 years later. Right?

Katherine | Absolutely. It's never too late to have a conscious uncoupling.

Robin | Yeah, and that is going to affect your relationships in the future.

Katherine | I've met people who 20 years after a really big breakup had never even had so much as a date. Because I think if you really get your heart broken, and you're shattered in that way, you know, most many people won't go back and risk that again. So conscious uncoupling is also about how to harvest the growth that's now available to you in order to trust yourself to never do that again. Right because you know, most people will say after that after a bad breakup, I don't trust men anymore. I don't trust women. I don't trust love. But what they're really saying is I don't trust myself to not give up my power, to not be dimmed down, to, you know, not go into my codependence or whatever toxicity I, I acted out because a lot of us are, you know, we're pretty healthy and together when we're not in a relationship.

Robin | That's a good point and then you get into a relationship and all of it, all is revealed because that person is there to teach you a heck of a lot about yourself. Yeah. So can we go through the five step process, Katherine? Because I listened to your book, and I have it as well on paper, but I think I loved listening to it in particular, because it's your voice, it's your teaching, and it's coming from you. I think that's just so powerful. But you say that the five step process offered in your book will serve as a blueprint that can bring out the best rather than the worst of who we are during one of the most stressful and challenging periods in our lives. And that's really what this is, right? It's, it's about if you are conscious about this, you are continuously like, cause no harm, and take the high road ethics over emotions. Right? That's really important.

Katherine | Don't create karma.

Robin | Wow, yeah.

Katherine | Don't create karma. See, if you look at all of my work, Calling In The One, and all of the transformative work I do in my learning communities, now it's all future-focused. And one of the things that I and when you break up with someone, you've lost your future, and you don't even want another future. So it's hard to say, you know, okay, from now on, I'm gonna have happy, healthy love on the other side of this, no, you want that person you want that life, you know, particularly if you didn't see it coming, and you're quite shocked. So, conscious uncoupling is keeping a positive possible future in mind as you're going through the process because studies show that those who can say might not feel it yet. But if you can say, I know that I'm going to come out the other side of this and be happy again one day, those people do much better at recovering. So that's really what conscious uncoupling is doing. It's guarding you from a crop and planting bitter seeds in your backyard. You know, because if you if you plant seeds of revenge of turning the kids against your former partner, of turning your family and friends against that person, of getting them fired from their job, or all the things that we might want to do or fantasize about doing if you really act those things out, you know, you're going to be living with the fruits of those actions for many years to come. And if you have children, they're growing up in that environment. So in order to protect the possible positive future, that we know this could actually lead to, and, and even even even get you to a place where you could have a breakthrough in love, and leave your old patterns behind and really enter into a whole new arena of what's possible for you, in terms of happiness, and health and love, you have to navigate it well. So that's really what the five steps are. And step one is about finding emotional freedom, which of course, that's the thing we do not have when we're in the midst of a breakup. You know, most people are impatient with how intense the pain they feel is and how relentless it is, or the anger, you know, it could be heartbreak with could be anger, or indignation, or humiliation, these are some very difficult feelings. And they can come and go like tidal waves, you know, it is grief, that is very severe. And it's kind of unlike any other kind of grief because the person that you're losing, is choosing to leave. It's different than I mean, it's a different distinct to grief. And if you lose someone through death, because the internalization of the person that has died is still that, they loved you so you keep the sense that that person loved you. So it's quite traumatic. It's one of the biggest traumas, as you said, that we can go through, finding emotional freedom is centered on certain abilities to learn how to hold and contain your own emotions from a deeper center. Meaning that when we went it's almost like the witness self when we meditate when you access that part of the self, and then you just turn to yourself and you say, Sweetheart, what are you feeling, you start to name your feelings, and you mirror those feelings back. That's a way of containing our emotions. You're welcoming all those big feelings in. There's a beautiful practice in Buddhism called Tong Lin, because some of the feelings that we have when we're going through a breakup are so overwhelming, they're actually hard to hold. They're almost unbearable. And so one of the things In Tong Lin, that it offers us as I tell people, breathe the feeling in, welcome the feeling into your heart. So it might be like, you know, the feeling of despair. So welcome despair into your heart, but on the out breath, breathe out a blessing for all beings in the world, right this very moment who were experiencing that with you. Right. So what we're doing is we're helping people to contain it so that they're not so reactive, and just kind of, you know, prone to take actions that they're going to later regret. There's there was a study at UCLA that really demonstrates the effectiveness of language to serve as a container for overwhelming emotions, where people were shown screens of images of people experiencing emotions, like horror, or disgust, or hatred, or rage. And they were biologically they had all sorts of things hooked up to them, they were being monitored, everything was going through the roof, really stressful to just watch those images. Another group saw the exact same images, that the name of the emotion was on the screen, and they had a much-diminished response. So if we can name the emotion, the particular emotion, and just mirror it back, I can see that you're feeling disgust, I could see that you're feeling humiliation, it begins to de-escalate. The other thing I tell people to do in step one is to turn towards the emotions in a way that allows us to welcome them in and look at, look to see what's wanting to wake up as a result of having this emotion. So for example, if you're feeling a lot of rage, the positive part of that rage is that you are, you are desperate to change something. So rage is usually an emotion because you've been violated in some way. And it usually happens when you have been tolerating things for a while, minimizing things or turning away from things and then it ends up biting you in the butt. And so to be able to take that rage and say, I will never do that, again, I will never pretend that I know that. I will never pretend that someone's not lying to me when I know they're lying to me, from now on. This is what shall be so. So now you're using that destructive emotion constructively, you're not going to act it out destructively. So this is what begins to line us up with a positive possible future.

Robin | And that in itself, that example, you are feeling the rage because of something, let's say that your partner did, let's say, let's say there was infidelity. And you give the example of Diana and Brian, in your book around how Diana was the you know, she worked nd Brian stayed home took care of the kids. And she found out that he was having an affair and wanted to divorce. And she was so full of rage and anger, which is so natural that somebody would feel those feelings like so hurt and mad, like just hurt angry.

Katherine | And now go then into the legal process. So that's a big problem.

Robin | This is what you're saying.

Katherine | Yeah.

Robin | So finding emotional freedom is, I understand the necessity of it. This could take some time, right? Because it's like at the beginning.

Katherine | Well, it's both, it's like you can get relieved in one day. If you're practicing, you can actually it's like the quick tools to use. I mean, most of us are ill-equipped to deal with these big emotions. Maybe we've never even felt them before. So the conscious uncoupling process kind of gives you the tools. That's why one of the reasons I can promise that after you do conscious uncoupling, we'd be in a much better position to have happy happiness on the other side of this is because that is one of the core skills of healthy relating is to be able to de-escalate your reactivity and hold and contain your own inner experience enough to actually have a conversation with your partner for clarification, for boundary setting, for requests, all of that. Where you're able to not just believe everything you feel and go into attack or feeling so threatened. So it's each of the steps of conscious uncoupling actually teaches core skills that are very basic necessities for healthy relating moving forward.

Robin | And what you were saying Katherine around the rage, you're going in and going into it and under it and the self accountability piece is very important. And that's really what so much of your book is about to and all these tools are about. It's like this relationship is 50/50. There's 50. There's one, there's you and the other person. And you're both accountable.

Katherine | Yeah. But you know, the truth is we're not there at all. It's like 100%,

Robin | I know. That accountability piece, even for that feeling, it's like, I will never that rage is showing. There's a lesson in there. I'm never going to let this happen again. I'm not going to ignore my intuition around maybe, maybe, Diana, I don't know the story. 100% it was just a story you told in the book. But maybe she did that. She was getting clues along the way that something was going on. And she wasn't speaking up or ignoring or who knows.

Katherine | Well, it goes into step two now. So we organically you just organically went there, which is reclaiming your power, which you know, all sounds really sexy and great. But reclaiming your power is about personal responsibility, always responsibility and power, kind of the flip side of the same coin. So what we're looking at here is, first of all, most people are obsessing. And they're going over every little detail. And they're trying to understand what happened and what was really going on. So there's, you're almost held captive by your need to try and make sense of this experience. Because here's what trauma is. Trauma is when something happens that you cannot wrap yourself around, you can't integrate it, it's kind of bigger than you. So it's very, so the obsessive kind of trying to figure it all out is is us trying to come to grips with the trauma. However, most of us do this from a victimized perspective. So we're only seeing it through a victimized lens, and we're not seeing it in a way that's actually going to complete in a healthy way for ourselves. So I don't know that people are ready for the 50/50 conversation, but I like to play this little trick. And I say, okay, even if it was 97%, the other person's fault, let's look at your 3%. Because that's where the gold is. And I think that those of us who have these patterns of giving our power away or disappearing ourselves, or people pleasing, or not speaking up all of these kinds of almost invisible ways that we throw ourselves under the bus. You know, they're not overt crimes, and so we minimize how toxic they actually are. And it's really important to look at your 3% and get the cost of them. These are not small things, you know, the giving away of your power in the relationship. Now a lot of us are up against it because we don't have a lot of models in the external world of love between equals, as my friend Polly Young-Eisendrath says, you should have Polly on too, she's really wonderful. So Polly has a book called Love Between Equals, which is wonderful. And it really describes she's a psychotherapist super smart. So you got to, you know, you got to she writes for therapists, so you have to be willing to kind of get through some of her, you know, clinical language. But what she's saying is really important, which is she's really pointing out that love between equals is a new phenomenon. It's really new.

Robin | Even though we want to, we aspire for this equal partnership, we're not operating like that.

Katherine | Well, what it is, is, you know, all creation begins with desire. So the hunger that all of us have to be met to be seen to be with someone who is an equal, who's a best friend, a spiritual partner who knows all of this hunger is what's driving our development. We're having to grow to become who we would need to be, in order to have those relationships and sustain those relationships. So in step two, what we're doing is we're really looking at the 3%. And we're identifying how will I need to grow in order to have this never happen again. And that's going to restore confidence in yourself. And it's not a vague thing, like, oh, I need to be a more loving person, because I don't really know what that means. But it might mean, I need to learn how to fight with someone when I'm upset without humiliating them, and to sustain respect. So how would I do that? Because I can see the cost of that, or I need to have a conversation with someone before I start sleeping with them. So that my expectations don't get out of control. I actually am related to what they're available for. Right, like what's going to change in how I show up in a relationship moving forward from right this moment on? Yes, and that begins to restore a sense of power. Now it's painful. And I like to remind everybody that life lessons are insanely painful. But if you know and, so are heartbreaks and You only want to have to learn it once. So you really want to get engaged. And that might mean a learning curve, like what book? Do I need to read? What teacher do I need to follow? What course do I need to take? You know, so we're all students of love between equals, of healthy love, of love that sustainable over time. This then leads to the third step. And the third step is breaking the habit and healing your heart. So this is where we look at, we step back from that particular situation, we say, Okay, where has this happened before? What's the pattern in my life? Where people leave, or they betray me, or they don't show or they humiliate me in some way, or I'm with narcissists, and I'm the invisible one. And the moment I have the courage to ask for what I need it ends. Like whatever that pattern is. You want to look at the overall kind of the total story of your life in this domain. And then you ask yourself, what am I making this breakup mean about me? To begin to understand the beliefs that lie under the pattern. So it and I call that your the original break in your heart, your source fracture story.

Robin | Yeah, the original break in your heart. I when I read that, I was like, Oh, yeah.

Katherine | Right. And it could have been as a child.

Robin | Yes. That was a learning for me when you said that, because it could have been a moment, it could have been an experience you had, but maybe not a long term thing that happened as you were a child, something like that, right?

Katherine | Well, trauma comes you know, as an acute trauma, like somebody dies, or it's a developmental trauma, something that happens over time, or you're not getting what you need. But we make decisions about who we are. See, when we're children, the task is to form identities. And so when these things are happening around us, because we have imperfect people, in our family, or imperfect people raising us, or imperfect teachers, we obviously make it mean something about us, and what's possible for us in life. So you know, there's basically 21 major ones that are most common, I'm not good enough, I'm not safe, I'm alone, I'm not loved, I'm not wanted. So we're looking for the meaning that you're making, to start to identify, really that core source fracture story that's kind of been at the heart of that toxic pattern all along. Because the moment you get disappointed, the moment you get hurt, or even the moment your own, you start to need someone in a way that you're not really sure they're there for you. It's very easy to drop down into this sense of self. That's the phenomenon of, you know, I'm in an adult relationship but somehow, internally, I'm five, and I'm trying to pretend that I'm an adult.

Robin | Yes. You're in your child self.

Katherine | You're in your child self, and it's hard to get out of it. So again, if you can name it, what's the core belief? Where is that center? Where are the emotions? Beliefs are not in the brain. They're not even out here, beliefs are in the body, they tend to be pointing down here. Like right here, they tend to be here or there in you know, sometimes they're here in the heart, but they really live in a particular emotional center that gets activated, when we get disappointed or afraid. And so if you, you know, if if you have and it can happen, like in an instant, somebody, you know, said they're going to be there at 7, and they show up at 7:15, you know, at 7:01 or 7:05. "Oh see, I'm not important." You start making meaning of these things. So one of the hardest things about a breakup is that they are an insult to identity. That's the hardest thing. And that's actually the source. I think of prolonged grief when people are just not getting over it. Yes, because of the way that they internalize the I'm not good enough for that person. Or the I'm not wanted, it's a retriggering of that old source fracture story, and that's what we're stuck with. So I distinguish the difference between grief which is a natural occurrence when you lose someone you love, and when you lose a relationship that you love, yes, that you hoped would last forever. And you're gonna go through all of the stages of grief. And generally, those should pass within a few weeks or a few months. But the what doesn't it pass is the core identity that you're left with. So step three is all about naming that identity and challenging it. Because the identity is formed by a three year old you or a five year old you or an 11 year old you. Before you lack any sophistication or ability to hold complexity. It's not that I'm not lovable, it's that my mother is chronically depressed and needs to be on medication, or under the guidance of a psychiatrist. So we don't have the ability to say that as children we just know, I'm not loved and no one is there for me, no one, no one values me enough to love me. And that's what we bring in. So here's the other piece of this, this gets very sophisticated. This is why people study with me for years because if you really go into the teaching, but I do offer it as a really important part of conscious uncoupling is that when you drop into that center, for example, I'm all alone here, you get triggered, somebody's not showing up the way you want. You feel alone. It's like an old comfortable sweater, you know this story, you actually start showing up in that relationship from that center, and you covertly generate aloneness in the relationship. So for example, you might not engage in conflict directly. Because you're convinced that conflict is the beginning of the end. But if you study relationships, and John Gottman was the one who, you know, described this if you study that, he says that relationships bond through conflict So if you're avoiding conflict, you've never have the opportunity to bond very deeply, which makes you very easy to leave. So we're actually the source of our own patterns. And this is really deep work in consciousness, but I've filtered it down so that it's very accessible. And what we need to do is number one, we need to challenge this belief that I'm alone, by actually saying No sweetheart, you say to yourself, you're not alone, I'm here with you. And the deeper truth is, I didn't come here to be alone. And I have the power to learn healthy relationship skills, which will allow me to create much healthier, long lasting bonds. Right. So you course correct your unconsciousness, and you start to identify new ways of showing up. And then the final piece of step three, which I really love, is what I call a soul to soul conversation with your former partner. Were in your mind’s eye.

Robin | Yes. Oh, that was so powerful.

Katherine | You take back your power, you say, Look, I know, you call that person in, if they're dangerous, you put a firewall, so you're safe. You call that person in. And I say, I tell people if they're afraid of that person to make them small. It's magic. They're like half the size of you so that you're towering above them. And you say to them, I apologize for showing up as less than who I am. And I want to really introduce who I really am. And then you imagine them getting it so that you're completing that experience of humiliation and being dropped down again into that false center. So those first three steps of conscious uncoupling are all internal, very deep internal work. Now you're ready to deal with the person. And so and the relationship and the last two steps, four is actually my favorite step. It's called becoming a love alchemist. And it's about really being a leader of love. Now, if you have children, you definitely want to do this. But if you're a spiritual person and you don't want to give someone with a lesser consciousness, the power to determine who you are and who you are going to be. You show up magnanimous, you show up generous. You do yourself forgiveness work, you clear the field with them. And you want to create a new intention for the relationship, because you just lost a future with that person, or hoped for future. So you have to create a new future. Now, some people don't want to be connected to that person, because what they did was so hideous, and they don't have children. So they might say, Okay, well, the new way I'm going to hold that person in my heart is as my dark guru.

Robin | Oh, yeah. I like that.

Katherine | I mean, I don't know about you. But I've learned more about love from the absence of it than I have ever from the presence of it.

Robin | Wow. Yeah.

Katherine | Or at least equal amounts.

Robin | Yeah. This is also an area where this is this was something that I thought was just so fascinating, which we all know to be true, because we've experienced it before. If you know, somebody you know is breaking up, you've got your people around, you break up with somebody, and all of a sudden you've got people already going, Oh, and they're trying to make this bad story about that person in protection of you. Like to stand in solidarity with you.

Katherine | Oh yeah "I never liked him anyway."

Robin | No. And then all of a sudden, they you know, they're trying to villainize your ex and it's like, no, that is not what's happening here.

Katherine | Not how we're doing it. Yeah.

Robin | And that's a very important, important part of conscious uncoupling is making a stand. It's almost like you are standing up for the other person. That's if you're able to, we're just saying, you know, I don't want that story to be circulating, I have respect for this person, or I'm not, I'm not going there.

Katherine | Well, that's the way you value the relationship. You know, because ultimately, if you settle for devaluing someone as a way to try and separate from them, it's understandable. But it leaves you compromise because it means that you have bad judgment, it means you can't trust yourself, it means that you just spent however much time just barking up the wrong tree, there is no value to that connection. So in conscious uncoupling, and this, you're getting into step five, which is creating your happily even after life. And it's about training people that they don't have to do that, to show their love for you, that you got the love, and that you're doing this in a conscious way. So everybody wins moving forward, we're not going to overly simplify it, make it just one person's fault, that you were both, you both have things to learn. And that the most help they can give you is to pray for both of you, that you're in your highest self. So again, we're back into not creating karma it is actually you know, it's hard to not do it. And I know that because I want to do it. You know, I remember doing it like it's just, it's so organic to us to kind of bad mouth that person. But it ends up costing us big time because studies have shown that rejection. And what we're doing when pulling on people, is to get them to reject that person. It's a covert way of kind of having revenge or punishing them in some way. And it's understandable. I mean, we're all hardwired for fairness, when somebody doesn't show up in a fair way we want it's just human to want restitution for that. So it's, it's a big lesson to let life give each person what their due. I'll tell you in Calling In The One I tell this story about, I tell this story about a resentment that I was carrying towards a former boyfriend that was very intense. And if I told you the whole story, I'd have you hating on him, just like I was hating on him. I mean, he did something really nasty, that ended up really impacting my life. And I was devastated. And I was really struggling to let it go and to forgive him because I didn't want to take it into my next relationship I was calling in the one. And so I was meditating, I was actually with Michael Beckwith on a three day meditation retreat. And I'm meditating for like, 12 hours, you know, and I'm trying to and I'm wrestling and I'm trying to let this go. And I couldn't do it. So I took a walk outside and look up to the sky. There's this beautiful moon up in the sky, and I was kind of in this altered state anyway. So I felt like there was this heavenly host of angelic beings surrounding me. And this is what they said to me. They said, Katherine, you are right, that a great debt is due you. But if you hold on to him for restitution to the debt, you're limiting us from being able to give you what is your due.

Robin | Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Katherine | So, in that moment, I was able to let it go. And I have to tell you, that blessing, after blessing, after blessing, after blessing came to me very quickly, within a matter of a year, I met Mark, I got married, then I had my daughter, then I wrote a book that became a national bestseller. I'd never written anything before. It was just I opened a healing arts center, I bought my dream home. It was just one thing and my life had not been that magical before. So I really learned that, you know, to let the universe straighten things out, to let the universe do the, you know, bring people, bring everyone. If you really don't like that person, you say, let us all get our due.

Robin | Wow. I really, I really like that. So the three ways that you say to help me, will help create well being in your social circle and people around you when you are going through this. Number one is maintaining dignity. Number two is showing restraint in how you relate your story. I think that's good, that's important. And number three is offer clear guidance to others on how they should behave. I really think that's important.

Katherine | Yeah and the maintaining dignity thing. It's like it's really countering this assumption that you know, something's wrong. or one person is a villain or you must have chosen incorrectly. So there's like this feeling that many of us get of feeling humiliated by the breakup. And just know that you have nothing to be ashamed of. That this just happens in human relationships. And there's a way that you know, none of us want to go through this. But if you do have to go through it, there is a way to do it. That brings us out the other side, wiser, and more equipped to love and be loved in a healthy happy way. And karma free.

Robin | Yes. Oh my gosh, Katherine, I just love your book, and everything, all the work you're doing. And I want to close with a quote from your book. And it really we did talk about this already about love stories. But you say, what love stories can we even point to where living happily ever after, included a kindhearted honoring breakup, where the love that was shared, changed forms, and was blessed and celebrated by all? A breakup where neither party was blamed or shamed. Yet both people were left valued and appreciated for all they'd given to one another, and the community as a result of their union. I just thought that was the most beautiful, and it really is what we're talking about it's time to change our love stories. Right? And that's something that when I divorced, my first husband, that was our story, and it still is, and I continue to tell my children even show them. I mean, I see my former husband on the, you know, on the grass and watching our daughter plays sports, and it's like, in the end, we're hugging saying love you before we part ways because we love each other very much. And I will always love him. We shared so many years together, and we still have children, but I really genuinely love him very deeply. I just don't want to spend my life as his wife anymore and that's okay. And really, I feel like that is that is 100%. Okay, just because we changed the terms of our relationship, why? Really, when it comes down to it, there's so much judgment. And I don't want to be the judge and jury for somebody else's relationship. Just like I wouldn't want that from other people in my relationship life.

Katherine | That's right, and I think it's important to say that we're both very happy and loved now.

Robin | Yes, we are.

Katherine | It's like when you leave a relationship and you do all of that you're conscious and there's no like bombs in the ground, you know that someone's gonna step on accidentally, you're not dragging a lot of incompletions into the next relationship. You're really free to be happy and loved moving forward.

Robin | Yeah. Well, I hope that anybody that's going through a breakup, or if you've already if you have gone through a breakup, and you still haven't really, really 100% freed yourself from any negative emotions around it, that they read your book or take your course because you offer courses and just learn from you because it's an amazing work, Katherine, so thank you so much.

Katherine | Thank you so much.

Robin | Please visit realloveready.com to become a member of our community. Submit your relationship questions for our podcast experts. At reallovereadypodcast@gmail.com We read everything you send. Be sure to rate and review this podcast. Your feedback helps us get you the relationship advice and guidance you need. The Real Love Ready Podcast is recorded and edited by Maia Anstey. Transcriptions by otter.ai and edited by Maia Anstey. We at Real Love Ready, acknowledge and express gratitude for the Coast Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play, and encourage everyone listening to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded and continue to steward the land that you live on as well.

Transcription by https://otter.ai & edited by Maia Anstey