267 - Reducing Stress Together
Stressful times, stressful measures
Stress is a big deal in regular life, but at the time that this episode comes out, we’re in the midst of a pandemic, and many people are unemployed, cooped up with a partner, or perhaps separated from a partner or partners that they might normally be seeing regularly.
We thought it would be a good idea to talk about some tools that you can use to keep stress levels low, especially when interacting with partners.
Top external stressors
Most people already know what stress is, but not everyone is aware of the different things that can cause stress. Some activities seem relaxing, but may actually be cause for anxiety:
Big issues, like death of a loved one, losing a job, a global pandemic, etc.
Sexual difficulties
Career change
A child moving out
A partner stopping or starting work from home
Changes in sleeping or eating habits
Vacation
Managing your stress, especially if you live with someone else, is vital. Studies show that couples who poorly manage stress are more likely to relapse in a way, or ignore the coping mechanisms and tools that they’ve learned.
According to the Gottman Institute, couples who are considered to be “chaotic” may exhibit signs such as:
feeling like they’re completely out of control and always reactive
feeling powerless to problem-solve
feeling like it’s impossible to find a routine or solid ground even in the midst of stress
“Passive endurance,” or feeling resigned to things always feeling hard
Stress toolbox for conversations
In order to keep healthy communication alive in your relationships, managing stress together is important. We have some tips to have a good, clear conversation that won’t add anxiety:
Take turns. Make sure each person has the chance to speak and listen.
Speaker’s job: Take the time to talk about what’s the most stressful in your life right now. Talk about what you’re feeling and thinking, not just what happened. Use the Triforce and communicate what you’re looking for.
Listener’s job: Show interest, communicate understanding and empathy, and give affection and comfort. Do NOT side with the enemy, minimize your partner’s emotions or distress, or exhibit any of these behaviors: stonewalling, criticism, contempt, or blame/defensiveness.
Remember to check up on each other regularly, communicating how you’re feeling and giving your partner space to do the same. And don’t forget to share the good stuff, too!
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 talking about managing stress in your relationships. We're going to be talking about how external stress can negatively impact your relationships, a specific formula to follow for having stress reducing conversations with your partner, as well as some things to maybe watch out for that you don't turn into your partner's therapist or vice versa.
Right now, at the time that we're recording this, things are pretty stressful. We're in the middle of a pandemic, many people have lost their jobs, at least temporarily, if not longer, a lot of people are either cooped up with a partner they don't normally spend this much time with or they're separated from partners that they're used to getting to see. Now is a time where it's paramount to find ways of managing all of this external stress in your relationships. We're going to arm you with some tools and things that will help you with that anytime you're experiencing external stress in your relationships.
Emily: Yes. I don't think the three of us need to sit here and define what stress is and how it affects our mood. I know for myself, definitely I have heard from a lot of Patrons of ours people are having freakout or big emotional moments on almost a daily basis. I know for the three of us we've talked about like at least on a weekly basis, we've been having these big emotional, maybe meltdowns at times or just exertion or throwing out of emotion to a degree. I definitely am myself, but with this, we want to just talk about that we're putting an emphasis on external stress in our lives, stress or stressful things that are occurring outside of our relationships.
Some of these tools might not work if you're applying it to relationship related stress, so just bear that in mind that right now we're talking about that external stress that happens.
Dedeker: Yes, if right now your primary source of stress is from inside of your relationship, I recommend that you listen to the rest of this podcast, this episode, all the other episodes to maybe start to see if there's something that might help in alleviating some of that inner relationship stress. While I was researching this, I came across something called, oh boy. It's called the Holmes_Rahe, Rahe.
Emily: Rahe?
Dedeker: Okay, it's Holmes, like Sherlock Holmes - R-A-H-E. Rahe, Rahe.
Jase: I'm going to go with Rahe.
Dedeker: Rahe? You're going with Rahe?
Jase: No, I'm going to say Rahe.
Dedeker: Okay, Jase has spoken. I came across this thing called the Holmes - Rahe stress scale. It's a tool for identifying specifically non-relationship related stress in your life. Now the people who developed this scale, good old Holmes and good old Rahe-
Emily: Are you sure it's not just one person named Holme - Rahe?
Dedeker: No, I'm pretty sure.
Jase: It's two people.
Emily: Okay, okay. All right.
Jase: Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe most likely.
Emily: I see.
Dedeker: These doctors, Holmes and Rahe, who developed the scale, they encourage people to go through the scale with their partner. It's basically they have a big old long list of potentially stressful things. They assign some point values to each stressor they have. You go through circle tally it up at the end. At the end, you get rewarded by, you get to check and see what your chances are of developing a stress related illness.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: It's a super fun game.
Emily: It's like going on Google and looking up your symptoms. It's like, am I going to get cancer or something.
Dedeker: I know. I don't necessarily want to recommend people to do this portion of the game because I don't necessarily agree with how they assign certain point values to things and it's more art than science really, but what struck me was looking through their list of potentially stressful things. I just wanted to give some examples from the list because of course they have the big ones like the death of a loved one or losing a job. They didn't have global pandemic on there-
Emily: They should.
Dedeker: -but I'm pretty sure it would be there if they'd thought of it at the time, but they--
Emily: It's going to be on there now.
Dedeker: Yes. They included things having sexual difficulties or switching to a different line of work or your child moving out. A partner, either starting or stopping work outside of the home, a minor change in your sleeping or eating habits, even going on vacation, stuff like that.
Jase: I love that they put vacation as a source of stress because I'm like, "Yes. 100%, absolutely."
Emily: It can be.
Dedeker: They put Christmas time on this list.
Emily: Oh, totally. Any big family gathering like Thanksgiving.
Dedeker: This is just a small list of examples. I wanted to read those out because what struck me was these are all things that don't automatically come to mind when we think about external stressors. I think our minds go to the big things like moving locations or switching jobs or things like that. I think especially right now, when there's this big, big global stressful thing happening, it's really easy to tell ourselves, "Oh, we really shouldn't be stressed about the small things," and, "we really shouldn't be letting this get to us." In reality, it's okay to feel stressed, even with these relatively small changes.
Jase: I think that any change is a source of stress. If there's been a change in your routines or your work or anything, that's big. That's not just a little thing, that actually is one of the more stressful things that a person can go through. Actually, I've heard moving, is actually one of the most stressful things someone can go through and it's funny because we don't often think of it as stressful because at least for me, when I think of what stress means, you picture fretting over a decision or waiting for some specific thing to happen that you don't know how it's going to work out.
In reality, stress is more about this not feeling peaceful, constantly reacting to something new or not having your expectations met. These are things that actually contribute chemically to stress. Something like moving or changing your routine is actually a very stressful thing. Yes, exactly. It's I think things like that of just being in closer quarters to someone than you were before. When couples move in together, just in general, that's actually a huge stressful thing and people tend to ignore that that's a stressful thing that they're doing.
Emily: Yes, thinking about what's happening right now and for myself, my entire routine is just completely gone from what it usually is because I spend so much of my time-- I work like 15 miles away from where I live and I'm in Los Angeles. I spend so much time every day in the car driving to a place. As stressful as that can be, it also has become a part of my daily life, and I'm just very used to, and listening to my podcasts in the car or whatever. Now I listen to my podcasts while walking every day because I'm trying to get out and get into the sun and see the light of day and stuff every day.
Just having a big routine shift, I think it can be so stressful, which is fascinating. Even not being able to go and see people in the way that one used to. I avoid so many people on the sidewalk, and everyone's just walking around each other, instead of coming together in a way that we used to. I do wonder, is that going to become the new normal now?
Jase: Well, and I think you also pointed out something really interesting about this, which is where if you described to someone in the abstract, "Oh, my life has just changed where I used to be commuting for two hours in LA traffic every day and now I'm not." They would go, "Oh, wow. You have so much less stress in your life now."
Emily: That sounds great. Yes, the opposite seems to be true for whatever reason.
Jase: Right, and I think it can actually lead to a lot of us feeling guilty about feeling stressed because it's like, "Oh, I shouldn't be, I should be less stressed now." It is a change, it is.
Emily: Well, yes. Going to that job afforded me things that I can't do because I don't have that income now.
Jase: Well, that's it.
Emily: That changes--
Dedeker: Changes in income.
Emily: Yeah, changes in income.
Dedeker: It was also on their list, on the doctors Holmes and Rahe list.
Emily: I'm sure a lot of people are going through that now. As of recording, rent is due tomorrow, and I'm sure a lot of people don't know how they're going to pay it and that's pretty horrifying.
Dedeker: Anyway, I just wanted to go over this list to let people know that it's really arguably, any level of change has the opportunity to produce some stress. That doesn't mean that we all need to aspire to be zen as fuck and not react to any change whatsoever. You can aspire to it if you want to. I know I do
Emily: For better or for worse.
Dedeker: Yes, but even the little things can throw you off, and it can be an opportunity for being able to manage those things together, with the help of a partner.
Emily: Yes. We wanted to talk about stress management and chaos because how you and your partners manage external stress together is very critical within your relationship. We found someone, Neal Jacobson, who is a psychiatrist, and he researched marital discord, which is what the New York Times calls it.
Dedeker: Yes. That's what I thought was funny. Neal Jacobson is a researcher that often gets cited by the Gottman's. Actually, he's not a Gottman researcher.
Emily: Of course.
Dedeker: He just did research that I think they really respect and admire. It's funny, I was looking up his stuff and actually, I found his obituary or not quite his obituary, but the New York Times did a write up of him and his work, because he died in early 2000s. It was just funny that their title was, “Psychiatrist who researched marital discord.”
.
I just found it funny.
Emily: That's very in New York Times. I love it. Yes, he researched marital discord and also marital therapy. He found that there was this correlation between external stress and how likely a couple was to relapse. That's an interesting word to use. Relapse or completely disregard the tools that they had gotten in therapy, which, yes, definitely. I think this is one that people are-- it's very easy for a lot of couples to do this.
Those couples who had a difficult time managing external stress and helping to reduce stress with each other, they were much more likely to relapse in their relationship in terms of disregarding those tools that they had gotten through therapy.
Dedeker: Yes. I recently learned that specifically when it comes to couples therapy and marital therapy and stuff like that, relapse is a huge issue. Actually, to put it in perspective, relapse is an issue in a lot of different modalities and medical modalities.
Emily: Of course.
Dedeker: It's not just in therapy and stuff like that, but specifically in couples counseling, relapse, it's a higher percentage chance that people are going to relapse more so than in other therapies and things like that. It makes sense on the surface that, like, as soon as something in life gets stressful, it becomes so easy to just default to your worst self, really-
Jase: Sure, yes.
Dedeker: -and to not have the bandwidth to apply the tools that you may have learned from your therapist or to apply the tools you may have learned from this podcast or whatever.
Jase: Yes. Well, it's like, I think, with anything where you're trying to change your behavior or to change the way that you respond to something is that you might figure out a way to do that change in the one situation you're in. Maybe your current routine, maybe your current social group, whatever it is, you're able to do it, but as soon as those things change or there's this extra level of stress, that's when you just revert back to the behavior that you were used to before.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Do you have any personal experience with this, Jase?
Jase: . I mean--
Dedeker: Sorry to put you on the spot.
Emily: He's like, “Wow, okay.”
Jase: This isn't exactly the same, but for me, it often has to do with sleep, actually, that I know that for me when I'm not getting enough sleep, I tend to be a lot more anxious. I tend to get a lot more depressed, a lot more upset, and just easily affected by everything. I think of it like becoming more exposed to the elements as it were.
Dedeker: For sure.
Jase: It's something that I'm well aware of, I know this about myself, I've known this for many years. When I'm good about it, it's really good, but I will tell you, this past couple of weeks, I just-- it's been really hard for me to get myself into a routine of actually going to bed early enough, and yet my body still wakes up early. I've definitely been having to try to do things to force myself to get to sleep earlier, to find a new routine where I can do that. For me, this coincided with also changing locations and my routine changing up.
There's a lot of, and being totally alone in this house for at least a couple of weeks, that there's been a lot of changes that have just thrown off my normal rhythm of things. I notice that a lot, actually, since I travel a lot. Every time I go to a new place, that change, it's like I have to re-figure out how to get a good sleep schedule. That's an example there.
What's interesting about this whole concept of, a change gets thrown at you and suddenly you fall back into your routines, this is something that the Gottman Institute also researches with couples where in addition to stress, they also look at something that they call, chaos. I really want to make the term, the chaos quotient a thing to describe the level of chaos in your relationship.
Dedeker: We've already had an argument about this.
Emily: Of course.
Dedeker: Of course, no.
Emily: Surprise, surprise.
Dedeker: The problem with calling the chaos quotient is then quotient implies that there's a number or figure attached to this.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: There isn't really.
Jase: Now, well, we just haven't developed that quiz yet. Look.
Emily: I say, do you want a number to be attached to it?
Jase: Right. There's the Holmes - Rahe stress scale. There's going to be the Winston-Lindgren-Matlack chaos quotient.
Dedeker: Chaos quotient?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Wow. I love it.
Dedeker: Yes. Chaos is interesting. This is something I didn't really learn about until I started doing specifically the Gottman's training for people who work with couples and things like that. When they assess couples for chaos, it's not just looking at what kind of stress people are dealing with, it's looking at how the people in the relationship actually perceive those stressful events. For instance, couples who are ranking high in chaos, they may show signs of things like feeling they're just completely out of control and always reactive to everything that's happening to them in life.
Feeling powerless to problem-solve things or feeling like it's just impossible to find a routine or come back to solid ground after a stressful event has happened or even in the midst of a stressful event happening. The Gottmans talk about this idea of couples in high chaos slipping into what they call, passive endurance, which is this idea of, “We're just resigning ourselves, things are always going to be hard, nothing's going to change. We're just going to try to white knuckle our way through as best as we can, without trying to change it. without trying to make it better, without trying to connect to each other. We're just going to have to power through.”
As you can expect that, like, in their studies, couples who scored high in chaos are much more likely to split up than couples who don't?
Jase: Yes, it reminds me--reminds me of a concept I learned about in college in my psychology course. We talked about having an internal locus of control or an external locus of control, that this high chaos, to me, also sounds similar to what you would describe someone who has a high external locus of control, which is essentially a belief or a perception that more things are out of your control than actually are, versus someone who's too far on the internal locus of control, who thinks they have more control over things in their life than they actually do. Those are a balance there, but it seems, this high chaos also describes a high external locus of control perception of the world.
Dedeker: Yes, that's really interesting. It's this kind of thing where at the end of the day, the sphere of what any of us can control versus what we can't control, I feel, ends up being relatively universal. Relatively, of course, your relative level of privilege and where you're born in the world and stuff is maybe going to change that a little bit, but I feel if we're getting super reductive and just looking at world averages as a whole, it's like, we know that-- we generally have an understanding that I can control like, maybe, gosh, now I can't even think of anything that I can control. I feel like chaos, right now.
Jase: Well, that's understandable.
Emily: I think most people are. Yes, I don't know. You can control what you eat for breakfast and when you wake up in the morning, to a degree.
Dedeker: Right, to a degree.
Emily: When you go to bed at night. If you're going to do this podcast today or not.
But we can't control a global pandemic.
Dedeker: Yes. However, it is interesting that there is something about, like that level of perception that does change with people. I know that there's also been studies on external locus of control versus internal locus of control and how that relates to one's mental health and the influence that it has on one's mental health.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes, I definitely find what I see when I'm working with couples and when I'm first getting to know them and I'm looking out for what kind of chaos quotient they might have. It makes me sound so clinical, I don't want people to think .
Emily: That's okay.
.
Dedeker: That's all I'm caring about, but it is interesting that I will sometimes see couples who have, what I would call from the service very, “chaotic lives” as in a bunch of kids, all of them in different extracurricular activities. We're all hustling at our jobs. Sometimes, the money doesn't come through the way that we wanted to, and we're dating other people at the same time that logistically looks chaotic, and yet, they don't perceive it as chaos.
They perceive it as, “Yes, sometimes it's tough, but we make it through it, and we're going to do it. We're doing these things to make it feel better,” versus couples that I would perceive from the outside as not having a very logistically chaotic lives who have much more of the sense of like, "Oh my God, things just keep happening to us and we can't get back on our feet and we don't know how to bounce back from this and it's always just one thing after another." I don't say that to put any necessary value or character judgment on it. I just think it is interesting that sometimes it's not necessarily related to how logistically chaotic or non-chaotic your life actually is.
Jase: Right, I think that's a good point, that the focus of chaos or external locus of control is on your perception and not on the day to day of your life. To use a simple example is like with Buddhist monks, that a lot of Buddhist monks live completely off of people giving them food. They wander around and teach people when they can. You'd look at that from the outside and go, that's very stressful. You literally never know if and when your next meal is going to come, where you're going to be, how people are going to treat you, if you're going to have a place to stay during inclement weather, stuff like that.
Yet a lot of people would look at a Buddhist monk and go, wow, there life is so stress-free or they're so zen, maybe literally. They're so zen about the way that they approach this. It really about you're perception of it and how you react to things and how you feel about them more than it is about what's actually happening, like how many new things are happening.
Something I also wanted to mention briefly, this is actually not part of our main thing here, but it's just the circles of influence and circles of control concept which is-- this has been around for a long time in psychology. It's something that my psychologist in college when I was having a really really hard time with anxiety and depression, he talked to me about this. It actually did help me a lot. I think it helped me more than I realized at the time and it's been a tool I've brought with me which is essentially to imagine three circles inside of each other. There's one big circle and inside of that's a second circle and inside of that's a third circle.
That innermost circle is your circle of control and these are the things that you actually have control over. It's the things that you do, the things that you say, things that you want to learn. Can be like, I'm going to decide to do something different, here I'm going to do it.
Then the next circle out is your circle of influence. These are things where you don't have full control over them, but you can have an influence on them. This could be something like voting in an election or supporting your community. It's something where your input does make a difference, maybe the articles that you write influence how people think, you have an influence here but you don't have full control over it.
Then that third circle, the biggest one that has both of these in it is your circle of concern. This is basically everything inside all those inner circles also affect you and that's this circle of concern. These are the things that concern me but I don't really have control over like the weather or the price of gas or who actually does end up getting elected. Like, I had some influence in the voting on that but ultimately, this is something that concerns me that I don't really have a lot of control over or at least it doesn't feel that way.
Outside of that, you have stuff that also happens in the world but also doesn't concern you, that doesn't affect you. That's outside of all of it. Basically, by thinking about it this way and evaluating the certain things that are stressing you and evaluating like, am I thinking about this thing like it's in a circle that it's not? Am I concerned about something that doesn't affect me, for example?
Maybe this is in the outer circle and I actually need to move this out entirely and just realize, you know what, no, this doesn't affect me or maybe this is something I'm concerned about and don't feel like I can influence, that I could actually move into my circle of influence and I could start doing something in my community or in the world to help influence this thing or maybe this is something going the opposite way. This is something I think I have direct control over.
I see this one a lot in relationships, thinking I have a lot more control over my partner's behavior or decision or that "I should have more control over that than I do and saying, I can move this into influence or maybe even all the way out into concern, that it's not something I can influence. By doing that, letting go of some of the stress that you might be carrying over things that you can't control. Anyway, that's something I found really helpful for me.
Emily: That’s great.
Dedeker: Jase, but what if you're someone like me and my inner circle is just Just full, full, full to bustin,’ popping out of the seams of-- I don't know if the two of you know this, but I am directly responsible for holding the world together.
Jase: That's true, I did know that, yes.
Emily: No, we knew that, yes. I don't know, Dedeker, maybe you're just going to have to let it go a little bit right now.
Dedeker: Well, I'm just saying that for those of us who have to keep the world together, maybe that exercise isn't going to work. I'm angry, I'm leaving.
Emily: Well, we have another half of this episode to do, we're going to, let's see, be talking about stress-reducing conversations and more but first, we're going to talk about ways that during this time you can help support our show so that we can continue giving it to you for free.
Jase: All right. Now we wanted to get into some steps and an actual process you can go through for having a stress-reducing conversation together. It would be cool if we could just give you the tools to manage all the stress and never experience it and that would be great. Unfortunately, there's stress to be had out there. It's a little too individual to give just some general advice that's going to help that, but if we could, boy, we would be millionaires.
What we can do is introduce you to this formula and this comes from the Gottman Institute who we talk about a lot on this show. They have this formula for having a stress-reducing conversation with a partner. During a time when you're experiencing stress, this is a process you can go through together to help each other.
Dedeker: I will say I was initially quite resistant to this because I'm like, I know how to have a stress-reducing conversation with my partner. I know how to vent, I know how to be supportive. Like what is this? I don't need a formula. Until literally the next day when I was listening to a partner of mine decompress from his day on work and I was in a bad mood myself and really didn't feel like being supportive and I was like, wait, wait, wait, there's a formula for this. I know what I have to do because if I didn't rely on this formula, I don't think I would have been very supportive and it probably wouldn't have been a very good de-stressing conversation.
Emily: Well done.
Dedeker: I'll say that to tell people, don't knock it until you try it. All right, let's set the scene. It's the end of the day, you and your partner have come together. It's been a long stressful day and you're ready to reconnect. How do we do it? First things first, it's going to be really important to make sure that the two of you take turns. Again, this may seem either obvious or unnecessary but it is really important to make sure that each person can get a fair share of time to talk out what's going on for them.
You can definitely get into situations where especially if one person is a spewer and one person's a chewer where one person goes off for an hour about their day and decompresses and vents and then the other partner doesn't have anything to say or by that time no we're home and we're in the middle of dinner or stuff like that. It is actually really important to make sure that both of you are defending your right to have that time with each other. This can be informal or you can actually set a timer if that helps. You can be like, "All right, I'm going to hit a time of 15 minutes and now go complain, go nuts" things like that.
Jase: It can be really nice to just know that you've got the time.
Emily: I do like that. When you are the speaker, your job is to take the time to talk through what is stressing you the most right now. Also, something that I'm not always great at, is to remember to talk about what you're feeling and thinking, not just recounting the events that happened. It's an opportunity to show your inner world to your partner and that can ultimately increase connection.
With our addition, we wanted to throw a little bit of Triforce of Communication in there because before, during and after, just try to give cues to your partner like, Jase is good at this I think, "Can I bounce some ideas off of you? Can I just talk through this now?" or saying, "I just want you to tell me that everything is going to be okay." Like, "I'm having a hard time here, can you just tell me that everything is going to be fine?" or "I just need you to listen to me vent for a while" something along those lines. When you are the speaker, remember to be very clear about what it is that you want at that particular time.
Jase: Now, on the other side, if you're the listener, there's three important things that you should do and three important things that you should not do. Number one, thing that you should do is show interest. I would actually take this a step further and say, "Actually be interested."
Emily: Pretend, at least, to be interested.
Dedeker: No, no, no. Some people are interested but then they don't necessarily really show it very much.
Jase: That's true, that's a good point.
Dedeker: Like Jase, any time you've been at a concert literally-- What?
Jase: What do you mean?
Dedeker: You've talked about this before where you have been like, "When I go to a live music things, people often think that I'm not enjoying it at all and really, I'm very much enjoying it. I'm just very clued in to--" Now literally Jase at concerts is like stone-faced.
Jase: That's true.
Dedeker: Like stone face and it really looks like he's having a terrible time when in reality you're not, at least, that's my impression, is that right?
Jase: Yes, you're right. I do lose myself in just thinking about it and taking it in rather than--
Dedeker: You lose yourself in the music, the moment.
Jase: Yes, okay. Thank you.
Dedeker: Are you giving us a mile eight, eight-mile, a mile eight.
Emily: Oh, my God.
Dedeker: This is falling off. This is really going off the rails.
Jase: Let's bring this back on track.
Dedeker: I'm sorry, everyone.
Jase: You're right that's a good-- Not quite the same thing but yes, that my enjoyment doesn't come through the way it does for a lot of people which is like dancing around or whatever that for me it's more of a still thing. Okay. Yes, got it. Now we're done at the concert. We've come back home and now we're talking about the stress that we experienced at the concert.
As the listener, is showing interest which is things like maintaining eye contact, not being on your phone, ideally not even having it in your hands or anywhere near you. Whenever we record this podcast, we say to each other throw your phones in the garbage. We don't literally do that, but it's just kind of a like, yes out completely away, and to ask questions or ask for more details. To help of like, "Wow, really then what happened?" Or, "How did you feel about that?" Or, "What was that like?"
Questions like that not, "Well, why did you do it that way?" Or, "Why did they say that?" But just, "What happened? What were the facts?" Also on this side, use the Triforce. If they haven't clearly indicated that to you what they're looking for, you can ask.
Dedeker: Ask.
Jase: Do you want advice or are you looking for encouragement? Or often with things is like, "Well, how did you feel about that?" Because maybe they want congratulations on this thing and you were going to offer sympathy. You got to clarify like, "How did you feel about that?" so I know how to support you? "Do you want me to just listen or do you want me to hug you or hold you while you're talking about this?" Things like that, just ask for what would be most helpful for them.
Emily: When you're the listener, try to communicate understanding and empathy to your partner. That means expressing things like, "That would make me feel really stressed too," or, "That sounds like it would be really frustrating." Also get bonus points if there's an indication that you know your partner's inner world such as saying something like, "I know how much you get upset when people bail out on plans with you. I know how you hate people who are super flaky." Maybe not that exactly but it's something along those lines showing that you care about your partner and what's going on with them.
Dedeker: Especially like giving that indication that you know your partner and you know their inner world, provided that you know it accurately.
Emily: No, I don't. I don't care.
Dedeker: It really turns a conversation that's about stress into an opportunity to forge your connection really.
Jase: That's a good way to put that.
Dedeker: And to help your partner be seen and feel understood.
Jase: If you don't know those things yet about your partner, this is an opportunity to learn them.
Dedeker: Exactly. Yes. Then the third thing is to give affection and comfort in whatever way is most effective for your partner. That could be touch, it could be jokes. I think that's my partner Alex's love language is just jokes. It could be words of affirmation, it could be comfort, food, and movies, et cetera. Bear in mind that what you find to be comforting may not be comforting to your partner. That's another thing you can ask about and ask for clarity on. Again, just a quick rundown, the three things and the listener's job are to show interest, communicating, understanding, and empathy, and give affection and comfort. We're going to move on to the three big don'ts.
Emily: No, no's.
Dedeker: No no's. Do not do these things when you're the listener. The first one is, don't side with the enemy. As in, if your partner is complaining about their boss or their friend who flaked on them or the really stressful situation at work, even if you feel like your partner's complaints are unreasonable, even if you agree with whatever it is that their boss said, even if you think that they set themselves up for this, it's okay for you to feel that but right now in this context is not the time to bring that up. Right now you're here to be supportive, you're here to listen, you're here to seek understanding, it's not time to convince your partner why they're actually the one who's wrong in that situation.
Now, I say this, I'm really bad at this. Hence, why I really needed this formula to remind me like, "Okay, this is what I do do. This is what I don't do. Okay, great. Got it." That's something I'm working on because I definitely very much notice when I am siding with the enemy. I'm trying to be better now of really not doing that. Unless my partner comes to me and is really specifically like, "Can you tell me if I'm the asshole in this situation?" Very frankly and bluntly, maybe then I'll be like, "Okay, actually I do think maybe you're being a little bit unreasonable here."
But I'm trying my best to stay away from doing things like, "Well, actually maybe your boss is right there" or "Actually maybe if you just did this. Well, there's your problem is because you were doing this the whole time."
Emily: Goodness.
Jase: This one reminds me of something that-
Dedeker: Of me?
Jase: I know, it's okay. I wasn't going to say that.
Emily: She was trying to be nice.
Jase: It's something we've talked about on this show before which I think is related is this concept of when other people are telling you about their world to take it at face value and believe them because that's going to help you understand their experience of their world because that's what really what this conversation is about, you're right, is how are you experiencing your world right now? Not about trying to uncover what's the absolute reality or to question their worldview or something.
Dedeker: Who is right and who is wrong?
Jase: Right. That's not the purpose of this conversation and trying to take it there is just going to make the whole rest of this not work. Going along with that, the second thing to not do is to judge your partner's emotions or stress or to minimize their emotions or stress. I think similarly, like agreeing with the other person in their story this could also be, "If that happened to me, I wouldn't feel super stressed about that," or, "That seems like getting stressed about that something I used to do back when I was young and stupid. You shouldn't be doing that."
Emily: Don't invalidate their feelings, basically.
Jase: Right. Don't invalidate those feelings because you haven't had the same life that they've had. You haven't had the same experiences they've had so this is going to affect them differently. Just actually be there for them in their world the way they're experiencing this right now. Dedeker, the third one is don't horse.
Emily: I love that.
It's so ridiculous. Don't be a horse.
Dedeker: Don't play basketball game horse.
Jase: Oh, I see don't play horse. I was like no horseplay.
Dedeker: No horseplay either.
Emily: No horse riding.
Jase: Yes, no horse riding during this. Don't ever have this conversation on horseback. No. What we mean is to don't do any of the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse, which is stonewalling, criticism, contempt or blame/defensiveness. This, I think is also part of why we're saying this particular format and structure is best for an external stress, not about stress in your relationship because it's especially hard to listen to someone be stressed about you and not go to a place like blame or defensiveness or stonewalling or criticism or something.
That's a little bit for something else and like Dedeker said before, listen to some other episodes there's stuff to work on there too but in this, maybe you see yourself in the boss or maybe you somehow feel responsible for a situation that they're talking about as an external stress or I know for me, I often feel guilt that I'm somehow not doing enough to help you out of this stressful situation, even if it's not something that's totally in my control or that you've asked for me to do.
When someone's stressed about those, it can be tempting to go to these places of then feeling defensive or even just having contempt because you're frustrated with them that they're still stressed about this thing or whatever. Again, it's be in the moment and be here to engage with your partner and learn about their world and support them in their world, not yours.
Dedeker: Again, just a quick review of the three don'ts. That's don't side with the enemy, don't judge or minimize your partner's emotions or stress, and don't horse around, or horseman around.
Emily: Don't be a horse.
Dedeker: Don't be a horse or a horseman.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Exactly. When you're having these conversations, these stress-reducing conversations, it can be really helpful to check in with each other throughout them and see how both of you are feeling like do either of you need a little bit more from someone? Are you feeling understood from each other, between each other? It can be really nice to take turns sharing one good thing that happened during the day as well. Hopefully, this will raise your endorphins or make you feel good in some way.
Even if it's a small something like, "I had a really good meal today. I went outside and felt the breeze on my skin for the first time in a week." I don't know, something along those lines. Talk about those kind of things as well and hopefully, it'll make both of you and your partner feel better. That's stress reduced.
Jase: That's a nice one to do. After you've both taken your turn sharing your stressful situation, is to then maybe take a quick turn with each other, maybe even do a few rounds of sharing positive things too to help and remind yourselves.
Emily: Yes, grateful things.
Jase: I like that.
Dedeker: Remember to thank your partner for listening as well.
Emily: Yes, do a little thank you round at the end.
Dedeker: That's the formula that is, I think, pretty easy to follow for doing stress reducing conversations with your partner. I think it's really important to have something like this in place because I think especially for people who are cohabiting or raising kids together or running a business together, that it can be really easy for your conversations together to become stress-producing conversations because it becomes about, we've got to make a decision about this thing. We got to figure out the logistics of this thing. We got to plan for this thing that's coming up in two weeks.
It can be really important to make sure that you're also roping in maybe some regular ritual for having specifically a stress-reducing conversation like this. Now, I think that this does beg the question of can this go too far? Is it possible--?
Emily: Dedeker, it's a favorite thing to question.
Jase: Yes, I love it.
Emily: Well, you're always don't weaponize those shit and stuff, which is great, which is great. I feel like this is along those same lines.
Jase: I always feel almost this is like don't weaponize it against yourself. Don't then use this to put yourself in a negative situation.
Emily: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.
Dedeker: Okay. Because I do want to warn people that there is a risk, I think, in any relationship of becoming your partner's therapist or you turning your partner into your therapist. I do think that turning to your partner to help each other reduce stress is a really wonderful thing. It's a great opportunity for connection, but I do think it's possible to take things too far. I do think there can be a dark side to this dynamic that it can result in things like you feeling compelled to fix or save your partner or ending up feeling totally exhausted and depleted by the emotional labor of acting like your partner's therapist.
Or on the flip side, feeling totally dependent on your partner for reducing your stress. The only thing you have that's reducing your stress is turning to your partner for these things. None of those things are, I think, very good romantic, sexy dynamics to have in a relationship.
Jase: It's like there's areas where that support can be nice, but when it becomes this thing of like you feel responsible for this person kind of surviving their own mental world, that's just too much of a job for one person and not a job that's appropriate for a romantic partner. With this then on the other side too is do your self work first or at least, also. Right? Also, do work for yourself. The most important thing to remember here is that stress response is varied and it's individual. It is really important for you to put in the work to get familiar with what are your stressors, what your stress response is, and start the process of developing your toolkit for how you deal with stress, right?
How do you personally distress? How do you personally adjust to that? This could be something that you do, reading articles of people's techniques, listening to episodes of this podcast, finding techniques there or this could be talking to a professional and getting help with that, reading books on the subject. There's lots of ways you could be going about this, but this is also your responsibility to take care of for yourself and not just to rely on your partner to do all that heavy lifting for you.
Emily: There are some warning signs to watch out for if you think that maybe you are becoming your partner's therapist or vice versa. One of them is that you tend to be the only person that your partner confides to about anything. I'm sorry. Your partner is the only person that you feel that you're able to confide to about anything. If you and your partner or you and your partner are struggling with clinical depression or anxiety, addiction, PTSD or other serious issues like that and you're not seeking outside support for that, that's definitely a warning sign to watch out for.
Dedeker: The caveat there specifically if it's like unmanaged depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, all these things and there's no steps being taken to manage it outside of just turning to your partner. Another warning sign is if the support that is given in the relationship ends up being one-sided more often than not. One person is able to unload and vent, but they're not able to ever show up or listen when the other person needs the same. That's an indication you might be actually more of this person's therapist than you are their partner. I have a small feminist rant related to some of this.
Emily: Do it. Excited.
Dedeker: It's going to be small, I promise. This is just something, warning signs specifically for if you are in a heterosexual relationship because there's a couple of unfortunate gender dynamics that do come into play here.
One of them being that a lot of men are socialized to not talk about their feelings with their friends, especially their male friends to not go to therapy. I think the stigma for therapy is still a little bit stronger for men than it is for women. As a result, a lot of men are socially trained that the only person they can open up to is their female partner. Women, on the other hand, we're trained to do everything that we can to preserve relationships, we're trained to be in a position service, especially to our partners, we're trained to be the ones who are listening and empathetic and compassionate.
These two kind of not great gender dynamics that we end up with often result in women being men's therapists to their male partner's therapists. Literally their only source. This is also seen when people break up that men have often a much harder time mentally and emotionally than women do because women are more likely to have other sources of that than men do. For a lot of men, it's literally like I lost my only lifeline for emotional support.
I just want to say that just so that people are aware of it, this is something that's been a part of the bigger discussion around emotional labor in relationships in general, that it's not just like helping out with family stuff or cleaning up around the house, that it also does kind of bleed into being the therapist. I just want to put that bug in people's ears just so that they're aware of like, maybe this is going on. If you notice that going on in your relationships, it doesn't mean that you're bad, it doesn't mean that the relationship's over and it's all caput. It just means like, okay, this is an opportunity for us to be aware of it, maybe call it out, and then seek ways to make that feel a little bit more balanced.
Okay. I'm done. That's the end of my small feminist rant.
Jase: No, that's great.
Dedeker: Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Jase: If you want the slideshow presentation, you can write in and we'll send that. In summary here, we want to remind you that it's possible to give and receive support of each other without becoming your sole lifeline. That finding more and more tools for supporting your partner and having them support you is great and awesome, but also isn't just finding enough tools so that they can be the only person you need for that or that you can be the only person that they need for that. Right? Whether that's family or friends or a therapist or a discussion group or a processing group or any number of things.
Finding a way to spread out those resources for support amongst a larger network is going to not only be better for each of you, but it's also going to do wonders for your relationship and just for your own well-being.
Dedeker: Okay. To wrap this up, we have another question we're going to be tackling. I think this is a question that very specifically is related to people in nontraditional relationships or multi-partner relationships or non monogamous relationships of some kind. Let's say we set the scene and at the end of the day I'm coming together with my partner and we're only going to talk about external stressors. Right? If I'm stressed out because of another relationship that I'm in, does that count as external stress that I can then process with my partner? A question for the ages that we are going to be tackling in our bonus episode today. So, if you're a patron, stick around for that.
Emily: Yeay.