Dr. Stan Tatkin and Kara Hoppe, psychotherapists and co-authors of Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, join the podcast to share their wisdom on creating secure, purposeful relationships in a world that is indifferent to us. They explain why this relationship is so imperative, especially when it comes to raising healthy, happy children.
Stan and Kara both bring a wealth of understanding of neurobiology and personal relational experience to this conversation. We talk about the importance of humor, how suffering can motivate us toward change, and how we can shift from being feeling-centered to purpose-centered in our relationship. All of this ultimately makes us better parents and creates a secure relational foundation for our children. In other words, this is how we parents can make it through the overwhelm, heal wounds for future generations, and begin to create the world we want to live in.
Whether you’re expecting your first child, are deep in the throes of raising children already, or just want to be a parent someday, this conversation is for you.
RESOURCES:
Learn more about Dr. Stan Tatkin, his upcoming trainings and retreats and more at https://www.thepactinstitute.com/ Follow him on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
Learn more about Kara Hoppe and her upcoming virtual retreats for couples at https://www.karahoppe.com/ Follow her on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
Buy their book, Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, on Amazon or Bookshop.org.
Listen to Rebecca’s conversation with Dr. Stan Tatkin from Season 1 of the Connectfulness podcast, Episode 6 “Why Are Relationships Difficult? With Stan Tatkin”
connectfulness.com
If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining one of Rebecca’s online offerings to deepen your relational skills and expand your Self care. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offerings
Also, please check out the new WHY DOES MY PARTNER short form weekly podcast.
This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.
SHOW NOTES/QUOTES:
Secure functioning couples tend to retain their humor and they use their humor as a co-regulatory function. Couples that are insecure functioning, often lack of sense of humor. That makes the system much more brittle. Part of the reason we emphasize secure functioning, and we emphasize that the couple learn to be really good with each other under pressure, under stress, under load from the outside, from the inside, so that they can retain their flexibility, their humor, because it's going to require a lot of humor to raise a baby, raise a child.
Since we're part of nature and since we're energy conserved, meaning we do the least amount necessary, very few people ever try to think about, are they marching to their own drummer or are they marching to somebody else's, like their parents, or their grandparents. Very few people want to think about that because there's many other things to think about. Only when we're in an enriched environment where we're interested, even then, we don't want to do very much. What forces us is suffering. And when partners are suffering in their relationship and they want to stick together because the attachment system is a biological mandate that says, I can't quit you, even though I should. That biological mandate often forces us to move up a level in complexity and wisdom. And then now we have reason to explore ourselves and to think more deeply about why we are suffering because we can't quit each other, but we can't live with each other.
Those of us who suffer learn compassion, learn that we're not the only people. We start to see that all human beings are suffering in the same way. We're not that special, but that we do have a responsibility to move towards complexity and to move the bar up and to become better people with better character. And secure functioning is basically two individuals acting as adults, setting the bar as high as they wish, and getting each other to do the right thing always, when the right thing is the hardest thing to do, and that builds character and discipline.
We're trying to shift people's culture to being purpose-centered and not feeling-centered. Purpose-centered is something that we both can agree on. We can achieve regardless of how we feel. But if we are feeling-centered, then it's the wild west. Then it's chaos. Then it's everyone for themselves. I'll do it if I feel like it. If I don't feel like it, I'll do what I want. And that's the, again, the human condition. We need to focus on shared purpose. We do this because we can. Because we both agree it's the best thing to do. And we do it regardless of how we feel, because it has to get done.
There's a purpose that has to be fulfilled. And the feeling that comes from meeting that purpose is going to follow and it's going to be better than the one than I would feel if I did what was driving me to show my anger, act out, punish and so on.
Principles protect us from suffering, but principals also allow for the amplification, the budding of earned love and respect and trust. And that's what we're after, not the kind of love that just comes and goes. But the kind that we can't forget, because I can feel it every day.
We don't do anything well by ourselves. We certainly don't repair past injuries by ourselves. And we certainly don't become secure/insecure by ourselves. And so all of this is done inter-personally with another person upon whom we feel we depend. And that is why it's a practice. That is why both people have to be on board with the same idea, because two people can achieve this. One person can't.
We are intertwined, not fused, not merged. We are interdependent. We move in lockstep. It's as if our legs are bolted together and we would have to move together in order to be effective. We share a nervous system in some ways. That's biology. And ignoring that actually causes our own suffering. So most of what we do to hurt our partner is self-inflicted, is self-harming, we just don't realize it.
The first thing always at the top of the list is to reduce threat. You cannot do these other things if partners are feeling threatened. If they're feeling threatened, this is what people will do. They will begin to amplify threat. They will begin to accrue memory of unfairness and resentment. That will begin to take up all the space. If they don't trust each other, they won't be able to influence each other. If they can't influence each other, they can't change anything. They're becoming adversaries. They're becoming dangerous characters to each other, and that will kill all goodwill. That will kill any effort to do something that is loving.
We of course have not been an imminent danger. We have unseen fear and looming danger of global warming, maybe an oncoming civil war. All of these things are not happening right now, and we think we have the luxury to create fires at home. This is not reality. Reality is that we live in a dangerous world. We live in a world that is indifferent to us. That is opportunistic and that is unkind. Life is unkind. The two of us can make an agreement that in our world, in our bubble, in our fiefdom, we are completely loyal to each other, have each other's backs. We know each other better than we know anything else. We're experts on each other. We do that because that's the world we want to create, even though we're in a world of madness.
