How much tension in your life comes from using or avoiding conflict in order to get what you want? What would change if you allowed conflict to deepen your connection with others and find great solutions? In this episode, Brett and Joe unpack the nature of conflict avoidance. They take a deep look at its root causes and symptoms and how it can lead to stagnant relationships, substandard solutions, and a lack of internal alignment. Learn to navigate the turbulent waters of discord with loving boundaries and an open heart, finding the connection and collaboration possible through welcoming conflict as it arises.
Tag: relationships
Episode 80 — Marriage, Love, and Death
Brett, Alexa, and Tara talk about marriage, commitment, and the fears of loving and losing a life partner.
Episode 77 — How Love Gets Confused
What is love? We all have a felt sense of love and opinions around what it is. How do our feelings and ideas about love form? What happens when our experience of love gets confused with our complex past? And how can we unwind our conditioning and open up to the deepest, richest love available to us?
Episode 69 — I Can’t Hold It All Anymore (Coaching Session)
Our guest Christofer returns with his wife Sadie for a powerful couples coaching session with Joe. They uncover how a pattern of self-reliance and appearing strong for each other has created stress in their relationship. What happens when they try a different approach?
Episode 61 — Triggered! — Relationships Series #2
In this follow-up on the recent episode “How Relationships Reveal Us”, Alexa joins Joe and Brett to dive deeper into the premise that we’re all attracted to the partners who trigger us the best. We discuss how trigger and attraction are related and how avoiding the feelings underneath our triggers can produce relationship dynamics that last for years if left unexamined. Learn to recognize and welcome your own triggers as well as those of a partner, finding the empowerment to draw boundaries and share desires from a place of kindness.
Episode 59 — How Relationships Reveal Us — Relationships Series #1
Brett and Joe address curiosities from listeners about how to approach relationships in a healthy way, riffing on the observation that we find ourselves attracted to the people who most perfectly hook into our triggers, traumas, and projections. Seeing this pattern as a feature rather than a bug, relationships become a vessel for deep healing and personal growth.
Episode 58 — The Beauty of Grief — Emotion Series #9
Anthropologist and coach Alexa Anderson joins the podcast again for a deep dive with Joe into the emotional and practical value of grieving fully. “Without the grief we recreate the cycle. Without the grief we relive the trauma. Without the grief we don’t find the freedom on the other side of the limited identity.”
Episode 56 — The Anatomy of Shame – Emotion Series #8
Joe and Brett examine shame as the conditioned outline of our identity, sharing tools to deconstruct and melt it on an intellectual, emotional, and somatic level. “All we’re doing here is freeing the blocking of emotions by feeling into our body and creating love where there was abandonment.”
Episode 55 — How Do I Trust Myself? (Coaching Session)
Joe coaches a course participant through an exploration of self-trust. Beginning with an intellectual question about conflicted inner parts, our guest embraces the underlying emotional experience and touches the essence of who she is.
Episode 54 — The Upright Apology: Accountability Without Shame
Apologies are commonly associated with shame, power games, or beliefs about who’s right and who’s wrong. In this episode, we talk about the freedom to be had in making apologies without shame and in full ownership of our experience. “When you make an apology that’s upright, that’s empowered, it feels fantastic. You feel strength in it. You feel responsible. You feel empowered.”