538 - When Knowing Better Doesn't Mean Doing Better
Knowing better is only half the battle
Current generations are the most therapy-literate to date, but we still struggle with healthy relationships. But sometimes knowing a lot about healthy communication and relationships can make us feel worse when we’re unable to put it into practice. For instance:
Internal pressure: feeling shame when old patterns repeat despite “knowing better,” or the exhaustion of trying to therapize your way through every interaction.
“I know better” phenomenon:
You know you should use "I" statements, but in the heat of an argument, you still find yourself saying "You always..."
You understand your attachment style intellectually but still feel anxious when your partner doesn't text back.
You've read about healthy boundaries but struggle to actually set them without feeling guilty.
You know communication is key but freeze up during difficult conversations.
Spiritual bypassing with psychology: Using therapeutic concepts to avoid difficult emotions or personal responsibility.
Intellectualization: Using analysis to avoid feeling feelings.
Cultural assumptions: How therapy speak assumes universal understanding of concepts that vary greatly across backgrounds.
Putting your values into practice
“Knowing better” might mean we’re losing the ability to have messy, authentic human conversations, and the focus of being “psychologically correct” can interfere with genuine human connections.
Putting your values into practice can be difficult, and you’re not alone if it’s something you struggle with. This is called the Value-Action Gap or Intention-Behavior Gap.
This is the discrepancy between what people say they value or believe and how they actually behave. People often express positive attitudes or intentions toward certain behaviors but fail to follow through with corresponding actions.
Common barriers to following through could be:
Individual barriers: Personal conflicting attitudes, lack of interest, or feeling like "the wrong type of person" for certain actions.
Responsibility barriers: Belief that it's not one's responsibility to act or cynicism about effectiveness.
Practical constraints: Lack of time, money, resources, or physical ability.
Why does the gap even exist?
Multiple factors influence behavior beyond just personal values.
Values are negotiated and sometimes contradictory.
People often act impulsively or out of habit rather than deliberate consideration.
Self-interest frequently outweighs altruistic values in decision-making.
How to change
Here are some ways to start following through with the knowledge you have about communication and healthy relationships!
Building self-efficacy:
Small experiments: Instead of trying to change everything, choose one tiny relationship behavior to practice consistently for a week.
Success tracking: Notice and celebrate small wins to build confidence.
Skill stacking: Add one new behavior only after the previous one feels automatic.
Acknowledge: Check in and notice your successes, especially anything that surprised you (how fast or easy certain parts were).
Reframe setbacks: From "I failed" to "What did I learn?" “What could be a different behavior to try?”
If This, Then That method:
Specific "if-then" planning creates automatic behavioral triggers that help translate goals into action:
Instead of relying on willpower, an automatic trigger can be easier to apply in daily life.
Works by creating strong associative links between situations and responses.
There is a large amount of research that shows making a plan for how you will implement a behavior in specific situations is effective, but we often focus more on learning than on planning for real life.
Makes situational cues highly accessible in memory.
Framework: "If X (situation) arises, then I will do Y (specific behavior)."
Examples:
"If I feel defensive during feedback, then I will take three deep breaths and ask a clarifying question."
"If my partner seems upset, then I will put down my phone and make eye contact before responding."
The key: Make plans specific, behavioral, and tied to specific triggers.
The Integration Practice - "Head, Heart, Gut Check:"
Background: Embodied cognition shows three cycles: self-regulation (gut), sensorimotor coupling (heart), and intersubjective interaction (head) Embodied Cognition and the Direct Induction of Affect as a Compliment to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Intellectual level: What do I think about this situation?
Emotional level: What do I feel in my body about this?
Somatic level: What does my gut/intuition tell me?
Integration question: Where do these align or conflict, and what does that tell me?
Practical application: Use before difficult conversations or relationship decisions.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're discussing why we struggle to put the communication and relationship lessons that we learn into practice. We are the most therapy-literate generation in history, yet our relationships aren't necessarily healthier. What happens when everyone knows the psychological terms but hasn't done the deeper work of integrating that into their lives and changing? Today, we're going to dive into the reasons why learning how to do relationships better isn't always enough. Then dig into some fascinating research about it, and finally give you some practical tools to bridge the gap between insight and real change.
If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, and how you can put them into practice, check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which you can find at multiamory.com/book, or wherever books or audio books are sold. All right, this is a topic that I've been excited to get into. I've been planning this one for a few months. I think you, too, can relate to this. We're in this world where knowing psychological terms and concepts like boundaries, or baggage, or trauma, or these sort of things are much more commonplace and they're used much more frequently.
Yet sometimes it can feel like we have all these words for things, but they're just words that we use to express why we still have all these problems, rather than being terms we understand to help improve those or make our lives better, or not have those problems anymore. Does that ring true? I saw you both nodding there.
Emily: Yes. A close friend of mine, I think a couple years ago when she was back on the dating apps, after the end of a more significant relationship, she complained about how she was going on dates with men who could be very open about like, "Yes, I have this avoidant attachment style," or, "Yes, I have this anxious attachment style," or, "Yes, I'm this," or, "Yes, I'm that." They knew the term, and they knew that it applied to them, and they understood what it meant. They knew that maybe this was a problem or this was something they were struggling with, but then that was where the reflection ended.
That was like, "Yes, I'm avoidant and I'm going to just go keep on doing all my avoidant behaviors," but just as long as you know that I'm avoidant and I know I'm avoidant, yes, I'm working on this.
Jase: As long as we all know.
Emily: As long as we all know, that was the end of it. Of course, I always want to have compassion for people because sometimes that's a stage in the process, is understanding that there's a problem or understanding that there's a particular default way that you tend to operate. Sometimes you know that before you're ready to change the pattern, but at least, according to how my friend was sharing, it seemed like this wasn't just a temporary stage. It was like people felt like they had landed here, and then that was the end.
I do think that sometimes with certain terms that we pick up from social media or even from being in therapy, that landing on a term or landing on, "Right, this is what's going on with me," can feel very freeing and very liberating. Then also it can feel good enough that there's a risk that then you just stop there.
Jase: It funny, it reminds me a little bit of that old adage of admitting you have the problem is the first step to recovery. I think that it's that. That it's the first step toward something is maybe the piece that's missing, and it sometimes feels like figuring out what it is that's "wrong" or what it is that I am, or what I'm like, that's the end. It's like just about self-discovery and not about self-improvement or change, or feeling empowered to be able to change, I guess.
Dedeker: That's really interesting. I do wonder because you place a label on yourself, like, "Oh, I am anxiously attached," or whatever, instead of necessarily saying, "I'm going to work towards becoming a more securely attached person." You just stop at, "I'm anxiously attached and that's it. That's who I am. I know now, and so thankfully, I understand some of the traits that I may have or some of the things that I may be more inclined to do or not because of this box that I'm putting myself in." Instead of actually moving towards, let's do something about it, or let's break that pattern or change that pattern, or something, they just resolve in their mind that like, "This is who I am and this is all that I'm ever going to be."
I do think that the three of us are in this unique position where we have so many tools at our disposal. Anyone even who listens to our show or who listens to shows like this, where they're constantly inundated with a lot of information on how to become better or how to break patterns and cycles, and sometimes it almost can be an abundance of resources that you're not necessarily sure which one is going to be the one to help. You're going to learn a lot of things and you're going to hear a lot of things, but then maybe it's almost a little too much and too overwhelming to know even where to begin or where to start.
Jase: I also think that when we read self-help books or when we listen to relationship podcasts, not always, but I think a lot of the time, we're in a pretty regulated state of mind. We're not listening to a relationship podcast while we're in the middle of a fight, or while we're in the middle of being upset by our partner. Sometimes we could reach to a podcast to help us through those times, but just thinking generally that we can tend to think about these tools that we want to use, like how we want to be better in arguments or how we want to communicate more clearly when we're in this really neutral intellectual mindset. Then it all goes out the window when we're actually upset.
How many times have you had the experience of, "I had this situation and I reacted this way, and I know better than that. I wish I hadn't done that." I feel like that's a pretty universal experience.
Emily: I don't know, Jase, I think that when you and I have an argument, I show up exactly the same way as I show up when I'm recording a podcast, learning about all the ways to-
Dedeker: I'm sure you do.
Emily: - correctly with communication.
Jase: Yes, yes, you're so right.
Emily: Is your yes a validation?
Jase: What are my other options from what the yes could be?
Dedeker: I think Emily, yes, like you're saying that for the three of us-- I think this is not unique to the three of us. This could be anyone who's gone and gotten their master's degree in psychology or gotten their licensure to be a therapist, or anyone who's spent a long time really inundated in the body of knowledge that is around good relationship practices, good communication practices, good mental health practices, may relate to that sensation of, I have a lot of knowledge, I have a lot of tools, and that's great. Sometimes they help me, and sometimes they all go flying out the window when I'm just too upset, or too overwhelmed, or too confused, or I'm facing a situation I've never been in before.
I ran into that personally. When the pandemic happened, having this sense of like, "I've been reading relationship research and I've written books and I have so many tools, and I've never had to apply tools under these particular sets of conditions." That's not to say that they're not helpful, but it is to say, like, "I feel completely out of my depth and I'm not entirely sure what to do, even though I technically have a lot of knowledge.
Emily: That's a really good point.
Jase: Then, to make matters worse with all of this is, I think that there's then this, in Buddhism, we'd call it the second arrow, but then there's this idea of, "I know better than this. I should know how to handle this because I listen to Multiamory, I've got these tools, I've been to therapy." Whatever it is, but then I see myself not doing it, and now I feel ashamed, and I feel guilty, and I feel bad. Now I feel maybe even more entrenched in that belief that I can't change because I saw evidence of like, "Look, I learned a better way, and I still didn't do it. I am terrible. I'll never be able to get any better."
Maybe that's where you end up in that situation where you just say like, "Oh yes, I'm avoidantly attached." The end of story. That it can be really discouraging, and it can make you feel like you're not able to get any better.
Emily: We know some people out there who have absolutely used therapy and therapy talk to go back and be in a position of weaponizing that speech against their partners. I think it is also that struggle of we want to use these tools for good and not for something that is ultimately going to be more harmful. I think that those are just things to be aware of, and that it's difficult sometimes to recognize that we might be doing that within ourselves.
Dedeker: Sometimes I don't think it even necessarily has to be weaponized, although that definitely happens. Intellectualization and verbalization can have a protective barrier nature to it, in that I can bring online my prefrontal cortex, which is the part of my brain that's good at wordsmithing and good at analyzing concepts, and because I'm heavily leaning on that part of my brain, I don't have to futz with, the amygdala that deals with fear feelings and my survival responses. I don't have to actually feel into them because I can create space between myself by intellectualizing it and verbalizing it.
It's something that I love to do. I think a very classic Dedeker Winston interaction in conflict is a partner might be, "Can you tell me about what you're actually feeling here?" My response will be, "It reminds me of this amazing research study that I read once upon a time. Let me tell you all about it."
Jase: I've definitely had this interaction with you.
Emily: You're definitely not actually saying anything about how you feel, but rather just throwing more psychology at the problem.
Dedeker: I will say how I feel in this moment is I'm feeling a little defensive. I will go on to defend myself by saying that I don't think it's all entirely a distancing tactic because, of course, I do also have a brain that has this full roster of fascinating research studies that I've read. Sometimes that's how I process my feelings.
Jase: No, I feel like as someone who knows you pretty well, I am often able to then, after you've told the story about the research study or this psychology book that you read or this particular meditation from someone that it reminds you of, that then I'm able piece through that and see, "Oh, okay. You're saying that you're feeling this way." Usually, we're able to get back around to how you're actually feeling after you've gone on that journey. I do think you bring up a good point where knowing terms for things and knowing these therapeutic concepts or intellectual concepts, or even this could be spiritual too.
This doesn't have to be psychological necessarily, but there's this term, spiritual bypassing, for when you use your mindfulness or your spirituality or whatever to avoid actually feeling your feelings, and intellectualization can do that too. That can definitely be a risk that comes with, I guess I keep coming back to learning things, but then not embodying them, or I don't know-
Emily: Actually taking action or making behavior change.
Jase: Behavior change is hard. There's a reason why quitting smoking is so hard, or why changing our habits can be hard, or developing a new habit's hard. It's not something we can just think, "Oh, yes, I should do that." Then we just do it.
Emily: I think it's also really difficult to look inward in a way that is more than just surface level. I think at its best, therapy allows us time and space in which to get away from the lizard brain part of ourselves that is just the really emotional doing, and existing, and emoting at someone.
Dedeker: Reacting?
Emily: Reacting when you're in the moment of being really upset. It allows you to put that away, talk about something from a really rational level, and hopefully get things bounced back at you and reflect in all of those things and whatever form of therapeutic modality you're doing. I think that that's harder for some people to do than others. It's really difficult to dig deep in those moments. From an intellectual level, you may hear the words and you may listen to the diagnoses or whatever it is from the standpoint of saying you're somebody with an anxious attachment style or not, but then really getting to the core of why that thing is, and what put us in that place in the first place. It's tough, lifelong work.
Some people just are simply not willing to go there. I think it's really difficult. I'm saying this as a person who, I think, famously on this show for years and years, never wanted to go to therapy because I didn't want to face it.
Dedeker: Makes sense. We're from this generation that has been much more likely to be in therapy, much more likely to have picked up a lot of therapy speak online for good or for ill. What I find particularly fascinating is that we can forget that certain concepts, maybe stuff like attachment style or boundaries, not only do they not translate to, let's say, another language, they don't translate in a one-to-one, but also different cultures may have completely different value systems. Different therapeutic concepts carry more weight in different cultures than in others.
I'm reminded of Jase and I, a few weeks ago, we hung out with a friend of mine who's Japanese, born in Japan, but is working in Australia. He works in healthcare in Australia. He was talking about how something that struck him is he was like, "Australians are talking about boundaries all the time. Everyone's really clear on my boundary is this, and I have a boundary around that." Everyone talks about boundaries. He's like, "Japanese people never talk about boundaries at all. Technically, yes, we have the word for boundary, but nobody uses it."
If anything, he shared that at least in recent days, people will refer to, I guess, the AT field from Evangelion. They might say that is a roundabout way to reference maybe having a boundary around, let's say, your personal space or your social energy capacity, but it's not--
Jase: It's one specific sub-use of boundaries.
Emily: Yes, of boundaries.
Jase: It's a little more about personal space and just, "Leave me alone for a sec." It's not quite the same meaning. It's really interesting.
Dedeker: I just bring that up to say, sometimes I think it's helpful to de-reify, not only our own attachment to some of our concepts of ourselves and our labels that we apply to ourselves as far as our own psychological makeup, but also to understand that just in different contexts, how heavily people weigh certain concepts or not is going to change. With all of these in mind, we're wanting to take a look at why, even if we can understand some of these things about ourselves and even if we can have a lot of knowledge about tools and psychological concepts, why that doesn't always necessarily translate to personal change or behavior change.
Jase: Now it is time to put on our science hats and start learning some science.
Dedeker: My science hat has some jingle bells on it. I like to bring some festivity to science.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: That's fun, I like.
Emily: Christmas in July.
Jase: I'm trying to think what's my science hat like? I'm imagining my science hat would just have a lot of LEDs and lights and readouts and a computery hat.
Emily: That'd be cool.
Dedeker: I feel like your science hat would be gathering data from your brainwaves constantly.
Jase: Oh, yes, for sure.
Emily: Like an EEG cap that we've talked about.
Jase: Like that cap in Back to the Future 2, I think, where he's wearing that dome hat thing.
Emily: 1.21 gigawatts.
Jase: Maybe that was Back To Future 1.
Dedeker: What's your science hat, Emily?
Emily: Gosh, I don't know. Right now, I just want a lot of fans on it because it's so warm outside.
Jase: I feel like that's got a bunch of little fans.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: I hope the listeners, you have your great science hats on as well.
Dedeker: There you go.
Jase: Please have a seat, and let's get into this. The first thing is I wanted to look for research that was directly relevant to this problem that we're talking about, of how do we implement change? What is it that stops us from doing this? Is this a thing that's studied? Because of how common this experience is, it should be no surprise that, yes, it is studied and there's a term for it. If you want to do some research on your own, the term that I found is the value action gap, or it's sometimes called the intention-behaviour gap.
It's basically that gap between our values and then our actions, or that gap between our intentions of what we want to do and then our behavior, what we actually do.
Dedeker: Jase just gives me more ammunition for me to be like, "I heard about this fascinating research where they've actually identified this gap. They call it the intention behavior gap." I think that like really explains why, even though I said I'd be nice to you, I wasn't today.
Emily: Got it. Got it.
Jase: Good. I'll keep an eye out for that.
Dedeker: Keep an eye out because it'll be your fault.
Jase: This concept emerged, actually, initially in relation to people's behavior about environmental impact of their actions and behaviors-
Dedeker: Wow. Interesting.
Jase: -but it's also been in other areas. At least that's what I found, is it started from people understanding how their behaviors affect the environment and yet still not behaving in a way that's consistent with what they say their values are. Then, this phenomenon that people often express positive attitudes or positive intentions towards certain behaviors, but then they don't actually do the actions of that behavior. Some common barriers that came up in this one is conflicting attitudes or a lack of interest, or feeling like you're "the wrong type of person" to do certain actions. I think all of those, in different ways, relate to what we were talking about before of that the wrong type of person could fall into that, "Oh, well, but I have this attachment style, therefore, I can't even really do that thing, so I'm not even going to try. That's not what I should be doing," or the lack of interest, one's interesting where it's like, "Yes, I do think that'd be good to do, but I haven't got time for that. I don't want to spend my energy on that. I've got other things to worry about."
Emily: Even people who are like, "It sounds really interesting, but I could never do non-monogamy or something along those lines."
Jase: That's an interesting case. Of like, "Someone else might be able to do that, but I'm not the type of person who can do that."
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Honestly, Emily, myself personally I feel that way about veganism for myself.
Emily: Oh.
Dedeker: In a sense where I'm like-
Jase: Interesting.
Dedeker: -"Yes, I could totally see how it makes sense and aligns with my values," and like, how interested am I in having to be more picky when I go out to eat or things like-- I don't know. I don't think I'm that interested in that. It's not like a "good" or very strong argument, but I think that's, for sure, a barrier to action for me.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: I think that's a great example of also understanding is this something I actually care about or not, or is this something I care about enough to be worth trying to make the change? That's an interesting question. Another one is people's attitude about if it's their responsibility or not. I think that this could come up with environmental things, but I'm thinking about in relationships of this, like, "Well, I could do this work to try to behave better in these arguments, but really, they should be the one not arguing with me and just accept that I'm right." I'm being a little silly, but there's-
Dedeker: Well, no, no, no.
Jase: -a certain aspect of diffusion of responsibility there.
Dedeker: You're onto something there. I can think of a ton of examples. One example that I see play out, and I've fallen victim to those too, is it might be I could be the bigger person and reach out first and try to repair with my partner first. I could be the one to choose to apologize first, but I don't think that's my responsibility to apologize first. I'm tired of doing the work. I'm tired of being the one who steps up first. They should do it. That's what--
Jase: That's not always wrong, right?
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: That there is also a certain aspect of maybe that is true. Maybe you are the only one doing your work, and then there's maybe a different issue to tackle here.
Dedeker: Saint Esther Perel, patron saint of all relationship podcasters-
Emily: Of course.
Dedeker: -in one of her episodes, I remember she talked about this concept of hostile dependency, and that's this idea of, "The only reason why I'm behaving this way is because they're behaving that way. If my partner would stop behaving that way, then I would stop behaving this way." Then the partner is also like, "The only reason I'm behaving this way is because you're behaving that way. If you would stop being so hysterical during fights, then I wouldn't run out and slam the door." Then the partner is like, "If you wouldn't run out and slam the door, then I wouldn't be so hysterical." That could just go on-
Emily: So it's cyclical.
Dedeker: -for eternity.
Jase: This just occurred to me right now, and so this was not something I had planned to talk about, but I learned about this fascinating research the other day.
Emily: Of course.
Jase: I was watching this YouTube video about the phenomenon of crowd crushes. I think, Dedeker-
Dedeker: You talked to me about this one.
Jase: -you might have heard me talking about this.
Dedeker: This is when you're at a concert and you see someone all the way across the other side of the crowd and they're so cute and you just instantly have a crush on them and you're like, "Oh my God, maybe I can-
Emily: A crowd crash.
Dedeker: -mosh can my way over there and we can talk about how we love this band, and then we'll be together forever." That's a crowd crush.
Jase: Unfortunately, this is something much more tragic, actually. A crowd crush is basically a phenomenon where a large crowd of people is in a particular environment where they're all vying for something. This often happens with getting into a concert, or certain religious pilgrimages sometimes can have this issue. Basically, where the dynamics of how the crowd is flowing through an area can end up with some people ending up crushed in a corner.
Emily: This has happened recently.
Jase: People die from this. There's fatalities every year around the world from a crowd crush. Because this is a problem, there's been a lot of research on it and a lot of looking at what happens. I'm not going to go into all the details, but one thing I thought was really interesting is they were talking about that in the research, they found that in situations of terrorist attacks and the crowd's reaction to running away from a bombing or something like that, that crowd crushes basically never happen.
They were talking about that psychologically, the explanation they believe is that in those situations, there's the trauma of the danger and the attack that we're all under unifies us. We are all on the same team. That people are actually more likely to help each other in those situations than they are with something like getting into a concert, where it's all these other people are my competition for getting a good space.
Emily: It's more competitive.
Jase: We're not on the same team here. We're opposed to each other, or at least we're not allies. That's where the most danger for crowd crushes comes from. There's also about ways about how the line is managed and stuff that is a big part of it that's been researched. I just thought that was interesting. Now to bring that to our relationships, this idea of even with two people of that mental shift, I think we've all experienced at different times between feeling like my partner and I are allies trying to solve this problem, or they're a little bit my competition in this area, in this conflict that we have like in those examples you were just talking about. I don't know.
Just something to throw out there that popped into my head.
Dedeker: I guess if we're on the subject of responsibility and this idea of responsibility barriers, if we're extrapolating from the crowd crush example to a relationship conflict, I guess in a crowd, if you're like, "It's this stranger's responsibility to try to get a good view. It's not my responsibility. I need to get a good view too, and so I need to look out for number one and try to get in there as fast as possible by whatever means possible to make sure I get a good view."
As opposed to if it's something more life-threatening that's happening that maybe, hopefully, I know it's easy to be cynical, that maybe there's something in our human nature that is maybe less likely to be like, "It's on them. Every man for himself, essentially. It's on them to get to safety," instead of like, "Hey, we all need to get to safety."
Jase: Our different views on how we would behave in that shows up in our shows and movies, and how differently different movies portray how humans would react in those situations, but that's maybe for another episode. The reason why it ties to this is that also in the research, they found that often a barrier to changing behaviors is if self-interest gets involved, because self-interest tends to outweigh altruistic values in decision making.
Emily: Really? That's-
Jase: It could just be-
Emily: -tough to hear.
Jase: -"Well, this serves me a little bit better, and so I'll do that rather than eat vegan or vegetarian or something." It's like, "Yes, but that puts me out, so that can be--"
Emily: I love my cheese.
Jase: I do love my cheese.
Dedeker: I hard identify--
Emily: How many times have I heard that?
Dedeker: It's really hard for me to imagine a future where I'm saying no to cheese.
Jase: I like that.
Dedeker: I'm very self-interested in that regard.
Emily: That's fine. Many people are.
Jase: I do think that thinking about that again with a partner and with your relationships is if we are in this mindset of it's me against them or I have to win, I have to be right, then there is no altruistic reason for you to give in any case or to be the first one to apologize or to admit when you've done things wrong, versus if you're able to instead think, "Oh, having a better relationship with this person is also better for me," then it helps empower your self-interest to also help make things better for that other person. I think that's that interesting subtle difference people often can overlook, how important that can be of like, how much do we identify our own happiness and wellbeing with someone else's?
Dedeker: Can I just share with you a fascinating research study that I also-
Jase: Oh gosh, please,
Dedeker: This is a window into, if you just set up a camera inside mine and Jase's house, it's just all day back and forth, insufferable. I think I cited this on an episode. We record so many episodes. I could not, for the life of me, tell you which one I cited this on. If anyone out there has it at the top of their brain, let me know. Basically, they found that if someone already anticipates that their partner is not going to be understanding of them, or they have an assumption their partner is not going to make an effort to hear them or listen to them, they will often choose means of communicating that make that true.
As in, they will choose a means of communicating that is very hard for the partner to receive. They might be more aggressive. They might be more accusatory. They might come in just with a more angry energy or a more critical energy, which then makes it really hard for the partner to listen to them to understand their side of the story, and then it's the self-fulfilling prophecy. That's what it reminds me of.
Emily: This is so difficult because I constantly say this, and I don't always do it, but I'm trying to do it more and more, especially in the healthier relationships that I'm in now. It's that hope that you assume good intent first, that you assume also that your partner is going to be able to take something well, or at least be able to hear it and at least be able to move in a direction of like, "I acknowledge that this might be a hard thing for me to hear, but that hopefully they are telling me this with the intention of us being more positive to one another, or breaking the cycle of some bad pattern that we have or something. But that's so hard to do, especially in the moment, from either end, when your partner comes to you to not be like, "Oh, they're about to tell me something shitty," and so I'm already in a state of defensiveness before I even hear it. They may even say something that's not that challenging, but because of my preconceived notion, I am hearing the story in my head that they're being really awful to me in this moment, and also from the other end--
Dedeker: You're primed.
Emily: Exactly, we're primed. We're priming ourselves, yes. Then just what you said, Dedeker, that if you think your partner is not going to take something well, you may end up saying it to them in a really poor way.
Dedeker: We talked about how there can be these individual barriers to action, there can be these responsibility barriers to behavior change, but there can straight up be practical constraints as well. Those are things like a lack of time, a lack of money, lack of resources, not having the physical ability that does get in the way of making a change, and so-- I don't know, I'm imagining something like, you want to be the person who gets eight hours of sleep per night because you know that it's good for you, and you know it's good for your health, and you know that you're a better, more functioning human being when you do. But maybe you're working two jobs and caregiving, and getting full eight hours of sleep practically is really difficult.
That's a barrier in the way, even though you feel like, "Yes, this is my responsibility to change," you have the interest, you don't have a conflicting attitude around it, but sometimes that's a part of life as well, that there are factors outside of our control preventing us, or making it at least much more difficult to change our behaviors.
Jase: Yes. We'll talk about this a little bit more later on in the tool section after this, where we can look at what are some things we can do in those situations. First, I want to talk about a couple of studies real quick here. One of these is from 2020. This is called Closing the Knowledge-behavior Gap in Health Promotion: The Mediating Role of Self-efficacy, and this is by Rajiv N. Rimal from Texas A&M University. They use data from previous longitudinal studies about how participants who had gone through program learning about healthy eating, how their eating behavior changed afterward. Basically, what they found was that people who, on a test, rated high on self-efficacy, was really important.
What that means is that people who had a lot of knowledge, who got this education, but had low self-efficacy, like low feeling that they could actually do something about it, didn't have much behavior change at all. In this study, they measured self-efficacy by identifying how confident someone was that they would perform each of the following activities consistently beginning tomorrow for at least six months, and they were different healthy eating behaviors. Basically, the more someone believed from the start they were going to be able to commit to that, the more likely they were to actually do it, so the people with high self-efficacy were the most likely to apply their knowledge. Those with low self-efficacy showed basically no change at all, even though they'd gained more knowledge than they'd had before.
I feel like this study is relatively straightforward and simple, and backs up a lot of what we've talked about already in terms of our own mental blocks to making these changes. But it's just interesting to see from a relatively recent study, such a clear confirmation that the way they were taught, the knowledge they had was not the thing that mattered actually.
Emily: I wonder, what if your self-efficacy shifts throughout the course of your life, or even just throughout?
Dedeker: Totally.
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Emily: Yes, I don't know. I mean, the course of a week, you know-- If sometimes you're like, "I feel really good about myself in this moment, I feel like I can do anything," versus the times when that's not the case, then what? I'd be interested to know, if you fall off the wagon maybe in those moments where you're not feeling great about yourself, and then you're able to pick yourself back up in the moments when you are feeling good about yourself.
I think, again, when it comes to relational behaviors, this is a really interesting thing to think about, because probably, when you are feeling good about yourself, you are more able to implement the good behaviors and the good ways of speaking to one another. Versus when you're feeling really down in the dumps, really insecure, you may be more likely to lash out and feel like, "Oh, I can't put my best foot forward in these moments because I just simply don't have the emotional bandwidth or the ability to believe in myself to be able to do those things well," so this is a tough one.
Jase: I think you've hit on such a key thing there, is that it does all change, and that it's affected by all sorts of circumstances in our lives. Yes, this could be much harder sometimes than another. In this particular study, they followed these people over six months, but at a different point in their life, yes, that could have been very different. Yes, absolutely, this is not a static trait that you're just born with and stuck with.
Dedeker: I think what I've noticed is I've grown to a place in my life where, yes, I feel pretty confident when it comes to learning about different communication tools, implementing different communication tools, learning to feel my feelings better, implementing, being able to talk about my feelings better. I feel the highest self-efficacy when it comes to my personal relationships, but not when it comes to my family relationships. In my family relationships, there I think I have that, yes, high knowledge-- very, very high knowledge, a constant sense of, "This could be better, there are better ways to do this. I could be better," but very low self-efficacy around, "Can I actually change my behavior around my family members?" Like, low confidence around being able to keep myself in one piece and not have all the screws fall out of my-- you know what I mean?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes, that we can have very different self-efficacy-
Emily: Based on the person in front of us.
Jase: -even in the same arena, but different situation.
Dedeker: Exactly. Like, same time of life between different relationships.
Jase: Absolutely. Yes. This next one I want to talk about is actually a paper from 2018 called Embodied Cognition and the Direct Induction of Affect as a Compliment to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This is from Behavioral Sciences, and it's by Pietrzak, Lohr, Jahn, and Hauke. This one is not specifically a research study. I mean, there's a study in it, but it's kind of proposing a modality to add to complement cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. In this, they talk about how the research proposes that while CBT has been shown to be very effective, especially for anxiety, the purely cognitive approach of it can miss the sensory-motor integration, which maybe the more hippy-dippy of us would say like, the more embodied part necessary for real change. They looked at embodied cognition research from cognitive neuroscience that looks at experiences and behavior patterns being stored as "reenactments of sensory-motor and emotional experiences."
This is something I've talked about on this show before, but it's been a long time. There is a lot of research basically showing that emotions don't come from our thoughts, or at least they don't always come from our thoughts. That often, our body experiences a sensation first, and then our mind detects that physical change and then says, "Oh, I'm feeling this emotion." That actually comes like body first, that then our brain interprets, rather than being a top-down, the mind thinks an emotion, and then our palms get sweaty, or then our stomach gets twisted up, that it actually might go the other way around.
Basically, their proposal is that CBT has been shown to be really effective, but it's only going mind-down. Their proposal was taking this idea of CBT-- which is kind of changing your beliefs, which then changes your thoughts, which then changes how you behave, that's the whole idea there. Taking that and then adding into it, also coming up with body postures or movements that represent those changes. Basically, going from where you are now in terms of how you believe now, how you think now, and how you behave now, to then what your goal state is, how you want to behave, how you want to think and believe, and then doing both of those together.
They would actually have a hallway and kind of decide, "Okay, at this point in the hallway, at the start of it, you're in your present state. Let's come up with a posture for that." Maybe it's like hunched shoulders, or maybe it's your hands up in fear, something like that. Then they'd have them walk down the hallway, striking different poses as they went, to then getting to the end of-- in the posture, doing the gesture or the pose that represents their goal state. Kind of combining the cognitive side with then having them walk through these states together with a therapist, and practicing the physical side of it too. It sounds pretty hippy-dippy, but I think it sounds fun. I'd love to try it.
Dedeker: Well, can I just say that this is literally an exercise that Orit facilitates during the somatic retreats that we run
Jase: Oh, I love that.
Emily: Really?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: That is so cool.
Dedeker: Because she's a dance and movement therapist, and so yes, this is very much in the wheelhouse. Sorry for the plug-- go to multiamory.com/retreat if you're interested in something like this specifically for polyamorous people. Sorry about the plug, but you just teed it up so perfectly. I'll leave it there, because otherwise I could talk for six hours about this very subject.
Emily: Yes. The whole like, the body keeps the score type thing, and why you can be in situations where you're like, "This seems like it's really innocuous, nothing's going on, but whatever just happened is putting my body in this really intense state of fight or flight where I feel like I got to get out of here or I'm going to break down in tears," or whatever it might be.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. I think that anyone who's experiencing frustration, like let's say you're in a relationship, and maybe a long time ago, there was maybe some sort of breach of trust between you and your partner-- small or big, I think it doesn't matter. Really what matters was the impact that it had on you and your system, right? That maybe your partner dropped you in a particular way, or maybe they lied to you in a particular way, or they didn't show up the way that you thought that they would. Even if you have processed that with your partner, talked it through, maybe you've forgiven them, maybe the two of you have agreed like, yes, that was in the past. Maybe they've apologized.
Maybe the whole process has been "A-student" as far as getting through it, but then if you feel frustrated, like, yes, I still feel this tightness in my chest when I have the suspicion. Like, are they being honest with me? I don't know. Or I still feel a little bit of this panic or anxiety come up when they're gone and I don't know where they're at or whatever. I think this really underlines the fact that sometimes, trust, you can cognitively choose to forward some trust to your partner, but you're not actually going to feel trust with your partner until your body and your nervous system has gone through the experience of your partner coming back and feeling safe again like over and over and over and over and over again.
I think that's the frustrating part in relationships sometimes, when it comes to repairing ruptures, is that in an ideal situation, like you and your partner have a rupture of some kind, and then you're able to sit down and talk it out, hug it out, maybe repair it, and then we keep going on as usual, and that doesn't stick with us, but sometimes things stick with us. Certain breaches, certain ruptures are more sticky than others, and I know people get really frustrated feeling like, I should be "over this by now" or I shouldn't be upset by this anymore. I said that I forgave my partner, why am I still getting upset about it? Or maybe your partner's frustrated with you about the fact that you're still feeling upset about a hurt that happened years ago or things like that, but-- I don't know.
This is something that comes up often in my work with clients, and especially my somatic work with clients, that like we need to attend to the fact that-- as I've said a billion times, everything from the neck down doesn't speak English, and so just trying to talk yourself out of the way you're feeling doesn't necessarily always work.
Jase: Now, let's talk about how do we put all this into practice? How do we actually change? I know we've hinted at some of it so far, but let's get into it. The first one is the one I promised we would come back to, which is about that self-efficacy thing. How do we gain the confidence to think that we can change so that we actually can change? It seems like a little bit of a catch-22 cyclical thing there. With this one, basically, it comes down to baby steps, or small experiments. We're all still wearing our science hats, right?
Dedeker: Yes. Mine's still jingling away--
Emily: I haven't taken mine off.
Jase: Yes, lights are still flashing on mine. The idea here is to take a look at what it is that you want to change. Maybe it's about how you react when your partner comes home from being on a date with somebody else, or the first time you see them again after that. Or maybe it's how you react when your partner's stressed. Maybe it's how you react when they are upset about something at work and maybe you take it personally, or how do you react when they're too tired to hang out with you, whatever it is. Some larger-picture thing is to look at that and say, "Okay, rather than trying to change that whole thing all at once, if I don't feel confident that I could do that--" If you're already scoring 100 on the self-efficacy, go for it. Great, the odds are in your favor.
Emily: Never have any self-doubt ever. I wish I were you.
Jase: Right, and it might change by area, like we talked about. Maybe with this one person, you're good, but with someone else it's harder, like Dedeker with their family. Is to then say, "Okay, instead of trying to change everything, what would be one small part of that that I could decide I'm going to change that feels doable?" I think that's the key part, is like, what's something-- and you could even go so small, but to just find something that feels like, "Yes, okay. Sure, I could do that, whatever, that's not a problem." Maybe it's as small as like, I'm going to wait one second longer before I reply or something. I'll just count to myself, one, and then I'll yell at them about what a jerk they're being. Well, hopefully it's not that--
Dedeker: Okay, I have an example, because-- Yes, something that I've tried to implement with certain family members is trying to just be a little bit better at taking their bids. Like, I have certain family members who I think spam me way too much with memes and videos from the internet. Like, way too much, but instead of just ignoring it or getting annoyed by it, I've tried to be like, "Okay, I'm going to at least try to drop a little heart react or indication that I did see it." It's not that I want to encourage the behavior, but also that I want to have a good relationship, and so trying to at least show up in the sense of, I can respond to some bids for attention and connection in a low-effort sort of way.
Jase: I think that's the key, is identifying like, the ideal behavior would be what? They send me something, and I watch it and write a thoughtful reaction to it and share something back. You're like, "I don't want to do that. I don't have time for that. I don't actually want that at all," but saying like, "Okay, what's a small thing like that of just doing a reaction to it?" I could see that being a case where someone's like, "You don't respond to my messages when you're at work," and you're like, "Yes, I'm at work. I don't have time for that," but maybe it is something where you could viably reply with an emoji, and you could agree together like, "Hey, that's going to be what I can do in that situation, but at least it lets you know I'm thinking about you and I'm getting your messages," just as a random example.
Emily: I talked about this on a recent episode, where sometimes I wonder if me asking where my partner is or what they're doing that night when I'm not with them, for example, if that's kind of controlling behavior. I think part of it is just me trying to keep myself safe, but sometimes it results in me questioning like, why is it that I need this information? What is it that I'm really worried about here? And so I'd like to-- even if it's like half of the week, or four days out of the week, or three days out of the week when I'm not with them, if they want to tell me what they're up to, then they can. Otherwise, I'll just let it be, and I don't have to necessarily ask. Just sort of weaning myself out of this idea that I have to know in order to be safe in the relationship.
Jase: Yes, like trying to identify what's some small part. Maybe, like you said, it's a few days a week, or maybe it's finding an adjusted version of the question. Because part of the idea here is, it's not that you do this one little thing and then you stop, but that you do this one little thing partly because it makes a little bit of a difference, but then also because you can then look back at it. That's the second part of this, is you identify what's the small experiment. What's the manageable thing that you can confidently say, "Yes, I believe that I could do this consistently for the next six months," or whatever length of time? Like, "I believe I could do this, that's pretty easy." To then look back and say, "Hey, I did that. Cool. That actually wasn't so bad."
Maybe you actually ended up doing more than you had planned because it's like, "Well, I already started doing that little thing, so I'll do a little more." It's like the whole micro habits thing that I think we've talked about in the past. Like, if you want to start flossing your teeth, just make a deal to yourself that you'll floss one tooth, and that's all you have to do. If you just get out your floss and you floss one tooth, cool, you're good. But you're kind of like, "Well, I'm here, I might as well keep going. I might as well floss a few more teeth-- Okay, I might as well just do all of them."
You might find that you even do more than you'd planned, but the point is to celebrate that success and to then look at, "Okay, how could I build on this?" Or maybe that was enough actually. "I solved the problem, I'm done. Now, look at my self-efficacy points, they've gone up. I can build this into something else." It's really important to have that feedback loop of acknowledging your successes, acknowledging what was easier than you thought about it, congratulating yourself for being able to do it, kind of proving to yourself that it's possible.
Then, of course, in the event that you struggle, to try to reframe from, "I failed" to "What did I learn?" Okay, maybe I picked a behavior that's actually harder than I thought. Or maybe I picked something that I don't care about very much, like I'm not actually motivated to change, right? Kind of looking at not just, "Oh, I failed. See, look, I can never change," and recognizing, "Well, what was it specifically about this that didn't work? Maybe I could do something else." Maybe it's something smaller, maybe it's something different, just trying to get in that mindset. I feel like, of all the steps, that's the one that's the hardest, because it's also kind of a behavior change. Maybe that's the behavior where you could try to take some small part of that and try that, of just not quite beating yourself up as much about not doing the things you wanted to do, and trying to find what are the small victories you can celebrate.
Dedeker: I think it helps to set you up to, again, be like a little scientist of your own life by being able to examine like, "Okay, when I wasn't able to necessarily follow through with this small experiment, what did happen?" And I can recognize, "Yes, I went ahead and tried to keep tabs on my partner on a day that I was super exhausted and really mentally drained and feeling disconnected, and I was feeling really lonely," right? I can see like, "Oh, there were a lot of things that got in the way of me being able to make this particular change," and that offers more insight to you. Where either it might be like, "Huh, this maybe is tied to something bigger that I need to address with my partner," or "Huh, maybe this is something where I need to look out for how I act out on days when I have like really low capacity and low resources. Or maybe this is something where I need to notice that if I'm having a day like this, I need to step up the way I care for myself," or any number of variations.
Jase: All right. The next one is called If this, then that. That's what I've named it here. This is based on some research talking about if-then planning and how it can significantly improve follow-through. This is based on a 2020 paper written for therapists called Assessing and Promoting the use of Implementation Intentions in Clinical Practice published in Social Science & Medicine. Basically, the idea is that specific if-then planning, so saying, "If this happens, then I'll do this," creates these automatic behavioral triggers that help translate goals into action.
Instead of relying on willpower or relying on being in a state to cognitively think through how you should behave, an automatic trigger is easier to apply in those day-to-day moments, or even when you're a little more activated. It works by creating this strong link between situations, and then the responses, rather than just thinking about the things in the abstract. It's like, the specific situation, specific response. There's a large amount of research that shows making a plan for how you will implement a behavior in specific situations is effective, but we often focus more on learning than on planning for how we're going to use the stuff that we learn. It's kind of taking it just from learning in an abstract way to literally planning, "This is how I will do this in this specific type of situation." It's a lot like micro-scripts.
Dedeker: Well, it seems like there's some overlap with micro-scripts, there's some overlap with how we talk about boundaries to a certain extent. Maybe that's just because it's very focused on your own behavior. I think in my work with clients, sometimes I end up approaching this sort of in a side door, if you will, by-- if my client has reached a place where maybe they have a very strong intention of, "Well, I'm going to stop texting him altogether. I'm going to stop reaching out to my ex," or "I'm going to stop stalking this person on Instagram or whatever. Yes, I need to stop. I'm going to do it. I'm going to stop." I will try to bring in, "Yes, that's great. Can you anticipate any obstacles that might get in the way of you being able to stop or to do this thing that you want to do?"
I do find that's a very helpful exercise, I think, for maybe priming some of this. Actually thinking about real-life situations, instead of just holding the intention or just having the willpower. It does get you to think about like, "Okay, yes, as I go about my day or about my week, what could I see coming along that could totally derail my intention?"
Jase: Yes. I think that's interesting too, because it could be a case of the if-then trigger response, but it also could be you realize, "Hey, actually in this one situation, that's really going to be a problem. Can I avoid that situation?" An example of that might be, I want to change my behavior to not immediately check my phone in the morning. I could say, "I'll just not check my phone in the morning," but when when it has the alarm that goes off and you pick it up, then you just check it because it's there, and you say, "You know what? That's a situation that's too hard and I'm not awake enough to stop myself. What if I change the situation? What if I instead put my phone in the other room and I buy an alarm clock or something like that, or put an alarm on my watch or something like that." I think that's a great question to ask of like, what are the obstacles, what are the situations where this would actually come up?
Emily: Another example is something along the lines where your partner is maybe giving you some feedback on something that you did, and maybe it's --
Jase: "They're critiquing me, they're talking shit."
Emily: Yes, it could be anything, but perhaps you find that you get defensive a lot whenever you receive feedback from your partner. You can do something like, okay, if I feel like I'm going to get defensive during this feedback time from my partner, then I'm just going to take three deep breaths and ask a clarifying question, like, "Fascinating--"
Dedeker: Well, that's not a clarifying question.
Emily: No, I was going to say --
Dedeker: Although I kind of like that as a little micro-script, right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: If you know that you tend to get defensive, and maybe you have a tendency towards, I ask a "clarifying question," but really it's just an argumentative question trying to poke holes in what they're trying to tell me or request of me that-- yes, maybe you do set up an if-then that like, yes, if I notice myself feeling defensive, I'm going to take three deep breaths, and then I'm just going to say, "Fascinating."
Jase: Maybe just one deep breath and, "Fascinating."
Emily: I was going to say, "Fascinating. Can you think of a specific example where I did that thing, or can you relay what your feelings were when I said that thing to you? How did it make you feel?" Something along those lines. I don't know, man. I think that --
Jase: Either, way works.
Dedeker: Especially if you and your partner get on the same page where you can tell them, "Hey, I know my defensiveness is an issue and I'm going to work on that, and this is the script I'm going to implement," so that you at least know, "Okay, I'm feeling defensive, but I'm also making an effort to not be a jerk about it and just like puke my defensiveness all over you," right? I could see it being quite helpful.
Jase: Right, I could see that working. I can think of some situations where I might start trying that one-
Emily: Oh, boy.
Jase: -so, you two let me know how it goes.
Dedeker: All right, I'm ready.
Emily: Got it. The key to all this is to make your plans really specific, make them behavioral, so an actual behavior that you can do. Like, say, "Fascinating," or take three deep breaths, or whatever it might be, and that it's tied to specific triggers. I think something for me is that I find that I have really low self-efficacy, or just ability to be able to think rationally and without feeling really down on myself. I am not able to do that when I'm really tired or when I'm in a space where I'm overworked and emotional, or upset. All of my emotions come to the surface really easily, so I know that in those situations, a halt or halted is very, very important for me so that I can actually take the time to rest and focus on that thing that is causing me to not feel good about myself or not be able to come to a situation where I'm in the best spot possible. I need to address that first before I go and take on and tackle the problem in front of me.
Jase: This just makes me think too that we've talked about these triggers and actions as being things that you just plan like, "Oh, when I feel this, or when this happens," but you could even make this like a very concrete thing. Like, if you have a watch that measures your heart rate, some of them you can set an alarm, a thing that'll buzz when your heart rate goes above a certain amount. We've talked in the past about flooding, which is if you're having an emotional conversation, there's research that shows if your heart rate goes above around 100 beats per minute, you're actually entering a state where it's harder to manage your emotions and regulate and communicate clearly. So it could even be like a very literal-- I set that, and if I'm in a discussion and I feel that buzz, I acknowledge it and say, "Okay, I need to take a moment for that to go back down." We can use science and technology to our advantage is what I'm saying here.
This has definitely been a fun and deep journey into some of our own baggages and some things that we need to work on, and hopefully was inspiring and relatable to a lot of you as well. I think feeling empowered to make the changes that we want to make is such a huge thing, and so anything we can do to give that gift to ourselves is awesome. I really hope this is helpful for all of you, so just take-- Of those couple of tools that we mentioned, or some of the things we discussed earlier on in the episode from the studies, pick one to experiment with this week and see if you notice any difference between how you might've thought about that change in the past, to then actually putting something in place to implement behaviors to change it, or to change your physiological reaction to things. I think it'll be really cool to see if even in a week you can notice a change from trying one of these.
Dedeker: Sometimes when I am frustrated by myself, if I'm frustrated around a particular behavior that I'm repeating that I know is not good for me, or I feel stuck in the way that I'm relating to somebody, something that really encourages me is to remind myself that nothing is a death sentence. Like, nothing about myself is a death sentence. As in, I'm not stuck, I'm not broken. I've entered this world with some scrapes and some injuries and some patterns that are maybe not the healthiest, but that it is possible to shift those, and I really strongly believe in that.
That doesn't mean you can flip a switch, that doesn't mean you can willpower your way through it, that's not what I'm implying, but-- Yes, just that reminder that we do have the power to shift things, we're not stuck. Just don't beat yourself up feeling like you've been given this death sentence in the form of your attachment style, or in the form of your PTSD, or in the form of your mental health issues. That you're worthy, and you matter, and all of us can find ways to relate to each other in a way that's compassionate and healthy.