Brandon: 00:28

Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. We are in episode seven. We're gonna be talking about The Shortcut to Healing Your Marriage. Now, for those of you men that decided to listen to this with your wife or on your own, the shortcut is your emotions and your feelings and the bodily sensations, your nervous system. And most men don't like to look at that because it feels weak, feels vulnerable, and at times it can be.

Brandon: 00:53

That's just because we weren't taught most men and women how to navigate their emotional world and how to have it again, similar to how we talked about in the last few episodes about your sexuality. Your emotions are everything. All we have in this life is what we feel and experience. And the currency of marriage of union is through emotion. It's their connection.

Brandon: 01:13

It's through experiencing each other in the present moment. And so if you don't have that, if you don't have the ability to connect, you're going to feel at a distance. And so a lot of times when the relationship is shut down, you are numbed out, you are shut down. And so we're going to talk about, we're gonna dive right in Mhmm. As we always do, to our story.

Brandon: 01:35

Before we do that, we do have a couple of workshops coming up. By the time you listen to this, our Phoenix workshop was filled and passed, and we had an incredible time, I'm guessing. We haven't flown out quite yet. But we have two more three more workshops happening, Oregon Portland, Oregon in June Mhmm. And San Diego, California in August.

Brandon: 01:52

And then there's a three day Maui intensive happen marriage intensive here in Maui in October. So Caitlyn and I will be facilitating all those. There's more details in the show notes if you'd like to join us in person. In 2019, I was completely numb. Yeah.

Brandon: 02:06

And, Caitlyn, I wanted to ask you what what was different about this time when you had caught me lying to emotionally looking back at me when nobody was home for me? What was that like?

Caitlyn: 02:18

Yeah. So we got married in 2015. So we had already been married for a couple years, and we've noted this on a couple of previous podcasts. We had since 2015, I think we were a couple months into our marriage in 2015 when I first discovered that Brandon was looking at inappropriate content on his phone online. And that thus began four years of a continual cycle of me catching Brandon, looking at inappropriate things, him repenting, saying sorry, saying he was gonna heal, saying he was never gonna do it again.

Caitlyn: 02:52

And with each year, and with each time around that circle, he just got more numb. Why? Well, because if you don't truly actually face that cycle head on, and go through it instead of around it, it's like a roller coaster. You just keep going and going and going. You know, it's like sometimes there's a roller coaster that then takes you through to the other side.

Caitlyn: 03:14

Well, we weren't got we weren't on that roller coaster. We're just on the continual loop for four years. And we didn't make it through to the other side because Brandon wasn't willing to look at everything, face it, and go through it. So to keep going through the cycle, he had to keep numbing himself, pushing down what he was truly feeling, pushing down what was really happening, and continually suppressing his emotions, which then shut down the nervous system, which then shut down our connection. And so by the time of 2019, when I caught him again looking at inappropriate things on his phone, I could tell when I was looking into his eyes, it was almost like looking into an out of body person.

Caitlyn: 03:59

I was like, where even are you anymore? You're not home. You're not there. You're not in your body. It was like he was outside of himself.

Caitlyn: 04:07

He had completely left. You had left because all those years, you had to leave. You had to leave your body because to be fully present in your body, you would've had to have faced the discomforts of life, the discomforts of our marriage, and the discomforts of your choices.

Brandon: 04:25

Which is why we talked about the elements of denial. So if this is your first episode you're listening to, go start with the first episode of the podcast Mhmm. Our marriage breakdown. We talk about denial, when you live in denial. And also, for me, coming from a ministry background, I had as we talked about in the spiritual bypassing episode, I had really split who I was.

Brandon: 04:43

So I was able to operate as somebody at church in front of other people, being the good, God loving, God fearing man, and then being able to detach from that and still justify my behaviors and looking at content that I knew wasn't right for me or my marriage and having to live in the reality of those two things happening at once. And so when you split yourself like that, when you live in that that double person, it's a very it's very exhausting, and it doesn't allow you to think deeply, to feel deeply, or to feel anything. And specifically, what I had been doing up into this point is spending about two hours on my phone numbing out on social media and just scrolling, scrolling, just doom scroll and coming across inappropriate content, but scrolling past it. And basically, I would scroll on my phone until I was so numb. Like, I couldn't even my eyes were burning, but I couldn't go to bed because I I was so anxious at the same time.

Brandon: 05:31

And it was this pitiful pitiful spiral where I was feeling more and more disconnected from Calin. And then when she finally confronts me, hey, you've been lying to me again. Like, you told me you weren't on your phone when I went to sleep. I'm like, oh, I've been doing this for two years almost. And I was scared because I couldn't give the fake wasn't fake, but in the past, I would cry.

Brandon: 05:50

I would put a lot of emotional energy and say, hey. I'll I'll make it better. I'll change. And this time, Caitlyn was weeping. She was somehow hurt she was that I had lied to her again, and I didn't have a response.

Brandon: 06:00

I couldn't express empathy. I couldn't cry with her. I was sitting there numb. Numb and dumb is how I say it. This literally just looking at her like, I want to I would pay so much money to feel something right now.

Brandon: 06:10

And all I am is looking at this weeping woman, and she's saying, I need you to change or we aren't going to get through this. And I'm looking at her like, if it was fight or flight or freeze, I was frozen. I was frozen in time. I thought, you know what? I've been trying as hard as I can to live as a pure man, a holy man.

Brandon: 06:26

I've tried praying. I've tried fasting. I've tried confessing to other men. I've done it all. I actually don't know what else to do.

Brandon: 06:32

And the fact that all this effort Yeah. Has still led me down this path of nothingness, of being dead inside. It was like, I was terrified because I felt dead, but I felt like I'd given it all I had. And I didn't know where like, what else could I possibly do. And I wanna speak to I think we we we talk about how, you know, we seem so cool calm, cool, and collected right now and able to articulate things.

Brandon: 06:54

This was an incredibly messy season for us. In 2019, when Caitlyn found out I was lying again, I had just taken the position as the children's director at a growing church, and we were really excited about it. We had shut down some other projects for me to be able to do this. And almost immediately after stepping into the position, right, right before I accepted it Yep. We started this process.

Brandon: 07:12

And we're like, our whole world just started spiraling and spiraling and spiraling. And most nights, Caitlyn would weep to sleep. And a lot of times, maybe you could speak to the the panic you felt inside of your body where you literally could not catch your breath, where you would were literally gasping for air as you're looking at me, completely numb, trying to get through to me. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm sorry. I I just feeling sorry for myself, sorry for you, but not a clue in the world where we're gonna go from here.

Brandon: 07:39

And a lot of nights, you your legs would be kicking from all the panic, from all the overwhelm of seeing your husband lie to you again and almost not care, but still hoping that the marriage can could work.

Caitlyn: 07:50

It was like I was sprinting nowhere, running into walls. Because energetically, in our marriage, I am actively trying to bring back the connection. So like I'm saying, I'm just sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, and my body was in a state of panic, which is probably where a lot of you women in the space of being betrayed feel. It's like the feelings of how is this my reality? I remember all the time thinking like, how is this true?

Caitlyn: 08:20

How is this possible? How have I lived so many years really as a lie? Like, I married someone that I don't even know. I don't I felt like I didn't even know you anymore. Like, I knew you, and then when you discover this whole hidden world, it's like, do I even know you?

Caitlyn: 08:37

And as everything was spiraling, there was this story. There was this night. And like Brandon said, we stayed up late every single night talking. We went into this room that was an office at the time, and it was farther away around the corner from where our kids were sleeping. We had two kids at the time.

Caitlyn: 08:52

And I remember this is a very significant time that stood out to me as very memorable because like every night we were staying up late talking, just talking through everything, just dissecting all that has happened.

Brandon: 09:05

Trying trying to make sense of Trying what is.

Caitlyn: 09:07

Sense of what is. Doing all the things that we've talked about in the last couple podcasts at the time. We didn't know what we were doing though. It didn't seem pretty. It wasn't like, okay, Brandon, let's sit down and talk about your childhood.

Caitlyn: 09:19

It's just weeping. I'm weeping. Brandon's numb, and it's like, let's figure out where did this start? When did this start? Where did all these things come in?

Caitlyn: 09:27

How did we get here? We're talking through all these things every single night. I'm crying. And Brandon's just looking at me. And I'm just like, how are you not crying?

Caitlyn: 09:37

How are you not upset? How do you not feel like anything? How do you not feel pain? Like, do you even I remember feeling all the time. Do you even care that you've hurt me and wounded me at such a deep level?

Caitlyn: 09:51

And I remember thinking, will you ever be able to understand what I feel? Will you ever understand what you've put me through? And I'm just looking at him, and I'm like, oh my gosh.

Brandon: 10:01

Because I think that night too, had out there. I had lied to you again or there had been another lie that had come out and you're kinda like, it had escalated again to like, I had started opening up and then I had lied to you again that day. Yep. And you were just sharing, and you were weeping, and it was kinda like, you're just looking at me hopeless to that I'm not going to get it, that there is there's not going to be a breakthrough. And you had this glass in your hands, like a glass cup.

Caitlyn: 10:23

Water. Was drinking it.

Brandon: 10:25

Drinking water. Yeah. From and the cup was empty, and then your desperation, you took the cup.

Caitlyn: 10:30

My anger.

Brandon: 10:31

Anger, desperation, insert painful emotion.

Caitlyn: 10:34

The angry wife.

Brandon: 10:35

And you threw the cup, not at me, but you threw the cup at the wall hard.

Caitlyn: 10:39

Oh, as hard as I could, like a baseball.

Brandon: 10:41

And it hit the edge of the wall Mhmm. Of the drywall where the where there's like a The corner. The corner of the wall where there's like a metal piece that goes all the way down that you can't see it because it's painted white. And the cup bounced off, broke a chunk of the wall out, and the glass was still fully intact without a chip out of the glass.

Caitlyn: 10:59

Completely whole.

Brandon: 11:00

In that moment, it was like nothing healed in that moment for us, but we both looked at the glass just kinda like, this represented me. This represented how numb and unwilling to break I was at that point and to open up and to really let the the flow of emotion, let the flow of reality step in. So for those of you listening, you may be in that spot right now where regardless of how intense the situation is, so many guys in my men men's app say, I need to change yesterday. My wife wants to see changes yesterday, and you were telling me, we need to I need to see you choosing into this. And I'm sitting there just like, what does that mean?

Brandon: 11:34

Yeah. And

Caitlyn: 11:35

that time was really symbolic because the cup didn't break, but the wall did. And the symbolism there was, you were the cup that wasn't breaking because the walls of denial inside of you needed to break and come down. And that for me was, at the time, a big moment. And then even as I reflected out of that season and looking back, I realized how profound that really was. That the first step, which is why it's the first episode, the first step of the journey is breaking down the walls inside that are protecting.

Caitlyn: 12:09

And there were walls inside of you that were protecting you and keeping you stuck and keeping you numb so that you could not feel your own pain and my pain, and those were the walls that needed to come. Those are the walls that needed chipped.

Brandon: 12:23

And so when we talk about the shortcut to healing, it's involving your emotions because in that time, we were talking. We were talking a lot. And there was a few moments where it went from we're talking about this to we're experiencing this. We're feeling this. Things are changing.

Brandon: 12:38

And so I wanna what we're gonna do now in this entire episode is give you a framework, a process that you can begin that will take you from talking about problems with your spouse to experiencing real change in your body, in your nervous system, and your emotions because that's where your reality lies. And so, in the counseling world, it's called the window of tolerance. If you can't tolerate emotionally or your nervous system, the intensity of of a conversation you're in, you'll shut down. You'll kinda detach from it. And so when you step into this realm of emotions, you have to gain some new skills, activate your nervous system, and actually be able to show up for these moments.

Brandon: 13:16

And so in that time, I was just desperate to feel anything. I was so desperate to feel anything, but I knew there was a ton of anxiety underneath the surface. So for me, I'd had a a history of of feeling quite a bit of anxiety, just that feeling of anticipation, nerves around the unknown, that feeling of walking on eggshells with Caitlyn, but it was a lot of it was a self inflicted anxiety. So far too as I've actually I had a panic attack at an airport one time because we were running late, and there was all these things not going right. And I literally just sat down on the floor, and I was like, we're not going.

Brandon: 13:45

Like, I just the the walls caved in. So I'd had this history of anxiety, and I thought, if I can numb out, it'll go away. And all it did was put a pause on it. So when you are trying to escape a negative emotion and try to distract yourself through a screen, through working too much, through a substance, through trying to use, like, anger or something to to cover up that emotion, it's just waiting for you on the other side. Yep.

Brandon: 14:06

And so no matter Temporary. It's temporary. So no matter how hard you're running right now from not most marriage problems stem from we have the sexual brokenness piece, but as ultimately trying to avoid feeling a certain emotion, trying to avoid something you felt as a kid when you felt ashamed, trying to avoid feeling stupid. You're trying to basically not feel something, and you're running your whole life from it. And emotions are meant to be our signals to understand what we're going through right now, and then we get to choose a response.

Brandon: 14:32

Mhmm. It's a signal, and you choose a response. So most people, I say this all the time, are spending twenty years running from one emotion that could take twenty seconds to flow through your body. And so this anxiety that I had been trying to escape from through video games, through inappropriate content, through dissociating and numbing out, it needed to come out. And so in those beginning days, we didn't have the tools yet, the ones we're gonna share with you.

Brandon: 14:55

But what we did have was a counselor that gave me some ideas of how to activate my nervous system. And part of this was when I was not following through on my word to Caitlyn. So we have a a little bit different view of how we approach it now, but one tool you can use to activate your nervous system and wake you up. If you were completely numb, go take a cold shower. So men or women, whoever is, like, feeling stuck emotionally, and your your wife's like weeping, and we're gonna talk about validating your wife's pain later on this episode.

Brandon: 15:18

When you would feel like you can't even get there, when you're just off Mhmm. Go take a cold shower.

Caitlyn: 15:22

Mhmm. You would do that before we would go to talk. Yeah. It's like we would go we would be like, okay, we're gonna talk through some deep stuff tonight. And Brandon would go take a cold shower, or we lived in Idaho at the time, and there were nights when he would go sit outside in his underwear, or even naked, and it would be it was winter.

Brandon: 15:38

20 degrees.

Caitlyn: 15:38

Could be snowing outside. It was actually freezing. It was colder than a cold shower. And you would go sit outside and journal, actually. I remember so many times, like, sitting in the office just waiting for him to have his time of falling out, honestly.

Caitlyn: 15:51

He would go

Brandon: 15:52

Falling out in the cold, icing up, but to I think

Caitlyn: 15:56

you would go sit outside, be freezing cold, and be journaling, because it you were almost initiating your body into a sense of feeling something, so that you could then become aware of what you're actually feeling.

Brandon: 16:12

Yeah. Because when your wife has become aware that you've been lying to her, insert anything. Yeah. Any form of painful emotion, it's big. Right.

Brandon: 16:22

And it it is it's very activating to your body. And so if you can step into something that's in a even a potentially more intense experience, and I'm not saying, like, go cause yourself pain, physical pain to feel emotion, but do something that doesn't harm you, but that activates you, that that brings you awake, that wakes you up. And so another thing I had done was, like, I wasn't I I was in decent shape, but I wasn't a runner. I ran, like, it was winter still.

Caitlyn: 16:45

Oh, nighttime.

Brandon: 16:45

Yeah. I ran, like, down to the like, mile. Yep. What happened for me in this season is I had so much panic and anxiety that when I take a cold shower, I could not catch my breath. I'd almost blackout because I was so anxious, but it allowed the panic to flow.

Brandon: 16:59

Same thing if I sat outside, it would be like my nervous system was so activated, but it allowed me to get into a space where it's like, Caitlyn was having her nervous system panic like mine, but it was from the reality she was under. Mine was from all this emotion I had tried to shut down for so many years that it was ready to come out and was ready to be processed through. So that's just initially what we had done is and that's why I tell you is if you don't if you are stuck, get into your body, go take a cold shower, workout, ride a bike, go on a walk. If you ever are stuck, I tell the guys in in the grounded community, move. Physically move your body.

Brandon: 17:30

If you are stuck emotionally, physically move your body.

Caitlyn: 17:32

Which is exactly what I did as well, because I did experience anxiety and panic from all of the information that was landing on me, and I share this all the time. I went for multiple walks a day. We actually went as a family because, again, we had children through this whole process, which a lot of you probably do as well. And so we went for a morning walk and an evening walk. I went for runs by myself.

Caitlyn: 17:56

I moved because there's energy that needs to come out. There's emotions that need to come out and to flow. If you're not into running, that's completely fine. Go for a walk. Go for a hike.

Caitlyn: 18:07

Get outside because there's also the benefits of the sun, of the fresh air, of all of the energy having somewhere to flow to. And when you do that, you normally have a clear head, a clear space to be able to see and feel and be and come back more present. And this is exactly, it's the opposite of numbing out. It's the opposite of stuffing. So stuffing, like, if you literally picture just I'm stuffing my emotions, you can't really like, you don't picture stuffing something down while moving.

Caitlyn: 18:36

Like, it's like, you're sitting, you're scrolling, you're numbing out, you're watching TV, you're on a phone, you're doing whatever, you're stuffing everything down. Okay. Well, if I go and I move while I'm getting everything out, everything's churning and flowing and moving and clearing and cleaning out. And so you can't actually stay in that anxious rut anymore. Whether that anxiety was a choice or whether it was something that was done to you and then therefore a result.

Caitlyn: 19:03

So for both of us, you chose your anxiety. My anxiety is also a choice, but it came because of a situation of trauma. We both did the same thing. We moved to get back into our body and to let things begin flowing again.

Brandon: 19:19

This conversation we're having about the shortcut, which is engaging your body and your emotions, is a big component for why, I'll speak to men, why maybe you haven't felt that talk therapy has been successful for you. Because when you get in a room, maybe it's you and your counselor, you and your wife and your counselor, and you talk, you might gain some ground there, but then you go back to your normal your normal environment, which you haven't learned to engage your body with to do some exercises that actually bring your, I call it your meat suit, the body you live in that actually uses your nervous system, not just theory or intellect, but it engages your body through movement. If you haven't done that, then talk therapy could be very difficult for you because you're just talking about these theories, but you need to have an experience with You need to have a feeling go through your body when you do an exercise. It's like, oh, this is the new way I want to be. And so one exercise that really helped me deal with the panic, and I've adapted this.

Brandon: 20:11

It was a an exercise that I've gotten from my counselor, now we use it in in the community called emotional response training. It's giving yourself permission to take an emotion and feel it. And so what you can do is mime out an emotion. First thing you can do, if you want to try this out, it's it's very effective. A lot of guys are afraid to do these exercises, but if there's an emotion you're afraid to feel or don't know how to feel, this will work great.

Brandon: 20:35

So you can just take an emotion. So for me, it was anxiety and you can write out a present day experience when you feel anxiety. So you could write out, I feel anxious when I get to work, when I walk in the door and I feel anxiety about all that needs to happen. So that's your first sentence you write out on a piece of paper. Then you would write out a memory from before you were 18.

Brandon: 20:52

I first remember feeling anxious when I had to go to the dentist when I had a cavity to get filled. So you write out those two sentences. You're like, well, Brandon, I can't remember my childhood. Think about places you went as a kid that you would have frequent, whether that was school, church, your home, or a friend's house, or a family member's house. Try to picture memories that happened in those key areas, Something that made you feel anxious as a child.

Brandon: 21:12

Then I want you to read those two sentences. I feel anxious when, and they first remember feeling anxious when. After you have those sentences, you can actually start to familiarize yourself with what anxiety feels like. Maybe you have tried to shut it down. The easiest way to feel it is to mime it out.

Brandon: 21:26

And what I mean by miming it out is literally just act out what anxiety

Caitlyn: 21:29

Charades?

Brandon: 21:30

Yeah. Charades. So take fifteen seconds and act out for three sets of fifteen seconds what feeling anxious would feel like in your body. Act it out. Give yourself permission to be like, well, that's weird.

Brandon: 21:39

Well, if you're numb, that's weird. So go ahead and act out what anxiety feels like. Get familiar with that feeling. And then you can sit with it. You can do the same thing again for three sets of fifteen seconds and just feel it.

Brandon: 21:50

Feel what anxiety feels like in your body. What's cool is you, going through that process, even just listening to what I'm saying is you can actually generate the emotion you want to feel. So what you need to learn to be able to heal your marriage and the fast, the fastest way to do that is to generate the feelings and experiences you want to have. So you can actually generate anxiety. Well, Brandon, I don't want to generate anxiety.

Brandon: 22:13

Me either. So you can actually generate the emotion you do want to feel. So you can make the switch by taking anxiety and then going through those same steps of writing out the two sentences, miming it out, sitting with it, but do it for the emotion of feeling calm or feeling at peace. And then what you do is you take your feeling of calm and feeling at peace and every fifteen seconds you just switch back and forth. So take fifteen seconds of sitting there and feeling that feeling of anxiety in your body.

Brandon: 22:38

And then switch to, you can think about it, what thinking about feeling calm feels like, and you can, whatever feelings you have big or small in your body, you just let that be what it is. So you go back and forth between anxiety and calm every fifteen seconds. And the goal is that you feel that switch. Sometimes you feel it in your stomach, maybe you feel it in your chest. And when your wife is present and your initial response to her is, man, I'm anxious.

Brandon: 22:59

We're gonna talk about this. Wait. I know what it feels like to feel calm too. And you make the switch. I'm going to feel calm.

Brandon: 23:05

I'm going to choose the emotion I want to feel in this moment. And I'm going bring that intention. And so that's a very simple exercise that allows you to begin to generate the emotions you want to feel and how to navigate the ones that are uncomfortable to feel, but to be familiar with that space and then be able to bring that into your relationship.

Caitlyn: 23:24

Mhmm. And a lot of men are extremely unfamiliar with their their emotions. Why? Well, I and we have our personal opinions on that, and there are probably countless others. I think a big reason why is all stems from childhood, how you were raised.

Caitlyn: 23:40

And most of the time, boys, starting at a very young age, are typically more shut down emotionally. You fall down, you scrape your knee. Get up, get up, you're good, brush it off, be strong, be brave, be tough. We hear all we do all these kinda cliche things for boys. Like boys need to toughen up and be big and strong and ra ra ra, don't cry, you're weak, know.

Caitlyn: 24:03

Wipe your tears off, like dust your knee, dust your shoulder, you know, whatever the all the sayings that we have for boys. And so from a young age, starting most likely around two, maybe even you resonate with this, if you are a man, you didn't really receive probably a lot of comfort. You didn't receive a lot of language for your emotions. And this can be the same if you are a girl, if you're a daughter as well. Typically, as a society, we are more open to receiving a young girl, a female in tears.

Caitlyn: 24:33

It's like, oh, she's sensitive because she's a girl. If you're a boy insensitive, then you must be extremely weak. There's something wrong with you. There's something going on. There's all these narratives that are pushed.

Caitlyn: 24:43

That's why we have you explore your childhood. Were you taught any emotions when you were growing up? Did your parents have any capacity to teach you about your emotions? So I know for our kids, it's like, okay, they're acting out in a certain way. They're feeling a certain something.

Caitlyn: 25:03

Yeah. We're going to help them find language for what it is that they're feeling. Okay. It appears as though you're feeling upset, anxious, overwhelmed, excited, happy. We're helping them create language.

Caitlyn: 25:18

It's getting on the emotional grid. There's a map, and we're helping them figure out where they are on the map. Most of us did not grow up whether we, whether we're a daughter or a son, we didn't grow up with that. Most of our parents didn't grow up with that. And so then we grow into our adulthood and we don't even know what we're feeling.

Caitlyn: 25:36

We don't know how to put a name to what we're feeling. We are maybe feeling overwhelmed. We're maybe feeling anxious. List any sort of negative emotion and we don't know where to land that. And then, we don't know what to do with that because when we felt something negative growing up, we most likely saw our parents on screens or doing things to numb out.

Caitlyn: 25:59

So then we think, okay, when I'm feeling any of these emotions, that's what I do because that's what my parents do. Or we fell down and got hurt, and we felt hurt, and we felt pain, and we were told to stand up and dust it off and not to cry about it. So then we think, okay, so when I feel these feelings, I need to dust them off, put them away, tuck them away. I can't cry, that's weak. And so here we are as adults and we just don't know what we feel.

Caitlyn: 26:22

We don't have a name for it, and we don't know a healthy outlet for what to do with that emotion. So what we're talking about here relates if you have anxiety, if you've been lying to your wife, or if you just feel numb and you don't really know why. Maybe you feel purposeless. Maybe you feel just completely lost in life. Maybe you don't know what you feel because you were never taught what you feel and you never taught what to do with it.

Caitlyn: 26:46

And so these exercises that we're talking about help you get back into your body, help you understand and put a name to what you're feeling, and then help you figure out how you want to navigate what you're feeling. And another tool that we had, I believe it's called the dailies, and it was another tool that we were given at the time, and we used this one off and on. It was extremely beneficial for helping both of us and mainly Brandon at the time as his emotions were extremely shut down. It was a great tool at helping him name what he was feeling, and also even put a name to feelings he felt before in his childhood. And then also helped him create what he wanted with that feeling.

Caitlyn: 27:28

And so if you wanna try this activity, we highly recommend it. It is a really incredible activity to connect on. It can bring up a lot of big emotions, big memories, big feelings. Yeah. And just like everything that we have taught in the past episodes, you can apply that as you begin to do the dailies.

Caitlyn: 27:46

A couple of ground rules is you make eye contact just like this in the dailies. There's no other distractions. So put your kids to bed and spend fifteen minutes after. You're gonna make eye contact. You're not interrupting each other, so one person has a turn.

Caitlyn: 27:58

And after you finish sharing, the other person does not make any comments or add anything in. They just say thank you for sharing, and then you switch roles and the other person begins speaking. And you never make the stories about each other because they're not to start arguments. Yep. And so similar to the miming exercises, you're going to pick two emotions.

Caitlyn: 28:18

Let's just say we wanna pick like I think oftentimes we pick like a positive emotion and a negative one. So we wanna pick peace, and then we wanna pick anxiety. And so I'm gonna share a time before 18 when I remember feeling peace, and a time present that I remember feeling peace. I'm gonna share a time before 18 that I remember feeling anxious, and a time presently that I remember feeling anxious. See how you can begin to take emotions and remember what it feels like in your body.

Caitlyn: 28:45

Remember experiences you've had from the past and from the present. And this is an incredible exercise for getting back into your body and getting back on the emotional growth. And you take turns sharing those. And I loved this back in 2019 because we actually learned so much about each other. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 29:02

It was awesome. There was so many stories and memories we had no idea about each other's lives that we began to even unpack further once those things begin to come up.

Brandon: 29:12

Yeah. So you share Caitlyn would share the present memory and the past memory with that emotion. And I would just say thank you for sharing. And then you can go, then I would share for the peace. For peace, I feel this.

Brandon: 29:22

I feel peace when, and I first remember feeling peace when. And then you do the second emotion, so you both take turns listening and sharing. Eye contacts, then you just say thank you for sharing. The second component of the dailies that we really enjoyed was and now you share affirmations with each other. So depending on the acuteness of the trauma you guys are in or the pain you're in, it may be hard to share an affirmation to your spouse that's betrayed you.

Brandon: 29:42

So this is when you're feeling comfortable to do that. Men, you if you if you're the betraying whoever caused the pain, you can actually do this on your own. Even if your spouse isn't willing to do it, you could do it written written out by yourself. So if your spouse is willing to participate for you to begin to numb out emotion or thaw out, not numb out, thaw out emotionally, you share an affirmation. So it'd be something like, Caitlyn, I so appreciate the way you daily love and nurture our children.

Brandon: 30:05

It's a beautiful thing to watch. And Caitlyn would receive that, she would say thank you for sharing. And then Caitlyn would share an affirmation with me. And for somebody who needs to thaw out emotionally and to feel again, you realize you don't really receive from others either. So it's one thing to give an affirmation or a compliment, something you appreciate or something they didn't, to say it, but then to receive it.

Brandon: 30:24

For me, that was big because I always say, kitten, you never tell me all the things they do that are great. And she's like, I tell you all the time, but I had been shut down from receiving any positive flow of energy in my life either. So I would then I started opening up to say, wow. Thank you. That means a lot to me.

Brandon: 30:36

And slowing down and actually savoring those moments. So those are the two steps. You pick two emotions to share with each other, and then you pick two affirmations to share with each other. You make eye contact, you say thank you for sharing. And then you can pray for each other if you want to, or speak life over each other.

Caitlyn: 30:49

Speak declarations.

Brandon: 30:50

The other rule to that is anything that was shared, like any memories or anything. There's a twenty four hour rule to not discuss those, like, I didn't know you went to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid. You wanna let the dialogue be safe. You wanna create a a container around the conversation so it feels safe.

Brandon: 31:04

As you've done the exercise for more time, like weeks, months down the road, you may be open to just say, oh, well, let's talk more about that memory as a kid. When things are not so intense, initially, it's just to create a safe container to rebuild connection when all trust has been broken.

Caitlyn: 31:17

Mhmm. And I remember hearing in the time, I think it's Brene Brown, who says that oftentimes when somebody has completely left the emotional grid, like, they're not aware of their emotions, they're numbed out, they aren't in their body. You can't get rid of anger. Anger is always the emotion that will stay present. And so if you don't know if you are numb or not, if the only thing that you feel most often is anger towards your wife or anger towards your children, anger towards your boss, towards everybody.

Caitlyn: 31:45

Yeah. If that is the primary feeling that you feel, then you might wanna take a look at if you've shut down and numbed out all of the other emotions. Yeah. Because anger doesn't leave, and we saw this to be very true in your story. As you were coming back online emotionally, we realized that anger was extremely present, and you didn't realize it until you were starting to realize that you didn't feel much else except for anger.

Brandon: 32:08

And that could also be you know, there's acute anger, which we talk about. I talk a lot about validating your wife's anger, And if she's angry, she if she's still angry, she cares. So we're talking a little bit more about this underlying bitterness to where any anything that happens in your life that you don't like, it just goes to, ugh, I don't like this. Not when there's a a real situation where maybe you've been caused pain and it makes you angry and it makes you frustrated that you're in that situation for a prolonged experience. But literally just, you don't know how to feel any spectrum of emotion except for anger or maybe you feel aroused sometimes.

Brandon: 32:38

And so what I wanna do is we wanna bring this into a really practical experience for you guys and what this looks like on the healing process. So we've given you the tool with the emotional response training that you can do individually. Then we gave you the couples tool that you can use in conversation with each other. And I learned a lot this I learned this third phase we're gonna talk about, this idea of embodiment. So you can call it mindfulness.

Brandon: 33:00

Exercise, it could be meditation, but exercise you do, breath work would be in this category that allow you to create a sensation in your body for the purpose of grounding your nervous system, of calming yourself down, or experiencing a certain sensation or or emotion in your body. There's a lot of information on embodiment on the Internet. But a friend of mine named Sky, he gave me a book back in in right after a few years into our our healing, that I needed. I didn't know I needed it. And then the book was by, GS Youngblood.

Brandon: 33:30

It's called the masculine in relationship. And it talked a lot about embodiment and creating structure and learning how to respond instead of react. And this was huge later on in our our maturing and healing in our relationship, but I I would have really benefited from a lot of the embodiment work at the beginning. So I highly recommend that resource. I don't agree with everything that GS teaches.

Brandon: 33:50

Just as a side note, so it's not like I'm condoning everything he does, but there's some great nuggets and the book is very approachable. So we really, really like that resource. What embodiment is is breath work. Cold showers would fall into that. Some different movement based things.

Brandon: 34:03

I like to do it like just shaking it out. You can just shake your arms out like you were getting ready to swim in a pool or do something like that. Creating like a fifteen minute routine when you're trying to get back into your body can make all the difference. And I think it's so simple that most people don't do it, but for men that aren't showing up in their masculine, in their in a grounded way, in a way that they are centered and clear and navigating with with intention, if you take 15 in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening to do some box breathing, which is a you can look that up. It's a breathing technique.

Brandon: 34:33

If you want to do some visualization or some meditation or or shaking it out or some, heel pounding where you lift your heels and then drop them in a in a rhythmic pattern. I teach all this inside of of my grounding community. When you begin to take that time for yourself in this healing process, taking fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the evening, and you give your nervous system something to pull from, to focus on, then when the intensity comes, when your wife is sharing the full force of her pain, you don't freak out and just shut down because you're like, wait a second. I know what it feels like to be in my body. I've done some emotional exercises.

Brandon: 35:04

I've done some breath work and I'm like, your wife starts sharing her pain. And instead of stop holding your breath, you breathe deeply because you know how to process through those sensations in your body. So I think starting a daily embodiment practice that as GS was who I was inspired to do that from and have done done some work with him, I think that can accelerate and shift who you are at your core instead of just going on on your automated path. It allows you to actually say, wait a second, I'm going to recreate who I am. I'm going to recreate how I respond to the stimulus in my environment.

Brandon: 35:42

And when your wife is hurting and when you are needing to step up and become a new man, it's one of the most practical things you can do is to take that time to activate your nervous system and recreate the person you want to become through movement, through motion, instead of just with your thoughts.

Caitlyn: 35:57

Mhmm. Like we said in the beginning, you were completely numb. There was a hollowness to you, and we were in the deepest pits of our marriage, and we needed you not to be numb. And so these are the very things that helped wake you up so that you could feel again. And the power and potency to becoming an embodied man, to becoming an embodied woman, an embodied person, is that you are fully present at every single moment.

Caitlyn: 36:24

No matter what you are facing, no matter what is thrown at you, no matter what your spouse throws at you, life throws at you, your boss throws at you, you have the power to choose what you wanna feel and to choose the experiences you wanna create. So all those miming exercises that we just talked about is to help you realize that when you are feeling something you don't wanna feel, you have the power to create a different experience and the power to feel something completely different. Yeah. And when you are in an experience in any arena of life, but specifically, we're talking about marriage and our marriage story here. So when you are in a situation in your marriage that you don't like, that's making you uncomfortable, you can stay present in that feeling, create what you want to experience, and create what you want to feel.

Caitlyn: 37:14

And these things, that is a tool. It's a way of living. It's a way of being embodied. Embodied literally just means you are in your body. And so Brandon was numb and out of his body because he thought that would be safer.

Caitlyn: 37:30

Okay. Well, if I'm not fully in my body, then I don't have to fully face or feel what it is that I'm feeling. And then you just keep running and running and running from what it is that you're scared of. So then when you become embodied, you come back into your body. So you will have to feel everything.

Caitlyn: 37:46

You will have to face everything. And like Brandon said, it's seconds of facing it. What you've been running years from. Yeah. What you've been trying endlessly to avoid.

Caitlyn: 37:56

People will avoid painful feelings at all costs. That's why most of America is addicted to screams. Most of America is overweight. Most of America has chronically broken marriages and relationships. Most of America is living off of medication.

Caitlyn: 38:12

The list goes on. We're most of America, I think, is diseased and sick. Like, it's just we are trying at all costs, at all costs, the cost of ourselves to avoid ourselves, to avoid what it is that we're feeling. And we're presenting you the thought that what you maybe are making yourself so sick, avoiding, is maybe only something that would take seconds

Brandon: 38:37

Yeah.

Caitlyn: 38:38

Of sitting with, and embracing, and moving through into what you want to experience. We'll talk about this in further episodes, but it's realizing how much power you actually have to create the life that you want. You are not a victim to your life, to your feelings, to your circumstances, to your marriage, to your wife. You're not a victim because your wife's mean. You're I'm not a victim because my husband chose to lie to me and betray me.

Caitlyn: 39:05

That doesn't make me a victim. I still get to choose what I wanna do with that. I still get to choose as a wife, if I wanna sit down and numb out of my phone and watch TV in a dark room away from you. I could have chose that. People always say, oh, is Caitlyn just this sinless perfect person?

Caitlyn: 39:22

And it's, I'm not perfect. And at the same time, I did not choose to dissociate or numb myself in the face of excruciating pain. No. I wept my eyes out. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 39:34

I woke up in the morning and went and got out in the sun, put my bare feet in the ground. I slept for eight hours a night. I nourished myself. I stayed hydrated and I went for countless walks. Why?

Caitlyn: 39:44

Because I'm not a victim to what you chose to do to me. I also didn't let you keep treating me that way. Right. I wasn't gonna allow for that anymore. Absolutely not.

Caitlyn: 39:54

Am I going to stay in a marriage where I am mistreated? So you're going to step up and treat me with respect as I am agreeing to treat you with respect. Right. Or I'm not staying in this marriage anymore. I am choosing to take a seat of responsibility in my life, and you begin to fully become embodied to come into your body, so that you could have that same experience.

Caitlyn: 40:22

And then I began to experience a completely different version of you, a completely different Brandon. The real Brandon because you came back home. It was like you got resuscitated back to life, And you experienced this in your own body and in your own life, and then that trickled to me experiencing that with you. People always say, and I've said this in other episodes, how did you trust him? You were a completely different man.

Caitlyn: 40:46

There was no way I couldn't trust you anymore. It was like you were dead, and then you were new and full of life. It was like I was staring into the eyes of someone who had a sparkle in their eyes. You talked in a whole new language. You had words for what you were feeling.

Caitlyn: 41:01

If I came to you, and I was crying and I was in pain, you had the capacity, the availability to be in your body and fully present with anything I was experiencing and facing and bringing to you. Yeah. And you could handle it. You could take it. You were ready for it.

Caitlyn: 41:18

And you were ready to then move into something new and create something new with me.

Brandon: 41:24

Which is where I wanted to land this part of this kind of this final part of the episode is, there's a myth of this idea that as a man, you you don't have to be empathetic or you may not have the ability to to express empathy, which is basically to sit with somebody else in their experience and not defend yourself, not minimize them specifically in your marriage. If when Caitlyn was feeling pain, initially, I didn't have the capacity to create the space to have the conversations with my guard down, seeking to understand the emotion and the experience she was having. One of the most healing things, and and this was really hard for us, was Caitlyn actually knew that I would get to a place where I could express empathy. And what's really hard and really devastating is for most couples, if there's been betrayal or broken trust, the betrayed spouse needs that initially the most. That's when immediately when they're most isolated, when they're most confused, that's when they need empathy from the person that they thought they were closest to and trusted the most.

Brandon: 42:19

And so was a really devastating part of our initial few months was Caitlyn knew she she she was believing that she'd have that from me in the future, but she needed it from me then. And that's why we're so passionate about these topics is we want to empower couples to step into it now. If you've told yourself as a man or a woman that you cannot express empathy to your spouse because it's just not you just we weren't feelers in our home, you can let that go. Because and I tell the guys in the community this all the time. When your wife is sharing her pain, and this is the fruit, like Caitlyn said, she finally saw something different in me and she started trusting me, but let's talk about the pain.

Brandon: 42:52

When Caitlyn was in pain, the fruit of me having done embodiment exercises, emotional work is I could then look at her in pain and show up and be present like we talked about. One of the biggest gifts you can give your wife when she's hurting is to explore that emotion with her, to explore and validate her. So we wanna talk about this connection flow, validation flow that we use a lot that we'd heard from counselors. It's a pretty common approach to take, and it's a speaker listener role where in this scenario, if you've caused your spouse pain, let them be the speaker and let you be the listener. And so Caitlyn would share with me.

Brandon: 43:23

And initially, when she would share a painful emotion, I would be listening long enough to try to get this to stop. And so when you do all the work to be in your body, then you can just listen without feeling you need to defend yourself because all of the pain, this is about her. So this is what I was going to say before I lost my train of thought for a second. Empathy is not about you. As far as a man, if you're a man, say, I don't know how to express empathy.

Brandon: 43:49

Empathy isn't about you. So when you've been stuck, I don't know what she's wanting from me in that moment. Nothing. You're not trying to prove something to her. You're not trying to do something that you don't have.

Brandon: 43:57

Empathy is saying, let's make this about you. And one of the things I tell guys all the time is you've picture your wife, and you're in this standoff with her, and you're, like, facing off, and you don't wanna see what she sees. Pretend that you're sitting with your spouse on the couch, and you're looking at the situation together. So, Caitlyn, tell me what happened in this situation even if the is about you. And for so many guys, they're so afraid to let them be the subject matter, meaning this is about you, Brandon.

Brandon: 44:22

This is about the pain you caused. But, no, this isn't about you. This is about Caitlyn's experience of you. So when you're thinking about how you want to express empathy and validate your wife as from a a mindset, it's this is not about you. Empathy is not about you.

Brandon: 44:38

Empathy is slowing down and saying, what is it like to be in your shoes? And you don't get it's not the I've been there before. You have I haven't been in Caitlyn's shoes. It says Yeah. Tell me the details.

Brandon: 44:51

Tell me the emotions. I want to understand what you've been through. And when when your partner's sharing with you, you're just looking at them seeking to understand what is she experiencing right now? What is she feeling? What are the thoughts going through her head?

Brandon: 45:03

And you basically clear yourself from everything you're feeling to say, what is your experience back then and right now? And so for us, that connection flow, and this is what you could follow, you listen. You let your spouse share all that they need to share. And then the easiest thing you can do is as you're listening, don't try to correct facts. Don't try to think about things that they're saying that aren't accurate.

Brandon: 45:23

Listen to the emotion and the heart of the message. So as a man, if you're like getting if you're like finding your brain, trying to like analyze, analyze, just listen for what emotions is she sharing? What's the emotion behind the story or the experience she's having? And then all you do is you reflect back once she's done speaking what you heard her share. So you listen and then you reflect.

Brandon: 45:45

I heard you sharing that it was the most devastating night of your life to hear that I had been lying to you again. I heard that you're really irritated with the kids earlier and you needed my help. So you just reflect back what you heard her sharing. You don't make it sound better than it was. You don't change any of the details.

Brandon: 45:58

You just say, this is what I heard you sharing.

Caitlyn: 45:59

Mhmm. And there's a difference between reflecting and repeating. Because Yeah. If you listen and then you just repeat, oh, yeah. You're really upset with me.

Caitlyn: 46:08

Aren't you? I heard that you're really upset. I hear that you're saying this, this, and this. Well, then that person doesn't actually feel validated. You feel validated when you feel that someone felt for a minute what you are saying that you felt, and they reflect back what they are feeling and experiencing with you.

Caitlyn: 46:29

And that's something that was a huge shift in Brandon as he began to tap back into his body and his emotions is he could feel with me because now he was back on the emotional grid. He had language for emotions and he had capacity to feel emotions. So instead of just always repeating what I was saying, you were able and I could sense, I could feel that you truly heard me, felt me, saw me. I felt seen in my pain. And I think there's this comfort flow that we're talking about and this would be like a totally standard tool you would get if you went in and you said you had communication issues in your marriage, which we are firm believers that if you have communication issues in your marriage, you don't need another communication tool.

Caitlyn: 47:15

You need to dig down deep into the root systems to figure out what down here is leading to all of these kind of surface level issues like, why are you arguing over random things? We don't have arguments over random things.

Brandon: 47:30

Let's get on the same page. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 47:31

We have gone to the root systems. So, yes, this comfort flow can be used once you are completely out of your season of trauma. This is still something that we would flow into now. We're not in a season of trauma anymore. We're not in a season of deep arguing and all of this pain and turmoil and betrayal and lies, we're not in that anymore.

Caitlyn: 47:50

And we still use this tool because if one of us has something that we would like to express, it's most likely not super heated, it's not super intense. It's still something that we feel and it's something that we want to express. So then we would say, hey, can we talk about this situation that we experienced? We of the time, we try our best to do our conversations when we don't have distractions because we now have four kids. That's very distracting to have heartfelt conversations and to fully feel out what each other is thinking.

Caitlyn: 48:18

And so we will go through that exact flow. And that looks way different than going through this flow when you're in deep trauma. So you can use the same tool in deep trauma and just when you're running into simple things that you would like to express to your partner, to your spouse. When you're in deep trauma, it might not come out super perfect. I know a lot of people focus on like, well, don't use the word you because that's super attacking and try not to use this language and that language.

Caitlyn: 48:44

And it's like, if your husband has been lying to you and cheating on you for ten years, try your best to stay composed if you would like to, but you most likely are gonna need to say, you really hurt my feelings when you cheated on me. You know what I mean? Yep. So it's like, you can go into a comfort flow and not have to be so poised as maybe your counselor was trying to convey that you need to be. And if you wanna be super poised, you can.

Caitlyn: 49:08

And at the same time, if you're in deep trauma and you're going through this comfort flow, it's gonna be a little messy. Yeah. And what I'm wanting to share with this is that in the messiness of me maybe expressing what I was feeling, because Brandon was embodied, he was able to see through the mess, like he was saying, to feel my heart. He was able to have capacity to be like, you know, she maybe didn't say that the nicest way or the most perfectly poised way, and that's pretty okay because I've been lying to her for five years. Because I've been looking at other women's butts and other women's boobs.

Caitlyn: 49:42

And so, yeah, my wife's probably not gonna be able to stay super calm and collected while she shares about how that's been hurting her feelings.

Brandon: 49:49

Which this is coming full circle. The reason this is so crucial is the emotional piece is you're basically you actually want to validate your spouse. You would say on paper, I want her to feel known. I want her to feel I wanna repair the the wounds. Your nervous system is trying to protect itself.

Caitlyn: 50:05

There you go.

Brandon: 50:06

And so if you don't activate your nervous system through embodiment, through emotional work, then when your spouse shares, you're kind of in this fight or flight primal, I'm going to protect myself. But once you feel safe in yourself, then you can say Exactly. Exactly. I can now step into what you're sharing. And actually, not that you like, say you aren't poised and you're messy.

Brandon: 50:23

It's like, oh, I'm okay with her being messy because I'm not threatened by her mess.

Caitlyn: 50:27

Exactly.

Brandon: 50:27

Because I know what safety in my body feels like. I know what a grounded nervous nervous system feels like. So I can step into the mess she's feeling and say, ah, I see you now. I can I can go there with you? And one of the things I always say is even when the pain is about you, do not absorb it.

Brandon: 50:45

You don't need to absorb your wife's pain. You need to see it.

Caitlyn: 50:48

Yep.

Brandon: 50:48

You need to step into it with her. But she's throwing things at you and saying, you're this, you're that, you're this. Just listen to her. Receive her. Not necessarily just the words she's saying.

Brandon: 50:58

Receive her and the emotions she's experiencing, and you will go a long way. So I wanna go over the connection flow one more time because one more element of it. So you listen, you reflect back what you heard your spouse sharing. This is when everything's are getting out of control or if you guys are sitting down just to hash things out, say, hey, I wanna go through the connection flow with you. I wanna listen to you.

Brandon: 51:14

I wanna reflect what I'm hearing, what you're what I'm hearing you say. And then you ask, is there anything else you'd add to that? Do they miss anything? And most of the time your spouse say, you you miss this or I was meaning this, and you can go back into it again. So then you reflect again.

Brandon: 51:28

Listen, reflect, ask. Listen, reflect, ask. There's other elements you can add with, like, you can make a commitment to change a behavior, but I would say initially just listen, reflect, and ask. And that is going to give your spouse the feeling of connection and validation more than any empty promises or saying, I'm sorry. Did this.

Brandon: 51:45

Saying, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. And with that, body language is everything. So as you can see, if you're watching on Spotify or on YouTube, I could be sitting, laying back on the couch like this, and Caitlyn could share something with me.

Caitlyn: 51:57

We're not even looking at me.

Brandon: 51:58

We're not looking maybe demonstrate that. So say something to me.

Caitlyn: 52:01

Mhmm. I would like to share with you how I'm feeling.

Brandon: 52:04

So I could respond just sitting back like this and say, yeah, what are you feeling?

Caitlyn: 52:07

I'm feeling really sad.

Brandon: 52:08

I'm hearing you're sad. See how there's nothing audibly, it's harder to hear this, but if you go this is a great time to go to YouTube, check it out. But my body's back. I am just repeating right now. Mhmm.

Brandon: 52:18

But if she says, hey, let's try it again.

Caitlyn: 52:20

Mhmm. I'd like to share with you how I'm feeling.

Brandon: 52:22

I'm gonna sit up. I'm gonna situate myself. I can already I can breathe better. I'm more alert. It says to Caitlyn, I haven't said a word yet.

Caitlyn: 52:30

Right.

Brandon: 52:31

But she's saying, oh Yep. He's adjusting. He's bringing his eyes towards me. Mhmm. I talk about leaning in.

Brandon: 52:37

Guys, does mean to lean in? You could lean towards your wife.

Caitlyn: 52:40

Mhmm. Now I feel like what I'm about to share is important to you. Yeah. You really care about what I'm about to share.

Brandon: 52:47

And it communicates, which is one of the biggest things. I can handle you. When I lean back, it makes her want to, like, almost say, are you listening? Am I getting through to you? Do I need to get louder so you can actually take me seriously?

Caitlyn: 53:01

It's kinda primal. It's like, oh, you're weak. You can't handle me. So then I'm going to need to get bigger, get louder, cry more, be more dramatic, so that I can get through to you, get your attention.

Brandon: 53:14

When you use your body as a tool, like, that's what this whole episode's about, you wanna go faster, engage your emotions, engage your nervous system, because now I'm leaning towards her because I have my oh, wait a second. I'm gonna put my use my body for good. Tell me more about what you were feeling. And then Caitlyn can speak and I'm receptive. I'm here.

Brandon: 53:33

Almost like if she were to throw if she's throwing a bag of groceries to me, I'm ready to catch it. I'm ready to receive her. So use your body as that tool. Use your body language when you're like, wait. What she's saying isn't landing.

Brandon: 53:48

You can stand up. You can even pace around. You could show you can move your body. I wanna hear what you have to say. There were so many times when we were in our pit of despair where I I got out of the bed, and I came on to Caitlyn's side of the bed, I stood in, a fighting position.

Brandon: 54:00

Like, tell me about this. I I I want my body to wake up to what you're saying. So there is no rules in the sense of you don't have to lay down and and be passive. You don't have to just sit there. You can say, you know what?

Brandon: 54:10

What you're telling me is so important, and I'm so numb right now. Can we walk? And can we keep going? Can we move our bodies? I'm stuck.

Brandon: 54:19

I'm stuck. So when you realize I'm stuck, move your body.

Caitlyn: 54:22

Go take a shower.

Brandon: 54:23

I'm not saying like you have to just run around when your wife's talking like, hold on. I gotta run. I gotta run. But like, we would take time when I'd be like, hey, you know what? I'm shutting down right now.

Brandon: 54:31

Can I take two minutes, five minutes, make a clear timer, and I'm gonna go do my embodiment work, and I'm gonna come back in the room, and I wanna hear from you? Mhmm.

Caitlyn: 54:39

So Yeah. You did that a lot, actually.

Brandon: 54:40

And I would and I'd make a phone call to another guy from a from a men's group, and I was like, I'm going to get this. Mhmm. So that's the message you needed to come away with men and women. In your emotions, commit to getting it. Commit to saying, I will file.

Brandon: 54:55

I will feel again, and I will activate my nervous system through an embodiment routine, through some breath work, some very simple exercises you feel good about that allow you to feel safe in your body enough to approach your spouse. This can rebuild your relationship, and it can be in your acute days of pain and trauma.

Caitlyn: 55:10

This is how you come alive as a couple again, because you're coming into your bodies and you're creating the experiences that you want. And so even as you're going through that comfort flow, it's so that you can fully see and know each other and create what you want. So if I'm bringing my pain to you, you're seeing my pain, reflecting back my pain. And then with that, we're then recreating something different for ourselves so we don't have to live out those same experiences where we keep getting stuck in these painful situations anymore. Because when we can see each other, we can then see clearly on where we wanna go and what we wanna leave behind.

Caitlyn: 55:52

We don't have to keep repeating things that hurt each other anymore, which is why we don't have to then have these surface level arguments all the time because we're getting to the roots. But we have to actually have the capacity to see each other, to feel each other, to feel ourselves, and then that's how we move forward. You cannot move forward if you don't even know where you are. Yeah. So you need to first figure out where you are and where your spouse is so that you then can eventually move forward.

Brandon: 56:25

So again, we have a few more topics we're gonna be diving into in this first season of the Grounded Union podcast that will really drive in the key elements that allow you to heal at a foundational level. So stay tuned for the next few episodes. If you are a man and you are looking to get your body back online, get your nervous system working for you instead of against you, there is a link in the show notes for my grounded community, which will give you the tools and the frameworks to be able to put that into action. I also do a weekly coaching call there, so check out that in the show notes. There's one other thing I wanted to add.

Brandon: 56:55

Gosh. We love you guys. We love being able to share our story with you. Emotions are the shortcut. So use your emotions for your benefit.

Brandon: 57:03

They're not a bad thing, and you have the ability to express empathy to your wife and to rebuild your marriage through your nervous system and through leaning toward her instead of away from her. We'll see you guys in the next episode.