Couples Under Pressure: Competence and Mindfulness for Families with Dr. Kathryn Ford

When families are under pressure, is it ever really about one person? Or is it actually about the system they’re part of? In this episode of The Reframe, host Douglas Bodin speaks with Dr. Kathryn Ford, psychiatrist, couples therapist, and author of The Aperture Effect, about how stress within families often exposes deeper relational dynamics. Drawing on her systems-based approach, Dr. Ford explains why competence lives in relationships rather than individuals, and how mindfulness can help couples stay connected when tensions rise. They discuss how modern families have become more isolated, even while living together, and how this shapes the way parents respond to stress and conflict. Dr. Ford shares practical tools from her book, including the idea of “aperture”, or moment-to-moment openness, and explains how slowing down and noticing subtle shifts in connection can transform difficult conversations. The episode also explores the challenges parents face when raising adolescents and young adults, from learning how to let go of outcomes to supporting growth through uncertainty. Tune in for a grounded, thoughtful conversation on how to strengthen relationships when families are under pressure.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Systems thinking and why Dr. Ford works with couples rather than individuals.
• How modern families have lost a sense of themselves as interconnected systems.
• Why isolation can exist even when families live in the same household.
• Competence as something created between people, not within an individual.
• The limits of therapeutic models when presence and connection are missing.
• How to use mindfulness as the foundation of moment-to-moment connection.
• Learning to notice early “uh-oh” moments in difficult conversations.
• How challenges can move couples from complacency into a growth mindset.
• The shift parents must make from control to consultation with young adults.
• Trusting young adults to learn through mistakes and recovery.
• Dr. Ford’s tools for helping families slow down and stay present in conversation.
• Practical exercises in The Aperture Effect for communication and learning.
• How Dr. Ford works with families when a young adult at home is not thriving.
• Ways that post-pandemic uncertainty has reshaped youth development.
• Why growth, learning, and change remain possible at every stage of life.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Dr. Kathryn Ford

Dr. Kathryn Ford on LinkedIn

The Aperture Effect

Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together

A General Theory of Love

Douglas Bodin
The Bodin Group

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's very much like driving. When you're driving a car, the most important thing is that you keep your eyes on the road. It's not that the road maps aren't helpful. So having these models in your head, understanding about different conversational styles, understanding about love languages is helpful. But when you're driving, you don't want to be looking at the maps. When you're driving, you want your eyes on the road because, as with driving, everything is changing moment by moment.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Welcome to the Reframe, where we have real, unfiltered conversations about mental health, parenting, and addiction treatment in a changing world. Hosted by Douglas Bowden, a therapeutic consultant with 35 years of experience, we explore the shifts shaping mental health care, featuring experts pioneering new approaches and offering practical advice. Join us as we challenge old narratives and reframe the way we think about the challenges in mental health treatment. This is the reframe. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

After 20 years of helping couples, she has written The Aperture Effect. And in this book, she teaches couples and therapists to use the Aperture Awareness, which is a mindfulness approach that integrates mindfulness, psychology, and neuroscience. She received her MD from Brown Medical School and completed a residency in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Ford, welcome. It's good to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Thanks, Doug. It's great to be with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

I wanted to invite you in to talk about your work with couples, especially and how that relates to, I think specifically the kinds of clients that we work with in our mentoring and consulting programs. When we were talking earlier, I think a lot of the different pieces resonated for you. But I'd like for you to just start with a little bit of a background, your approach and what you bring to your work with couples.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Okay. Excellent. Yeah, I think one of the most relevant things for our talk and for related to the work that you do is long before I was a psychiatrist, I was kind of naturally a systems thinker. I grew up with both of my parents doing work that involved systems of people, large systems, small systems. And so as I headed towards becoming a therapist, I was pretty sure that my view of human beings was that we're systems of people. That I think Tony Kushner said there's no such thing as a single human being. And so I very much relate to people as systems, which is why I started very early on working only with couples as opposed to individuals. So that's a very important part of my work. And other than that, as you said, it's kind of a blend of my classical training and psychotherapy and various Western psychologies, and a lot of practice of mindfulness and feeling like that's really taken hold of me in terms of what's important about how people interact with each other is being present with themselves and with each other in the moment.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Do you think people nowadays are as attuned to the notion of systems as they might have been a couple of decades ago? I asked that question because it's a loaded question. I feel like the clients that we see are less attuned to that notion that there's a system at play, that there are other factors going on within a family other than the dilemmas they're facing with their adolescents or young adult children. And that's who why we're seeing them. So I think we're finding that families are less inclined to see the systemic aspects of what's happening within their family and for their children.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Hmm. That's interesting. I was thinking about your placing it two decades ago. I'd probably put it back a little bit further than that. Having not lived really my primary adult life during the time where people lived in mostly extended family groups and small community groups. I can't say that by experience I know what that was like. But I've studied a lot about it and thought a lot about it. And I think that going back to the time where we lived in groups of people that were kind of stable over time, that were geographically conglomerated, I think that there was much more a sense of who we are is who we are in our family, who we are in our community, who we are in our community groups. And now, both with the fact that we live in much smaller groups, and though even those tend to attenuate. Lots of families have people that travel a lot, and so even the nuclear family isn't always together. And yeah, I think that has led to people feeling, I think that's very much a part of why people feel isolated and very much a part of why they tend to think that they individually can do a whole lot of things that we can't actually do individually.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

That's very interesting. I think that families, even when there aren't people traveling, they're together in the same household, and especially with more people working from home. You can have families fully in the same household, but isolated alone in their own bubble. And the system is playing out, but with each component of that system in some form of isolation.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yes. Yeah, I think that's become one of the major difficulties of not all cultures on the globe equally. I think the Western cultures tend to have that problem more than the eastern ones. And I do think of it as a problem. I think it's a big mistake. And within my psychotherapeutic community, I'm a big proponent for the importance of not forgetting, I think, individual therapy too much. The classical model of that has emphasized a sort of isolation of the individual as everything's going on inside this individual. And I think that that we've made a lot of mistakes that way.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

I think too that the the way the economics of mental health care have shifted has also reinforced that because a lot of times, and our our lens, of course, is seeing the adolescents and the young adult children of couples who aren't thriving. And therefore, the the medical model, the identification of that person as having the problems, because that's who insurance will reimburse for, reinforces that notion of that person being the problem and de-emphasizes the importance of the parents, the system, and all the other component parts that are affecting this particular individual. Not sure what to do with that, but that that is one of the uh the problems that we face.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And no that that's where we are. And and I what I do with that is that when I'm working with people and also when I'm just living with people, I'm constantly referring to that and keeping it in my mind that I often tell people competency is in the relationship, not in the individual. And when and people relate very well to competency these days. And so I remind them, you know, it's not about are you competent or not? It's about in this system, whether it's two people or a whole family, are you helping each other to be competent? And is this system moving towards competency?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

That's impressive. Do you find that here, especially in Silicon Valley, the the competency piece encourages people or can sometimes demoralize them? Because people try to, I don't know what the question is there, but I when I hear competency in Silicon Valley and the kinds of and I have a lot of compassion for this, but I feel like sometimes the the families here are striving to master the therapy, but haven't had the mindfulness component that you also bring to the table that really emphasizes the relational components at a very real and profound level. You can probably articulate this better than I'm trying to ask it.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

You know, that's interesting. I think you picked up on the fact that that word could also trigger people into this hyper competitive thing that goes on. And I don't, I have to, I'll have to think about if if it's doing that. I mean, I think at one and the same time, people can relate to it because they're trying. I also think that that by and large, I work with and you work with people that are trying very hard to do the best they possibly can. And I guess that's what that word invokes for me. And I haven't found that it has a downside, but I'm gonna stay alert to that now that you mention it.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

What I think we see with the word competence is families who have feel a lot of anxiety and the desire to learn everything they can and take it all in and master the things, learning all the skills, the DBT, but the mindfulness and how to really relate, how to get the connection with your child is something that I think still can elude people, even though they've they can uh write the book, teach the class on some of the skills, but really getting the connection is something that I think is is harder with all the information and all the experts and all of the books coming at people. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

That's great. You're singing a song that I like, so let's talk about that. Yes, the downside of anything that takes people to learning more from books and models, et cetera, is that really part of what mindfulness teaches us is that in everything we do, that includes our relationships with each other, it either happens right now or it doesn't happen at all. In other words, the the ability to connect is in each moment. What I see so much with couples that I work with is that when they're talking to each other and they get in difficulty, what they tend to do is to reach for their roadmaps. They reach for their models, they try to figure out what does this have to do with our love language or what does this have to do with our conversational style? What I tell people is it's very much like driving. When you're driving a car, the most important thing is that you keep your eyes on the road. It's not that the road maps aren't helpful. So having these models in your head, understanding about different conversational styles, understanding about love languages is helpful. But when you're driving, you don't want to be looking at the maps. When you're driving, you want your eyes on the road because, as with driving, everything is changing moment by moment. And you might be in a moment where the road is open and dry and it's clear sailing and you're having a good time, and it's not even hard to talk to each other, right? And you enjoy that. But also in a moment, something can change, and we've all had this experience. We think the conversation is going fine, and all of a sudden we have what I call the uh-oh moment, which is the other person's face suddenly clouds up, or they look away, or they grimace, and you realize, uh-oh, something just happened that isn't quite right, doesn't feel good, the other person isn't good with me anymore. And so mindfulness helps us to be aware in the moment of that uh response, to pay attention to it as opposed to ignoring it. So often what people do when they get that feeling in a conversation is they just whiz on by it. That's the equivalent of you hit the gas as it starts to rain and you're driving. You don't want to do that. You want to instead be able to be mindfully aware of uh-oh, this is a moment where I really need to pay close attention to how am I feeling, how's the other person feeling. We need to maybe check in with each other. So that's how I use mindfulness with couples. And I do think it's the most important thing. And I think for most people I work with, the first step is to kind of get the models and the ideas and the figuring it out. We're so good mentally at problem solving of a very abstract kind. And what I'm trying to do is get people to just kind of leave that aside. Mindfulness, among other things, involves intentionally going towards not knowing things, which is kind of an odd and weird paradox for most people that you and I deal with and talk to.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Myself included. What have you seen differently now versus uh we talked 20 years ago? How are the couples coming in today? And and I know you you sometimes only can manage a certain number of families who are dealing with teens and adolescents. And that's uh that's interesting. When we talked before uh taping this, you you talked about why that is, and there's some specific challenges there, maybe you want to speak to.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, I think my experience in my practice is that couples that are dealing with kids in their family that have sometimes we call it special needs or special difficulties or a different, you know, neurology, we call this the neurological differences. Any of that, anything that isn't just kind of straight down the middle average, and I mean that statistically as opposed to normal. What we have, I think, figured out, and a lot of couples come in with some awareness of this, is that we used to think of normal as the right thing. Normal is simply a statistical average of something, and really we're all individuals. But what I find is that couples that are dealing with kids or teenagers that are having unusual amounts of difficulty with their progression toward adulthood, with their school systems, whatever it is, those couples are experiencing a lot of stress. For most couples, the thing that's closest to their heart and the thing that they really do care about the most is their kids and their family. Most people these days, and I guess that's one difference as compared to three or four decades ago, is most people these days become parents very intentionally. It's not usually an accident. They really wanted this role and this these relationships. And so when things don't go well, they get very nervous, especially certain kinds of families with overly high expectations. So I think right now we're in a, I think we're in a transitional time. Ten years ago or more, I was dealing with families that thought that they had a unique set of problems when their kid couldn't interact with the school system the way everybody else was. And they felt like, gee, what's wrong with us? What's wrong with this kid? I think there is a growing awareness, maybe especially in the Bay Area, of the fact that lots of families are dealing with this, and there are a lot of variations about how kids and adolescents progress through life, including and especially how they interact with their families and with their school systems. So I think there's a little bit more sense of we're not the only family that's dealing with. There are more schools now that have certain programs within the school that offer talks and contact with professionals like yourself that help them get information about neurodiversity, about um unusual developmental patterns, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

And I think that the types of issues that are confronting parents of their kids are what can bring out the biggest rifts within couples. And so all the more reason why they have to figure out the tools to connect, to coalesce around how to assist that child in a coherent and mindful manner. Because that that overturn window of what's normal has shifted. I'm thinking now about the young adult children, but that overturn window of normal or average has shifted. And so a lot more of the children are young adult children in this case, taking alternative paths, are at home longer, are bringing up different challenges because of the economics of the situation, couples working from home. So I think those all of those pieces have have, I think, inflamed a lot of the types of tensions that can exist in an otherwise free functional family. But these pieces, that that range of normal is very challenging, especially within the families where their view or their intentional parenting has led somewhere different than their roadmap.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yes. We all need to keep growing. And in order to grow and learn and expand as human beings, we need sort of the right amount of difficulty. And in the families you're describing, sometimes the amount of difficulty is not quite right. It's it's a little excessive. And so it's it's extra challenging. And as you as you said, family systems and couple systems that, you know, are kind of doing okay without extra challenges, tend to have more difficulty when the challenges come. I would say the other side of that, or the potential optimistic side of that, is I do think sometimes it can heighten the need for learning and growth and personal expansion in a way that if the individuals and the couples can respond to that welcomingly or with the with the anticipation of, okay, now we get busy and learn something new, I think it can take a couple from complacent attitudes about, well, we're in our adulthood now, and now we just kind of cruise along and do our jobs, and that's that. I think it can take people into a growth mindset and an awareness that actually you have to keep learning. And I think that's the upside of it, which I think is important.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Aaron Powell What do you think are the biggest changes that parents and couples need to be aware of or make or be intentional about when they're moving from parenting a teenager or adolescent into an adult into a young adult? And and what those, especially so many families now, and we've all seen the statistics on how many young adults are moving back in with their families after college or having not gone to college staying there into their 20s and to 30 or so. What do you see as being some of those big changes and adaptations that parents need to make? If you can bullet point out some of those key pieces of uh differentiating factors that parents need to attend to?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, the first one I would say is is an interesting kind of two-pronged thing. The first one I see is that I think that there's a really interesting shift that needs to go on during late teenagehood, high school years, where parents need to shift from a controlling role to an advisory role and a consultative role, and that that really helps the kid get ready for college where they are going to be out on their own. And so, what I would say is relative to the stage you're talking about, parents that never made that shift, now they really need to make it. They really need to understand this is not about making it happen anymore. This is not about being in charge anymore. This is about being a really good consultant and a trusted advisor. And so if they haven't made that shift yet, they really need to do that. And I would say the other prong of that is that if a kid seems to stall out or not be progressing as they're leaving college and at that transition, there can be a tendency to actually regress towards the earlier mode of control because you know you get scared. And we all kind of tend to want to control things when we get scared. And so as parents get nervous about what's happening, even if they kind of had moved toward the advisory role, they may, they may backslide. And the whole relationship, it's not just that they do, the kid may also backslide into defeating and reacting to their control as opposed to welcoming their help. So that's kind of what I see both with parents and with kids in that phase is really important. The second thing I see about that is the importance of yes, learning about whatever the wisdom is we have at this point about that transition, like things I just said, but also keeping in mind, and again, this is the mindfulness thing, that you want to be very alert to the exact nature of this particular individual, this particular moment for them, this particular moment for this family, that there will be some generalities and some categories that apply that will be helpful to you. That's the roadmap, but also you want to stay very alert to what's really happening right now for this particular becoming an adult child and for this particular family dealing with a kid that's having a little extra difficulty with that.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Yeah, I like what you're saying about moving from command and control to advise and consent. It's one of the key things. One of the things I say too is, and this is counterintuitive at some level, but let go of the outcome. I think that desire to control is about not only controlling their, their your young adult child, but I think at the same time trying to control their own anxiety, their own fear, their sense of chaos and disorder is somehow addressed by by feeling like they have some control, or sometimes even in hiring us and in in wanting to have a particular outcome in mind, where a lot of times we're having to advise on mindfulness, giving the space and allowing for a particular direction that may not have been on what you're Early roadmap. I know we're using the term roadmap differently here, but your plans for your child and how you had intentionally gone into parenting.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Right. I love that you're emphasizing that, Doug. That's so important. Yeah, we get so, I mean, in fact, hardly anything goes better if we're looking at the outcome. And again, this is the mindfulness perspective. What we really need to pay attention to is what's possible at this moment, what's my best shot at whatever it is, driving the car, parenting, or whatever. What can I do right now that is skillful, that helps move things towards, well, a loving relationship, first of all, but towards what's needed right now. Do I need to listen? Do I need to advise? Do I need to go grocery shopping and leave the other person alone to have their own thoughts? Paying attention to what this moment offers and needs as opposed to where we're trying to get to is so important. And also that the outcome, I think that may be the other very important thing, is to realize there are all kinds of good outcomes. I'll share personally. I have three kids, and two of them are what I think have come to think of as off-roaders, meaning they're not following a predictable track that's the kind of track that I clearly followed since I went to medical school. They are one of them is a craftsperson and the other one is a musician. And the craftsperson is the older kid, and I sometimes joke with the musician that he got me ready for being okay with her being a musician. Because what I learned with both of these kids is to let go of my expectations and my definitions about what was success, what was healthy, what should be happening. We all have those. And um and what I came to with both of these kids is realizing that the most important thing, as, especially as they exit college, is that they that they become as aware as possible of who they are and what they really want, and that they develop the ability to know that, that actually I will never have the ability to know what the next step for them is. I may have the ability to know what the next step in my helping them is. But that really my best, my best shot at them being happy and successful is to help them know how to do that for themselves. And that involves really letting go of plans and set trajectories and ideas about graduate school and all of that.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

It comes down to trust, though, too. You have to trust your child to make good decisions. And that's hard.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Yes, it is. You have to trust them to make good decisions, and you have to trust that they can recover from mistakes, I guess is the other piece of that. Because they will make mistakes and they will make some bad decisions just like you did, just like I did. And so it's partly about making good decisions and it's partly about them learning what you do after you made a decision that didn't go well. And how do you recover from that? How do you learn from that? How do you not take a hit with your self-esteem but realize that making mistakes is a part of what a good, solid, learning adult does?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

And and we have to give them the space to make those mistakes. We're not going to trust them to make the mistakes and recover for them if we haven't given them the chance to make those mistakes in the first place. If we're constantly curating or trying to control what's happening for them, we're not trusting them, nor giving them the time, the space to develop that trust in themselves and for us in them. I like all the driving analogies too, roadmaps and off-roading. This is this is great. What are some of the tools that that you use with families? When someone comes in with you, they're presenting the challenges. What are some of the things that you do or like to address in in helping families develop the communication skills, the presence, the mindfulness? And I'm thinking specifically for the parents doing the couples' therapy and for the parents of the kids that we might see either in their adolescence or young adult lives.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Right, right. Yeah. I would say tool number one is being able to be present in the moment. And as I as I emphasize to people, it's not that every single moment you're you're at an exquisite level of mindfulness in the moment. A lot of times you're just having a conversation. It's that you've trained yourself to come fully present to the moment when you when you get that uh-oh signal inside of you, when something inside of you lets you know, pay attention, and knowing how to bring yourself fully present. That's tool number one. And I would say what's related to that, if you want to get into that, that's kind of the big overview is paying attention to the moment. And I guess the other thing I emphasize in my work and part of what the book is about, is that the most important thing to pay attention to when you're interacting with someone is their openness and your openness. And I call that aperture because I wanted a special word for it, because I think it's a very special ability that we have. It turns out that our brain is very well equipped to sense and kind of a full-body awareness sensation of our own openness and also of other people's. We're very connected to each other. There's something called limbic resonance, which means that the part of our brain that's processing our feelings and our interactions with another person is very resonant and I can actually tell if you're open to me or not. It's not, it's not such a mystery as long as I know that it's there and I can and I can relate to that. So I I um number one for me is reminding people the most important thing is that you're open to each other, and that if you're not open to each other, you know that you need to make a different response than when you are. As people start to close down, they get that uh-oh feeling, and they need to know number one thing, and now we're going to the the toolbox, the actual how do you do this? The how do you do that is slow down. The rate at which we conduct our conversations with each other is so fast that we can barely, or not at all, process the content of what we're saying. People don't usually get most of the content that they're exchanging, and yet their whole focus is on that. We need to slow down because we need to be able to not only process the content better, but process how we're feeling, what we're picking about up, how the other person's feeling, that uh-oh response, and what do we do with that? And so often what you need to do if you feel like things could go better here or things not quite good, or I'm starting to close down, that should be a signal to slow down and sometimes take a complete timeout. It's very important if things aren't going well, that first I slow down enough to check in with myself, like what am I feeling? And do I think I'm closing down? If the answer is yes, I might be closing down, then the next thing to do is to slow the other person down, the whole conversation down, and to actually take a pause and say, hold on a second. Um, I need to check in because I'm not sure we're doing very well in this conversation. What do you think? You don't have to get fancy about this and you don't have to use, you don't have, you can use the aperture word if you want. What's your aperture? But you don't need to. You can just say, How are you feeling? What do you how are you doing in this conversation? Very often, if something told you that you needed to ask that question, what will come back is something like, yeah, I don't like the way this is going, or I'm not feeling, you know, I'm not enjoying this conversation anymore, or something like that. And the next question needs to be, why not? What can we do differently? And sometimes it's something very simple. Occasionally you'll ask the other person, you don't seem to be liking this conversation. And they'll say, Yeah, you've been talking for five minutes straight, and I can't get a word in edgewise. Now, in a certain way, that's so simple. And what's great about that it's simple is right away you know what you can adjust to make the conversation better. The person that said, Yeah, it doesn't, it's not a conversation if you're talking all the time. And we all make that mistake from time to time. I certainly do. And so it's pure gold when you can ask and the other person can tell you, don't talk so much, or you're talking too loudly, or you started talking about X, and I thought we were back over here talking about something else. So often it's not that complicated to grab hold of what is it that threw us off course here? What can we adjust? It might be tone of voice, it might be the amount of content we're trying to handle. So, biggest tool is stay in the moment, stay aware of your openness in the other person's and slow things down so that you have time for processing. There's an exercise in the book that will give you an idea of just how extremely I mean this sometimes in terms of the amount that we're trying to process. When I am trying to teach couples about slowing down, the exercise I give them is that they're each to only say two sentences when they speak. And there's to be a pause of about two sentences length between the speakers. So if you think about it, that's a conversation that's like a really slow tennis volley, like the ball is hit and it travels and it's hit and it travels that's really, really slow. The first two minutes of doing that will feel really frustrating and weird to you. I promise you. Stay with it, and by the five-minute mark, you will start to actually, instead of feeling more nervous, you're going to feel more relaxed because your system now has a chance to catch up and you have a chance to process all those things that you felt coming at you in terms of the emotionality of the conversation, the complexity of it, the diversity of it. And now you don't have to work quite so hard to keep up, and you can relax a little bit. And once you relax, of course, everything goes better.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Another extreme version of that was in a lot of uh therapeutic programs, the communication between parents and children was often, and still often is, letters at first, because it allows for the very deliberate and intentional articulation of whatever it is you want to say in either direction, and at the same time, the ability to read and digest what has been written to you, and then your thoughtful response to that. So with the time and distance of being in a treatment program that allows for that. And it was an extraordinarily productive uh thing, oftentimes, and could see in comparable situations that the immediacy of communication, for example, in a phone call or Zoom, would devolve and not allow for as healthy communication. And these are in extreme situations between families, of course, but that's a I think a profound example of slowing down the communication and being very thoughtful about it.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah, no, I like that, Doug. You're right. The use putting things in writing effectively slows things down a lot, as much as you want it to, actually. You could slow it down as much as you need to. And you're right, that is that is a great way to slow things down.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Say more about your book. What are what are some of the other tools and skills that are in there? And uh let's I I know that in when we've gotten feedback about the podcast, one of the things that uh people really resonate with is the the skills and the tools. So I'd love to hear some more about that.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Let's give them several. Yeah, people people want something they can take away and use right away, which I really think it's so good because actually everything that we're talking about is not stuff that you really learn by hearing somebody describe it. It's stuff that you learn by experimenting with it on your own. And I think part of the tool with a good therapist. Part of the tools is they want something useful. But actually, I think behind that is in order to learn what we're talking about, they need a tool to practice with so that they can have their own experience. So I wrote the book originally, the book was going to be a workbook because I had a lot of exercises I was using with couples in my practice, in workshops with couples, and I wanted to just write those down and share them. And the book eventually became more than a workbook, it's a book with exercises, but the exercises I still think of as the heart of the book because everything that's in the book, and there's a lot of interesting theory and explanations in there, but everything in there is really stuff that you're really gonna need to learn experientially. And so, with every set of thoughts that I present, there's an exercise so that you can do the experiment yourself and find out what your experience of that thing is. So let's talk about a few of the tools that are in there. One of the hard things about human beings encountering each other is differences. And sometimes people talk about differences as if the differences are the problem, which is kind of true. But if you really think about it, every time one human being encounters another human being, there's an encounter with difference. We are kind of similar, sort of, enough so that we can talk to each other mostly, but we're also really different. And the way I remember a trivial conversation about who was gonna pick up the mail is gonna be different than the way my partner remembers that same trivial conversation. And if we're not careful, we'll trip over that difference and get in a big fight over no, you said you were gonna get it. I absolutely did not. So every time we're talking to each other, we're encountering differences. And so dealing with those differences in a way that isn't a debate is really important. The standard conversation about, I think just about everything, trivial things and important, is that we we without even thinking about it, we have a conversation that starts with a drag and drop, meaning I tell you what I know and you tell me what you know. And then the next step is we quickly compare to figure out if they're the same, do we agree? And then if they we don't agree, the next question is who's right? And from there, the conversation is either a long debate about who's right or a short debate about who's right, or we both stomp off, you know, disgustedly. That's the conversation we usually have about just about everything. What I want people to learn to do is have dialogue. And dialogue starts with what you know. You kind of put what you're bringing to the table on the table, and you start there, but very quickly you enter into a collaboration, the point of which is to discover what neither of you knows. It's a conversation to find things out. There's a wonderful book called Dialogue by William Isaacs, and his subtitle for that book is Thinking Together. And I love that. True dialogue is thinking together. And what it means is that you make really good use of the fact that you don't have the same brain, you do have a lot of differences of perceptions, opinions, assumptions, evaluations, and you make really good use of that. A couple of the specific tools and maybe my favorites that help people make good use of that is first of all, to remember that you're both right. And very often people quickly get to kind of, you know, this butting of heads about who's right. And what I coach people to do is what if you're both right? And and that can feel really odd because these differences look like, no, only one of us could be right. Almost always it will seem as if one of you has the truth and the other one is wrong. You need to step back enough that you can entertain the possibility of in what reality, what is going on, if both of these things are true, then what is going on? Often what you discover at that point is that um you're not exactly talking about the same thing. I'm talking about who was supposed to get the mail today, and you're talking about our agreement about who was supposed to always get the mail, right? So there may be differences in the meaning of the words, there may be differences in other assumptions about the conversation, but there's a picture in which both of these things are right and useful and important, and you want to put it all together. It's a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle. If you're working a jigsaw puzzle with another person, and and I pick up a red piece that definitely looks like a red barn, I think, oh, this is a picture of a red barn. That's that's the puzzle we're working on. You, meanwhile, pick up a picture that definitely looks like a little fringe of a pine tree, and you think this is a picture of a forest, for sure we're working on a picture of a forest. Both of us are right. In this bigger picture, there's a barn and there's a forest, and it's all going on. And if we get into a debate about forest versus barn, we're not even seeing the bigger picture. So, so one of the big tools is against all your instincts, because it won't feel natural, learn the discipline of what if we're both right? What's going on that could be consistent with we're both right? The other tool that's very much like that is what I call grain of truth. It's very important that our that our partner be able to bring us their truth about what they see about us. And it's very important that we be able to use that. The best source of information we have is somebody else's observations about who we are, because we only partially know who we are. And the more we understand about who we are, the better we can function in the world. So your partner says, you know, I'm getting really sick at you. Always leave the dirty dishes at the end of dinner, and you just walk out, and I'm really tired of that. My reaction might be, are you kidding me? I'm the main one that cleans up these dishes, right? So my first reaction is that's absolutely not right. What I advise people to do at that point is go to grain of truth. What there is a grain of truth in what your partner is observing, and you really need to evalue that and preserve it and thank them for having the temerity to bring it to you. What's going to turn out to be true for you is not going to be exactly what they're saying. You're not looking to totally agree with them. You're looking for the grain of truth. So, in this example, for instance, the grain of truth might be that in the last month, I'm smiling because some of this happened. In the last month.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Yeah, I think you might have talked to Pam before this, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

I've been so hard at work on my book that I actually have been walking out of the kitchen at the end of the meal and just falling into bed and going to sleep, right? And I wasn't even aware that I had done that enough that it deserved comment because in my mind, I'm the person that washes the dishes, right? And I hadn't registered that in the last month I've actually been the person that's writing a book and isn't doing the dishes, right? And so the grain of truth is my partners write, something has changed, and it's changed enough that they're concerned about it and they don't like it, and they need to talk to me about it. And that's finding the grain of truth. It's not what they said that I never do the dishes and I'm bad at dishes. It's that there's something here we need to talk about that they're onto. So grain of truth is almost always there, and you have to learn that it's not about agreeing. It's not about, oh yeah, you're right. It's not going to feel that way. What it's what it's going to feel like is, I'm not sure. And what you're looking for is not to simply affirm that they're right. What you're looking for is they're presenting their experience, and you're looking inside your own experience for what matches with that. So when I look inside my own experience, what I find is the person that's exhausted from the last phases of this book. Ah, that could mean that I haven't even been aware of the dishes. I didn't know I wasn't doing the dishes because I wasn't even thinking about the dishes. That's the grain of truth. And that's something only I know. They don't know where my head was and why I was preoccupied. You know, that that's my reality. And that's the grain of truth that you're looking for is what in your reality fits with their reality. And that's instead of getting reactive, instead of getting insulted, that they're complaining about you, because we all do that. That'll be your first response is to get insulted, let that go, and look for the grain of truth.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah, I love that. Because we're all looking for all these different puzzle pieces. And if we've got the part of the barn and part of the forest, there's a lot of other pieces out there that can reinforce our particular view of what we're trying to put together in this puzzle, but at least we can agree that we're working on the puzzle together.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Exactly. Exactly. Right, right. Good, good. It's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

But I'd like to ask you how you work with families when they've got a young adult child living at home or who's otherwise not thriving, and that individual is not working with the same skills and tools. How do you coach and advise those parents as they're struggling with their own communication, being mindful and using these types of skills? How can they bring that young adult child into that conversation or work with him or her more effectively?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Right, right. Good. Yeah, a couple of things about that. I would say the first thing is to remember that it's always all about learning. It's always all about your learning and it's always all about their learning. And so with anybody, and especially an adult child that's living at home and not doing well, um and you're worried about them, is to realize you only start where you are, wherever they are. What you're looking for is how can you provide in the experience with you, in the interface with you, and experience of living in your home, the very best circumstances for their learning. And that involves a lot of tuning in to who they actually are, which means a lot of letting go of who you wish they were. And you're not looking to take them from A to Z. You're looking to understand where they are right now, what's A, where are they, and what do they need to be in a learning mindset, which means to not feel too threatened, to not feel too controlled, to feel interested. And I think some of this comes down to so first thing is to emphasize learning and starting with your own learning, which is learning to be better and better at this interface that provides learning for them. And secondly, that the main thing they're going to take from you is modeling. And we've used that word for a long time, and I think it actually goes a little bit beyond that. There's an implicit kind of learning that we do with each other and provide to each other that has to do with this limbic resonance. There's a wonderful book called The General Theory of Love, which was written by three psychiatrists at UCSF a couple of decades ago. It's a real sleeper, but it has some lovely things in it about what's really going on in the neurology of our connections with each other. They talk about the three R's of limbic connection, limbic resonance, which is what I talked about, limbic regulation and limbic revision. This is really important for what we're talking about right now with how do you help an adult child at home. What they mean by limbic revision is that when I'm in contact with you, there is a subtle influence of my limbic system on yours and your limbic system on mine. I'm able to talk to you today, Doug, more easily than I might otherwise be able to, because as I just said to you, you're clearly very connected to what we're talking about. You're interested in it, you're interested in tossing ideas back and forth. That's affecting me way beyond the words that we're exchanging. There's a subtle effect of me feeling relaxed, welcome, respected. All of that gets communicated implicitly. Like, yeah, could you close the door on your way out, please? This is not going to help. But your limbic system is constantly signaling them about whether or not you respect them. What you really need to do is to pay attention to the fact that if you really don't respect them, don't expect them to feel that you do. They're going to read their limbic system, it is going to read very accurately your limbic system. So the first step is to check in with yourself what's in the way of you feeling fully respectful of this individual human being as they make their way through life, for example. So it's modeling, but it's even beyond explicit modeling, like you show them how to be honest in a conversation, yes. But also your limbic system being in a state of openness and receptivity and interest in what they have to say, not only encourages them to talk at that moment, but it subtly influences their limbic system to grow and develop in those ways. So I would say these are the important things that go on with a kid living in your home, a kid adult, that where things are going on that are really kind of unnerving and scary, just remember at every moment, there's a possibility providing something that will be helpful to their learning given who they are right now and what they need. And can you show up for that?

SPEAKER_02 48:38

What are some of the other innovations or adaptations that you see going on out there? One of the things we focus on on this podcast are changes that have occurred sort of during and post-COVID. And and what's different now? What uh what are families everything?

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Everything.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

You know, I guess it's gonna be a two-part episode. We're gonna keep going on this for a while.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Right. I I, you know, I don't know about your experience. My experience is that every time I turn around, I'm being reminded that I wasn't aware that COVID was wasn't over and it's not over, that there are still many, many things about the way we do everything that are different because we went through COVID. And for sure, the world of work is different, the possibility of working from home. A kid that likes to be on the computer a lot and doesn't really want to go in and have contact with other people, there's some things to look into about that, but it doesn't mean they're not going to have a productive job, for instance. So that's one big difference. The other big difference is that everybody got it kind of thrown off by COVID. And some people got thrown into an innovative state where they actually learned more than usual, but it was off track from where they where they ordinarily would have been. And other people got thrown off in a way that wasn't so innovative and kind of had them feel lost for a while. And this is particularly true for young people that were in middle school and high school during COVID. Their learning changed, their relationship to going to school changed, their relationship to trusting that things would be there for them tomorrow changed.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

I think that's one of the huge all of them are big, but I think that that trust in the world and in our structures and systems, I think has, I think for all of us has eroded dramatically, and I think especially for developing children and young adults.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Yes. Yeah, I'm glad that you emphasize that. And what else is true about that is that we haven't really known very well how to talk about that. And if you think about the difficulty of you and I talking about it at the maturity we have, people that are coming out of high school and college and in those kind of middle-early adulthood years, they don't yet have the ability to talk about these kinds of things with the complexity that they need. And they don't yet have the confidence to talk about them either. People in college and coming out of college are still finding their way to finding their voice and to feeling like they have the right to an opinion in the world and that their opinion is welcome. By the way, we often reinforce that it's not. So they're dealing with complex things and they're dealing with things like uh-oh, is anything, you know, going to be there the same tomorrow? And they also don't have language and concepts and the assurance that talking about that might be helpful.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Yeah, you know, and and there's not really the mechanisms built in to help remediate or to help them move. Because once they've fallen somewhat behind developmentally, that delta becomes wider and wider over time. And that's what we're finding with our mentoring program, which has just exploded post-COVID, because we're having to backfill some of these experiences of confidence building and trust in themselves, and ultimately the parents trust in them thereby, but incrementally with little experiences that happen over time. And that that's sort of the idea there is to backfill that development, growth, maturation, self-confidence, resilience, all these things that that that I think, especially for those those kids who might be a little, you know, challenges, uh not neurotypical, something like learning disabilities, they fell even further behind, and the the seduction of being online all the time reinforced their bubble, but again, kept them further and further behind their their peers.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Right. I really like what you're saying, and part of what I'm noticing as you're talking, Doug, is the importance of me not thinking that I have really good answers to what you're talking about. Meaning, I don't think we have really good answers to this yet. I think maybe sometimes the most important thing we have to offer each other and our families that are dealing with this stuff is the acknowledgement that nobody has the answers yet, and that we're all struggling to figure this out. And even the language that that the kids are behind, you know, behind references a timeline that fit with a certain time period under certain circumstances. And and it was kind of true for a while. We got used to everybody marches along and they pass these gates. And so in what way are they now behind, right? That we're all kind of living in a new set of circumstances, feeling our way. We don't even know for sure which things have changed and which things haven't. Lots of things haven't changed, but some things have. I think there's a degree of uncertainty that that means that our usual way, I mean, the the word behind, I think, is it's a it's a part and parcel of us checking in to be sure we're okay and to be sure our kids are okay. You know, we we constantly are measuring because we want to, you know, it's it's important to keep track of your health. We take our temperature when we don't feel well to see, well, are we okay or are we not okay? So so the concept of behind comes from wanting to be alert to is there a problem? What should we do? Do we need to go to the doctor? We need do we need to go see Doug, you know, at Bowdoin? What do we need to do? So there's something good about that, but also we need to release it and to understand behind is maybe not that useful anymore. And what we really need to figure out is what's possible next. How does this person how do we help this person have the very best month they can have this month? And what do they, what can they learn? How can they grow inside of themselves? How can they feel more stable and more confident? There's so many different agenda, but I think maybe it starts with knowing that we're all trying to learn and figure this out, and there aren't any easy answers. So if parents are feeling like they're lost and they don't quite know the answers, that's okay. And there are experts that have different perspectives than parents do, and different skill sets and different knowledge. And it's also okay to puzzle about these things with other people. And in fact, it's really important. One of the mistakes that parents need to never make really with any of their kids, but especially if a kid is in particular difficulty, is to be alone with that as a couple and as a family. And they need to have the advice and connection with experts, they need support groups, they need um all kinds of connection with other people, because carrying these things is hard.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Yeah, and there is this cultural recalibration and of what is normal or what's behind it. And I agree with you not using those terms. And yet the not knowing, the recalibration, if you will, is also leading to a ton more anxiety, fear, FOMO, whatever else you want to call it, which I think can reinvigorate the anxiety that has parents often trying to impose some semblance of a roadmap when they feel the chaos of not having any.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Exactly. I totally agree that we both need these maps and need these ways of understanding something about what's going on and what to do next. And also we need to hold them lightly and keep revising them, keeping in interaction with the maps that we're holding.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

Okay, well, this has been absolutely fascinating. I really love talking with you. We could probably keep going, but I want to ask if there's any last bits you want to say about your book or your work with families, and then we'll we'll call it a day.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

I always emphasize innovation. And I and as you can hear in our talk, I always emphasize what's always there is the possibility for learning and expansion of your understanding. One of the big innovations or one of the big new awarenesses that came with this recent wave two decades ago that started neuroscience. For those of you that don't know, neuroscience kind of exploded a couple of decades ago, and we know all kinds of things about our brains now differently and more than we used to, and that's wonderful. One of the things we learned is that the neuroplasticity of the brain is infinite and goes on forever as long as we're alive. What does that mean? We used to think that our brains were formed and figured things out and became and we became who we were, age zero to five, and then there was a little bit of revision in adolescence, and then that was it. And after that, it was all losses. That's the old brain that we used to have. Fortunately, that's not actually the brain we have. The brain we have is infinitely capable of learning, remodeling itself, revising itself. And so what I always emphasize is that life is full of a lot of difficulties, a lot of challenges, a lot of confusion, a lot of times where you don't exactly know what to do next, etc. There's always the possibility for that moment to enhance your understanding of yourself, your life, your family, your family members. And so lots of these moments are super hard. And I'm not saying ignore the difficulty. It's real and it's there. I am saying keep next to that always, that showing up. I also believe that that almost everybody really wants to do their best and to be a really good person for themselves and for their family. And so doing your best and showing up with your best in that moment will result in you learning something and to value that and to know that there's recompense for all this difficulty, and it is a lot of hard work. And there is, even if you don't get your kid to get out of the room and get a job, in every moment there's a possibility you might learn something that will help you be a better human being with other human beings. And most of us really want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 59:27

On that, Dr. Catherine Ford, it's been a real pleasure. And uh thank you for being here on the reframe.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

Thank you so much, Doug.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

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