Let’s Talk Love Podcast Season 4 Episode 8 with Jordan Dann | Transcript

13.07.23

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

Robin Ducharme | Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Love. Today I shared time with Jordan Dann, a dynamic psychoanalyst, author, speaker and educator from New York. Jordan has advanced training as a consult therapist, somatic experiencing practitioner, and imago relationship therapist. I have been interested in learning more about somatic therapy, and I've been following Jordan's work for a few months now. She is an excellent teacher, and very easy to learn from. Jordan helps clients come into their bodies and go into deep awareness of the present moment into a meta awareness. She describes some simple and tangible ways of doing this during our chat. Jordan has a beautiful way of explaining why we enter into intimate partnerships to heal parts of ourselves. And by being dedicated to a more conscious way of being can lead to healing, deeper connection, and a collective betterment of all of our relationships. I so enjoyed our time together. And I hope you do too. 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, everyone, and welcome to this episode of Let's Talk love. I'm so happy to have our bright and beautiful guest Jordan Dann with us today. Hello, Jordan.

Jordan Dann | Hello

Robin Ducharme | I'm so happy to have you and I meet you. I've been reading your workbook going through it and learning from you for months and kind of just getting myself prepped for today. I just I really have been looking forward to learning from you and working with you. So this is a great pleasure.

Jordan Dann | Oh, well, the same goes. We're mutual appreciation society. You appreciate the work that you're doing. And I've been looking forward to this conversation with you. So it goes both ways.

Robin Ducharme | So I would love it if you can tell us about your history here with your, you've got like such a diverse career path. I love that when I when I meet somebody like myself that has had quite a few different careers. But each one is a stepping stone to where you are now. And I think all these gifts that you have have brought you to where you're at. So tell us I know you're an actor, you've done some like coaching with body and speech therapy. Tell us about that journey.

Jordan Dann | Yeah, well, I love your starting place. I have a colleague who talks about hybrid professionalism. And our our professional identity and our roles are more than just our title.

Robin | Yes.

Jordan | And I really, yeah, I feel so grateful for the, you know, I see it, I see it as a kind of one straight spine, but it's also a windy road. And, you know, I think my love of theater was really born out of a psychological impulse of growing up as an only child of feeling moving a lot as a young child. And so having to start over and make community and make relationships again and again. And theatre really became this kind of universal home a place where no matter where I was, I could go and I kind of had a feeling that that was going to be my tribe. I kind of knew, you know, you can move. I think this is true, probably of any professional interest or craft, that there are cultural norms that translate from place to place. And so I could always no matter where I had moved to go to the theater and find my people. And, you know, theater is so much about relationship. It's the relationship of the world of the play. It's the relationship, understanding the relationships between all of the characters, really diving deeply into the internal world of those different characters and understanding how those relationships function or don't function in the world of the play. And so, that eventually brought me towards, you know, trying, I was in I was in a band for several years and toured the country. I was also teaching yoga and trying to be an actor. And at a certain point, trying to piece together all of those different interests, I realized were kind of in conflict with having the kind of financial life and stability that I really wanted, which is when I went and did a MFA in theater education with a focus and Linklater voice technique and Grotowski physical theater. And because I had really started to understand that my way into acting was really through my body. And as I started to kind of discover that and explore the dimensionality inside of a theater and acting craft in relationship to my body, and started teaching simultaneously as I was working with students, and really the voice work that I taught was Linklater voice technique, it's really a process of as the body is the instrument for the voice. And that we're really invoice as self. And that were really in a process of freeing the body from extraneous tension to provide maximum freedom for self expression. And as I was coaching and working with students, and working with their bodies, what I just continued to discover is unprocessed trauma, and all of this out of awareness, psychological material. And at a certain point, the doing the work for the application of a play or a monologue stuffing interest in to me. And I felt like I was having to stop the work that I was really interested in. And that felt most important. And so I that's how I then pivoted and made my way towards Gestalt, really training, additional therapy and becoming a psychoanalyst. Wow.

Like you're working with these actors, and they're, they're getting, they're realizing this profound stuff that's coming out through the work you're doing with them. And then it's like, then you want to focus on this role, like never know, what do you do go back into the trauma. Which is really, really important. I like I really love that. So yeah,

yeah. And there's a parallel there, you know, more, the more awareness an actor has of themselves, the more access they have to all of themselves. And the more access they have to all of themselves, the more power the more creativity, the more presence that they have. And the same thing is really true for me. Yeah, exactly.

Robin | Right. So it's, it wasn't until I mean, you know, we've been doing this with the company for over three years. And I have to say, in the last, it really has only been that long, maybe even not that long that even the term somatic therapy has really just taken off. And I myself am not an expert in somatic therapy, I'm not an expert in really any any what I'm doing, like I mean, I'm introducing the experts and learning from you, so that we can share this information and understand it more. And so, I think you did explain a little bit based on the work that you're what you've just been, you've been talking about. So can you explain what somatic therapy is that we can understand that?

Jordan | Yeah, so somatic therapy is a kind of under it's an umbrella term for lots of different modalities. Somatic Experiencing Gestalt Therapy EMDR, Sensorimotor. EFT any modality of therapy that really attends to the felt sense in the body is kind of falls under the category of somatic therapy. And you know, I really I have a teacher who says he's a Gestalt therapists purist, and he says, all these newfangled modalities are really just derivative of Gestalt therapy. And, you know, Eugene Gendlin really is kind of one of the pioneers around attending to the body as the starting place for really attending to emotional experience, attending to our needs arise out of the ground of our body. So our our body is our nearest environment. And the the, more sensitive our relationship is with listening to the wisdom arising from our body. The more we know ourselves, the more we know, what we want to move towards and what we want to move away from But additionally, you know, I think I think the popularity that has arisen is out of this kind of cultural understanding of trauma and somatic therapies, effectiveness to working with trauma, because we're really working directly with the nervous system, we're looking to restore a felt sense of safety. And as we do that, especially in the context of a safe relationship, because someone, you know, of course, there are different categories of trauma, there's shock, trauma, and then there's developmental trauma, most of us have some developmental trauma, some attachment or relationship trauma, from our pasts. And the more we can come into a felt sense of safety and be in a safe relationship, the more we can start to really discover these parts of ourselves that have been out of awareness and also start to work with implicit memory, and to process and integrate whatever is unfinished or out of awareness from our from any traumatic experience, whether that's singular or repetitive.

Robin | I think even just the word trauma, or even that concept doesn't ring for a lot of people. Maybe first maybe for a lot, but maybe for some, they're just like, I don't I don't have trauma. I had a great upbringing, my parents are still together, let's just say this example, not mine. I have never had like a really traumatic experience in my life. Like maybe it's in a couple of car accidents. Like I'm just giving examples of maybe somebody that comes in, but they're having a heck of a time in their relationship. So they're coming to you, because maybe they're having a hard time even bringing in a really good positive, healthy relationship, or the relationship that's just full of turmoil. So how is it that you are talking with your clients about trauma in that respect? And then helping is a big question. Right. And then helping them with with what's going on in their in their lives?

Jordan | Yeah, I mean,

Robin | Like, I think trauma is misunderstood. Would you not say that Jordan?

Jordan | Well, yeah, I mean, because we traumas part of the human experience.

Robin | Yeah. So this is what you talk about in your book, which I was like, I read that, and I was like, yeah, that makes sense. But then do some people understand that? I don't know.

Jordan | Um, no, I don't think so. And I think, you know, part of the challenge is, or the problem is, because of social media, because of the internet, we now have this, like, over abundance of access to content and to kind of how I think how these concepts and terms get popularized, and then synthesized and then kind of integrated into the culture. And so often, when that happens, it really lacks nuance. It lacks a really kind of grounded and diverse engagement, actually, with the concept itself. It's like, it's this is, you know, it's like Tiktok university or kind of therapy wise.

Robin | TikTok University, that's good.

Jordan | And, you know, my clients will use these terms like gaslighting or narcissism. And it's, I mean, I think this happens with language in general, but there's a complete lack of actual engagement with the experience of that,

Robin | Right.

Jordan | So which then ends up kind of further polarizing us it's like, you're a narcissist, you're gaslighting me, instead of finding the nuance of our language to really talk about our experience. And I think the same thing is true with trauma. It's like it's become this kind of normalized concept that nobody a lot of people aren't really engaging with, specifically in relationship to their own experience, but we're bio social creatures. I mean, you wouldn't say to a dog, a dog hasn't experienced trauma, because you see them shake, shake their body. Anytime they've had stimulus that has overwhelmed them. They shake as a way to come back into regulation. Animals are doing this all the time. They are. They are processing and regulating their bodies just because of you know, I think the gift that they have is that they don't have a brain that will they do have brains but they don't have the developed brains that humans have. And so, I really like to think of, you know, I think that trauma is better to be thought of, as probably, you know, any human being that moves through the world is going to have some experience that feels overwhelming, hard to process too much too soon, too fast or too little, not enough, not at all. And when that happens, there is most likely going to be some lingering effect. And to be able to pay attention to what that effects might be, which is going to be to some experience of triggering, a feeling of overwhelm, a feeling of fear, a feeling of freeze a feeling a fight or feeling of flight. And when that happens, we have to start to get introspective and curious with our own process of, oh, this has a real effect on me, what are the roots of this, this present stimulus?

Robin | Yes. And so your workbook, I'm gonna hold it up for those of you that are watching this. And we're going to look at it during the IG live to, it's awesome, because in the beginning, there's a lot of education on really what somatic therapy is. And then it goes through all these exercises that I'm sure you're working with your clients to actually help them. Like you talk about noticing, right, that would be an example of a lesson that you teach in your book about, like, we have to learn the language of noticing, you say, just beginning to notice instead of reacting, well calm the brain, right the amygdala. And so we have to begin to notice instead of making meaning, storytelling, reacting or interpreting, which is like such a natural thing to do, like so many of us are, like going down this rabbit hole of making up our minds and our minds are playing tricks on us. And and, and use and talk you talk about pursuing a negative bias. So how does somebody like start to begin to this is about mindfulness, right? And beginning to notice. So can you give us an example of that, Jordan? And how, first of all, like, how it takes such a tendency for us to begin storytelling and being in the negative bias versus noticing? And how when you start noticing, how can that make such a big difference?

Jordan | So I would even take this a little bit of a step further to, to, you know, I think mindfulness can lose a little bit of meaning. Often, when I do a somatic settling in a client will say, oh, thanks for that meditation. I'm like, nope, this isn't, we're not doing meditation, we're doing actual active sensory awareness of ourselves in the present moment. And being, being even starting to be aware of being aware, meta awareness is the like, I'm able to be aware that I'm aware. And when we when we do that, we are really kind of rooting ourselves in reality, the reality of now, as opposed to being driven by all of these kinds of forces of belief and story that are all a result of our past experiences.

Robin | We're not present or not being present.

Jordan | Yeah. So even right now, I have my shoes off, I'm feeling the quality of the carpet underneath me. I'm aware of my feeling of my fingers touching each other. And then what happens with awareness is kind of as you enter into awareness, there's a moment to moment experience of new awareness that emerges. So now I'm aware of the colors behind you in this kind of beautiful orange theme. And as I'm aware of the orange theme, I can feel because orange releases endorphins, endorphins. I know that because I love color. I feel this rush up through the center of my core. And I'm aware of my voice just getting more full. And now it's up here a little bit. So it's like we're really tracking how each piece of awareness in the moment expands into more awareness. And now, even just after doing that tracking verbally with you, I can I feel more present here now. I feel more weighted. So you know, I think, oh, awareness can start anywhere we can start with awareness outside. And often for people that feel quite overwhelmed by their felt experience or by anxiety or whatever the the feeling inside their body. Actually starting with outside awareness is a great beginning. But this ongoing practice of awareness, the importance of that is because we can start to have choice. Because these cognitive biases, you know, these beliefs, these stories, the that our drive that are usually driving us and keeping us out of awareness in the present, are also driving our behavior. And so we are, not only am I believing if you're my partner, not only am I believing that you are dismissive, I'm trustworthy, I'm gonna then behave towards you as if that's the truth of who you are.

Robin | Yes. Oh, boy. Yeah, anyway, that's coming from the past. Okay, so I've got a few examples of what I have experienced, which I think are like, wasn't okay, the first time I experienced like, something that I thought, wow, there's something hidden in my body that I didn't know was there. And I think this is what you're helping, you must be helping people do and your practice. So I was doing a five rhythm therapy weekend with one of my good friends. And it was a big group of us just wildly dancing in Vancouver all all week, like just like pumping the music and you're just freely moving, right. You're and it is about being in your body, and getting out of your head and just seeing what your experience. And at one point in time on like, day two, I, like I'm happy, I'm elated. I'm debt, everything's feeling great. And then all of a sudden, I just felt immense sadness. And I started crying. And I had no idea why I was crying. I had no clue. And I sat down. At that moment, it was just trying to, I'm trying in my head to process what I'm crying. But there's nothing coming to me. It's not like a memory that was locked in, or, but it was something that my body was holding on to. And so this is this. Can you talk to us about that? Jordan, please? Because it's like, we our bodies have all the memory? Right?

Jordan | Yes, our body keeps the score,

Robin | Our body keeps the score. And, and so it's important that we, and we may not even there's no reason for it, there's no mind, you can't put your mind or reason to it. But it is, this is why it's so important to get into your body and try to release stuff that may be holding you back in some way. Is that how is that a good way to say it?

Jordan | Yeah, I mean, so we process, you know, what happens when we experience trauma, when we experience any stimulus that is overwhelming, is that, you know, our brains are processing, I can't remember something like 4 million bits of information at any given moment. And so what happens is our window, our awareness, kind of narrows, and we're just focused on survival. And meanwhile, there are all these parts of ourselves that go out of awareness. And so really, that becomes implicit memory. So, you know, there's, I can say that there's, it's a little challenging because you're because with your emotional experience, because, yes, you had some experience of my body had to release something of some feeling inside and I can't attach it to any stimulus or rationale. I'm going to try to come up with an example that feels like it's going to respond to this question, which is, let's say I have a patient who had a parent who was very volatile and would become kind of physically threatening with them. That are the client might be just in touch with the fear the overwhelm the terror. But as we can really, really slowly start to work with a little bit titrate work with a little bit of that memory and keep coming back to the to the body. What might emerge is a a huge wave of aggression, of wanting to punch of wanting to screen what also might emerge as a part of frozen part and really attending to that frozen part, and allowing that part to, to, to fall to actually start to thaw and to feel processed or movable again, there might be an expression that wanted to come through that of responding to that person. So these are, but actually what all the client might be aware of, is, I'm terrified. And so with enough support, and time and space, we can start to make more space for you know what I like the multiplicity of self, we have so many threads of our experience and of parts of ourselves, that without time and space, don't get to complete. And without that completion, we're still living in the being driven by the fear of the past, with that is actually then driving our behavior and our thoughts and our experience in the present. So you win, we need a collaborative other in order to have that support to start to come into awareness about what has been out of awareness.

Robin | Yes. A collaborative other.

Jordan | Yeah. And so, you know, Freud is the first person who gave us this conception of the repetition compulsion. It was a, it, he really observed something crucial, but left out the body. And I really see this as like, this is the beautiful design of human beings, is that we're looking to complete that which is unfinished. You know, Freud talked about it in a mastery structure, which is we're trying to master what we haven't been able to master before. You know, there's this ubiquitous quote of we marry our unfinished business, you know, and I think so many people see that as a negative thing. I see it as this beautiful design of nature of what an opportunity that we are moving towards what is familiar, what what is unfinished, in the attempt to reclaim on reclaim undeveloped, lost parts of ourselves and become more whole.

Robin | Wow

Jordan | I think that's the best way to understand is like, what a brilliant human experience that we all share. That is part of our evolution and healing.

Robin | So let's talk about this because you did you posted this on Instagram a while a while ago about how we are, we partner with people that are our unfinished business so that we can we don't do it consciously, right. But we do know, like, I think we're driven to heal. I feel like I've been on this healing path for It's my very first book that I that was resonating so close for me was Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with God. And I grew up very Catholic, religious. But that was a book that kind of flipped my belief system on its on its head. And it was about healing. And it was about love. And it was so much so many so many lessons. But, so your post, there's a few let's let's talk about this because ok so for instance, if one example would be if I am a caretaker, you say, I will find someone who needs to be taken care of. Right? This resonated really close to me, because I remember being little growing up. And oftentimes, I felt like I had to be the caretaker, like, things weren't going great with my parents, like, shit was hitting the fan on a regular basis. And I felt like this little person that had to step into an adult role and actually, in a way, like emotionally caretake, my parents, right. And my mom, especially like, because my dad would just skip town for a little bit, right. Or just leave for a couple blocks for a couple weeks away. So I really did feel like I and it was It wasn't that I was asked to me, I think that was just what I did. And so in my relationships, I really do step into that role of like taking care of others. And it's like this. I can do it. I'm very skilled at this, but at a cost.

Jordan | Yeah, what's the cost?

Robin | Well, the cost is that I don't feel like I'm being taken care of. And it's like Like this mothering role, which does not feel good in an intimate partnership, it's terrible. It doesn't No, I'm not here to Mother, I've got my own children, I don't need another one. Right. And I think it has wrapped into codependency. I'm still trying to figure it out during, but like, let's talk about another example would be if I am controlling you will be, you will be willing to be controlled. But what about if I was controlled? I will be yes, if I, if I was controlled as a little line, I will be controlling. Does that does that fit?

Jordan | Well, I think these kind of symmetric realities or partnership configurations that you're naming, they can work in any different number. Yes. But you know, I think what you're kind of pointing to is yes, we pick, poke, provoke, and project that which is familiar to us, we will find partners who confirm our belief of our earliest attachment experiences, and we will behave in the way I mean, here's the here's the complexity of our internal systems is we will, will behave like the we will behave like our primary caregivers, and we will behave like the young parts of ourselves, we move, you know, we move between these kinds of neurophysiological states that are this kind of orchestration of our internal system. So yeah, sometimes I will, I will feel like the criticize child and my partnership. And sometimes I will be the critical parent with my partner. And that's just,

Robin | It's just naturally learned, right?

Jordan | What we do, and with awareness, and with with really starting to get to know these parts of ourselves to pay attention to these patterns to interrogate them really. Like, I think that that's, that's the most important part, we, we are more than our patterns, we are more than our beliefs are more than our stories, there is a, beyond all of that, which we call personality, or beyond all of those kind of structures, there's something that is much more expensive, much more whole that I see is like, you know, connection to the natural world, you could call it spirit or God, you know, there is a sense of kind of unending connection that is beyond the structures of ourselves. And the more that we can tap into that, and the more we can start to go, Oh, that's not me. That's a pattern I've learned. But with awareness, I get to choose, if that's serving me? Do I keep that with me? Or do I set that aside? And is there something else? So, yeah, I really see unconscious coupling as this beautiful thing. And that we are driven by, by the unconscious by biology, we partner with our unfunded finished business. And then you know, nine months to a year we start to wake up, we start to really see who our partner is, we start to be more of ourselves. And that's when the work of self actualization begins. You know, so many couples enter into this stage, the power struggle or the end of the romantic stage, and they think, Oh, I chose the wrong person. And it's just such a myth. Because actually, I mean, I'm not denying the reality that some partnerships are not meant to last. But so often, we just we, we enter into the opportunity for conscious relationship. And what we do is we determined that that person isn't the right fit, as opposed to going, Oh, now we enter into the self actualization process, and we embrace that we are each other's mirrors, and can actually reflect each other's stuck parts triggered parts and start to collaborate and work together to actually become more of our whole selves.

Robin | I love that. Did you call it unconscious coupling?

Jordan | Yes.

Robin | Okay. Okay. So there's conscious uncoupling, but you're talking about I've never heard This before, did you talk about that the book? Did I miss that?

Jordan | No

Robin | No, I don't think so. I was like, I didn't. I don't I hadn't ever heard that before. So you're calling it unconscious coupling. So you're mean, what you're saying is like, there's two people that are entering into a relationship unconscious. Like you're, you're acting like from your primal self pretty much and you're just like hot darn. Everything's great. Like, everything gets real, pretty suit in. And then it's time to get conscious. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's good.

Jordan | Yeah, because we're being we're being drawn to our unfinished business. Yeah, that's the unconscious couple.

Robin | Yes, yes.

Jordan | And then when, when the difficulty starts to emerge, is when we when is that's the moment where we start to embrace becoming conscious.

Robin | Okay, so I just love that I really do. And I love the way you explained things. Jordan is fascinating. I just love. So let's just let's talk about signs that your relationship is over. Because we can do all the work, like let's say you are with like, you're you're in it, you are, you're very aware. And you're you're you're trying your very best to be conscious. And you're working through your own stuff. And you've you know, you're you're into counseling, and you realize, well, maybe maybe this isn't, how do you help people understand, this may not be you've got some signs, right, that you can help people identify, not just them, because I think that can be the other tendency, when you're on this path. To

Jordan | What tendency?

Robin | The tendency to internalize and this is like, this is my work, and I'm your and it's not them, it's me. And that can be that's mine. That's my tendency. I'm looking myself a lot, a lot a lot of critical of myself.

Jordan | Yeah,

Robin | Not going well,I need to fix this.

Jordan | This is where I like to set myself apart from tick tock University. I really kind of push back against red flags and pathologizing because there's so much nuance,

Robin | Yes, there is.

Jordan | I and I really see like, there are hierarchies in relationship. What can we accept? What can we accept? Where can we get our needs? Met and other places in healthy ways? You know, not breaking contract. But but or, you know, not breaking the agreement of the relationship. But, you know, Esther Perel talks about this a lot, how we have, you know, had our intimate relationships become like, the place to fulfill all our need. Yeah. I mean, that is just unrealistic, it is not sustainable. And partnerships that flourish the most are when two people can be autonomous selves, and have these outside supports relationships, communities, passions, that are like underground, well streams that then feed the space in between, because they feed each other. And then two people can show up and be in a mature kind of engagement with here are my needs, this is what I can expect from you. This is what I want to give to you. And I want to respond, but there's not a demand and a reliance that the relationship do everything. Chris Rock has this quote that I love. He has a very funny little piece of partnership. Stand up. But he says one person can move a couch by themselves, but it's much easier. Do people do it?

Robin | Right. I like that. I've heard him say That's funny. That's a funny story. And,

Jordan | You know, a lot of people will ask me, my partner will go to couples therapy, is that a red flag? Not necessarily. I worked on my part. I mean, my husband, my husband did some couples therapy with me in the beginning of our relationship. But then it was seven years of me periodically asking him to go to individual therapy. Meanwhile, I was becoming healthier, more autonomous, more differentiated. And at a certain point when I changed my tactic from being shaming grandiose and critical, I'm doing all this work and what are you doing when I shifted to it would mean so much to him to me, and I really think it would support our relationship, he then was ready. Yeah. And so it's always best if two people are willing to embrace the, my mother actually came to my masterclass the other night and she said, I don't like when you say work. Can you come up with a different word? And I'm thinking about that. Because what is a verb that captures the reality that relationships require, umm engagement, tension, energy, but isn't associated with something we don't want to do. That's why I really like self actualization is like, it's best if two people can accept that being in partnership will require their self actualization.

Robin | Ohh I Iike that.

Jordan | That they are partners in that what are deal breakers for some people, and our red flags about them getting out of relationship are not for other people. And so I do believe, you know, partnerships are systems. And there is a real reality that when one person, if one person's one partner is not on board, and one person really starts to do their own self actualization, that it does shift the system a lot. They become more regulated in their, how they approach their partner, they become more aware of language that doesn't create safety and that alienates their partner, they become more self supporting by going to therapy, learning how to be cared for, they're in therapy, leaning on developing their lives outside of the relationship, and that can shift the relational system as well. And so I think that's up to each person to determine and maybe the only, and, and at the same time, there are plenty of partnerships of people that don't need to have their relationship be an evolutionary process,

Robin | Right? perfectly happy they're both content. Yep.

Jordan | Yes, that get a lot of meaning and satisfaction from having a family from sharing domestic partnership, like, each person has to really author the authentic path that they want to walk with respect to intimate partnership.

Robin | That was so well said. So tell us about the course that you're teaching and also about your book, because I am looking forward to doing more of a deep dive in your course. And I read your book. And that's, that in itself is not you just read it. This is like an exercise in like months and months of your own third doing your own therapy.

Jordan | Yeah, you know, my book was really a little bit of a sidestep for me, because well not but yes and no, because my my real work focus on is on relationships and couples. And so when I was asked to write that the somatic therapy for healing trauma workbook, I really started to kind of think of it as the ground of developing a relationship with one's own self and with one's own body, which is the best starting place to enter into relationship from. And so the somatic therapy for healing trauma is really a workbook, it's a it's a course really, for self directed development of awareness of one's own relationship to their body to begin to be in a kind of introspective and reflective process with what are the life experiences I've had, that have had a big impact and are continuing to shake me or show up in the present. And I loved writing that book and doing a bit of a deeper dive into really, I mean, my, my mother's here again. She always says, If you want to learn something, inflict it on someone else. And I realized

Robin | Inflict on someone else. What does that mean?

Jordan | Inflict as a strong word

Robin | Teach someone else.

Jordan | So yeah, and that workbook is really a kind of collection of exercises, practical exercises that I do with my clients. My course is really my course relationship transformation. The art of rupture and repair is a really decade long curation of a combination of what has transformed my own marriage, and what time and time Again, I have seen be turnkey for couples, in navigating conflict effectively, gracefully peacefully, in understanding how their past shows up in the present. Most of the course is really structured around Imago relationship dialogue. And the course offers scripts for well, Keith and I, my husband model the dialogues, which I think is so significant because so many of us have not had the best models of relating. Many of us have had an actual, what not to do. And we have to unlearn actually what what was shown to us. And so Keith and I are really modeling kind of good enough partnership or modeling good enough, even parenting, I would say. And then also giving the giving a couple of scripts so that they can do these dialogues themselves. We have getting to know your partner's younger self and getting to know your younger self.

Robin | That's good.

Jordan | Being in these dialogues, so that each, each person can really build more metacognition, build more awareness about how their history how their respective histories show up in the present, because it's good if you know how your attachment history shows up in your partnership dynamic, it's even better if your partner and you know, because then you're triggered and you lose access to your prefrontal cortex and you lose access to understanding how hurt you got when I was looking at my phone. But my partner knows that there's a history of not being mirrored and not being listened to. And that that wound actually extends far beyond their behavior in the moment to really deep roots of the past where there was a lot of hurt. Appreciation dialogues are covered in our course how it for how to have frustration safely. Erotic dialogues, where we do a lot of work around, building sensory awareness of touch, just working with self, then building more awareness around touch with partner what erogenous zones are and what parts of each person's body are. Yes and which are no, and then really starting to have a structure to enter into talking about pleasure and eroticism that is free of blame and shame and resentment that is free of I'm always the one or you're never the one. And and also re romanticizing is another module in the course for because so many couples that are in long term, monogamous relationship, you know, move through these different chapters of first building their careers, and then having families and then their children leave, leave the nest. And suddenly, there's this discovery that, oh, gosh, we've had all of these other life enhancing priorities, and we've forgotten how to nurture our connection and nurture our relationship. So you know, romance is not a moment that happens in the beginning of our relationship. It's a skill and a practice, and understanding and making explicit caring behaviors and surprises, making explicit the ways in which each person feels cherished and adored. And romanced and bringing those practices in as a, as an ongoing, nourishing thread of how you care for your partnership. So that's the course content is extensive and really far reaching. And then the course is also each cohort. We come into community and we do these behavioral practices together. Sometimes people are coming with their partner, or they're just going there. Many people are in the course doing a self directed study to kind of call in the next relationship that they want to have, or to even process from a relationship they're leaving. And the calls are so beautiful, because they're these, you know, I like to say insight doesn't leave lead to change experience does,

Robin | Yes.

Jordan | And so you know, great couple transformation is INSIGHT Plus behavior change and the behavior change the doing something new is really what creates change. And couples really need a commitment to growth and change as part of their relationships. So, yeah, these calls are just these great opportunities to do the practices. And for people to share what they're experiencing in their body, what new insight they're gaining as a result. And I love it, it's feels like you know, teaching has always been such a passionate identity and role I love to be in. And I can't work with as many I have only have so much time in the day. And this course has been this great way for me to reach and work with more people and work with people all over the world. And it's just, just,

Robin | Yeah. And you said it, I think when you when you're able to join in group, the collective healing. This is something that we don't talk enough about, because it takes it takes a village in so many ways, right? You can read the books, you can work one on one. But when you come together with a group, and you're all there for the same, the same goal of bettering your relationship skills and your relationships, I really believe there's like this bigger healing that happens. It's beautiful.

Jordan | I'm so glad you said that. Robin, I love this gesture you did? Because yeah, you do. It's exactly that we when we come into community, we create a larger container for whatever we're moving through or transforming.

Robin | Yup so you've extended I discount for people that want to join in or listen to the podcast and it's RLR we'll make sure we put it on the show notes and we're going to talk about it the IG live and Jordan, I just, I really do love you in the work you're doing and it's such a pleasure. Thank you for being with us today.

I'm going to close with a blessing. I'm going to close our beautiful discussion with a blessing. May we come into our bodies to process the past, enjoy the now and unlock our ability to consciously choose our beautiful future. So thank you, Jordan, Dann, for being with us and I will see you soon.

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 sent. Be sure to rate and review this podcast. Your feedback helps us get you the relationship advice and guidance you need. The Real Love 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, and stewards of the land on which we work in play, and encourage everyone listening. 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