S3 | Session 15: Two People Overboard: The Co-Regulation Conundrum
In this episode
Julie Menanno returns to anxious-avoidant couple Rachel and Mike after a two-week disconnection triggered by the holidays, work stress, and depleted capacity. Using Rachel's 'dock' image, Julie names the co-regulation conundrum: when both partners go overboard at once, neither can pull the other back to safety, and their negative cycle drags out for weeks. Rachel's setback reactivates an ancient shame story—'there's something wrong with me'—rooted in a lifetime of emotional abandonment. Rather than attacking Rachel's protective walls, Julie pivots toward honoring the barrier and warming the relational environment so it dissolves on its own. The session reframes guardedness as wisdom and shows how self-compassion, not force, restores trust and connection.
Key takeaways
- When both partners are depleted at the same time, co-regulation collapses—there's no one left on the dock to pull the other back up, so recovery takes far longer.
- A relapse after real progress can reactivate an old shame narrative ('I'm defective / something's wrong with me') that belongs to the past, not the current relationship.
- Emotional walls aren't the enemy; they're protection built over a lifetime of real emotional abandonments and deserve to be honored rather than shamed away.
- You can't hack down an emotional wall like a block of ice—you dissolve it by consistently warming the environment with safety until it softens on its own.
- Self-compassion is the starting point: thanking your defenses for keeping you safe is what actually helps them let go and lets connection back in.
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S3 | Session 15: Two People Overboard: The Co-Regulation Conundrum
Julie: [00:00:00] Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Secure Love Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Menanno. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of the book Secure Love: Create a Relationship that Lasts a Lifetime, which is now out on paperback. So, you know, we can do all the heavy lifting in therapy, and we can learn the tools, but sometimes life just throws too much at, at once.
You know, between the holidays and chaotic work schedules and just general ex- exhaustion from life, you know, Rachel and Mike recently hit a wall. They slipped off the tracks and ended up in a really tough two-week period of disconnection. So when we were catching up about it, Rachel used an analogy that I think so many of us can relate to.
She said that normally, if she jumps off the dock, she needs Mike to stay on the dock and pull her back up. But this time, they were both so depleted that Mike jumped off the other side of the dock and suddenly they were both just swimming around in the water with nobody to pull them to safety. So when [00:01:00] you experience a s- a setback like that after, you know, making so much progress in your relationship, you're, you're doing all this work and things are getting better, it really is incredibly demoralizing to see yourself go backwards.
So for Rachel, this brought up a really painful, ancient narrative. Instead of just looking at the situation and saying, "You know, we're both stressed out right now," her nervous system told her, "I'm defective. There must be something wrong with me because I can't let my walls down." So in this session, we'll, we'll get into the heavy reality of what it feels like to constantly battle your own defense mechanisms, your own emotional blocks.
And we talk about why trying to just aggressively hack down your emotional walls is actually the worst way to try to get rid of them. All right, well, let's get into it.
Well, how are you? It's been a while.
Mike: It has. [00:02:00]
Rachel: It's been a while, and it's been a little wild.
Julie: Has it? Okay. What's, what's wild?
Rachel: Well, we have a lot of stuff going on just with our company and, um, just lots of kind of high stress with that right now.
Julie: Okay. Um- Life stuff?
Rachel: Yeah. So that's
Julie: Extra life stuff, I should say?
Rachel: Yeah. I, I mean, I think it adds a l- it just adds a layer. It does. Um, or multiple layers.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: Sure.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: It, yes, it definitely dra- can drain our resources.
Rachel: Yeah.
Mike: I think, yeah, that's
Rachel: And I think what we talked, we, we had a good talk the other night finally, and I think- We, I don't know that we know in the moments that we're as drained as we are with all of that going on.
Mike: Yeah.
Rachel: And then it's just the normal negative cycle where we're sliding. Mike: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: We're hopeful we can [00:03:00] catch something or deal with it. We don't, we fall off the cliff, and then we're disconnected for two weeks, so.
Julie: Okay. So, so basically you, y- you know, you've got all this other stress, and it was the holidays, and then you're, you're more tired, you're more stressed, you're more anxious probably about the stuff going on, and then that makes you more vulnerable to the cycles.
Rachel: Pr- yeah. Yeah.
Julie: And you're not- ... quite at the place where you know how to get out of them, and
Then when we're tired, we kind of have less motivation to try anyway, right?
Rachel: Yeah. And I think for me- Yeah ... it was... And I, I had this concern kind of from the beginning with like, uh, what happens when we're not meeting with Julie regularly?
. And I think for me, that was part of it because there was such a good feeling and a hope with all the work and the progress, you know, daily [00:04:00] that we were making, and then just with the schedules and the holidays and then j
just that sudden break of not meeting with you. And then I, we went back home to see my family for a while, and then it's just normal that when I come back from that, I have kind of an emotional rollercoaster.
. And so I was dealing, trying to deal with that, and Mike ended up having to launch into two full days of offsite project stuff. And so we just didn't stay connected through all that.
Julie: Okay. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Um, I'm, I'm sure there's a part of you that recognizes that's- Normal ... probably normal considering the whole big picture, but it's
that doesn't make it any less, um, demoralizing and hard. I mean, it's hard just going through it, and then on top of that thinking, "Well, we [00:05:00] should've been able."
Rachel: Yes.
Julie: You know, you think we would've been able to pull it together a little better. Okay, so let me ask you this. Um, is... Do you... Is there any, um, any lasting progress here?
Have you seen anything kind of
Rachel: Oh, yeah
Julie: ... permanently? Okay.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: Okay. So let's start with that, and then we'll go into, you know, what's not working so well. So what, what is working better?
Mike: I think from my perspective, it, it, it, it's... We're, we're m- and this is probably completely normal, but we're so much...
It, it's so much easier to stay connected and kind of sit with each other when we're connected. But when we're both low on capacity and we're not kind of like, you know, Rachel said, not really realizing it, we... It, it falls off the rails, and if one's, one of us is low, you know, like really low on capacity, the other one's like, you know, kind of like just barely dragging [00:06:00] along.
We're, we are unable to get through to each other to, you know, to kind of pull... Like Rachel uses the, kind of the analogy it's like, you know, whenever something happens, you know, like we're both standing on a dock. She jumps off one side. I'm standing on the dock and she goes, you know, basically her... she says, you know, "We need to get in a spot where you can pull me back onto the dock."
And I said, "That's... I understand that," but I said, "But where I'm at is I jumped off the other side of the dock." Sure. And now one of us needs to get back on top of the dock and pull the other one up, and that's- Right ... that's sort of like when things get tough, we are unable to connect quickly. Like, and I think that's the thing I keep going back to is our That I keep, you know, kind of hoping for is that our recovery time can improve 'cause like, you know, this past, as we-- at this past kind of instance it was, it was a couple weeks again, and that's kind of the, the normal negative cycle that we go [00:07:00] through.
It's very long, it's very drawn out. Sure. And it's just, you know, that, that's what's, i- is kind of, um, tough. So- Yeah ... I think that just to kinda sum it up, I mean, I think we do really well and we can really do good in this work when we're connected and, you know, like when we're working with you. Um, you know, just, just that's easy.
But when the going gets tough, that's when , obviously that's when the, you know, the, the true skills have to be displayed or used and we still kinda stumble, fumble, and are unable to, to get through to each other.
Rachel: . When we finally did talk though, Mike's doing a really good job of, um, sharing more, which is really helpful.
And he, he's recognizing how much he stays in his head and how hard it is to come down to figure out what's going on in his heart [00:08:00] and being able to share that. But, like, that's really good progress that he has that awareness and that he's open and seeing things a little differently than before
Julie: Okay, beautiful
Rachel: it leads to, it leads to good conversation.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: And then does that make a, um, repair more possible, or at least somewhat more possible?
Rachel: I'd say right now somewhat more possible, and that's a spot where I'm really frustrated because, you know, a year ago, if, if he would've had these kind of conversations with me, it was...
It would be easy to connect quickly. Right now, it's almost harder and taking longer because I'm fearful it's going to go away. Because the, because of the inconsistency
I'm not opening up in a way that allows [00:09:00] me to feel connected to him again, even though I'm kind of getting what I need and want.
And that's really frustrating to not understand right now. .
Julie: Your nervous system is still kind of in that collapse mode. Rachel: Yep.
Julie: Is it, um, is it a l- a little more trusting than when we began, or would you say we're still low?
Rachel: I'd say marginally improved.
Julie: Marginally.
Rachel: Okay. I mean, there's improvement, but it's...
Like, I want it to be so much more, and it's not.
Julie: Sure. Okay. Good, good information. Hard information, but good information for me to know, 'cause it helps me see what needs to be worked through. And, you know, this is actually, um, as painful as these breaks are, um, it actually does really give us a, a good window into what's gonna be a problem going forward.
So gives us a chance to, to look at what the long-term, um, struggle might be here. So, you know, I- [00:10:00] just using your, your dock example, it's kind of like I'm, I'm on the dock, right? So if you guys jump off the dock, I'm there to pull both of you back in.
And then I leave and go away, and then now you're, like, stuck in the wa- you know, you both get off the dock, and no one's there to pull you back up.
And so for two weeks you've been swimming around in the water, and that's scary and hard. .
Rachel: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: So let's, let's see what we can do. 'Cause, yes, the absol- first of all, the goal is, is we don't jump off the dock nearly as often to begin with, and then when we do, you know, we both have better capacity to pull ourselves up or help each other or, you know, be flexible in the moment to get yourselves back up to safety.
And we'll get there.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: Um, so, all right, why don't you give me an idea of what happened that set you into this two-week drought?
Rachel: Um, well, as I
mentioned
Julie: And, and where, where are you now in the, in the two [00:11:00] weeks? Or where are you now with each other?
Rachel: Somewhat connected
Mike: Yeah, I mean
Julie: Okay ...
Mike: the last, yeah, we've, we've spent some, this week we've really been intentional, you know, in the evenings to spend a good bit of time talking to each other, just try and connect and, and, and break through, um, where we're at.
So I think, yeah, I think, you know, I, I, I feel, you know, pretty connected to Rachel, but as she's expressed, she still has kind of these hesitations, reservations, just kind of can she trust it? Um, which is, I think it's kind of just keeping a little bit of a
Rachel: A buffer ...
Mike: a buffer, yeah. I don't know how to say it.
Rachel: And that it's hard to, it was hard to share that with him because obviously he, you know, in those talks, he's doing a really good job at sharing and going deeper and, and doing all the things that we need. And then I say, "I love this. This is great, [00:12:00] but I'm also still feeling like I, I can't just jump right back to, okay, things are great and I wanna feel, you know, super close to you."
Like there, and that's hard to share because that probably doesn't make him feel really good about like, here I'm stretching and doing this work and sharing things I normally don't share, and now you're still not close to me So
Julie: Well, how, how could you, I mean, how could your body be ready for that? You know, what you've experienced, you know, over and over and over is just kind of these repeated emotional abandonments.
And Mike, I understand that was n- not your intention, and there's a cycle here that's doing all of this, but
Mike: Right. Right.
Rachel: Yeah. But, like, what I realized this morning even thinking about going into this session was, like, you know, what is it... What's the [00:13:00] story that goes on in my head? And that story is like, "I, I'm not able to do it.
It's not my nervous system. It's because there's something wrong with me. I'm defective."
Julie: Sure. So what are those tears saying right now?
Rachel: I realize that's been the loop and the story my whole life.
Julie: Yeah. So your whole life, what's, what's the story? Tell me the story again. There's something wrong with me because I can't trust?
Rachel: When, like, I mean, I was, you know, teased when I was little. There must have been something wrong with me. Yeah. I didn't have strong relationships growing up.
There must have been something wrong with me. In my first marriage, it had a lot of challenges. There must have been something wrong with me. So here I am again.
Julie: So, so often in conflict, there is an invisible force that just hijacks the conversation, even without even having time to think about it, and just leaves you [00:14:00] feeling stuck or defensive.
Well, that force is very often shame. So if you wanna learn how to recognize your shame triggers much, much more clearly so you can learn to work with them and break free from the negative cycles, because shame work is such a big part of that. So I do have an Understanding Shame workshop that is meant to do just that, and you can find out more in the podcast description or just visit thesecurerelationship.com.
So notice how the trigger is always the same. In all of these situations that you're describing, the trigger is always these emotional abandonments. Right. In moments, and sometimes the whole relationship is just emotionally abandoning in itself.
Rachel: Right. So it makes sense that this is my body's response, but I... It makes me angry that, that that's been my whole [00:15:00] life.
Julie: Mm-hmm. So what happens is, is, you know, again, your body has experienced, in, in your whole life, your body has experienced repetitive emotional abandonments. That's, that's been your s- relationship story.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: One of the things that you do with that story, one of the things y- your body learned to do with that story is to say, it's not just the sadness and the, and the defeat and the, you know, enormous sense of loss and grief in every single one of these moments.
It's, you know, that's causing me to hurt and, and mistrust. It's actually because something is wrong with me.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: So how quickly do you go there in these moments when, um, you know, Mike is, is sharing with you, and he's showing up, and he's putting the work into practice? And then what happens is, is your body just can't be open, right?
And how fast do you go to... I mean, are, let me just ask you this. Are, are you sitting there trying to be open? Are [00:16:00] you trying to... Okay.
Rachel: Yeah. And yeah, it, but I can... I'm trying to be open. I'm engaging. I'm asking questions to understand more. I'm sharing. But even I notice in my tone, and I just feel a barrier to full connection
on the inside of me.
Julie: Okay. And so let's get really clear, you know, again, what is that barrier? I know we've, we've gone over this. I'm trying to kind of get my bearings straight here, 'cause I know, um, we're kind of diving into, to new stuff that's not so new. Yeah. Um, so what is that barrier doing? Why, why does that barrier come up?
Rachel: It's protection.
Julie: Yeah. Protection from what?
Rachel: Hurt, abandonment.
Julie: Yeah. From getting dropped again
Rachel: Right
Julie: And it's one thing when he's not showing up, [00:17:00] right? When he's not showing up in the right way, and your body knows, "Well, here I am, you know, I'm in it right now. This is the emotional abandonment," then it's just easy to go into anger and protest back and all these things, right?
Rachel: Yeah. And that's what happened on the front end of the, like, where we started to slide off, because we had returned from the trip. I had let him know that I was struggling with the emotions, and I think he even maybe asked at one point, like, how I was doing with it. And so that kind of told me, like, okay, he knows this is usually hard for me.
He, uh, th- the week that we were away, he did such a good job at staying in tune and checking in and all of those things with me while we were there, and that felt so good, and I had, had let him know how good it felt. And, um, so then when we got home and I'm struggling a little bit with my emotions, and he was aware of it, I had an [00:18:00] expectation that we were going to continue the same behaviors and that he was in tune and going to check in.
But then he got just completely distracted by stuff that needed to be dealt with at work, and, and that's part of it, too, right? So there's, for me, those are two big things is there's, there's a pretty deep wound for me around the move that I made to be with him, and then wounds around work being an easy distraction.
Work and other things have been a distraction earlier in the relationship that he went to when we were disconnected. So it was- Okay ... you know, it's like that's why, like you said, I feel the, the, the abandonment. I see it's happening. I had asked for help, maybe not as clearly, as directly as I should have And then [00:19:00] he was just gone.
Julie: So here, so here you are dropped again.
Rachel: Right. Yep.
Julie: Right? And it's not just dropped again. It, it, before this drop, you had, um, actually been taking in the good stuff. Yes. It was coming your way. Yes. You were getting the good stuff. And were... Was your nervous system more open to it then?
Rachel: Absolutely. Yes.
Julie: Oh, I see.
Okay. Okay. All right. So if I'm just kinda trying to organize all of this, the old cycle is you get dropped, your body knows this place, it feels bad. You kinda have some hope that maybe he's gonna be able to show up for you. He doesn't. The pain hurts, and then that goes into anger, and the anger says, "Well, if I can just get him, bring attention to the problem and get him to see, maybe he'll, he'll shift gears and he'll show up in the right way."
Right? And then he doesn't, and then- . Go ahead.
Rachel: A- and I, and I told him that's what's hard for me to make sense of, is because, you know, three, four, five days before all that, he was showing up exactly as we'd [00:20:00] want to. And I think I deserve him to.
Julie: And so I don't, I don't know exactly why, what happened with him.
We'll get, we'll get to know all about that. But right now, just kinda sticking with you, is you're, you get confused, you get blindsided, right? And so, and so maybe your body kinda goes, initially goes back to that old cycle where you, you protest, and that doesn't really get you anywhere. So now what we are, we're in this new cycle.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Julie: The new cycle that you guys are in, the big cycle right now, is that Mike's getting to a place where he can start making repairs, right? We're not perfect. He's still... You know, we're still having these, these hiccups. Um, but he's in a place where he's still open, um, where he's getting better at this.
Um, and, and you went back into a place where you started to trust his availability, and trust that you weren't going to be dropped. But then you got dropped again. Your nervous system shut back down, okay? And [00:21:00] so now, when he tries to do the repair work, your nervous system is saying, "I just had another experience where I let it in and I got dropped."
Rachel: Yep, exactly. "
Julie: And now I'm shut down. Now I don't wanna let it in." And you're not doing it on purpose. You're actually trying so hard to let it in. Then on top of that, it's not just, well, I'm not letting it in because, you know, all of this makes sense because I have all these experiences with emotional abandonment, and this is just kind of what nervous systems do, right?
Um, then you say, "No, that's not the explanation. The explanation is there must just be something wrong with me. I'm not doing the therapy right. I'm not capable of it. I can't..." You know, I don't know what the story is. We'll get there, the exact story. Right now it's just kind of vague, there must be something wrong with me.
Um, but right now I wanna [00:22:00] work on a different piece of it. I wanna work on honoring the barrier.
Okay, so Julie jumping in here. So this, this is a big pivot. So often, you know, we, we view our defenses, like shutting down or putting up walls, as the enemy. We just hate them, and we end up shaming ourselves for having them.
But Rachel's barrier was built over a lifetime of needing to survive real emotional abandonments. It's there to protect her, and it needs to be honored for the purpose that it has served in her life. Um, the goal isn't to force the barrier away. It's to create a new relationship environment that is so consistently safe that the barrier eventually realizes that it doesn't need to have a job anymore.
All right, so let's go back in.
That's where I wanna work, is honoring that barrier. Because that barrier is... It has a lot of wisdom in it.
Rachel: Okay. [00:23:00]
Julie: So what comes up just as I say that? How often do you honor the barrier? Rachel: I don't. I try to push it away.
Julie: What happens if you don't? What happens if you don't have the barrier there, or people in general don't have these barriers?
Rachel: You get hurt.
Julie: Mm-hmm. You keep getting hurt over and over. I don't want you to have to have that barrier, but I, I want you to not have to have the barrier because the barrier doesn't need to be there, not because you just, you know, randomly force
it to go away. I want you to not have that barrier because you have a relationship that, you know, again, it doesn't need it.
Rachel: And that's what's hard is because every relationship is it's needed to be there.
Julie: If y- if you've had all of these experiences in life of emotional abandonment, that's real, and it's real in this relationship, and it really happened when he wasn't there for you. And I am sure there's... You know, Mike, I know that wasn't intentional.
You had your [00:24:00] own stuff going on. We'll work through it all. We can get it to a place where we can, you know, have it sewed up in five minutes. But regardless, the abandonment was real. It happened again. How often do you just say, "These abandonments, they're real"? Of course my body blocks, goes into mistrust and
Rachel: I think it's, like intellectually I can recognize it and tell myself that, but at the same time, there's part of me that doesn't trust myself that I'm getting it right.
Julie: And when you say doesn't trust, um, do you, do you trust the ab- the abandonments existed? Do you, do you buy that?
Rachel: Yes.
Julie: Okay. And then so what is the, this part of you that doesn't trust, what does it say that you should, you should do about that?
Rachel: I think specifically in this relationship, it's because [00:25:00] for so long when I pointed it out, I was just basically told that I was get- I was wrong.
That I was wrong, that I wasn't reading the situation right.
Julie: But, and, and you've been told that over and over, right?
Rachel: None of the, none of the other ones have ever been addressed or acknowledged.
Julie: Okay. So it didn't, you didn't really get the opportunity. You didn't even feel safe going that far.
Rachel: Oh, no.
Julie: What you've been doing is you've just been believing, believing that narrative.
There is something wrong with me. But then you started accessing all of this in new information, and it started to make sense. Wait, that's actually not true. There's really not anything wrong with me here. To need support and connection.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, there was one moment in, when I was working with another therapist, and we went through an exercise, and at the end of it, the very first thought I had was, there was never anything wrong with me.
Julie: Wow. Wow. [00:26:00]
Rachel: It was hard to make sense of, right? Like, having that realization that as a child, there wasn't anything wrong with me. It was adults who didn't know how to behave or interact or connect. And so there was never anything wrong with me, but all my life it certainly made me feel like there was.
Julie: And there's a lot of grief work to do there, to let yourself cry for that little girl that had to take on this belief that there's something wrong with me.
And you're still giving... You still, you still come in. That voice still comes in and says, "There's something wrong with me." It's still there.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: So, so the voice says, "There's something wrong with me that I get abandoned, and then there's something wrong with me when I don't trust that I won't get abandoned."
Rachel: Yeah. There's something wrong with me because I can't figure out how to get this right.
Julie: Yeah. There's something... I, I keep finding myself in [00:27:00] pain over and over and over again. I'm hurting when I'm being abandoned. I'm hurting when I'm not being abandoned. What is going on? What is so wrong with me that I keep hurting?
So again, that, that barrier that your nervous system puts up gets, gets drawn into this narrative, right?
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: But what if the barrier wasn't there?
Rachel: Probably be even more of a mess.
Julie: What would happen if, if you didn't have the barrier come up in, in your life and help out? Would you just keep expecting?
Would you just keep opening yourself up? Would you just keep getting dropped over and over? Is that, is that a possibility?
Rachel: That's what I can't make sense of though. That's what I can't make sense of though, right, is because whether I do or I don't have the barrier, it feels like the, the outcome is the same.
Like, if I just ignored that protection that's trying to help me, the circumstances are [00:28:00] still the same, so is, is the protection really helping anything?
Julie: Let's get really clear about what it is
helping. Again, I don't want the barrier to be there
Rachel: Right ...
Julie: in your life, but I trust that it is there for a very good reason.
The way that we get rid of barriers is we stop giving them a reason to be, to e to need to exist. That's how we get rid of barriers. We don't say, "Barrier, you're bad. You're just getting randomly getting in my way." So I need to do the work in this relationship to get that need for the barrier g- gone for good, right?
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: But part of your self work and part of getting there is for you to start trusting yourself and not abandoning yourself, and that means not abandoning that barrier anymore.
Rachel: So how do I utilize it to help myself? [00:29:00]
Julie: Well, for one, I don't think you need to utilize it. It, it's utilizing itself right now.
It's acting out of its own wisdom.
Rachel: But what do I do?
Julie: I think what you're saying is, is how do we get it to go away, right? Rachel: I mean
Julie: Well, we get it, we get it to go away by, by helping this relationship have vulnerability safely. . That's how we get it to go away. We get it to go away by giving you a lot, giving it a lot of experiences of not being emotionally abandoned anymore, and when you are, the ability to, to get, you know, back to safety.
That's how we get it to go away.
Rachel: Yeah. That's how I'm doing, and that's what I explained the other night Yeah ... when we were talking about it. Because I, I felt like I had to let him know, like, that's the reason that you're not feeling me come in as close as you're used to experiencing after we have repair conversation.[00:30:00]
Julie: Okay, so here's that part of you coming on board that can see this all really clearly. Notice how your voice changes. You get- ... you sound stronger, you sound more confident. So tell me again what you're, what you're saying, this other way of making sense of the barrier.
Rachel: Um
Julie: The new, the way that you're speaking.
Rachel: Being aware that it is there and trying to let Mike know that I'm aware of it, it's there, it's a protection, and I wanna figure out, kind of like you said, how to honor it and come back together.
Julie: And some of that is just going to take time.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: Well, I think what you did is, is great, is you talked about it with him.
You didn't just shut him out and then go off by yourself. You guys ha- had a talk about what's going on here, and that's the work. And, and if you were, you know, [00:31:00] here's the thing about you is, is I know that you're capable of taking in emotional support. If I thought you're, "Okay, Rachel, you just can't take in emotional support, and we need to work on that, do some self-work around that," then, then I would be going down a different road with you.
Mike: Okay.
Julie: But you're, you are able to take in emotional support. So now I have to look at, you know, what's happening outside of you that's not supportive, that your body is wisely on guard against.
Rachel: Okay.
Julie: Does that make sense?
Rachel: It does.
Julie: Yeah. So again, and you know, I, I just wanna keep, keep reiterating what I'm doing here, is I'm getting, I need to get us some peace around the barrier.
I need to, to understand the very, very good reason that barrier is there instead of just shaming it or trying to make it run off or
Because every time you hate on that barrier, you [00:32:00] self-abandon. And in, in the big picture kind of way, that self-abandonment will block Mike from coming in in some way, right?
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: So what would you tell your daughter? Let's say that, you know, she had similar circumstances in life, and she's in a relationship that keeps getting stuck in these cycles, and, and the cycle is abandon- the cy- let's just say the cycle is abandoning, okay?
And what would you tell her about something inside of her that says, "Wait, maybe don't trust that so much just yet"?
Rachel: I would be telling her there's wisdom in it. Yeah. And actually I do tell my kids that a lot, trust your gut
Julie: It, it sounds like that y- you've got, you do have this awareness over it, right? Um, it comes and goes because that shame part comes in and says, "This barrier's a threat."
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: And I just want to reorganize that and reframe that, that the [00:33:00] barrier isn't the threat. The environment that leads to barriers is the threat.
Rachel: Okay.
Julie: And, and so my job is to clean up the environment by looking at both of your roles and creating this environment that needs the barrier
Rachel: I think I've As we've learned about our protections and how- play the role in this cycle, I think I've equated those protections with being a bad thing, and that's why I've equated this nervous system response as being a bad thing
because it's threatening and it's blocking the connection, instead of viewing it as a wisdom-related protection.
Julie: The only bad thing is what we do with it. That's where it can be bad or good or helpful or not helpful. And, and one of the unhelpful things we can do with it is mistrust it. You know, one of the other bad [00:34:00] things we could do with it, or ineffective things, is y- you know, all, all sorts of stuff. Yell and scream and protest or slam the door or shut down or drive away.
Or, I mean, those are all things that don't work because of the barrier that the barrier could contribute to, right? But again, it's not the barrier that's the problem. The barrier has a function, and the function of the barrier is... And again, this is all in service of helping the barrier go away. That's what we're working toward here.
But b- we want it to go away because it doesn't need to do its job, not because its job is bad. Its job is there to keep you safe. Again, what would happen if, if your daughter just kept going through life just blindly trusting and experiencing emotional abandonment after emotional abandonment and didn't, you know, have any way to protect herself from that disappointment, that over and over [00:35:00] feeling of loss and grief and disappointment in every single moment of abandonment?
Every single drop hurts somewhere on some level. What do you think life would be like for her?
Rachel: Hmm, I'm watching it play out kind of somewhat. Mm-hmm. Julie: And what's it like?
Rachel: Painful.
Julie: Yeah. It's, it's traumatic. And, and yes, I think what we're... When you're saying, "Look, I always thought of it as a bad thing," is I think what you're probably saying to me is, "I've always thought of it as something that blocks connection."
And it does block connection.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: But it also blocks hurt. And so again, we want, we want to open it up so we can have connection come in freely, but we have to create an environment that, that can do that. Because just because it goes down doesn't mean that the connection will be there. Does that make sense?
Rachel: Yeah. [00:36:00]
Julie: Yeah. He has a role in that too. I mean, you bo- you both have a role in it because you're, you both have a role in creating a safe relationship where the wall can go down, and you're working together here to create that environment.
Rachel: Yeah. And that's what we talked a little bit about too, was we, we both know we have a role in it, and we both know that we don't have this, the full skill set.
And that's frustrating.
Julie: Yeah. It's frustrating because not having the full skill set leaves you hurting.
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: And it's hard. And especially when you can see it, you kinda can see it over there, and you know it's real, and you know it exists, and you can't quite grab it when you need it.
Rachel: Yeah. That's accurate.
Julie: And, you know, I think we can all agree too that Mike has his own walls and barriers, and those barriers are important, too.
Rachel: Right.
Julie: Does it help to, um, recognize that in him? Does it [00:37:00] help you accept that in you, that cycles create barriers?
Rachel: Yes, and it doesn't feel good because I know that I'm part of the reason that the walls are there.
Some of them were created before me, just like mine were, but
Julie: Yeah, the cycle again, again, this, we both contribute to this cycle and the way we communicate, and the cycle creates the barriers and the protections and
Rachel: Yeah ...
Julie: the cycle causes us to put on armor And so I want you to tell him this. I want you to say that this barrier, it, it's here because it's protecting me from having to keep hurting over and over again because of this cycle.
You know, because the, the emotional abandonments that I've been through in life so many times, they're, they're hard on my nervous system. They, they hurt. And so that, that barrier is there in all its wisdom to kinda just help me [00:38:00] get through the day sometimes
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. The barrier that's there is because I've just endured so many emotional abandonment and disconnections, and it's,
it's there to protect me from getting hurt
Mike: Yeah. Makes, makes a lot of sense.
Julie: So how does it feel? 'Cause we, we started this conversation, and we we're, there's deeper work to do here, right? We, we need to do some shame work around these walls and some grief work here too around all of these abandonments in your life. And it's coming out w- every time the tears come, it's, it's there, right?
Um, but we started this conversation with there's something wrong with me because this barrier comes up, and it's so frustrating. And now we're saying, "Okay, look, the barrier has a really, really good reason for existing." And how does that feel different for you?[00:39:00]
Rachel: Instead of feeling like a sharpness on the inside, I feel a softness
Julie: Okay, so Julie coming back here. So listen to the, the change in her tone here. When we fight our own nervous system and call ourselves defective for having the protections that we needed at a time in life when they were created, we create a sharp internal tension, because ultimately it's considering a, a really important part of our own selves defective.
That part is, is going to say, "Hey, I'm not going to just sit here taking that, because I know that I had to exist for a good reason." So the moment that Rachel was given permission to view this wall inside of her as a wise protector rather than just this character flaw that she was born with, she stopped self abandoning, and that internal softness is exactly what allows a partner like Mike to finally reach her.
And you can see how that's the [00:40:00] path. You know, the path is, is connection. The path is creating connection, so the wall no longer has to be there. All right, so let's return to the session.
Because at least you're not self-abandoning. Because when you self... When you abandon the barrier, you have to make sense of it being there, and the only way to make sense of it, if it's bad, is, "I'm bad for having it."
Rachel: Yeah.
Julie: There's something wrong with me for having this bad thing." And so Mike, how does it hit, you know, how does it hit your heart to hear us go through this conversation?
Mike: It's helpful. It's helpful in a lot of ways. I mean, it, it's... The bar- the, the barriers in both Rachel and I have been, been present and just kind of
understanding that, that level, 'cause it's, it is super frustrating to me, like, in particular, like this, this past week where I'm, I'm trying to reach through to Rachel, like doing everything I [00:41:00] have, everything I know, and it, still hitting that resistance, it's, it, it creates a lot of frustration because it's, that's, you know, as I'm frustrated because I c- I can't get through to her, I can't connect as m- as hard as I'm trying.
The s- days keep going by and it just, you know, disconnected state, the cycle continues. And it's like I know that barrier's there and just, you know, it's helpful to understand it, you know, at a, at a deeper level. And then, you know, i- i- and, and I, I, and, and Rachel has said as much, I do recognize that it is totally a, a protection for her, you know, from all the hurt that's, that has happened in, in this relationship and prior.
Um, it- it's, yeah, it's, uh, it, it, yeah, the, I mean, just understanding where she's been, her kind of feelings, you know, it's, it's, y- there's a good reason for it. Yeah. I, I, yeah.
Julie: So when, when [00:42:00] you're not, when we're not kind of looking at it in this way and putting these kinds of words to it, um, I'm guessing that that barrier just feels really threatening, right?
It's like, well, what am, what else can I do here? I'm doing everything I possibly can, and this barrier's still there. That doesn't feel good, right?
Mike: Right. Right.
Julie: But when we talk about it in a new way and we say, "Hey, actually this barrier is here for a good reason," you know, we're still working on a new emotional environment, and as we build up that emotional environment by continuing to do what you're doing, the, the, the barrier will start to dissolve
Mike: Yeah, that's
Julie: We have, we have a different way to get that barrier down.
Instead of just saying, "We hate this barrier, go away, this is super frustrating," we're saying, "Okay, barrier, we're gonna, we're gonna approach this from a different angle
Mike: Yeah
Julie: We're gonna help you come down instead of making you come [00:43:00] down
Rachel: That, that word dissolving makes sense because it's not gonna happen quickly.
It's gonna take time, and that's the- Yes ... consistency that we'll bring, and then it will just naturally
Julie: Yes ...
Rachel: go away.
Julie: Yes, yes, exactly. You just said it. And it, and it'll dissolve, and then it might thicken back up a bit, and then it'll dissolve. And so the idea is we're dissolving it faster than we're thickening it.
Rachel: Yeah. Right now it feels like a big old ice wall, and I just wanna take a hatch it and chop it down and get it out of the way.
Julie: Exactly. Exactly. And what we're, to use your analogy, what we're doing is we're just warming up the environment.
Rachel: Yeah. Mm. Makes a lot more sense.
Julie: Yeah. It's just takes longer.
Mike: Yeah.
Julie: It does.
It does. It, it, well, it arguably the other route doesn't work at all- Right. ... so it would never work.
Mike: Yeah. [00:44:00] There's that.
Julie: All right. Give me, give me one sec, guys. I'm gonna take a quick break. Rachel: Yeah.
That works.
Mike: Cool.
Julie: We'll come right back. Okay. All right. So this is where we will wrap it up today. So setbacks are frustrating.
There's nothing happy about them, right? But they're also a very normal part of doing this work. So what I really loved about this session is how we were able to reframe what it means to be guarded. So for so long, Rachel looked at her emotional wall as this massive block of ice that she needed to just hack down with an ax.
But as we talked about today, the only way to actually get rid of an ice wall is to slowly warm up the environment until it dissolves on its own. And warming up the environment starts with offering yourself some basic compassion. You know, the truth is, is if, if we're not able to see and understand and hold and offer these parts of ourselves compassion, it's going to be very, very difficult to take that in from [00:45:00] another person.
So next week we're going to trace that, quote-unquote, "defective narrative" all the way back to some really painful moments in Rachel's past, and we're going to see Mike step up to offer the kind of steady protection that she's really always longed for. So when you find yourself putting up a wall with your partner, do you immediately just beat yourself up for it?
Well, this week try to do something new. Try to practice some self-compassion and just say to that wall, "You know, I know you're here for a good reason." Acknowledge that they, they came to be to keep you safe and that there's wisdom in them, and tell them thank you. And this isn't in the service of keeping them around when they know- don't need to be there.
This is in the service of helping them dissolve on their own. Ask yourself, "What kind of safety does my environment need for this wall to soften?" So if you found value in today's session, please leave us a five-star rating on [00:46:00] Apple or Spotify. Thank you to Mike and Rachel for their continued bravery, and thank you all for listening.
So until next time, take care of yourself and your relationships.
If you feel sensitive in relationships, scan for signs of disconnection, or spiral into protest and panic when you don’t feel close, this course is your starting point for healing. In this self-paced course, Julie Menanno guides you through the deeper emotional work required to stop self-abandoning and start showing up for your own needs, so connection can feel safe again. You’ll learn how anxious attachment develops, how it shows up in adult relationships, and how to build secure self-support,
