In this episode, we speak with the licensed therapist and relationship expert, Lair Torrent LMFT, about how we may enrich our relationship with a romantic partner by moving away from putting a spotlight on symptoms and learning to bring our best selves to the relationship. Lair Torrent is a clinically trained licensed marriage and family therapist. His graduate work focused on couples at Mercy College under the mentorship of world-renowned marriage & family therapist, Dr. Evan Imber-Black. He’s the bestselling author of, “The Practice of Love: Break Old Patterns, Rebuild Trust, and Create a Connection That Lasts”, which was published in February of 2022.
Introduction: Romantic relationships and love, two topics that bring up a wellspring of emotions. In today's conversation, we speak with the licensed therapist and relationship expert Lair Torrent about how we can enrich our relationship with a romantic partner by moving away from putting a spotlight on symptoms and learning to bring our best selves to the relationship. Lair is a clinically trained licensed marriage and family therapist. His graduate work focused on couples at Mercy College with the support of world renowned marriage and family therapist, Dr. Evan Imber-Black, the best-selling author of “The Practice of Love: Break Old Patterns, Rebuild Trust and Create a Connection that Lasts”, which was published in February of 2022. What follows is our conversation on important ways in which couples rekindle the romance and grow their relationship.
Moderator (M): Lair - thanks so much for being here we really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to this this conversation and specifically around relationships. And I wanted to have you on this podcast for some time now so I appreciate you being here.
Guest (G): Thanks for having me. When we talk about relationships what are some of the biggest problems or challenges that you see today you know based on your work in in the field yeah so any Google search will tell you the top five top ten things that plague couples the most. And those were all the communication issues, sex, what do we do with the money, how do we take care of the kids, and from my mind and from my experience those are all very topical. Those are actually symptomatic pieces that's like wiping the nose when you have a cold. You still have the virus is something else and that tends to look like things that people wouldn't think of like how do we show up being more mindful and aware of the thoughts and the feelings that we bring to the table with our partners that are influencing and seasoning how we react to them. What's the story that we're telling about our partner because our thoughts that we have about our partner create feelings about them and again it influences how we react to them. So, of course, your communication is going to be off when you're showing up to anyone communication with your partner in a warrior part of self or a defender part of self. A part of you that is designed to create space as it were or a part of you that is there to win the argument. These are all the things that live below the surface that most therapists aren't talking about and you're certainly not going to find it on any Google search. And I'll be honest with you when I do my Instagram posts I tend not to talk about these things because no one searching these things and I think that's what makes my work a little bit more derivative is that when I get with a couple in the room I drill down below the water line. I know it feels really important what time she got home, what time she said she was going to be home. You're really talking about something else and we want to drill down and find out what that is. The other piece beyond how we show up is you also have to recognize that whether you know it or not you are dragging your wounding into your relationship. Whatever happened to you in your past, whatever happened to you in formal relationships, whatever happened to you at home with your family it's probably being recapitulated here somewhere. And most people are probably just unconscious about that really or at least on some level right in your experience. Well I think most people want it to be easy work. They want it to be the symptomatic piece. They want to be oh we have poor communication, they want it to be oh and so we just fix that right? And how do we parent the kids more collaboratively great and fix that that would be easy. No one wants to hear it's that I've never felt loved in my life not really or that I've never felt safe or I've never felt like I was enough or I never really mattered to anyone in my life. And now there's some part of me in here fighting for that. That's what's going on beyond these surfaces for most couples. I don't care if you're arguing over what to have for dinner - there's probably a part of you in there going I need to matter here yeah. And so I guess that's what I was getting at.
M: It sounds like what you're talking about is there's a bit of work around self-awareness you know for yourself so that you could look at those issues or be mindful of them so that they're not really controlling you during these interactions right?
G: You have to be introspective, you have to have self-awareness you know? It's a cliche and you know it's we're beating a dead horse now around mindfulness but it's the reason there's a reason why it's practice number one in my book because if you can't pay attention now everyone pays attention to what's going on externally we are safer that way that goes back to our old reptilian brain. To look externally make sure it's safe and so that transitions into I'm looking at you my partner and finding out what you're doing with in my work. I have people first look inside what do you thinking? What are you feeling because we need to get in touch with that first and for me I don't know how and another point is I don't know how any western clinical modality in therapy couples therapy specifically works without some self-awareness without being able to practice. And this has to be a practice because we don't do it naturally - to begin to pay attention with the rhythms, the thoughts, the feelings that are happening within us. It's job one well that's interesting can you tell me a little bit about what would be some of the things that you might do in a in sort of a couple session but what also might be able to kind of share with people that they can do on their own if they're not seeking couples counseling and they're trying to work on themselves sort of outside of that so the things I give people early and often are the simplest techniques. And we'll offer you some techniques now and I will offer simple techniques if you ever pick up my book because simple but effective techniques are will rule the day a specialist number trigger. So it sounds silly but take a breath right? If you and I take a breath right now if we were to take a collective breath in through the nose out to the mouth just that simple act. And you can already hear my voice drop down a register. That simple act begins to regulate the nervous system we begin to titrate that nervous system when you were activated your breathing goes shallow and what does that do to the body and the brain? It tells you it tells the body and the brain we're in peril right and so we go into a fight flight freeze response of some kind yeah and so we go back into that caveman sharpening sticks, checking to make sure there's no Saber tooth tigers and that Saber tooth tiger looks remarkably like my partner kind of thing. Happens right? But taking that mindful breath allows us to bring it back down a little bit. I'll have people feel their feet oddly enough. I will have people actually put their hand on the top of their head because a lot of our energy can escape through that 8th chakra. Right out through the top of the head and when we put that cap on it quite literally it begins that process of bringing our nervous systems back down and that's what we want because we don't want to think from a reactionary perspective. We don't want to react and speak from a reactionary place. So mindfulness gets us out of our needs and responses to each other and so it brings us into a place that I call choice and we get there first by taking a breath feeling your feet, noticing the chair underneath us. I give them the five senses drill what am I, what am I feeling, what am I hearing, what am I tasting, what am I smelling. Checking with those five senses brings us back into our bodies so that's job one yeah because I mean I certainly, not from my experience, I can get into where I'm just not even hearing what's being said on the other side or anything because I'm sort of in that fight mode or defensive mode. I'm defending myself and my nervous system is all wired up and then at that point it's hard to reach me. So I mean is it obviously in a in a couples counseling session good environment conducive to sort of that kind of a thing but it also could have you seen him work with the I guess the folks who practiced it enough in the real world setting they could kind of get themselves in a mode where they can reset be more money so this is what really started me looking at what was available to us and trying to create a model of working with couples that was there, was simple enough to be used outside of the therapy office. I started looking at people who rang that bell like Elvin Simrad from Harvard he was a forefather of modern psychology and he was like let your clients be your textbooks and I was like OK so I can actually listen to these people and so I did and what they told me is we're activated. So mindfulness will help take you out of your activation and that wasn't good enough to have one practice in your model and so we're having poor communication and so I started looking at parts work you know and we have parts work going all the way back to Jung and even Freud. I think beyond what we're seeing to start looking at narrative work. What's the story we're telling about each other because that influences how I'm feeling about him. And these various other things that sort of took me down the road of pulling together these practices. I'm not saying there's anything necessarily new under the therapeutic sun but the we've been very siloed in therapy. We need to be looking at that and so that's what I did. I sort of took down those things that kept us separated and said oh what's going on over here? What's going on there and I begged, borrowed, and stole from many different models including eastern psychology, eastern philosophy to create the model that I think really does actually work.
M: Let's talk about your model. You've alluded to it and you've talked about different components of it but maybe just sort of in a snapshot not only just sort of the couples therapy but the kind of work you think couples should be doing on their own what are your thoughts on that?
G: Well essentially my work goes into how do you show up? What part of you, what can you take responsibility for? Most couples are mired in - no I didn't, yes you did, well no I didn't no, yes you did because Sheila rolled her eyes at dinner the other night when you did it, that's not what I said, that's exactly what you said. And so they get mired in this nonsense. These back and forth where there's no traction to be had because everyone wants to pass the buck. Personal responsibility is the last practice in my in my book for a reason because no one would come. No one would pick it up if it was just a book of personal responsibility. It's the jagged little pill that none of us wants to take and in our culture responsibility can feel like blame. Blame feels like shame and so we run from that and so this is what people say to me. I’m going to ask you to own some stuff that you don't want to own. They say - you're gonna ask me to be too permissive and I say no, in fact, what I'm doing is I'm offering you freedom. Because when we take personal responsibility for my mindfulness and how I'm thinking and feeling in the relationship the part of me that's showing up meaning in my showing up in a warrior version of myself or an overly critical versions or a wounded self am I telling you not fair or not loving or not compassionate story about you? Am I not loving you the way you need to be loved and recognizing the fact that by and large there is an aspect of you that's showing up here that is your wounding? If I'm not willing to take responsibility for how I'm doing in that all is lost.
M: Explain to me a little bit more so, for our audience, you know you talked about showing up. Part of us is wounded. What do you mean by that - the wounded child?
G: I'm speaking quickly for time sake. The people that we love can often seem like the most dangerous people in the world right like they will recapitulate our childhood wounding and they do that and for a very good reason - so that we can have a healing experience. I think that's what we're doing here. It's not just puppy dogs and rainbows. And so it's very normal for us to feel or for our wounded child part to come up and for our partners to often unintentionally make us feel like we are not loved. We are not safe we don't matter we aren't enough and when that happens guess who shows up? My protector part right? Part of me that's here to create distance, that's there that was forged in the fires of my trauma to protect that wounded kid from anymore trauma. And so when these two parts are going at it yeah right there's no way to find connection because these parts don't do that right? It's like trying to send an e-mail from your Instagram account. Instagram just doesn't offer that that skill set or that ability. Your war yourself or your inner critic - the part of you that's there to protect you does not have the ability to have a loving connected conversation with your partner. It doesn't have the ability to not argue for the witness position. It doesn't have the ability to not fight to win right? So my partner, who knows me, knows the buttons. The buttons can be pushed that hits the sort of deeper elements of myself. I get into sort of reactionary defensive mode.
M: Obviously it sounds like mindfulness is one of the things or the deep breath as sort of an entry point to maybe break that pattern you talked about the personal responsibility. So I mean somebody who's sort of driving around and in their car listening to this having some relationship challenges what are some things that they can do around this kind of personal responsibility component you're talking about?
G: Well it's noticing who shows up right and being able to take responsibility for the part of you that shows up to your partner right? Ask yourself that question - how do I feel in my body? How am I thinking of them? And so in that we can own the story we're telling. Is it fair, is it compassion, is it empathetic? Now I know there's probably some scar tissue in there that's going yeah but she, or yeah but he OK OK you can sit on that all you want and guess what's going to happen? It's going to push you further apart. The moment you start taking responsibility for the way in which you show up and knowing like OK so lately my very you know crunchy warrior side has been showing up, my protective side of self my defender. I'm going to ask that part of me to step aside what does that mean? It means negotiating with the parts of the inner parts of me and saying look I want to show up in a kinder, gentler, more wise, more emotionally intelligent aspect of myself. This takes practice hence the name of the book, the practice of love, right? Because love takes practice it takes practice to step out of that warrior side of self to hear some stuff that's kind of triggering and going you know I'm going to do something different I'm going to try something different. I'm going to try to love them the way they need to be loved. I'm going to try to recognize that this person is also wounded. I'm going to take that the ground of personal responsibility, which is the higher ground and does that look like I'm just sort of thinking?
M: So let's say my significant other says something to me and it wounds me. It kind of gets into this feeling around value or sense of self-worth. Normally what I do is I would react and kind of go on the attack mode. The personal responsibility piece would be kind of recognizing all right this just sort of hit me and here's the sort of pattern that yeah there's the rabbit hole I'm going down can I stop that for a second? But that aside, as you mentioned and sort of be present to what is she really saying here at this point so that I can interact in a different way.
G: You're on it yeah yeah so you might be able to say something like you know wow you know the fact that you would speak to me that way really hurt my feelings. I'm really disappointed that aside I can also see that you're really angry or are you really upset. And you begin to validate their experience and this takes practice and because I'm asking a lot but there's no other road than this one, which is to say to take the mantle of that wiser more compassionate self and say I don't want to do this with you this way anymore.e I want to love each other different. I want to create new practices and I'm starting not pointing the finger at you - pointing the finger firmly back at myself. And I'm saying I know I've shown up here in a defended part of myself and I'm not going to argue with you about this. And this is the biggest mistake most couples make and one of the hardest ones to deal with is that when you hear your partner say well you did or you said that and you don't actually agree with them right but what we have to agree with is the fact that they're having a feeling regardless. They're actually right about the things they're saying or God forbid your intention will argue for our intentions all day long. When we stop and you hear your partner centers you know you were a real jerk last night when you did her said that thing. If we could step back in that way itself very often we can go I could see that I could see that was when it came out of my mouth. I knew it was a little left of center and I was hoping that it didn't come off that way. I'm really sorry for and if something I said hurt your feelings I'm really sorry about that.
Intermission: The South Carolina department of mental health is celebrating its 200 year anniversary offering mental health services for children families and adults. SCDMH is one of the first states in the country to provide mental health services. Learn more at www.scdmh.net.
M: I want to talk about the narratives piece. Tell me because it's in your book, the practice of love. There's a chapter maybe 2 on it I think on what is the narrative some exercises around it that kind of thing. Let's get into that a little bit for folks.
G: Well one of my clients said it best he said “it's the ticker tape that runs in my head every day about my husband all the time”. And I said that's it it's the thoughts - our thoughts we have an on average about 6:40 to 60,000 thoughts on any given day and we are on autopilot going back to the mindfulness practice. This becomes a cohesive practice of noticing that I'm on autopilot and I'm having thoughts about sandwiches and kids and work and you know any other thing. And oh my partner we should stop and ask like what am I thinking about them most often and I run it through. Is it loving? Is it compassionate? Is it true? And very often there's some holes in that and maybe we have some work to do around noticing the story. I'm telling and pushing pause on that and reauthorizing this race straight from narrative therapy reauthorizing a new narrative. Now I can tell you that you know I've been with my wife now for 21 years. I wanted to make my relationship work with her and I think narrative work really helped us really looking at the stories we tell about our partners affects how we feel because we have a thought and the body fires off a chemical response. We call it a feeling and the party goes OK yeah let's do that and So what we're doing if we're not watching our narratives we are mentally rehearsing to fall out of love.
M: Interesting. That sounds like incredibly invaluable work but work that you're probably hashing away in a therapy session in many sessions with a therapist a trained therapist. Are there any kind of things you would recommend people do as sort of an entry point before they're getting into counseling that they can do on their own that would have a positive impact?
G: Yes so start paying attention to the thoughts and you know you want to be careful because you don't necessarily want to take these thoughts to your partner because some of them are pretty awful right? The deep dark recesses of our minds we say some pretty awful stuff sometimes and we think because no one’s hearing it's not a big deal but the body fires off chemical responses in response to that thought and so you are building a belief system about that person. We need to do it mindfully and what I would ask people to do is say your thoughts out loud to yourself when no one else is around and notice your reaction to it because most people want to make them do it in session. They go well I don't really think that I go no no no no you do you do you do it every day you do it all the time. It's just that we're saying it out loud and now you're hearing how awful it is and so you want to stop that short and so then I would say maybe write them down and look at them and go OK is that fair? Is that empathetic, is that understanding, is it true and notice where you can begin to poke holes in your own story that you're building about your partner and then reauthor that using the same filter of what would if I was bringing some level of fairness what would come? What would happen here if I was bringing loving kindness to the table? What would happen here if I was bringing gratitude for this person what would happen here and what I can tell you often have is you begin to feel differently about them now let me offer this people because I know people are thinking yeah but what if my partners a real jerk or has been acting like a real jerk well you can't stand in front of a weed filled garden and say there are no weeds. There are no weeds or no weeds and tell a story about there being no weeds and just hoping that there's suddenly there's no weed that's not a thing someone needs to be doing something on the other side to cultivate that good narrative. So as partners we need to be doing good things to help our partners create good narratives and so this is what a cohesive work begins. If they're not and you're trying to build this flowery narrative about this person who's really toxic you're not toxic relationship well I was thinking of that because you know in in many respects I mean the relationship is only as healthy as the both parties are right? So somebody's at some sort of lower level. There's no willingness to move there's only so far you can go right but the only thing you have control over is how you show up and so my work in this is or perhaps some of my work is a little derivative it's like it's about the individual and so many of the practices and the exercises in my book don't actually require your partner's presence you work on yourself and you show up in the best version of yourself and if they don't meet you in that place well now we have some decisions to make. And this is where people don't love it because it's like I may have gotten you some information that's really inconvenient right well I love the for the narrative work just kind of like that three-part pieces.
M: It sounds really powerful for me you know just sort of stating you know on your own wherever sort of the thoughts that are that you have about your partner and then kind of analyzing them and assessing them and then perhaps reauthorizing is sort of like the third step you know. I can really see that as making some real powerful changes in relationships so that's great stuff. I love that yeah change your thoughts, you changed everything. yeah really powerful and so there's the narrative piece. What are some other parts and I think we've kind of touched on that but just to kind of clarify that or bring that home again. What do you mean by that?
G: We are not the single organisms we see staring back at us in the mirror. We are the many vestiges of ourselves depending on the people, the places, and the things that we encounter. We react to things and parts of us come show up. The brain is a compartmentalized thing we go into compartments of our brain much like on our cell phone where we go into an app to do a particular task. We go into our compartments of our brain to do particular things. We just do it unconsciously right and so we have to be aware through mindfulness of what compartment we're in or what part of self we're in. And so I'll say to people - think about yourself when you go home to see your parents. It's a particular part of self now consider yourself when you go in the doors to work right? Probably a very different person as opposed to the part of you that goes out with your friends at happy hour. Very different person typically. We look in the mirror, we see the same face and look there is some spillover but the thing I do with people is I say let's look at who you become when you're hurt. How do you protect yourself? Are you a fighter, are you a fleer, are you a freezer? Which one do you do that's really important that's a part of self? What happens when you're in your inner critic right you're in a critic thinks that you're dumb and everyone else is dumb too right and so that part designed to create distance that's another version of protection. It's also important to look at how you're wounded and so I'll ask the question - were you loved? Were you safe? Were you enough and did you matter? Those are the four core complexes in my work, that again, because those are the key. Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I enough and do I matter? I will say those to people in one of the first sessions and typically you'll see them look up immediately because when you know people cry in my office for a great many reasons not the least of which is when you have their truth. And when you look at someone who's never felt loved like they were safe and you say were you safe and then immediately you know and that part is coming here to this relationship for healing to know that they are loved. We are inexplicably drawn into the arms of a romantic partner who will by their very nature recapitulate our childhood wounding but for a very good reason so that we can have a reparative experience. This is it it's not what time you got home and what are we having for dinner. It's not that - it's this. And when we drill down below the surface and get below the water line on couples work these are the four things we're working on.
M: If I were to write on a piece of paper and just kind of free associate to that I would get some really interesting information that could help me that's for sure. That's how you show up in everything right? Now let's say that relationships you know we kind of touched on is not working. How does one assess whether the work is worth doing for the couple? You're talking about focusing yourself as an individual obviously there are times when relationships don't work out and they maybe shouldn't work out as a healthy option. How do I know when it's not working? I'm just thinking if people are listening here and they're wanting to work on their relationships how might they know if it's just too toxic of a relationship or it's a place that they shouldn't be?
G: Tough questions yeah. I think toxicity, abuse, those are all like hot button matters. The harder ones are when it's not particularly toxic or outwardly abusive and all of that and that's where I say - are they willing to work on it and on themselves? Meaning are they willing to do the 5th practice which is take responsibility for themselves. Not blame you that's not work. When are they willing to say yeah this is what I'm doing. These are the holes of my game. The golden rule for me is where there is no responsibility taken there is no relationship to be had. And so I had a couple come in not too long ago and they were working on all the five practices and they were doing pretty good by and large and they came in and they seemed to be kind of the energy wasn't good. They sat down and she looked and she goes - do you want to tell him or should I? And he goes “I'll tell him”. He goes - look I don't want to be mindful anymore, I don't want to look at the hearts of myself, I don't want to look at my narrative, I don't want to do the choosing thing. He's like, you know, I don't want to take responsibility. I am who I am. And she looks at me and she goes - what do I do with that? And I said, well based on my work in my opinion you have a couple of choices. One you can accept him for who he is, lower your expectations to where he's saying he's going to be know that you can't expect him to be anything other than what he's been which brought you in here, or you can pack your stuff, thirdly you could pack your stuff but there's no relationship here. I said, so this is where we part ways and this is where the couples work ends because there's nothing to do here. You're not going to do any of the things I'm asking you to do so you might as well stop paying me and wasting your time and mine.
M: OK that's really helpful to hear. You referenced the different practices and I know we've touched on them in number of ways but just in in terms of encapsulating them - the fifth practice the responsibility one but can we go through briefly all the five practices in your mind?
G: Practice one is mindfulness because we have to be able to pay attention to our thoughts and feelings in order to know where we are on the map and what we're doing and what we're thinking. Feeling is really important and it gets us out of our knee jerk responses. We can also ask some really important question - what part of me is showing up? Am I showing up in a part of me that's creating distance or creating closeness and my wounded parts here really important to all the communication pieces of the underpinning of so many of the problems that we have from that mindful place of mindfulness and parts? I can also ask like what story am I telling and is it fair and what's that narrative? There's the third practice narrative and from that place I can go OK I also need to love this person the way they need to be loved, which is the 4th practice, which is choosing and choosing people say “oh you mean the five love languages”? And I say well if you must but no it actually means looking and knowing how your partner needs to be loved and the things that make them feel loved but we drill down beneath that and choosing your partner is knowing what they're wounding is. Oh my partner feels like the world is an unsafe place is really important information for you because the things that make them feel loved speak directly to that wounding. And so choosing them means choosing to know them in a way that they've never been known before and so I array those first four practices across the line on the chalkboard of mindfulness parts narrative choosing the common denominator has to be personal responsibility. It has to be - I wanted to be mindful so be mindful this guy back in the day and still am but personal responsibility rules the day because for two reasons one you own the stuff that you're doing and saying and all that and you can apologize and all things you take responsibility but personal responsibility in this practice means that I am going to take responsibility for being more mindful in my relationship looking at how I'm showing up with my parts looking at the story I'm telling about you so that I can cultivate feelings within me and beliefs about you that are more true more fair more compassionate. And I'm going to also take responsibility for choosing you in a way that speaks directly to your core wondering so that we both can have a healing experience. That's how the cohesiveness of this practice works.
M: That's great Lair. We're getting close to time here so maybe if there's something that you could share with our audience just sort of as a closing message to them because obviously I'm assuming if they're listening they have some questions about their relationship and their role in it. Is there anything you might be able to share as an ending?
G: Sure. That love and relationships have fallen into the bin of things we should just know how to do. And it's akin to knowing your finances, knowing how to get a mortgage, knowing how to get car insurance. I didn't know how to do any of that. No one taught me. Love is falling into that same bin we're just supposed to know how to do it and guess what? We don't know how. And I know because I have a job. If we did I wouldn't have a job and love for me needs to fall into the bin of things that we want to do well. What do we do with things we want to do well? If you want to learn a new language do you practice it? If you want to hit a backhand in tennis you practice it right? If you want to learn how to drop into a big fat wave surfing you practice that stuff. We just think we should know how to do it and we don't and so we have to begin to look at love and relationships like something we want to cultivate. I want my clients and me frankly to be so good at loving each other that you could list it on the bottom of your resume as in special skills. And I can tell you I am really good at loving that woman and have been for 21 years now and I practice at it every day. I never ask a client to walk a path that I wouldn't be able to walk myself and so I'm doing it with you.
M: I'm David Diana, host and producer of, A Look Within Conversations on Mental Health and Well-being. We want to thank Lair for joining us today and you may learn more about his work at lairtorrent.com. And of course we want to thank all of you for listening and hope you'll join us next time