One of our most popular episodes was Episode #11 on EFT and Marriage Counseling.
In this episode the guys revisit the topic and talk about Abandonment and Engulfment, the two traits that are the basis of EFT. Chris says this is the foundation of his marriage therapy approach and says he has better success with marriage counseling since he integrated the concepts into his practice. It has completely changed his approach to marriage counseling.
Want to understand your spouse better? Don’t miss this episode.
Tune in to see EFT Through the Eyes of a Therapist!
Previous Episode
Episode #11 – The Foundation of Marriage Counseling; Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Expert Links
John Gottman
Sue Johnson
Resources
Insecurity Identifiers Handout
Working with Abandonment and Engulfment Fears by David Richo
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode #101 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] All right. Hello and welcome to another expedition. I said that wrong on purpose, Mr. Graves. You know why?
Craig Graves: [00:00:19] I don’t have a clue
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:20] because I hadn’t screwed it up in a long time.
I am Chris Gazdik. He is Craig Graves. I am a mental health and substance abuse therapist, and he is a coach, an unbeatable mind coach. I have a book coming out soon at some point, rediscovering emotions and becoming your best self. And Craig is fully up and operational on. You gave us the website, sir.
Craig Graves: [00:00:44] Yeah.
Wininyourmind.com W I N in your mind.com, write
I
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:49] need to
Craig Graves: [00:00:50] write
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:50] that down on this thing here. We welcome you to, Through a Therapist’s Eyes the podcast, where you can see the world through the lens of a coach and a therapist being aware that it’s not to delivery of therapy services in any way, checking out the website throughatherapistseyes.com. Where you get full show transcriptions, you still have the, the home health supplements thing. I think that we still have that affiliate link on there, right?
Craig Graves: [00:01:13] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:14] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:01:15] It’s still up there. We hadn’t talked about that in a while, but it’s there.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:17] We had a donation button and we got a show groupings and categories.
Now we’re going to have all the books that we’ve talked about online, where you can go find them and get them through affiliate links. It’s really cool stuff that we’re doing on the website. So. Mr. Graves, what are we doing here? This is the human emotional experience.
Craig Graves: [00:01:36] Let’s figure it out together.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:38] All right.
I’m excited about this one, man. What’s the title? You see the title,
Craig Graves: [00:01:44] the fundamental. The fundamental,
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:46] yeah. The fundamental fundamentals,
Craig Graves: [00:01:49] The Fundamentals of Marriage Therapy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:51] Yes. Isn’t all in their audience. I screwed him up. I’m sorry.
Craig Graves: [00:01:54] He’s going to catch out for that one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:57] This is episode 11, visited and redone, man.
I am excited about this because, I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and we just got done with the, you know, the last, last week’s episode of, Part two finishing up the, kind of the racy and emotional issue of funding, the police re renamed by my mind and, you know, reequipping the police.
And, you know, we had some energy there with those shows. I think we’ve had good listening numbers for those shows as evidence thereof. I do believe, and, but, this one was kind of put in there and I screwed up the numbers, man. I wanted this to be episode 100. But it worked out because you know, you think a science one Oh one biology, 101, right?
Craig Graves: [00:02:42] Mental health, 101
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:43] Marriage 101, marriage 101, man. I think so it worked out really, really well. I refer my clients to this episode a lot. That’s why it’s our most listened to episode. I believe
Craig Graves: [00:02:56] Is it the most listened to. I know it’s at the top. It’s a plan.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:59] Yeah. I think it’s definitely at the top.
I don’t know. I, yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure. To be statistically OCD wise correct.
Craig Graves: [00:03:07] It’s a good topic. It’s an interesting topic. And I’m looking forward to redoing it. Now. I really want to be clear on what each one of these things are. We’ve done several shows on this. We have, and I was talking to a good friend of mine.
Who’s a listener. And he’s like, yes, I don’t know what those are. And I’m like, how do you not know what those are either. We did a really bad job of describing or defining them. Or he just didn’t get it. One of the two
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:33] That’s a good point, Craig, and I think that, what are all these forget to start that my stupid little timer it’s like, God drives me nuts.
We’re supposed to know what we’re doing now. We did the show at episode 11 and now we’re doing it. No, what we’re doing, I still can’t start my timer. What’s up with that, right? No, it’s, it’s, it’s funny because I’ve had people in a therapy experience. You know, working involved ways and in depth ways with this, with this topic.
And it’s funny to me that you actually felt that as a surprise, Craig and I, and I really want to see as we go along here with this topic, how you are picking up and, and diving in, in your own thoughts about engulfment and abandonment pursuing behaviors in withdrawing behaviors. Because I think a lot about Dr. Spitler when he was on our show. So people have been in therapy for a long time and still struggle sometimes they’re like, you know what, what’s that other one that does that. And that’s my husband. And he does the, what kind of behaviors. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, how do you not know this seven months into therapy when this is our primary thing, but I just don’t think that people.
Wrap their brain around it. And I’ve kind of been so involved and it was so many different examples that I, I feel like I’m starting to very much tacitly understand how this works. I remember the tacit.
Craig Graves: [00:04:52] Yeah, definitely.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:54] What I mean by that? Let me get my
Craig Graves: [00:04:55] thoughts to jump in, man. Put me on the
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:56] spot. No, fantastic.
No,
Craig Graves: [00:04:59] so I’m not gonna, I’m going to do a terrible job at this definition, but basically tacit learning is learning on a subconscious level. Right Chris? Yes. So it’s, it’s taking in the information maybe more than once. And after a while it just becomes like, I don’t want to say a part of you, but it’s like, you know, when you drive in a car, you don’t think about it.
You just know it and that’s what tacit knowledge is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:23] Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. So this is emotion focused therapy from some people in on the show notes, man, there’s going to be some good things on the show notes. Craig J Neil told me that he’s going to go ahead and get the handouts that I use with this. And you’ll see that on our website.
And they’re, they’re really cool handouts. I don’t use handouts really anymore, but I use these ones all, all the time, whether I’m doing couples counseling or individual counseling. Because, and in the show notes as well, I’ve got a lot of cool things that I think that you’ll enjoy more than most times in the beginning to get your own research on things like John Gottman and Sue Johnson and who they are.
And what, links are that say emotion focused therapy are. And what, you know, attachment issues are in attachment theory because these, these are things that you can read about and the links will really, really help you on this particular episode. For sure, because Craig. I use this in some form or fashion, probably in most, every single therapy session that I do.
And I find that that way, because dude, like these. These insecurities that we’re going to talk about as a part of marriage counseling or that ingrained in our basic function.
Craig Graves: [00:06:37] Yeah. And it’s, it’s been interesting to learn about this concept and have conversations with you because I’ve seen you point this out and, and in other kinds of relationships too, like friendships, for example.
So we were having a conversation about a fellow in our mastermind group not long ago. And you were like, Oh yeah, those are those engulfment tendencies coming out, you know? And I was like, Oh, that’s pretty interesting. And then when you gave the example of what you meant, I’m like, wow. That’s that’s that’s.
Yeah. That’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:03] exactly what really, I don’t know. I barely remember that. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:07:06] Any names to what off the air, but, but yeah, it’s just interesting that it plays out in other, other relationships too. Of course, we want to focus on the, the marriage aspect of it in tonight’s show, but, Very interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:16] It really does.
Yeah. Yeah, it really does. And the more that you get aware of this internally, you begin to rarely get, get ingrained into how I’m operating and what my behavior is and how that’s working, you know, for me as an individual, let alone, you know, in the relationships that I got with. So let me launch with these two people that I’ve got.
Some, some links to John Gottman is kind of the grandfather of all this. He’s a guy, if you remember that, really totally nailed what we didn’t do very well in understanding in couples counseling, it’s a couples counseling has kind of traditionally been very difficult. Recidivism rates, divorce rates sucked.
We didn’t, I don’t think we were really hitting exactly on, on what we needed to be hitting on when we were doing couples counseling. Your marriage focus. And I’m going to talk about that later on. When I talk about mistakes that I used to make in couples counseling, but John Gottman wired people up. If you remember, man.
So he measured people’s, you know, sweaty palms. He measured people’s tear ducts. He measured people’s heart rates and blood pressures and all this kind of stuff, man. And he just, he just observed, you know, people doing, conversations in his office. He called it the love, the love tank or, yeah, the love tank.
Thousands of couples and what he identified was the primary foundations that we operate now in my mind with marriage counseling. And that is the two, one of two primary insecurities. Okay. Abandonment or engulfment. And it all spans from those two primary insecurities. And from that, he was able to observe sets of behaviors that abandonment people do.
When they’re looking at in conflict in discomfort internally, they will do pursuing behaviors. They’ll pursue they’ll gain emotional safety by being close. And then the engulfment people, which is a weird fear, which is a weird insecurity. Think of engulfed by flames or engulfed by water, you know? They have a terrible time worrying about being controlled or criticized by other people.
And when they get in uncomfortable places, they will withdraw, their behaviors will withdraw, create distance and space. So they’re trying to get the same thing, ironically, you know, they’re trying to get this, this, this, this the sense of comfort and safety, emotional safety by, by backing away by getting distance.
It’s not, but you can think of it as fight or flight, you know, medulla in the fear-based brain. It’s not a fight pursue or flight withdrawal, but that is the same set of biological and neurological systems that we’re dealing with when people are dealing with the pains that they have with marriages. And thus is the cycle.
The marriage cycle, the reason why we have conversations and fights over and over and over again, year after year after year topic, after topic, conversation, after conversation would do the same thing because we’re either developing emotional safety by pursuing, getting close to you or withdrawing, getting more distance from you. If I Pursue and try to get close to you.
That forces you to withdraw.
Craig Graves: [00:10:37] So it’s a vicious cycle, vicious, vicious cycle. I’m going to repeat what you said to make sure I understand it and to make sure that the audience understands it so that my friend won’t have any excuse this time for not knowing what these are. So mr. John Gottman, I always think of John Gotti.
I know the Teflon, Don, you know, Mr. Gottman, the Teflon therapist.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:00] Yeah. Was
Craig Graves: [00:11:00] not a joke fell flat anyway. So he identified these two, insecurities, I think you called right abandonment and engulfment. And so an abandonment individual finds their sense of security and conflict in being close and talking things out into, into resolving it, you know, to, to, to be in close, even, even physically close.
Cause that’s what it, that’s what it entails. The engulfment person also finds his sense of security or his, or her sense of security, but they need space. They need to be, they don’t need to talk about it right now. They need to be on the other side of the couch or the other side of the room. And so they find their security that way.
So it’s a vicious cycle. The abandonment, the abandonment person, pursues, the engulfment person withdrawals. And it just kind of goes into this, to this cycle
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:57] round and round and round, she goes
Craig Graves: [00:11:59] round and round and round. She goes, right. You got it. Okay, good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:03] You know, you got it. And, and it’s, and it’s, very powerful visceral thing that’s going on.
That’s not thought about, you know, attachment theory is a big part of all of this. Which Sue Johnson is the lady that got links on our, on our notes that, that kind of, I almost feel like John Gottman did some, some good old, serious science to this thing. And then Sue sort of clinicalize it. And emboldened a practice around it called emotion focused therapy.
And so. The idea of, Oh, and I want to highlight it. It’s a great thing to go to. If you’re, you know, for a marriage workshop, it’s called a hold me tight workshop. You really want to see our website show notes with this one guys. Cause this is a really good stuff about, all these links and all these things that you’ll see on our.
On our show notes,
Craig Graves: [00:12:50] the hold me tight workshop, who hosts that? How did they,
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:53] how did they find it’s a workshop, develop a suit Johnson, and then it’s just has different facilitators throughout, you know, really, I guess the world
Craig Graves: [00:13:01] interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:01] Hold me tight. If you Google holding me tight, I would need to get certified, but yes, I could do it, but I’m not certified to do it.
So therefore I can’t do it
Craig Graves: [00:13:10] to get you certified.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:11] I don’t want to pay money to get certified and stuff that I do all day every day. Anyway. Just Saying? yeah, I’m curious what you’ll find, he’s going to Google hold me to it.
Craig Graves: [00:13:20] So it looks like Ms. Johnson has a book too, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:22] Oh yeah. Yeah. They got, they got lots of material out.
Lots of material for you to get into Gottman is a preeminent authority on a lot of things that they write about. And his wife, I did a training with a well virtually, but I did a training with the Gottmans and got to watch them and talk with him and stuff.
Craig Graves: [00:13:37] So Hold Me Tight is a book by Sue Johnson. There’s also workshops.
If you Google. Hold me tight workshop. Then you’ll find information on that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:48] You local by you. It’s based on attachment theory. I’m not going to go long into this at all, but you need to understand the power of what happens with attachment theory as being a part it’s a therapy modality, right? It’s a part of what happens.
There’s actually something called reactive attachment disorder in our field. It’s a, it’s a terrifying, you know, you think of separation anxiety. It’s, it’s a difficult, very emotional challenge that people get into with attachment, so, I don’t know where that Oh, Ainsworth and Bowlby kind of said, this “Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space.”
This came from an article I saw, I think.
Craig Graves: [00:14:34] So how does that, how does that tackle, Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:37] Okay. Thank you. Okay. The, the power of this needs to be understood in, in way of, I really want you to understand the systems that are going on inside your emotion and in your brain is what I’m, what I’m really wanting to highlight here in attachment theory is, is a, is a big part of that.
Now when we did this year or two ago, Craig and we talked about the rough Russian orphanages. Oh yeah. Right. That’s how powerful this is. Okay. I wanted to get that particular study and I spent some time looking and I didn’t even find it right when I was doing some Googling about this. Here’s what I found.
Wasn’t even just in Russia, because Russia has gotten a bad name with a lot of the issues they had in their orphanages and such. But this said is in the beginning of the 20th century, in the U S and the UK, the death rates among infants placed in orphanages, nurseries, and fondling hospitals were in some cases close to 100%, dude.
Did you hear that?
Craig Graves: [00:15:45] A hundred percent death rate. What’d you sign
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:48] I’m going to read it again? And I got the link where I saw this. It says at the beginning of the 20th, a century in the U S and the UK, the death rates among infants placed in orphanages, nurseries, and fondling hospitals is what they call them.
Fondling hospitals. We’re in some cases close to 100%.
Craig Graves: [00:16:08] Wow. That’s, that’s incredible.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:11] If that’s true, like. Wow is right man. And the idea here is that most of the deaths were not due to starvation or disease, but most to severe emotional and sensory deprivation. In other words, a lack of love. These babies were fed.
They were medically treated. They were absolutely deprived of any important stimulation, especially touch and affection. You don’t think affection is important in a relationship? You’re crazy because literally it can be said that babies, when they don’t get it die from it, that’s powerful.
Craig Graves: [00:16:52] Wow. So I wonder how that affects us as adults.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:55] It does. If you think it doesn’t again, you crazy, you know?
Craig Graves: [00:17:00] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:01] Wow. Crazy. It’s a very powerful reality. When we look at even some of them biological aspects of what loves and hugs and touches does, you know, dogs help us feel better. You know why? Because they’re crawling in our lap and they’re sitting and we’re petting them.
It has a desensitization process that goes on even neuro sympathetically in our systems.
Craig Graves: [00:17:22] Yeah, that’s interesting. I know people live longer that have pets, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:26] There’s a lot of the stuff you talk about where your breathing, your breathing impacts your bodies. Tremendously. You breathe more deeply and slowly when you’re in a calm, emotional state and you’re, you’re being touched, touches a very Jesus in the Bible, talked about touching.
We can go on and on and on about the power of this stuff.
Craig Graves: [00:17:42] Know there’s actually people who, who are healing. Touchers paid snugglers now.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:47] Yeah. I’ve heard that. Yeah. I’ve heard that
Craig Graves: [00:17:49] How bizarre is that
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:50] You know, in this context is not, you know, why people go to prostitutes, often times. Not for sex. They go to discuss and talk and connect.
It’s why they go a lot of the times.
Craig Graves: [00:18:03] That’s interesting. Yeah. That’s really interesting. Chris. I remember reading about Tiger Woods when he went through his scandal, you know, some of the women that, that he was with, he just wanted to watch a movie, you know? Yeah. That’s interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:19] You know, the power of this, it occurred to me in love and logic.
Remember, this is part of the trifecta. Do you remember that
Craig Graves: [00:18:24] The trifecta for love and logic?
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:26] Nope. The trifecta in what I think are really effective things for the respective stuff, Dave Ramsey stuff. I talked about love and logic for parenting, and this is EFT for marriage as part of the trifecta Gottman nailed it.
Right? So in love and logic, there’s a lot of overlap. They talk about touching your teenager. I’m like what? No, they say, yeah, Because what happens a lot of times with your teenagers is if you don’t touch them, you don’t hug them, you know, wrestle and you play with your little, you know, eight, your old daughter, you’re hugging them and squeezing them in whatever will they start doing breast development and biological.
You know, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t hug them. I can’t start talking to them as much. I need to be treat them differently. My, my teenage boys can’t stand to be hugged. Well, the interpretation is if you don’t touch them or. Whatnot. When they’re in their teenage years, they interpret they’re not loved as much.
Craig Graves: [00:19:17] So even if you, even if they don’t want you to, you should still give him a hug
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:23] to a certain extent. I try to find ways that I can hug my kids. I absolutely do. Interesting. My older one he’s 19 is much more difficult, but still
Craig Graves: [00:19:31] interesting, man. I try. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:34] Right. So the whole point here has Gottman identified very intense and Sue Johnson clinicalize to this.
And I gave you my little bit of my elevator variety version of what the emotion focused therapy models are. Identifying abandonment, identifying withdrawal. identifying abandonment and identifying, pursuing behaviors with the abandonment and identifying engulfment and withdrawing behaviors that happen with engulfment.
And you racked that up and used your excellent own words for it. Awesome. Guess what? My mistakes were in therapy, right? I absolutely was screwing up. I feel like for many, many years doing a good job, probably an average, if not better than average, even, but I was missing the point because I would talk about.
You know, the issues of communication all the time. That was my staple talk, communicate better. And I can’t tell you, it’s still people come into me in therapy. They’re like, we don’t communicate. We need to learn how to communicate better. Now. I say, no, you don’t their eyes roll. They’re looking at me talking about man.
Literally this happens great. Just happens in my office and I’ll go through and I’ll explain a little bit of this. And I’ll say, you know what, when you’re worked up is very different. You’ve you’ve talked about getting married. You’ve talked about your first budget. You’ve talked about, you know, child planning and parenting and you know, different successes that you’ve had with very difficult communications.
They may have talked about racism before may have conversations about defunding the police, these tough emotional conversations in me. You have fights with them because when you get hot, you can’t even talk about whether you’re going to get Coke or Pepsi at the grocery store. That’s not a communication problem.
It’s not difficult to decide that. You know, but when you, when you’re emotional, when you’re in these States, men, people cannot talk about the most basic things when you’re calm you and I have had many conversations about it. I don’t get my, my emotions triggered with you. You think I’m able to do that at home all the time with my kids or my wife?
Craig Graves: [00:21:35] Nope.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:36] Nope. Nope. Whole nother level there when it comes to that. So I would talk about communication and I would talk about love languages. And I would talk about, you know, conflict resolution and I have specific strategies that I still do take people through. Step-by-step, you know, kind of how to do these things sometimes, but do you know what I was missing?
I tried to figure out the foundations. I tried to figure out the patterns. I tried to figure out what are the things that I would tell people for years, what are the patterns we want to keep them? We want to change them when we’re going to lose them. How do we want to work? But you know, when I was missing the real foundation, if you do not figure out how to help somebody manage this cycle that we just talked about effectively, internally, You’re not going to deal with communication.
You’re going to deal with conflict resolution. You’re not going to deal with a lot of the things that you hear from churches and gender, you know, differences and understanding the purposes of your relationship in your life or all these things. You’re not going to deal with it. You’re not going to get too much of anything.
Because when you try to deal with those things in your brain is on fire with your amygdala, to the point that you’re in fight or flight mode, you could pick up a car, right? How are you going to work on any of those things? When that’s the way you’re feeling? I don’t care if you know your love language upside down one intimately well, and your partners, you know, a lot of people don’t even know their own.
I don’t care if you know all of that super well. If you don’t understand what’s going on with these very powerful insecurities, they will dethrone you and throw you into a whole nother world. And you won’t be able to talk about Coke or Pepsi at the grocery store.
Craig Graves: [00:23:19] So how do you step people through that hole?
How do you step them through that? I mean,
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:23] we’ve got a segment there. Yeah. We’re going there. Okay. We are going there. We are definitely going there. I don’t know if I want to go there next. I’m thinking of a friend that always tells me, I guess that question you don’t want to go away from that. Hm, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna end there that whole segment that you see on the notes there yet.
We’re going to hit that. I think I’m going to, I’m going to keep on this stream in, in, in finish the cycle, because getting back to the cycle, you got to know it intimately. Well, abandonment and engulfment okay. So what are the choices in marriage? How do we go? What’s what’s the, potential’s not very hard to figure it out.
You got, you got three potential types of relationships, right?
Craig Graves: [00:23:59] Yeah. You got abandonment, abandonment and engulfment engulfment or abandonment engulfment. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:06] So what happens with abandonment and abandonment?
Craig Graves: [00:24:09] Yeah, I was going to ask how often you see the same characteristic
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:14] we do. I’d love to see some breakdown and I’d love to ask Gottman themselves.
Craig Graves: [00:24:18] Cause I didn’t think you saw a lot of that is my, am I wrong in saying that
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:20] withdraw, withdraw. Engulfment engulfment and I don’t see very often. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen it once.
Craig Graves: [00:24:27] That’s an interesting thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:28] Literally. I’ve been doing therapy for a long time. I’ve seen it once.
Craig Graves: [00:24:31] That that’s kind of funny, but that makes sense, right?
Yeah. I don’t want to be near you. I don’t mean you’re you either. All right. See
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:39] you later. Let’s characterize that. Interesting. Right. It’s well, I love you. You do your thing. You do, you. Oh, I love you too. You do your thing. You do, you.
Craig Graves: [00:24:50] Well, I figured you drift apart. It’s what I’m saying.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:52] People
Craig Graves: [00:24:52] do to you.
That was my point. Eventually drift apart,
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:56] but it’s but it’s, but the reason why I was mischaracterized or re characterizing that it’s out of love. It’s like, out of, it’s not mean it’s not like dis detached. They love each other. They want to be together. They’re really committed to each other. They want them to be well.
So go to your corner and go be well. Yeah. And that’s what the other person saying, Oh, I love you too. Go be well.
Craig Graves: [00:25:19] So do you have statistics around the success rate of marriages who were.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:26] And got all the different types. No, I don’t. I had those kinds of breakdowns and,
Craig Graves: [00:25:29] and the abandonment abandonment would be an interesting situation.
Right? Your grief. If I never leave the house. Oh baby. I love you. I love you. I love you so much. I love you so much, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:43] It’s an absolute love fast
Craig Graves: [00:25:45] man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:46] you know, at the beginning. And then when it’s not so much of a love Fest in the. Fighting times it’s a nightmare. Hey nightmare.
Craig Graves: [00:25:57] Describe that scenario for us.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:58] That therapy session is Chris Gazdik. He’s very quiet. Just playing the referee. Really?
Craig Graves: [00:26:03] Yeah. Okay. So I think I can see that now they’re both talking their asses off and you can, you can’t get a word in or,
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:10] okay. Right. Literally, literally it has happened a few times and actually the one time that had happened, I was newer and identifying these things and I was just like, I felt like run over.
I was like, what just happened? Oh my God. Which has to happen. That’s what he was talking about. Abandonment, abandonment pursue, pursue. Holy crap.
Craig Graves: [00:26:34] So the cycle is, is it safe to say that it’s abandonment engulfment cycle of
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:41] the cycle is whenever you get into your emotion state, you do what you do.
To gain emotional safety in your marriage, right? If that’s withdrawal, withdrawal, then both people haven’t be doing the same thing. If that’s abandonment, abandonment, and both people happen to be doing the same thing, but an overwhelmingly majority of the time, it really is that abandonment and engulfment combo it’s opposites attract, you know, and it doesn’t matter which one goes first.
But once one person really gets triggered and tripped out, then the other person gets triggered and tripped out usually.
Craig Graves: [00:27:20] Hmm. So you’re saying as a mostly relationships that you see are one or the other. Yeah. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:27] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:27:28] Opposites attract.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:29] It’s opposites attract because you know, it works, man. I mean, it works in a healthy way.
It’s not. You know, I don’t know how much we’re going to have an opportunity to get this. I I’ll say to the listening audience, we did do one show indepth on abandonment and another show indepth on engulfment the whole show was each one of those. And I don’t think I’ll do that for quite a while.
I want you to do this one over again, but that one we won’t do for quite a while. I think so go back and find that one, because I’ll talk about in that particular show, probably not this one about, abandonment insecurity skillsets. And engulfment insecurity based skill sets. I think that’s a term I coined honestly.
Oh really? Yeah, because there’s actually some really cool things that come out of each individual insecurity. And I think we’ll come back to that a little bit in this particular episode, but
Craig Graves: [00:28:20] so you’re gonna write a book on those topics.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:22] I would, I very well might you should very well might it’ll it will be part of my marriage book that I’m kind of popping around with right now.
Craig Graves: [00:28:29] Okay. Good. Good. Good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:32] Yeah. So, what are you hearing so far? Where are we at? Did it help me kind of get clear in your, in your brain?
Craig Graves: [00:28:38] Yeah, I think I’m on board with you. I think we gave a good definition. Abandonment is the insecurity where the person wants to talk and be close. Engulfment is the insecurity where the person needs space and doesn’t need to talk and, or be close.
and then we talked about the different cycles of that, the different combinations of that. And you were telling us about how you missed the boat with your counseling up until you found out about this foundational element of marriage counseling.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:09] Right? So, perfect. Yeah. We’re, we’re in good shape there.
I wanna, I want to highlight a little bit of the, you know, you were talking about our mastermind buddy, Craig, and I want to dig into, I’m not going to do the whole show on it, but. like we did effectively when we did one on abandonment and one on, on engulfment because these really, you know, I drive to daily behavior.
You don’t realize it, but you get, you get what I call layering effect. Okay. And this is a good, a good time to cover, to cover this too. A lot of people are, I was like, well, I’m not sure which one I am. I do both. I hear that all the time till we really get into looking at the patterns and digging into that a little bit to kind of figure out where somebody’s lying.
Generally, you really are one side of the other and I, and you don’t generally switch sides and I call it the Razor’s edge. Right? So you fall on one side at birth somewhere, is it, is it a biological tabula rasa you learn at birth and you move forward. I don’t really know where it comes from, but you seem like you fall on one side or the other, and then you kind of go to an extreme a some point to that you stop moving to extremes.
And what I mean by that is. The opposite seemed to attract, right? So a hundred is going to be with a zero, which is impossible to be a hundred and zero 49 to one is abandonment 51 to a hundred is engulfment. So an 80 seems to match up with a 20.
Craig Graves: [00:30:44] All right. I’ll let you lost me somewhere there. Scale what’s this what’s the deal with the scale.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:50] So yeah, I thank you for that. Cause I covered a couple of things at once. It was a lot to cover with this. First of all people think that this is a gender oriented thing and it’s completely not. Can we just totally misspell that?
Craig Graves: [00:31:05] Okay. Oh, so you’re thinking, Oh, the man’s more engulfment and the girls more abandonment,
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:09] right?
That is not, not, not the case. Then people oftentimes have questions. Where do I, you know, I do both. Where do I fall? I don’t know where I fall. I do both behavior. And this is where I say the razors edge, right? You fall on the Razor’s edge and you’re a one side or the other. And as you go to the polls, it’s severe abandonment or severe engulfment.
And there’s a, I kind of think of it as a rating scale, right? 51 to a hundred. I say what you’re saying, a hundred is severe being abandonment and 50 51 is mild abandonment. 49 is mild. Engulfment. And one is, is severe, you know, and go, okay, I’m waiting. And an 80 matches with a 20th, 60 with a 40 and so on.
Got it. Right. So that’s the way we kind of see this, I see this pairing out. And so when you look at these, these behaviors, you’ll, you’ll really see day to day influences and throughout your life, I call this a layering effect. So. You fall on the Razor’s edge, you go on one side or the other, and where do you land?
Well, different life experiences kind of push you in one direction or the other. And when you fall on one side, you have almost a confirmation bias psychologically. So when you’re a little child, you’ll find this event and then this event confirms that fear. And then this event confirms that fear. And you literally have event after event, after event, that kind of layers on top of each other.
I’m really going to get left. I’m going to be abandoned. Happened in this moment happened in that moment happened again. And it doesn’t have to be like a severe abandonment of any sort or in the opposite way controlled or criticized. I got a critical parent. Well, you have a critical parent. You would find typically that you have an engulfment tendency, right?
Not always, not always, but that’s, what’s funny to me. When people ask, well, why, where does this come from? Is it, my parents was as a kid. I don’t really know, but families will have multiple kids in different kids have different they’re on different sides of the equation. I look and see my total kids right now.
One’s on one side and one’s on the other. Why is that? I have no idea. No idea. Interesting. Same family.
Craig Graves: [00:33:26] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:26] Okay. Right.
Craig Graves: [00:33:29] So do you think it’s a. Do you think it’s some kind of genetic thing? Or do you think it’s the way that the kid that we interpret the world as kids, it was, you know, you could really, you really could interpret the same situation.
Yeah. In, in different ways, let’s say you had, let’s say you had a father who was standoffish and didn’t give you a whole lot, a lot of love and affection. You know, you may have one sibling who sees that and says, well, I need to be close to somebody. I need to be close. I don’t want to be abandoned. Like my father’s abandoned me.
And he had the other kid may say, well, you know what? I need to protect myself and not get and not get pulled into that situation. So I just need to back off of it. Right. Instead, so that kid can you know, three different kids who interpret the same situation in different ways, through a different lens.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:21] That’s really cool, Craig. Yeah, you’re really on something there. And that is a great, I’m going to listen to this back because this is a really important show to me because I use this stuff all the time with people. And that, say that again in sort of shorter term.
Craig Graves: [00:34:35] Well, I was just saying, I wonder if you, you know, what, if you had two brothers or brothers, whatever two kids and the father was standoffish.
So one kid sees that and says, you know what? I need to be close to somebody. I need to be loved and I don’t need to have that happen to me in the future. I need to. You know, I need, I need to have that in there. Become the abandonment kid. The other kid sees the standoffish father who hasn’t shown a lot of love.
And he was like, you know what? I’m not gonna let anybody else hurt me that way either. And so I’m just going to create this standoffish and
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:02] withdraw
Craig Graves: [00:35:03] and withdraw.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:03] Yeah. I think you’re dead on there. And I know to a certain extent, maybe that doesn’t make any sense because it’s kind of like, well, you know, why would you do that?
And why would you do the other? And I but I think it’s absolutely possible. And from that goes, what I call a layering effect. So once you do that, maybe that’s like the initial event. Yeah. Think of it in simple terms, that’s the initial event. And then some other event happens later on with your kindergarten teacher or whatever, or later on with your fourth grade teacher and then your girlfriend and then whatever.
And honestly, on a simple day to day basis with your bus school driver and then your teacher and then your mom and then your brother and then your neighbor, and then your preacher in all these things within the course of the first week. I don’t know. It just, yeah. The layers on top of each other and build your experience of the way you’re experiencing the world with primary foundational insecurity.
Craig Graves: [00:35:59] Yeah. Yeah. Like a layering effect. I think most of our, preconceived notions happen earlier in life. Right. But I think you probably could.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:08] Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think so I pull this out all the time in my office, it’s, it’s one of these, one of these handouts. Right.
Craig Graves: [00:36:17] Oh man. I don’t think I remember the handout, but yeah, I didn’t want to do that.
Did I last
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:22] time? Oh yeah,
Craig Graves: [00:36:25] you didn’t want to do,
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:27] he’s like, that’s awesome. Maybe he’ll do it this time.
Craig Graves: [00:36:31] Me on the spot.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:32] Yeah. Well the, this other handout is actually a little quicker than I use a Craig more regularly. Because it nails very clearly what I hear in my office when, when you have, you know, direct fears coming out, I’ll actually hear these statements.
And this is what I’ll put you on the spot with Greg, for sure. I’m going to read, set number one and set number two. And all I want you to think of is which one is, which is this abandonment people that want to get close and, and have pursuing behaviors? Or is this the fears of engulfment people that have withdrawing behaviors?
Okay, these are all fear statements. I can play along with you if you’re being insecure. And you’re saying these things, which one are you? So I can’t count on you. You’re not there for me. I feel all alone. I fear that you’re going to leave me. It seems like what I want is an important to you seems like what I need isn’t important to you. If I’m saying those things, and those are the things that I’m fearful about. Which one am I.
Craig Graves: [00:37:34] I said, yeah, you’re the abandonment saying that, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:37] He didn’t show them too hard. Did you see his grin? He’s like,
Craig Graves: [00:37:40] I’ve done a lot of thought and not research, but I’ve done a lot of thought about this since we talked last.
So I feel like I got a pretty good handle on it
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:48] We’ve talked about several times. And so the next set number two, right? If you’re thinking these things and fearful of these things, you know, I fear that if I get too close, you’re going to criticize me. I can’t stand. You controlling me. You’re so controlling. I feel like I need my space.
I feel like I could lose myself. I don’t even know who I am. You’ve taken that away from me. I feel like you’re in far more control of this whole relationship. You’re trying to get more control. You’re a control freak, right? I feel overwhelmed by all your needs and all your reactions and all your emotions.
You’re so you’re too much. Which one are you
Craig Graves: [00:38:27] That’s engulfment person fighting back the laughter cause these questions, they just sound so whiny and both sides really
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:35] well. They are,
Craig Graves: [00:38:36] when you were reading the abandonment side, I’m like, geez, what a wimp. But when you’re reading the engulfment side, it’s like the same thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:44] Right, right. But you know, it’s funny because I hear people saying these things and if they’re not even using those exact words, They’re absolutely saying meaning, you know, the exact meaning statement, but it’s funny, man. I will sit there and therapy sessions before he even started an assessment.
Honestly, I’m sitting there in individual therapy sessions. I hear people saying this stuff about their spouse. Yeah. And I’m like, Oh wow. That’s one off the daggum sheet. I don’t even have to think about it. You know?
Craig Graves: [00:39:20] That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s funny, man. That’s funny.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:26] And the thing of it is too is it’s also super painful.
Right? I feel like I can do a comedy show. By mimicking the arguments people have. Let me say anything when we’re talking, you don’t even let me finish this sentence. Okay, Mr. Engulfment you don’t even care what I say. I try. I’ve told you five times in the last week and you ain’t listening.
Alright, Ms. Abandonment
Craig Graves: [00:39:51] you could do a comedy show cause I’m laughing at these questions, man. You know, it’s funny stuff,
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:58] but keep in mind, like. When this is in context of like, when you’re really hurting, you’ll go to these statements in any one of these statements. I just read off this little thing or all the lies actually.
They’re all lies. None of them are true.
Craig Graves: [00:40:15] Well, maybe they are
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:17] no, generally speaking, when you say I’m married to you and I can’t count on you, come on, man. Do they work? Do they make a dollar? If they don’t work in their, in a home, are they washing a dish?
Craig Graves: [00:40:28] Well, maybe not, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:31] it’s hard to not count on anything you’re particularly when you’re newlywed married.
And if that’s the case, you probably don’t need it be married.
Craig Graves: [00:40:41] You know, it’s hilarious.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:43] You
Craig Graves: [00:40:43] know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:44] it’s funny because you go back and forth, you know, I can’t count on you, abandonment fears. You’re getting too close. You’re going to criticize me withdraw. You’re not there for me while abandonment engulfment I feel like I need my space.
You can go back and forth and back and forth with these, these arguments in these fear-based things. But, you know, ultimately what people want is the exact same thing. Yeah. And intimately close. And this is the golden egg. This is what did I call it? The golden, the golden goal, the golden egg in the middle of the space between a man and a woman in any union.
And by the way, I do feel the same thing happens in a same gender relationships, by the way,
Craig Graves: [00:41:23] I’m sure it does the same exact sound,
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:26] right? The golden space in between that everybody universally pretty much wants is an emotionally safe, close, intimately close relationship, but it’s gotta be emotionally safe.
That’s so hard to maintain. If you’re able to get it in the first place for a moment, emotionally safe space where you’re intimately close, like man. And if you’re pining for your neighbors relationship that you see them holding their hands and being all lovey and buying the hallmark cards and whatever understand they lose it like that.
When the topic start flying.
Craig Graves: [00:42:11] Yeah. That’s one of the things I’ve learned in life is, you know, you can’t count on the social media pics, you know, all that stuff when no, I remember, you know, right before my wife and I got divorced, we were in some way, or, and we were doing something, you know, the kids to my comment.
I know you’ve got such a beautiful family, you know, and. Okay. Yeah, it was not that way at home, but, so yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:35] I remember you said this before, when we were talking, you were like, Oh yeah, we look nice. We’re pretty people. We got a nice, awesome family. And then we’d go home. We’re bitching and yelling at eight.
Craig Graves: [00:42:44] Yeah, it’s true. He’s this, this, this, this concept, man. I really do enjoy these conversations about this. And I see it so much now and asking yourself these questions that Chris just went over. Is this going to be on the site?
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:56] Yeah, this is an article he’s pointing out audience. That is a really cool. Cool tool that we’re not going to have time to go over.
Yeah. But I’ll let you comment on it
Craig Graves: [00:43:06] in a second point out.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:07] Oh, go ahead. Yeah. In a second, but this is, this is an article that you’ll find on the site. That is a, a really helpful tool that I actually found. And I kind of want to do a blog on this one. I’ve already got a sketch on. On my own version of like, you know, this and that abandonment list of daily behaviors and engulfment list of daily behaviors.
And it’s an article that I found that totally helps you to describe what I’m only being able to touch on with this segment of our conversation.
Craig Graves: [00:43:32] Yeah. Chris, you should really think about that marriage book next because what’s the divorce rate. 50%. If you can help people with this kind of stuff, man will be huge.
But you know what, through these questions is what I wanted to point out, because is when we did the first show, when we did 11, I was in a relationship with a lady and I was telling her about that these two concepts and she’s like, Oh yeah, I’m definitely abandonment. Right. And then when we went through the questions, she’s like, Oh my God, I’m definitely engulfment.
You know? I mean, you might think you’re one or the other and it turns out that you’re not, is that a true statement?
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:04] Absolutely. See that often. Yeah. I see that often.
Craig Graves: [00:44:08] Yeah. So that would go through these questions. If you’re interested in finding out what side of this, this you fall on, or maybe you just listen to the questions Chris, just read, and you can hear your own voice
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:19] over and over and over again,
Craig Graves: [00:44:23] you could be a bit of a shock.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:24] Yeah. And you know, and when you go through this article, I mean, you’ll find it w what the article is, again, is, you know, sort of contrasting the abandonment and engulfment on the left the list A and the list B sorta like I did on my little handout that. Actually Jeff Shook created it. I must say. Yeah.
Yeah. Not this article, but this handout, I believe. Anyway, the thing here is that you’ll have checks on both sides of that page. Right. You’ll have some characteristics on the abandoned, but you’re going to find an overwhelming majority on, on one side or the other.
Craig Graves: [00:44:55] So it’s like page and a half here. I didn’t even see the other pages.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:58] Oh yeah. Okay. It’s an awesome article. And you read down through it then you’ll, you’ll, you’ll really enjoy kind of trying to figure out where and you’ll figure out where’s your part.
Craig Graves: [00:45:07] Yeah, it’s interesting. Interesting. Well,
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:08] it’s Saturday on.
Craig Graves: [00:45:09] You know, I think I was afraid to say it last time, but I’ve, I’d like to, I’d like to think I’ve had some personal growth in the last couple of years, but I’m on the abandonment side man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:17] We both owned that.
Craig Graves: [00:45:19] And you know, I think I didn’t want to take the test last time. Cause I didn’t want to admit that, but I mean, it is what it is, right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:25] It is. It
Craig Graves: [00:45:25] really is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:26] Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And we’ve both admitted that I think, you know, I’m definitely on the abandonment side and what’s funny is, you know, you got it.
You got two dudes that are supposed to be like, I’m not emotional. I’m talking about, got my man cave
Craig Graves: [00:45:37] jujitsu later.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:39] Oh, Kiki,
Craig Graves: [00:45:41] nobody messing with me. Oh, baby. Please don’t leave me.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:46] You want to get back?
Oh, gosh. Insecurities sucks. Yeah. Oh man. Do you want to know what we do in a therapy practice when I’m really working with people with these ins and outs and trying to figure out the marital cycles. I want you to maybe kind of get into my therapy office with me for just a minute, right? I want you to get into my therapy office and kind of, kind of understand what it is that I’m going to do with you.
When you come to marital counseling, it sounds interesting.
Craig Graves: [00:46:25] Yeah, man. I’m I’m I can’t wait to hear more. Right. You’re talking to me or the audience, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:33] You,
Craig Graves: [00:46:34] where were you? Five years ago, bro.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:38] And now I know, you know, it’s funny. Can you say it that way? Honestly, Craig, because you know, I’ve said this thousands of times too, in my personal and professional life, you know what, you know, what kind of married couples counseling I would like to do.
Craig Graves: [00:46:49] What’s that
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:50] Pre marital counseling. Can I say that again? Yeah. Pre marital counseling. You know how often I get to do that? Probably never rare at best. I’m actually doing one right now. And the therapy experience where he came to me cause he wanted to, you know, prepare for being married. And I thought that was a coolest ass thing in awhile, man.
Craig Graves: [00:47:14] Dude, that’s a great idea. That’s a very good idea. And you know, I I’m I’m to. I had a friend who, went through a divorce and there was some kind of marriage course premarital course or whatever it was. And so he lived his life for a while. They decided he was ready for another relationship. And he went to a course like this, like this marriage, it was a course.
It was, yeah. It’s everybody sitting in a circle, whatever. He was the only person there without anybody.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:41] Wow. Right. And they’re like,
Craig Graves: [00:47:42] Hey, where’s your, where’s your girlfriend, you know, where’s your fiance. He’s like, I don’t have one. He’s like, what are you doing here? And he’s like, well, someday I want to have one someday.
I want to be married. You know? So he was prepping
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:52] that his fantastic,
Craig Graves: [00:47:55] he was prepping for this. Yes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:57] Yeah. I love that. I absolutely love that. I think that is absolutely because listen, one of the things that happens is we do a blame game. You know, what are we do in a therapy experience, especially with couples is highlight honestly, the, The goal of, of realizing this is an internal experience, not a external experience.
the thing is so cool about your friend. Who’s going to do a couples counseling seminar before he’s even married, as he’s recognizing that. Far before I meet my spouse, I’m doing things and wanting to get grounded in myself internally so that when I meet her or in the female’s case, him, I’m more prepared internally with me to be there for my partner
Craig Graves: [00:48:44] that’s exactly what he said.
You know, I mean, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:48] Yeah,
Craig Graves: [00:48:49] pretty much
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:50] that that is.
Craig Graves: [00:48:51] And he didn’t meet somebody and is happily married now. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:54] I can’t tell you how cool it is. I can’t tell you how cool it is.
Craig Graves: [00:48:57] Yeah, I think it was awesome too,
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:59] because that’s honestly item number one in a therapy office. I’m really trying to hammer the idea and help a person understand that their internal experience is very different than, you know, what’s actually going on because you’ll see something that happened, you know, and.
you’ll see that. Well, my husband did this and this is the way I felt. And then you blame them. You blame them for the way that you feel, and that’s not the way to go. There’s a locus of control issue here. Right? So item number eight therapy experiences, we’re kind of trying to highlight a locus of control.
You can control speaking of the abandonment or the engulfment feared people. You can draw me. No, you know what? You can control you can’t control, the issues of what somebody else is doing. Yeah. Control what’s going on in your own internal experience. So stop worrying about the other. Person’s doing.
Yeah. You know?
Craig Graves: [00:49:50] Exactly. And I actually wrote that down as we were talking earlier, is it kind of, it’s kind of coming back to emotional control, right? Oh yeah. You have to be able to control your, your emotional state. So if you are either one of these two things, then you can overcome the need to get, get all needy or to, to push back and.
And deal with the situation from an emotional standpoint, in your own, in your own self. Right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:15] So you’re, you’re taking me away from this section and then the last section, and I’m going to come back to what we do in a therapy office and go to that because you’re right on what are the challenges, right.
If you’re trying to figure out, you know, what, what am I trying to do differently? Like you just talked about, you know, the individual behavior that you’re trying to change. For an abandonment based person is learn how to shut up, you know? Right. Learning how to sit down and relax and just let problems go.
Not everything needs to be talked about for goodness sakes. Abandonment people want to work it out and talk, talk again, talk some more. Let’s have a marathon, you know, Here’s a hint. If you’ve ever done a text bomb, chances are, you might be abandonment person, I need to do that. What’s that? What’s a country song guy.
The country’s on the redneck guy. If chances are, if you’ve ever had a meal and you’ve had milk out of him, you’re a redneck.
Craig Graves: [00:51:16] Oh yeah, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:19] I need to do I need to do a
Craig Graves: [00:51:20] marital skid. It’s going to say the country singer redneck, that kind of narrows it down. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:25] Right, right. So the challenges for the engulfment person.
You have to have an opinion and express them often express your desires and preferences and shoot your emotion out at people multiple times. You know, what engulfment people like to save Craig, they’re like, Oh, well I tell people what I’m thinking. I tell people what I want them to listen to me. Once in 10 years, an abandonment person, who’s going to make sure, you know, what I want when I want it.
There’s not going to be any doubt because you’ve heard it five times this week engulfment person’s going to be like what I told you when we were newlyweds, we’re 20 years married now, but you should know that I want what I want. You know? So those are the challenges. And abandonment people tend to be very active with emotion.
They tend to be very goal directed to tend to be chatty. They have, you know, problem solvers. Engulfment people, you know, they have a tendency to bury to be very patient and flexible, you know, and they’re, they’re very kind of oriented towards, you know, being very easy going and wonderful coworkers.
But, you know, honestly you just don’t really, really know what they’re thinking. You know, any idea where they’re really at, they don’t really make it clear. They’re hard to read. Abandonment people really just emotions right on their sleeve. It’s not hard when they walk in the room, you know? So those are some of the, the challenges.
And so those are some of the tendencies. So let’s get back to the therapy office, cause item number one, we want to highlight locus of control. It’s an internal issue. It’s not an external issue. That’s what you can control and manage anyway. And that’s where the responsibility lies in the person. What are you experiencing in this situation back to like your kid situation that you’re awesomely nailed, you know, 40 minutes ago?
That kid is responsible for interpreting, what did you call the dad that withdrawn dad or whatever? Yeah. That kid is responsible internally for what they experienced it. Isn’t the dad, both kids experienced it completely different. Right. And that’s a great way to demonstrate that through what you said earlier.
So be prevent the blame game in marital cycles. We do not want to get into you’re to blame. You did this. That’s why I felt the way I felt. No, you felt the way you felt in internal experience is your responsibility. That’s something to totally change. I mean, that totally changed the perspective.
Craig Graves: [00:53:54] Is that an abandonment, engulfment issue or just an issue of universal, right?
I was thinking that was, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:59] Yeah. Universal. You know we really, I have to think, well, I’m only quiet and I, you know, you’re not easy to talk to, therefore, I don’t tell you what I’m thinking because when I do you yell at me or you act like an asshole? No, that’s. Don’t put that on me. Right? You put that on yourself.
Well, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m so edgy with you when you come home because you don’t even talk to me. You don’t even deal with anything. So sure. I’m all, you know, mad and whatever. Not don’t do it to put that on me. That’s the way you’re feeling and you’re acting that way, you know? So you really gotta be preventative in your own internal self, you know?
So let’s put those two together. The first thing is internal locus of control. Don’t think that it’s outside of you, that causes you to feel this way and then avoid the blame game. When you feel that way you can’t look at the other person and blame them,
Craig Graves: [00:54:51] right. Focusing on us internal, and then we’re not playing the blame game.
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:55] Right. See, really, we’re trying to get as close to real time recognition of this in the first place. Okay.
Craig Graves: [00:55:06] You know, define that a little bit more
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:08] real time recognition of this is really, really difficult. That means you and I, Craig are in a disagreement right now. You just looked at me in a snotty way and kind of shook your fist at me because I’m doing a bad job with this recording.
And I’m kinda like all weirded out and I’m like, Oh my God, you know what, why did I, what did I do wrong? Craig’s mad at me. Oh, wait a minute. I’m doing a good job. It’s not my fault for, you know, doing this. I, I wonder what’s up with Craig. If he’s edgy now I can get outside of myself right now. I can say, well, what’s happening here?
That, that Craig’s, you’re shook your fist at me, man. Now, instead of shutting down like an engulfment in pull back and just maybe stop doing the show altogether, I’ll step up and say, Hey Craig, you know, you look, you look upset. I mean, what’s up.
Craig Graves: [00:55:59] So you could also, that’s kind of synonymous with awareness, right.
And awareness of the situation,
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:03] MIndfulness. Yeah. Awareness. Okay. Being in the moment. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:56:07] That’s what I just wrote down awareness. Yeah. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:09] Yeah. You know, because that, listen, listen, that’s the goal. You’re probably not going to get there. I’m not there. I don’t know when I’m triggered all the time. I remember a little bit ago, I claimed it.
I have a little bit of a tacit understanding of this stuff. I’ve really been working with this a lot for, for quite a few years now. I don’t know when I go into this, I go home and I get worked up and somethings irritate me and you know, somebody looks at me cross or something, or like, what’s wrong with you?
My wife will say, what’s your problem. They got, I have a problem. What’s your problem? Half hour later, I’m like, Holy shit. I walked home and I was like, acting like an asshole. Why. I didn’t even know. You don’t know when you’re in a spot. A lot of the times when you go in, if you can get close to figuring it out five hours after you went in, that’s pretty good.
Hopefully you’re not still fighting literally. Right? So when you can identify this boom in the moment you did yourself and your partner, by the way, a super good job, that’s the standard target.
Craig Graves: [00:57:14] Chris, how do you think you develop that awareness to do it real time? I mean, that’s a skill, right? That’s a skill.
Yeah. We’ll talk about that one at a different time. I think that could be a deeper discussion,
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:23] maybe so, maybe so, because that’s, that, that takes a lot. I mean, I’m, I’m working with therapy and people either individually or marriedly on these things in awhile and it, and we’re still getting through to, to trying to identify and it’ll be even like, what a week later they come see me and you tell me about an argument.
I’m like, okay, well, when did you get, when you go into your spot, they’re like, Oh yeah, I don’t know.
Craig Graves: [00:57:48] Yeah. We’re going to come back to that in another show. Yeah. And it build that awareness and emotional control.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:53] Yeah. It gets a great brain. Write that down.
Craig Graves: [00:57:56] Yeah. We’ll integrate some of the stuff I’m doing with that and have a, have a good love it.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:01] Craig’s going to develop that one. Hold him to it audience. Listen, understanding the importance of internal rather than external locus of control. Don’t blame the other person get close to real time as possible. Oftentimes in sessions, I made the point, I’ll actually interrupt their core people’s conversations.
Pretty actively. I mean, I’ll, there’ll be in some discussion, whatever. I’m like, yo stop freeze right there. What did you just say in what, how does that relate possibly to abandonment or engulfment and there’ll be like, Oh, Oh, I, and then we’ll go into it then the topic of what they were talking about doesn’t even matter.
So stop right there. And what did you say? What does that mean to you? Why did that? Why what’s going on there?
Craig Graves: [00:58:45] Yeah. So one of the things we developed through a mindfulness practice is the witness. So we can observe our thoughts in real time. So what you’re really doing there is acting as a witness for these couples who were having these discussions in your office, is that
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:58] that’s exactly right.
It’s very interesting. It’s exactly what I’m doing. Very, very interesting. Usually audience, if you picked up and following us or whatnot, something just clicks with Mr. Graves when he says very interesting.
Craig Graves: [00:59:11] Well, you know, these, these are EFT discussions, man. I’ve been the biggest takeaway I’ve had from our show.
I think it’s very interesting. I can see it in people. I can see, I can see those tendencies in myself. It helps me deal with, people in all kinds of relationships better.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:25] Listen.
Craig Graves: [00:59:26] I mean, my kids, I can see it. I can see my kids, which pattern they fall into. You know, it’s, it’s really good stuff. And I really hope you guys take it in.
Listen to this show more than once. If you need to hit that tacit knowledge. And, so he had just things, things clicked.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:40] I love it, Craig, that you say that because honestly, when I came across this stuff, I mean, dude, it made me a much better therapist and a much better person, husband and wife. I still suck at a lot of that, but, but in my much better than ever the last right,
Craig Graves: [00:59:57] we’re all about growth.
It’s not a, it’s not a destination. It’s a journey.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:00] That’s what they say. Number four I dispelled the myth that we’re going to eradicate these tendencies. I would love to be able to do it. But at some point early on, when I’m working with people, I’m telling them, look, we’re not going to get rid of this. That’s not the goal.
Can you imagine being able to be successful in figuring out how to get rid of an insecurity?
Craig Graves: [01:00:20] It’s just like a, you’re always going to be, in one of the two categories. It’s just how you manage it and kind of be the difference.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:27] So I can move you from an 80 through getting insightful and working on some strategies and managing your emotions.
Getting mentally tough as Mr. Coach Craig’s would say, right. And I move you down to a 72. An 80 down to a 72 51 is the best of ultimately like, you know, self actualized person. Well, that’s great. That’s seven points of movement and that’s fantastic.
Craig Graves: [01:00:47] Yeah. And that’s really what we’re doing. Right. We’re bringing awareness to it so people can handle it differently.
So if I’m the abandonment person and she’s the engulfment person. And there’s a dispute. I know I need to give her a little time and space. She knows eventually I need to talk and feel close again. At some point it needs to be something.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:09] So you may have to wait a month. To be able to connect with her in a real way, again,
Craig Graves: [01:01:14] hopefully not, but
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:19] I’ve wanted to do that.
Craig Graves: [01:01:20] But I think the point is you need to, if you’re aware of this abandonment engulfment and where you fall on the spectrum, then you can handle these situations differently. You’re not going to eradicate it, but you can manage it.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:30] Exactly. Exactly. And I meant a month thing there just now.
Right. And I said that a little bit for shock value for you in the moment, because I mean, that’s that’s yeah. And your reactions genuine, right? That’s a hard one. I hope not.
Craig Graves: [01:01:41] Yeah. It’s tough.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:42] It is really, really, really is. But you know, what, if you’re an engulfment person, would you got to kind of realize is you need to freaking stay in the conversation.
Craig Graves: [01:01:51] Yeah, true. Hopefully it doesn’t take a month, but
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:54] hopefully if it is a month for you and the next time you have an argument, cut that in. By a quarter and give yourself three weeks and force yourself to go back to the table. Yeah. Hopefully we’re talking about the next day. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [01:02:06] I mean, if you love that person and you understand that’s how they’re wired, then you give a little grace.
Right? I don’t see that this conversation, if you love that person and you give a little grace, I don’t want to go talk with this person. But I’m going to because they need that because they’re an abandonment person. Yes, my God, I think I’m going to die if I don’t talk about this issue, but I know that you’re an engulfment person and you need a little space, so I’m going to give it to you.
So, I mean, that’s,
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:33] that’s grace and compassion can come in when you really understand on an advanced level. Hear that now though, when on an advanced level, the other person’s insecurity is how they operate. That boy opens up all kinds of wonderful doors for a healthy relationship. I wish I could highlight that better in some way, but it’s also really hard to do when you’re hot.
Craig Graves: [01:03:01] Absolutely. And I think that goes back to the emotional control. You’ve got to develop that so that you can. Step outside of the situation, calm yourself down and realize what has to be done.
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:10] Yes. Yes. Here’s the cool part that we do, so, Oh, E letter E here is recognize the reality of what I call abandonment and engulfment insecurity skills.
I’m gonna leave it alone for right now. Cause I think I said that earlier in show F here’s something really important that I do with people in a therapy office in marital and couple’s counseling is Name It. Right. Put a name to the cycle, you know, it’s really, really cool and important when you can identify it.
And then you come up with a name and you and your partner agree on the name for the cycle. And then you can talk about it, the pronoun referring to a terrible place that you get into that you don’t want to be in. And that you can get out of when you get into it. You follow that.
Craig Graves: [01:04:01] Yeah. Yeah. So you’re saying you give the cycle a name, you know what my favorite word using the well,
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:08] yeah,
Craig Graves: [01:04:09] yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:11] dude, this was, there was a Southern, this older Southern black couple that I was working with one day and it was so cool because, and I know we’re going over a little bit.
We’re going to come to a close, I got two more, three more points on what happens in a therapy cycle, but this is a cool show and we want to short it out at all. So they were, they were kind of naming their, their cycles. And how about the, well, I’m like the, well, But you can think about it, an old Southern black culture, and they may not have had running water when they were younger and whatnot, even in what not.
Right. Yeah. Imagine the scarier
Craig Graves: [01:04:45] place,
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:47] bugs and spiders, and you can’t get out of this thing and it’s dark and it’s dank and it’s cold,
Craig Graves: [01:04:55] poor Stephanie Fast. He got thrown into a well I know, right.
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:59] I know
Craig Graves: [01:05:00] it place the w with an H two and that’d be a good, a good way to name it.
Chris Gazdik: [01:05:04] Actually, that’s it? Yes.
Craig Graves: [01:05:06] Can be hell, right?
Chris Gazdik: [01:05:08] Absolutely. Hell on earth, a hurricane, a tornado, we named ours a cyclone and, and, you know, when you can, when you can name it, it’s cool because then you, you, you can say like, Hey, you know, Hey Craig, are you going into that hurricane man? Are you, you know, you got some storms brewing. I mean, what’s going on?
Anybody? All my God, I didn’t realize it. Yeah. You know what I do, sorry. Cause you got a name, you know what the cycle is, you know, how it works and then you get better at getting the heck out of it, apply realization in self with current events and arguments. So again, it’s a little bit of the realization in actual arguments and events that are going on come back to this, because this is the issue, the event isn’t.
And if you realize that, and we work with that in therapy to identify that, then you’re going to be much more. Able at managing and in a similar same thing, G and H rate apply the new cycle, the new cycle, we worked in therapy to figure out, you know, what, what are the things that you’re dealing with? And let’s apply this new cycle to something else.
And sometimes he goes a little bit of success. Let’s say I’ll have somebody who’s really good at dealing with finances anyway. And we’re really struggling. We’re not getting the new cycles of patterns behavior very, very well. And you know, we’re dealing with them. And, and we go to something that you do kind of well, anyway, which finances, you know, when you could apply that Dave Ramsey does this, you know what I’m saying?
Right. What does he call them? Do you remember
Craig Graves: [01:06:30] the golly, the free spirit and the nerd? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:06:33] Right. He names them free spirit or the involvement people. People.
Craig Graves: [01:06:38] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:06:39] The Nerd us. We’re the nerds. It’s abandonment. That’s what I think it directly relates to in his
Craig Graves: [01:06:45] perfect. It really is.
Chris Gazdik: [01:06:46] Yeah. after the new cycles are developed, get more advanced now and apply all these things.
Either couples counseling right, apply all the, all the things in earlier couples counseling. And what I mean by that is earlier. the things I tried to do with before I dealt with the cycles. Now you can apply couples counseling, communication skills. Now you can apply the love languages. Now you can apply conflict resolution and go through a series of steps to manage this big conflict that you’re in.
Now you apply all of these things that marriage counseling books had been writing about forever. But yeah, you can do them because you’re freaking grounded and outta your cycle. You see. But if you try to do those things earlier on in the therapy relationship, dude, you’re absolutely screwed. I told you about my couple that came to me one time, right?
And this will ring a bell. I’m sure. Cause I talked about it before guy and the girl were in my office and the guy’s like, you know, this is good talking about this issue. And she gets upset. She said, wow, I don’t know, there’s this issue? And he says, well, I don’t know when you do that. And she goes, well, you get out of there.
And boom. And she stands up, she walks out to the office and leaves and he’s looking at me and I’m looking at it like, wow, this, this is like a year into doing therapy, man. I’m like, wow. He’s like, that’s. That’s a, I’m really glad we’re here, man. I really am glad that we’re here.
Craig Graves: [01:08:09] after she was gone, he said that
Chris Gazdik: [01:08:10] she said she did.
He said, he said, do you think that, you know, I really want to keep our marriage together stuff they can take if he’s engulfment or the abandonment. Right. I really want to keep our marriage together here and all in it. Do you think he can keep her in the room next time?
Now, if you’re out there and hearing the show somewhere, somebody, the answer is, yes, I can now maybe a little better because we ain’t going to have that conversation they were having. We’re not even going to have that conversation.
Craig Graves: [01:08:40] Well, you probably don’t have statistics on this either, but do you think that your success rates and marriage counseling have increased since you started.
Chris Gazdik: [01:08:49] Yeah, I don’t have any way of knowing, but I think the answer, yes. Yeah. My anecdotal experience of this is absolutely. And funny. You should ask somewhere in the show notes here. I lost it and missed it. I think I had it earlier on somewhere. It doesn’t matter. You can Google it. Google divorce rates.
Don’t do it now. Don’t know where we gotta wrap up. But if you Google divorce rates, you’re going to find that it’s gone down somewhere around a quarter percent. And we talked about,
Craig Graves: [01:09:15] I talked about this, the millennials are driving.
Chris Gazdik: [01:09:18] They are, but Craig, when I did this search the other day for this to reinvigorate what I was thinking about, I saw more and I can’t describe it, but I saw more than just the millennials.
I did. I did. I older people. Are still divorcing more like, like, you know, the baby boomers and stuff that the rates and stuff, but the people are divorcing less when they get older. Right. There’s more maturity going on. They’re there. They’re staying single longer and they’re, they’re coming to premarital counseling, your experience of your dude.
I think it’s fantastic. You came to a marriage seminar, single I’m, you know, we’re seeing stuff like that, man.
Craig Graves: [01:10:00] That’s interesting man? Yeah, that’s good. I’m I’m glad to hear that.
Chris Gazdik: [01:10:04] Fantastic is marriage is a fundamental part of our families, which is a fundamental part of our culture, which is a fundamental part of a lot of crap we got going on.
I think nowadays. Stability and emotional management. So to wrap up what we do in my therapy office, I wrote it in all bold. You want to steal my thunder? When did I write letter J or bolt on the back of the sheet there,
Craig Graves: [01:10:27] ultimate goal is to develop emotional safety while having an intimately closer union.
Both people actually want this
Chris Gazdik: [01:10:35] Exclamation point. So elusive folks out there. I know you’re oftentimes maybe listening to this episode about marriage and struggling with your marriage and fearful that you’re not going to stay together. I got hope for that out there. I know that people can recover from affairs. I know people who can recover from even domestic violence in some crazy ways we can, we can deal with being able to be married.
When you feel the least amount of hope. I told you, Craig, I feel like. People have been in their worst emotional States when they feel the relationship to their spouses ending. And so there may be some people feeling really bad out there. Will it happen? I have no idea. You can only do your part. It does take two to tango in therapy.
It does take two to get well in a relationship. No figure that right, but, but there’s hope there is absolutely hope on such a. Such an important issue. I hope we did a good job out there for you. If you’re in any kind of distress in marriage, I really want to suggest that you don’t freaking wait. Like usually people do ninth inning down by seven runs, two outs, count three, two, and you’re going to come to me and ask what can I do to keep my wife in to the room?
You know, come early, come get things checked out. Go find a professional, you know, talk about Gottman. When you go talk about emotion focused therapy, it is the single most important thing I feel like in marital counseling, I feel strongly about that. Then go get help, go reach out, go get this thing dealt with.
Cause marriages that work really well marginally well are really, really, really, really, really cool and rewarding.
Craig Graves: [01:12:19] Yeah. And let me just say, man, we’ve got a lot of shows on marriage. We do. We’ve got shows about surviving betrayal and, just different topics on marriage. And if you go to our website throughatherapistseyes.com, we’ve added a podcast categories, a dropdown box on there.
It’s right under the main graphic on the right hand side. And if you click down on that arrow, marriage and family is an option. And so if you select that, it will list all the episodes that Chris and I have done that relate to to marriage are several there’s a lot. There’s a lot in there. And these were some of our most downloaded episodes.
Yeah. So if you folks have missed any of them or just listen to us for the first time, I want to go back. Then, that’s how you can find the shows specifically related to marriage. And I would encourage you to go look, go listen to those.
Chris Gazdik: [01:13:06] And we’re going to have more, I mean, that’s not an issue we’re going to abandon by any measure.
Do you use a plug? You got to see how I did that.
Craig Graves: [01:13:13] Yeah, that was good.
Chris Gazdik: [01:13:13] We’re not going to abandon it, man. You’re important to us for your work. I that’ll listen to you. Alright, man, you got closing thoughts and ideas.
Craig Graves: [01:13:22] I just want to say I’ve enjoyed the conversation. And like I said, this is probably my biggest, a takeaway from the two years we’ve been doing this show is a segment on EFT.
I enjoy it. I’ve, you know, I’m not married at the moment, but I can, I can see the benefit of this and I can see it another, you said before in other relationships that I’m in with children and friends and people in my mastermind and it’s, it’s really, it’s really been a interesting topic to discuss.
Chris Gazdik: [01:13:46] Fantastic. And I hope we did a good job. Some of it’s redundant. If you listen to this one, the only show in the history of, through a therapist’s eyes that you do not need to listen to is episode 11. The rest of them.
Craig Graves: [01:13:58] Fair game.
Chris Gazdik: [01:14:00] Y’all have great week. Stay safe out there and we will talk to you soon then through therapist’s eyes national tribe. Take care.