Relational Life Therapy as a New Approach to Working with Couples with Terry Real | POP 832

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A photo of Terry Real is captured. He is a family therapist, author and teacher. Terry is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Are you a couple’s therapist? Can you find deeper intimacy by moving beyond the traditional roles within the patriarchy? Can therapy be effective even when the therapist breaks the standard rules?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about relational life therapy as a new approach to working with couples with Terry Real.

Podcast Sponsor: The Receptionist

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This episode is sponsored by The Receptionist for iPad. It’s the highest-rated digital check-in software for therapy offices and behavioral health clinics, used by thousands of practitioners across the country including many who are just getting started.

The Receptionist for iPad is a simple, inexpensive way to allow your clients to discreetly check in, notify providers of a patient’s arrival, and ensure your front lobby is stress-free.

The software sends an immediate notification to the therapist when a client checks in, and can even ask if any patient information has changed since their last visit.

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Meet Terry Real

A photo of Terry Real is captured. He is a family therapist, author and teacher. Terry is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Terry Real is a nationally recognized family therapist, author, and teacher. Terry has appeared often as the relationship expert for Good Morning America and ABC News. His work has been featured in numerous academic articles as well as media venues such as Oprah, 20/20, The Today Show, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, and many others.
In 1997 he published the national bestseller: I Don’t Want To Talk About It, the first book ever written on the topic of male depression. That was followed by two more successful books on relationships offering practical guides for couples and couples therapists; and most recently his New York Times Bestseller Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.

Visit Terry Real’s website, The Relational Life Institute, and connect on Instagram and LinkedIn.

In This Podcast

  • Relational life therapy
  • The three aspects of RLT
  • The essence of Us
  • Terry’s advice to private practitioners

Relational life therapy

It’s a radial way of working with couples [in] therapy, [and] any kind of therapy in which … we’re not neutral, we take sides, “You’re wrong, Mrs. Jones, and you’re even more wrong Mr. Jones, and here’s why”.

Terry Real

In Terry’s school of relational life therapy, the therapists take a radical stance with their clients with an incredible success rate.

The therapists take a stance, they include themselves and draw information from their personal experiences with their clients, and they expect their clients to want to get better, or at least give a genuine shot at therapy.

The three aspects of RLT

Relational life therapy (RLT) is known for producing deep, dramatic change quickly.

Terry Real

The three phases of RLT:

  • Loving confrontation and finding your relational stance.

For example, an angry complaint will never foster a closer relationship with your partner because it is a dysfunctional stance.

We call this the adaptive child part of you … the part of you that adapted growing up to whatever you were subjected to, and we put that on the table.

Terry Real
  • Trauma work and inner child work.

What were you adapting to? With RLT, each individual in the couple undergoes deep trauma and inner child work with their partner present in the room.

I think it’s much preferable to do deep trauma work in the context of the relationship than off in your own corner somewhere.

Terry Real
  • Teaching each partner how to stand up for themselves – and each other – with love.

The essence of Us

Terry’s latest book Us is about the different parts of people as they relate to their partner, from the wounded child to the adaptive child to the wise adult.

The autonomic nervous system, far beyond the level of consciousness, assesses whether it is safe or not over and over again.

If the body feels safe, people remain in the mature part of their brain, the wise adult. If the body feels unsafe, the wise adult shuts down, the nervous system is activated, and the adaptive child comes out.

We devolve when we feel like we’re in danger, or out of “us” into “you versus me”. Win, lose, it’s about my survival, me, me, me … we move into the adaptive child part of us, and we do the same things that we did when we were kids growing up.

Terry Real

The general adaptive child responses, with an activated nervous system, are fight, flight, flee, and fix – also known as “fawn” or codependency.

What is your kneejerk adaptive child response? Once you know that, you can notice it, take a breath, bring your awareness to your immediate response, choose something different, and thereby start to break the pattern.

The relational answer to the question, “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” is “Who cares?” What matters is how are the two of us as a team going to get through this issue.

Terry Real

Terry’s advice to private practitioners

Train with Terry and learn about RLT!

Books mentioned in this episode:

Sponsors mentioned in this episode:

  • Heard always has transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Sign up for a free, 15-min consult call today at joinheard.com/partners/joe
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Useful links mentioned in this episode:

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Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

Podcast Transcription

[HEARD] It’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. Heard is the financial back office built specifically for therapists in private practice. They combine smart software with real humans to help you manage your bookkeeping, taxes and payroll. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or are in the first year of private practice, Heard will identify areas of growth and streamline best financial practices for your business. When you sign up with Heard, you’ll connect your bank accounts so your transactions will automatically be pulled in and categorized. My favorite thing about Heard is their allocation guide, what helps you decide how much to pay yourself each month and how much to set aside for taxes. You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and personalized monthly reports. You can say goodbye to pouring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. Focus on your clients and Heard will take care of the rest. Heard always has transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Sign up for a free 15-minute consult call today at joinheard.com/partners/joe. Again, that’s joinheard, like I heard it, not like a herd of cattle, joinheard.com/partners/joe. [JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, episode number 832. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I am so excited that you are here with us today. We’re going to be talking about some really important issues today. I love having authors on, especially authors who are in the mental health space that have done some big things. Today we have Terry Real. Terry is a nationally recognized family, therapist, author, and teacher. Terry’s appeared often as the relationship expert for Good Morning America and ABC News. His work’s been featured in numerous academic articles as well as media venues such as Oprah, 20/20, The Today Show, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, and many others. In 1997, he published the national bestseller I Don’t Want to Talk About it, the book, it was the first book written on the topic of male depression. That was followed by two more successful books on relationships, offering practical guides for couples and couples therapists, and most recently, his New York Times bestselling book, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. Terry, welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. [TERRY REAL] Well, thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me. [JOE] Yeah, I am so glad that we connected. Actually it was at Slow Down School. Our mutual friend Angie connected us and gave me your book and I was able to dig into it and now we’re on the podcast together, so really excited about that. [TERRY] Great. I’m excited to be here with you. [JOE] Well, I want to primarily talk about the book Us but before we dive into that would love to hear a little bit about your world in regards to practice, in regards to why you’re drawn to the topics that you write about. What’s your process in regards to writing books and deciding your next topic that you’re going to dig into? [TERRY] That’s beautiful, Joe. Thank you. I wrote Don’t Want To Talk About It about what happens to boys in our culture, and I talked about normal boyhood trauma as part of patriarchal culture. I’ve been really writing for almost 40 years now about what patriarchy does to our relationships, to ourself and to the people around us. So the way we “turn boys into men,” in our culture to this day, while it’s changing some, is through disconnection. We disconnect them from their feelings, from vulnerabilities and from others. We call that being independent. What I wrote in that first book back in the nineties was the price of disconnection is disconnection. Feminists have taught for a long time now about the wound for girls and women being disempowerment and we therapists understand that often the healing move for girls and women is re-empowerment, finding their voice. The wound for boys which happens at 3, 4, 5 years old almost preverbal is a disconnection. We sever their vulnerabilities, their feelings their compassion for others on the way to “being a man.” I wrote about my own story with my own depressed, violent father, my own struggles with depression and also about the work that I did with boys and men for years. So it was really written in my blood, that book, and it was, as you say, the first book written about male depression. Before that book, depression was seen as primarily a woman’s disease in much the same way alcoholism had been seen as a man’s disease and I’m happy for my role in bringing male depression out into the light. What happened to me is that I began getting calls around the country, is there somebody in Topeka or LA or wherever that does the work that you describe in your book? For years, I would do my best to refer them but after a while, the light went on and I said, look, if you’re desperate enough and you have the resources, come to Boston where I practice and let’s work. I began to open my doors to couples, almost always couples on the brink of divorce that no one else had been able to help. What evolved was a two-day, I called it relational intervention in which the couple and I would sit for two straight days. At the end of that time, you’re on track of getting a divorce. This is the last stop. I noticed two things, one I had a tremendous success rate. Now, you weren’t fixed, you had to go home to a treatment program. You go to AA, you get medication, you get back into individual, whatever. But I saved most of the couples who came to see me from the brink of divorce. The second thing I noticed is that I broke just about every rule I had learned in therapy school. I took sides. I was not neutral. I shared from my own life. I took on not only issues of shame, which of course the field has been very well working on for 50 years, but the other self-esteem disorder, grandiosity, superiority, helping people come down from the one up of contempt or entitlement. I moved men, women, and non-binary folks into intimacy by moving them beyond traditional gender roles of patriarchy, women into powerful loving voice and men into connection and receptivity and vulnerability, both of which is moving them beyond the defaults of the culture. So long story short, it created a school of doing relational therapy, I call it Relational Life Therapy. We now have about a two-year training program. We train people in how to do this all over the country, indeed all over the world. It’s a very radical way of working particularly with couples therapy, but with any therapy in which, let me say again, we are LT therapists, are not neutral. We take sides. You’re wrong, Mrs. Jones, and you’re even more wrong, Mr. Jones. Here’s why. We include ourselves. Let me tell you about the fight I just had with Belinda. We deal with issues of helping people come down from the one up as well as up from the one down. We expect, and I think Relational Life Therapy, RLT is known for producing deep dramatic change quickly. Let me just say, and then I’m going to let you talk, there are, let me just say this if I may, as I do my overview, there are three phases to RLT. The first is loving confrontation. Joe, this is what you’re doing over and over again to blow your own foot off you. We call it your relational stance. You’ll never get more of what you want by approaching it. For example, angry complaint will never get you a closer relationship. I’m sorry. Angry complaint is not inviting. It’s a dysfunctional stance. So we look at the stance, we call this the adaptive child part of you, the part of you that adapted growing up to whatever you were subject to. We put that on the table. The next phase is trauma work, inner child work. What were you adapting to? We do deep, I’m the only one that does this except for Jan Fisher, we do deep trauma work in the presence of the partner, the other partner sitting there while you are talking to your inner little boy or little girl and sobbing. It opens the heart of the person sitting next to you. I think it’s much preferable to do deep trauma work in the context of the relationship than off on your own corner somewhere. So the second phase is deep trauma work. Then the third phase is teaching. Let me tell you how to stand up for yourself with love. Let me teach you how to deal with an unhappy partner. Let me teach you what to do when you are in your prefrontal cortex, your wise adult self and your partner’s stuck in an immature part of them and having none of it. How do you deal with that? I differ from some of the trauma people around in that. I don’t believe that if you just deal with the trauma, that people will instinctively know how to be intimate. I think it’s the combination of these three, and I don’t know any other school that has all three, loving confrontation, doing deep trauma work and then building skills. It’s the combination of those three together that produces such deep change in people. [JOE] I love that idea of doing the trauma work with the partner in the room because so often it’s go off and do your own individual work, and it’s more, I don’t want to call it secretive, but just you’re divided. Whereas if you’re with somebody and you’re hearing it and then you have a deeper sense of knowing what that’s like for them and to observe that unfolding has to be really powerful for a partner to see that happen. [TERRY] It really is. We talk about three parts. It’s similar in some ways to IFS, Internal Family Systems. We talk about three parts of the psyche, the wise adult part, prefrontal cortex able to stop and think, the wounded child part, very young, the part of you that was on the receiving end of the abuse or neglect and it’s just very reactive. In between these two, we talk about the adaptive child part. I got this from my mentor, Peter Melody, the adaptive child is that you cobbled together. It’s a kid’s version of a grownup that you put together in the face of either violation or neglect. It’s an immature version of what a mature person looks like. Most of the people who see me, Joe, have lived most of their lives out of the adaptive child part thinking that that’s a wise adult, and it’s not. One of the core practices in teaching people to live relationally is empowering them In the moment when you’re flooded. People talk about relationships taking work, but they don’t tell you what, the real work of relationships is in the moment. Right now, when my prefrontal cortex is offline and my neocortex is flooded, am I going to do the same old knee-jerk response I’ve done a million times or am I going to take a breath and reach for a more mature part of me and do something more skilled? That’s goal, that’s what we’re equipping our clients to do, and that’s what produces such dramatic so quickly. Can I tell you a story to illustrate that? [JOE] Yeah, that’d be great. [TERRY] True story, couple on the brink of divorce, guy’s a chronic pervasive liar, lies about everything. He’s the guy I’m sure your therapist listening know this guy, you say to him, the sky is blue and he says, well, it’s aquamarine. He’s not going to give it to you. So between the wife’s report and watching how he handles himself with me, I’m very clear what his adaptive child is all about. It’s about evasion. This guy is a black belt in evasion. Now we learn these adaptive strategies in relationship as kids. So I ask them a question, which if you’re not thinking relationally sounds, ah, wow, that’s brilliant. But if you’re thinking relationally, it’s easy. Show me the thumbprint and I’ll tell you about the thumb. Once I get the client’s adaptation, the next question is, who are you adapting to? So I say to this guy who tried to control you growing up. You get it. If he’s got a black belt in evasion, who is he evading? He says to me, my father. Tell me about it, military man, how he ate, how he drank, what clothes he wore, what friends, everything. I said, how did you deal with this controlling father? He looks at me and he smiles. Now that’s important. That smile is the force of resistance. He looks at me and he smiles and he goes, “I lied. Dad says, don’t be with Johnny. I go play with Johnny and I lied and tell him I was playing with George.” Brilliant, smart little boy. I always teach my students to be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child. You did exactly what you needed to do back then to preserve your wholeness and integrity. But I have a saying, adaptive then maladaptive now. You’re not that four year old boy. Your wife is not your father. So this is one session, Joe and all that comes floating out and I have him talk to that scared little boy and put his arms around him and tell him that he, the adult, will take care of him. He doesn’t have to feel so alone and overwhelmed. They come back two weeks later, all smiles were cured and they were. Okay, “Tell me the story.” Well, over the weekend, his wife sent him to the grocery store to buy, say 12 things and true to form he comes back with 11. His wife says to him, “Where’s the pumper nickel?” He says, “Every muscle and nerve in my body was screaming to say they were out of it. In this moment, I took a breath. I thought of you, Terry, that’s borrowing my prefrontal cortex. I thought of you, Terry, I looked my wife in the eye and I said, I forgot the pumper nickel.” She, true story, Joe, she burst into tears and she said, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for 25 years.” That’s Relational Life Therapy. That’s what we’re looking for. [JOE] Oh, I love that you tell that story to really give it real life application because it’s about the pumper nickel, but it’s not about the pumper nickel. I mean, that’s just amazing. Now take us into Us. I want to hear the next steps. Like who is this book written for? Is it for long-term monogamous couples that are married? Is it for anyone in relationships? Set the stage for us for what Us who it’s aimed at and would love to hear some of the principles that you discovered and research you discovered in the writing of the book. [TERRY] Great. Well, all of all of my books are written for both the general public and for the professional community. It’s sort of for the general public, but the therapists come along for the ride. I have about 60 pages of notes in the back, which are all my thoughts for professionals along with the body of the book, which I think is an easy and good read. The essence of us is this, it’s about the different parts of us as we relate in our relationships to one another, wounded child, adoptive child, wise, adult. Neurobiologically, what we know is the autonomic nervous system, far below consciousness, scans our body four times a second. Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? If the answer is yes, I feel safe, we stay seated in that mature part of our brain prefrontal cortex wise adult. If the answer is no, I’m in danger, that shuts down. The subcortical parts of the brain, limbic system, amygdala, et cetera, will fire up. We move into, we lose. It’s only the prefrontal cortex that has the capacity to remember the whole, remember the relationship. We devolve when we feel like we’re in danger out of us, into you versus me, a win-lose. It’s about my survival, me, me, me, me, me. We move into the adaptive child part of us, and we do the same thing that we did when we were kids growing up. For those of you who are listening, I talk very generally. I mean, we get very specific about your adaptive child response, but generically fight, screw me, screw you, flight. I’m out of here, I’m shutting down, you can flee while sitting six inches away from somebody that’s called stonewalling or fix. I’m happy to hear that the SE people and that the trauma people have now added fawn as one of their responses. It used to be fight, flight, or freeze. I don’t say freeze is a rule. To me freeze is frozen flight. If you look at Peter Levine’s work, when he has somebody in freeze, he usually has them complete the flight that’s been paralyzed. But at any rate, fight, flight or fix, fix is not an adult, let me see what I can do to make the relationship work. It’s a compulsive childish. Oh my God, you feel bad? I’ll do anything to make you feel better because I can feel good if you feel bad, codependence. I would like everybody listening to this podcast to take a moment and out themselves. What is your knee-jerk adaptive child response, fight, flight or effects? The key is knowing that taking a breath, bringing the prefrontal cortex back online, moving from what Dan Siegel calls the reactive brain to the responsive brain and saying, okay I’m not going to fight, flee, or fix. I’m going to, for example, say, gosh, that sounds bad. Tell me more about it. The bad news here is it’s only the wise adult part of us that wants to be intimate. The adaptive child doesn’t want to be intimate. It wants to be self-protective. I, for decades, I gave workshops around the country, and here’s my favorite slide. Other workshops teach you skills. We deal with the part of you that won’t use them. The way we deal with it in RLT is this first-phase loving confrontation. This is what you’re doing. That’s never going to work. When I first learned therapy, the idea, particularly if you’re dealing with a grandiose narcissistic patient was first form a trusting alliance, could be years. Then you confront them with difficult truths. In RLT the art is to form a trusting alliance by addressing the difficult truths right out of the starting gate. You have to speak to the person with so much respect and love and care. You’re so rooting for the best part of them that they feel closer to you as you confront them, rather than more just that it takes, come and do some training. It takes some art to confront someone in a way that brings them closer to you, but it can be done. Then the next question is, what was that little boy or girl adapting to? That adaptation that’s getting you into so much trouble now made perfect sense then. Let’s go back and open that up. That’s very deep emotional work. Then the third phase is, okay, now that we’ve addressed what you’re doing that’s wrong let me not leave you swinging in the wind. Let me teach you what doing it right would look like. It’s those three together that I think really equips our clients to live relational lies with each other. [RECEPTIONIST] When I had my group of practice, I was so sick of running to the lobby to see if my next appointment had arrived, or even more awkwardly to have a bunch of therapists run to the lobby when we heard the door open. Maybe you want a more discreet, stress-free way for your clients to check in. Take a deep breath. The Receptionist for iPad empowers your practice to create a zen-like check-in experience. This episode sponsored by The Receptionist for iPad, it’s the highest rated digital check-in software for therapy offices and behavioral health clinics used by thousands of practitioners across the country, including many who are just getting started. The Receptionist for iPad is super simple. It’s an inexpensive way to allow your clients to discreetly check in, to notify providers of a patient’s arrival and to ensure your front lobby is stress free. The software sends an immediate notification to the therapist when a client checks in and can even ask if a patient information has changed since their last visit. Start a 14-day free trial of The Receptionist for iPad by going to the receptionist.com/practice. Again, that’s the receptionist.com/practice and when you do, you’ll also get your first month free when you sign up. [JOE SANOK] Terry, if people are hearing this and they’re thinking, I want to do my own individual work to be more of that adult that’s responding and less of that reactive child, I want to say, yeah, it was adaptive when I was little, but it’s maladaptive now so that I can have better relationships, a better time in life, I’m not reacting like my childhood self, what are some skills that we could employ that this afternoon I could start thinking in a certain way, I could start doing mindsets things, I should practice doing that would help me move towards that adult way of thinking, that mature way of thinking more? [TERRY] Well, it’s about consciousness. The first order of business is beginning to monitor what part of your psyche you’re in at the moment. For most of us, it’s just automatic. In fact, it is a hallmark of the adaptive child that is automatic. It’s knee-jerk. Take a breath, my friend, the spiritual teacher, Thomas Bel says, breath is our friend and urgency is our enemy. Take a breath. I’m a big fan of breaks. Take a walk around the block. Let your partner or whoever family or whoever know in advance. “Listen, when I get triggered, I’m going to take a break, take 20 minutes, I’ll be back.” I’m a big fan of taking physical breaks. If you open your mouth and all kinds of crap comes out, shut your mouth and go for a walk around the block. Splash some water on your face. There are a million reregulation techniques that you go online and learn about tapping, holding, breathing, meditating. My favorite is doing the work of getting to know the adaptive child part of you and form a relationship with it. When my wife Belinda and I have a fight and I say this to people in my office all day long, I take little Terry, I have a composite, know him well, he’s about eight years old, and I put him behind me. He can hold onto my shirt and I have a deal with him. Between Belinda’s, anger and you is me, my big grownup body, my adult self. I will absorb that energy. You are protected back there behind me. That’s my part of the deal. Here’s your part of the deal. You let me handle my wife, you’re going to make a mess of it. One of the things I say, Joe, is when an inner child kicks up, and you’ll know that because you’re being, you’re feeling reactive in your body, if you’re honest, you’ll know when you’ve been activated, when an inner child kicks up, put them on your lap, put your arms around them, hear them out, be empathic and take their sticky hands off the steering wheel. “You in the back seat. I am driving the bus, not you.” So you move from that reactive state to what I call remembering love, remembering that the person you’re speaking to is someone you care about and the reason why you’re talking is to make things better. If you’re not there, if you’re there to prove your point or control them or retaliate or withdraw any of those things take a break and don’t engage with your partner until you are back in your adult self. Nothing good will come of it. The first skill is shifting from that flooded, trauma-based reactive response to an adult-centered, loving response. Get yourself centered, even if it takes a half an hour but don’t try and solve your problems from that defensive individualistic space. [JOE] As you say that, I was thinking through like, what would be my childhood reactions? I think for me it’s definitely more the fix but outsmarting or out debating somebody to intellectually defeat them is probably my go-to as a child. As you said that, I was thinking about how often, especially in like middle school and high school, getting in fights with my mom, I could get her to give up when she didn’t have an answer. Like, so by outsmarting her or being able to debate her out of it protected me from a bigger fight. Then thinking about how that then, like, I haven’t really thought through this before, but how then if I’m in a disagreement with a partner, then that would mean if I’m right, then that means that we’re going to be okay. But that’s clearly not true that if you can be right and still not win the war. What would you add to that, for my own self-discovery? [TERRY] Joe, I would say to you, I have a saying, you can be right or you can be married, what’s more important to you? The relational answer to the question, who’s right and who’s wrong is who cares? [JOE] Yeah. [TERRY] What matters is, how are the two of us as a team going to get through this issue? You move, here’s another one, objective reality has no place in personal relationship. Doesn’t matter who’s right or who’s wrong. What matters is how are we relationally going to, can I give you a quick illustration? [JOE] Yeah, yeah. [TERRY] Okay, here’s one that I think everybody’s familiar with and I’ll do it straight up, Header or Gender. She says you’re a reckless driver. He says, no, I’m aggressive. You’re overly reactive. She says, no, you’re reckless. He says, no, you’re overly sensitive. This goes on for 40 years. How about this? She says, “Listen, you may feel quite competent as an aggressive driver. Fair enough. I want you to know, I know you love me, every time I sit in that car and you’re going 20 miles above the speed limit and changing lanes and tailgating people, I get myself, that’s a good phrase, I get myself terrified. Now I know you care about me. As a favor to me because you don’t want me sitting next to you every time we drive being miserable, would you curtail your aggressive driving and be more conservative so that I don’t have to feel so terrified?” He says, this is a true story, to his own surprise, “Sure honey, I can do that.” What might have been a fight that went on for 40 years is solved in five minutes because it’s not about two individuals arguing over right and wrong. It’s about a team trying to work it out in a way that’s loving to both of them. That’s the new world order. That’s what we teach. [JOE] Terry, I love that shift. If every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [TERRY] You really want to know the truth, the unborn grandiose truth, I would want them to come train with us and learn how to do this therapy because I believe it’s so much more effective than most of what’s out there. [JOE] And Terry, if people want to connect with you, what’s the best way? [TERRY] Go to my website, relationallife.com. It’s called Relational Life Therapy, Relational Life, two ls, one word, relationallife.com. Learn what we’re offering, and do a little training. Try it out and see if you like it. [JOE] Well, Terry, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice Podcast. [TERRY] Thank you. It’s really been a joy. It’s been a fun conversation with you. [JOE] So what are you going to do to address that inner child, to think through that trauma, to make sure that you say to that little kid what, I’m the adult here. Stand behind me. I got this situation. You don’t have to react in that way. You don’t have to adapt in that way anymore. I love that saying, what was once adaptive is now maladaptive. That’s a great way to think through how much of our own work we’re doing as therapists, coaches, leaders in the world but also to share that with our clients to think through, is the way that I’m doing couples work, is it effective? Am I taking sides? Should I take sides? Should I push back more? Should I speak more from my own personal case studies? All these things that Terry talked about today and walked through with us. Such great information. Make sure you grab that book Us. It’s out everywhere, wherever you get your books, I’m sure your local bookstore would appreciate you to get it from them as well. A lot of great episodes we’ve been covering this month. Make sure you go back and listen to those ones. So all sorts of ways to get involved, to get connected, to get the help that you need, totally for free. We couldn’t do this show without our amazing sponsors. The Receptionist is such an amazing thing that I wish I had had in my practice. The Receptionist for iPad is a simple, inexpensive way to allow your clients to discreetly check in, notify the providers that the patients arrived, and to ensure your lobby isn’t full of a bunch of stress. You can start your 14-day free trial of The Receptionist for iPad by going to the receptionist.com/practice. When you do, you’ll get your first month free when you sign up. Again, that’s receptionist, thereceptionist.com/practice. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. [JOE] Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.

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