speaker-0 (00:00.106)
We know this very well because this has been the biggest pain in our marriage.

speaker-1 (00:06.388)
I don't call it the biggest pain. Hypervigilance for me in my experience was absolute marital hell. Beginning, middle and the end and the end only came when we discovered the secret way of actually dealing with this in a powerful way that brings connection and trust.

speaker-0 (00:36.014)
Hello and welcome to this new episode of the He Wants She Wants Marriage podcast. Today we're talking about how an anxious attach can turn their hyper vigilance into a gift to their relationship. So what we want to start by asking you is, is your anxiety impacting your relationship, creating constant tension between you and your partner? Are you feeling constantly on the lookout for threats?

even in situations that to your partner seem perfectly safe, nothing weird about it, but you are feeling something dangerous about to come at you. That's what hypervigilance does to you. And I really personally really, really get it. And we're going to go into this. If you are the partner of someone that's experiencing that, do you feel like you're at the end of your tether?

trying to help them, trying to support them, but coming up short, not knowing anymore how to fix it for them and again, adding to the tension. We know this very well because this has been the biggest pain in our marriage.

speaker-1 (01:47.822)
I don't call it the biggest pain. Hypervigilance for me in my experience was absolute marital hell. Beginning, middle and the end and the end only came when we discovered the secret way of actually dealing with this in powerful way that brings connection and trust.

speaker-0 (02:06.774)
Yes, it was what was destroying our marriage ultimately. So let's look for a moment as to what is hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is this constant state of very, very high alert of your nervous system. So you're constantly looking for threats where apparently there are known to everyone else that's around you.

But for you, that's like, it's a constant anxiety and constant looking. There could be something happening any minute. I need to just control everything. And where does this come from? This, we weren't born like that. know for a fact that that's not how I came into this world, but that comes from a trauma that can be very, very, very early on in childhood. It can be a repeated trauma throughout childhood.

or it can be like something that happens later in life. But it's a result of some traumatic experience, either one or more than one. That's what creates this hypervigilance in the system.

speaker-1 (03:13.614)
With the experience of dealing with hypervigilance as a married couple, we've come to see that there's two ways of looking at it. There's the one way which for what we're 18 years married now, it's for the vast majority of our married life together. We had one way of looking at it, which is hypervigilance is a problem. You see it as a problem to fix. There's something broken you've got to get stuck in there.

The second way is as a puzzle to unravel. We'll get to that in a bit. Definitely listen in for that because that's where the real juice is. The problem to fix... It's like...

Hypervigilance is like you're living in this beautiful, idyllic cottage in the middle of a forest. Imagine we have our cottage, but those listening in, imagine that you're in that home, your cottage, and that's what you know. So from the hypervigilant perspective is what you know, that's the safe. It's the safety of the known. Tony Robbins is that first thing that we need is certainty.

the human need. That's the known. Then all around the cottage, there's this big forest. And the far side of the forest, well, that's the rest of the world. That's the rest of the human experience. That's the totality of freedom that is available to us all in the human experience. But in hypervigilance, the problem arises.

the perceptual problem arises where

speaker-1 (05:02.478)
There's two ways of looking at that forest. The person that has the experience of hypervigilance, they see that forest and their whole nervous system is there's fucking bears everywhere in that forest. It doesn't matter what rock you meet, doesn't matter what tree, there's a bear. There's a really high chance of there being a bear. You're definitely going to meet a bear.

The problem for that was definitely my experience. I was the partner that was holding space for hyper vigilance. That brought it out to me where my perspective was, honey, it's fine. There are no bears. You're not going to die. We've just got to go to whatever event. It's the far side of the forest or the event is the forest. So it's like.

There was always this part of me going, trying to dampen it down, trying to turn that volume down, going, there's not a bear. There really is not a bear. And what that ended up, it ends up, and we found in our relationship, and I know when all couples that we're talking to, and hypervigilance, there can be a technical hypervigilance, there's hypervigilance.

almost in every single relationship, it's just the level of intensity changes. So it is almost all pervasive for all couples to listen into.

speaker-1 (06:35.502)
What we end up doing is we dig in our heels on our perspective. And when we do that, we make the number one mistake, the number one, like it's the most destructive error that we do in any relating. We think we're in ownership of the truth.

And then because our partner is going with the opposite, you are saying to me, no, there's a bear behind every tree. I'm like, there's no fucking bear behind any tree. And we get into this wrangle mess where you're never agreeing with me. I'm never agreeing with you. So what do we do? We seek external validation outside of the marriage. I want to bring you in, like in that pattern that was so problematic for us.

What are your memories coming up from?

speaker-0 (07:30.638)
Yeah. Well, that was, as you said, was hell. That was like the biggest pain for sure. In my perspective, I came from effectively in each relationship I've been in being the problem and being the problem to fix. was always this was always the perspective. There is a problem to fix. We spoke into the previous episode about even therapy experiences where it was in

like the therapist said, you are the problem to me. Like you are a problem, you need to be fixed. So the problem to fix was the only perspective. And in that, you obviously have someone that sees it as a problem to fix and the other one that gets defensive. And so, as you said, we have two very separate opposing truths, which what I actually, we came to the conclusion that actually the toxic trait in a relationship is not being hyper vigilant or not.

The toxic trade is believing that you hold the absolute truth. And that absolute truth, you want to validate it. And I mean, there's plenty of chances of opportunities to validate that absolute truth when you go online and you start reading how to fix an anxious attach, how to fix an hyper-vision partner, how an hyper-vision destroyed everything and how we can fix it and how to fix it, how to run away from one.

You could have plenty of, you see, you are the problem, validation from the outside. And I, in my own research, I can have plenty of validation of, you see, he has no empathy. He's probably narcissistic. So if we want to fling labels at each other to validate those very opposing truths that we're bringing to the relationship, mean, there's plenty of that.

We can do that all day. That's not going to bring any connection. That only brought pain for us. And we're seeing that actually in our work all the time. It brings pain. It brings a lot of pain. It doesn't actually bring a solution of connection.

speaker-1 (09:39.886)
The major screwed up problem with external validation is it does give a juice of power in the moment. You and anybody listening into this, it's I call rationalized righteousness. It's but there's it's rationalized, but there's a juice of emotional power when your perspective gets validated. You feel seen, heard and safe. That person gets me in that YouTube video or the person that you.

talk to at an event that goes, me too. You know, my partner has hypervigilance. That's really hard, et cetera, et cetera, or whatever. It doesn't matter. Like you can watch a movie. I remember watching movies going, huh? You know, my inner commentary was, huh? Yeah, that's what it's fucking like to live with that. It was like, I was feeling powerful. My marriage was in the shit with you. I was unhappy. It was just.

It was continually getting worse. The fights were getting worse and it led to just a same shit different day sense of hopelessness in you and yet that's the danger zone.

speaker-0 (10:53.47)
And the only way to stop the conflict seems to be that one of the truths needs to become dominant. So like I've done it plenty. Okay, I am a problem to fix. So every time that I have this hyper anxiety that I need to notice and I want to tell you about the bear, I want to tell you that there's this possibility of a bear. I'm just gonna...

I'm just gonna be quiet, I'm gonna shut it. I'm just gonna shut it, I'm not gonna say it because I need to fix this problem inside of me.

or the opposite, you have to tend to every single possible variable to make sure that my system doesn't spike up. in either situation, we're only looking at one of the truths and kind of the other person has to somehow suppress, repress, and ultimately be very unhappy.

speaker-1 (11:53.774)
And the thing with that is the suppression happens and I believe most people with hyper vigilance at some point try to do that because they're being bombarded with you're broken, you're the one that's wrong. Can you not just settle? It's a family event. Why is there this much fucking tension on the way to the event? I know for myself it was like God, the apiche co-sidus that we call in Italian.

speaker-0 (12:21.534)
In English makes no sense.

speaker-1 (12:23.374)
It's an obsessive clinginess and God, I just want space. Why can't you? You should just be able to. What was really revealing for myself when I go through attachment theory, I'd be more classically the avoidant attachment style was so revealing for me and humbling. And I really want to bring this perspective as being the partner who's, know, quote and go

holding space for the hypervigilance is.

That becomes a really smug place of judgment where you don't have any issue. It's so easy. Attachment theory research has shown that an anxious attached person who will have the more obvious hypervigilant behaviors, it's super externalized. It's very obvious. The neurophysiological

Disregulation, all of these funky terms that we use when an anxious attached person is amped up. You're going to hear about it. They can't hide it. What was so humbling for me to read in the research is an avoidant attached person myself.

You won't see it in their eyes. They seem perfectly still. Behaviourally, they get the fuck on with whatever they're doing. In the research, mommy goes, mommy comes, mommy doesn't come over, nobody is meeting your attachment needs, you're fine. But neurophysiologically, they're amped up. They're as amped up as the person who has anxious attached patterns, as the person who is so-called hyper-vigilant. So...

speaker-1 (14:17.878)
I really bring that in because I was smug as fuck for like 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 years more going you've got a fucking issue here. This amped upness. I now know my neurophysiology. I was having as much tension but part of my coping strategy was I had it so internalized. It was so locked up.

In fact, it came out as asthma. It came out as like a psychosomatic illness. It was so locked up. I couldn't even be aware of it. But when I look back, funnily enough, and I just touch base with partners that resonate with my role being the partner holding space for hypervisions, the irony is when I look back at all of those moments, behaviourally and more mentally in my mind,

I was being hyper vigilant of your hyper vigilance. There was a hyper, there was a worry, there was an anxiety, there was, but I had it, it was always through the lens of a projected judgment on you. I wouldn't need to be so hyper vigilant if you were just calm. really, it was all pulsating through the problem focus and the problem is you. The thing with that was how far did we get?

speaker-0 (15:45.134)
Well, we magically stayed together, but it was a lot of pain. It was a lot of pain. actually, caused such, it caused this connection in so many different situations. It never actually brought any solution to my system. I never actually felt better at any point. You...

We've talked about this so many times. You never actually felt ultimately good within the relationship at any point. So it's like it was not, it was not conducive.

speaker-1 (16:25.262)
So the problem focus, you remain at point A. both parties are wanting to go to a point B. And the point B is for the anxious attached to person that experiences hypervigilance is I want to be seen. Like I'm normal. There's something natural happening in me. I'm not broken. And the partner is looking for

I just want to get to those events and actually have a nice time. I want to be able to flow. I want to be able to relax here. And both of those are not wrong, but you remain at point A when it's a problem focus. It's guaranteed. You're not going to go anywhere ever. It will only get worse and worse and worse. There is a different way we have through trial and error and struggle and resistance and lots of

Humble pie eating, definitely my side, have to say there is a different way. Instead of seeing it through the lens of a problem focus, this is a problem to fix. It's making a subtle shift in the beginning, but a definite shift to this is a puzzle to unravel. And I invite people to lean in the agreement that we have come up with big dreams, small steps. This is most definitely appropriate here.

Listening into this episode, this is to give those at home like a mindset that has been invaluable for us in these three steps that we talk about. There it's a slow unpacking. It's a big dream. Small steps, conversations, peppered in over time, but it's the over time. It's amazing. That's always the message here. It is, it will seem miraculous in three months, six months.

Boy, oh boy, you take this on board 12 months. It's like an entirely different reality, but there's no there's no limit to the depth of where you can bring that. So people listening in, please don't be like me where the confirmation bias was this is hopeless. I just want to go back to problem focus. But the first step is. Yeah, looking at it like a puzzle and we were talking the other day, it's like the puzzle to unravel, you know, in folklore, in film, in stories.

speaker-1 (18:52.462)
What was the one in Lord of the Rings you were saying?

speaker-0 (18:54.99)
Oh, and the Lord of the Rings when they're outside the mines of Moria and they're like, there is a riddle on the door. You don't see Gandalf and the others just, know, oh, it's a problem. We can't get through, so we're going to go home. That's it. End of of quest. Or, I don't know, start throwing rocks at the door. They actually just sit there until.

They figure out the solution to the riddle, which unlocks the doors and then they go through. And this happens in so many heroes journeys in so many...

speaker-1 (19:26.414)
think Harry Potter, Indiana Jones was all the little scrappy piece of paper where he had to put things together.

speaker-0 (19:33.538)
There's a labyrinth, there's a map, there's some riddle, there's some jigsaw, there's some puzzle that you have to solve to go through.

speaker-1 (19:41.912)
which really reframes the whole thing. The problem focus is, God damn it, this is inconvenient. My life would be perfect, but I'm entitled. I'm entitled to a perfect marriage. And really, you just go from that perspective. The only thing is suffer it or, well, if you're the problem, if I got rid of you and got like a correct woman, it's horrifying. It's actually really horrifying what happens.

The puzzle riddle style thing? Well that's the hero's journey. Now it's, wow, I'm actually the hero. We're both the heroes in this incredible journey. And hey, the marriage is the ultimate hero's journey. But in the hero's journey, there's the call in all of those stories. The hero gets the call to action. Harry Potter doesn't want to take Voldemort on.

Frodo Baggins, that ring, I don't fucking want to go. I'm not able. They don't want to take it on. But this episode is very much about the invitation to the hero's journey to tap into something much bigger beyond your same shit different day persona thinking. And it's in that when you unravel, unwrap this puzzle, the greatest love, the greatest prize in human life is available, really.

but it takes effort. The first step, and this is where possibly 99 % of people will just press the stop button. Humility. If you're like me, of like not too many years ago, humility, fuck off. This is like, no, this is bullshit. I don't do humility. know, that's not this lifetime. But humility coming from a perspective of hummus, the ground of truth of where you're really at. I absolutely dig this.

research that was done. It's on the perception of different people. And it's that number one research or that number one error in relating where we assume we are in ownership of the truth. They got this bunch of people and one part of the crowd grew up in mountainous regions. And the other part of the crowd grew up in flatlands.

speaker-1 (22:06.968)
Super flat prairies, didn't have hills or mountains anywhere in your childhood. And one of the tests that they did was to put up on screen in front of this crowd was a capital T. And a capital T, some of you who guessed the video, and you can imagine it anyway if you're on audio only in the podcast, capital T is made of a vertical column, one line that is vertical, and then on top of it there's a horizontal line, like the cap of that T.

What was really interesting, for a nerd like me anyway, is that both of these lines were the exact same length. But they then posed the question to the crowd. Which one of these two lines is longest? It gets so juicy. The people from the mountainous regions, they were swearing blind, hey it's the vertical one. It looks way longer. No for sure, dead cert.

put my whole life savings on or 50 euro in my wallet I'm going to stick that definitely the vertical. The people that lived their whole childhood in the flatlands is the horizontal one. That's the long list.

It's a super simple research that has massive implications for every single husband and wife on the planet. This type of research, I bore you silly, there's tons of researches on human perception and how we perceptually get things wrong all the time because of our upbringing. So humility is that first basis.

You've grown up and if you've grown up in the mountainous area, you can't pretend that you're going to see things accurately in that capital T. know, husband one, the husband has had an entirely different upbringing. The wife has had an entirely different upbringing. This lays the basis for me to look at you and go.

speaker-1 (24:14.71)
Maybe there could be a bear there. At least sometimes. And then for you it's...

speaker-0 (24:22.162)
maybe sometimes there are no bears. And that's what we're beginning to move from that polar opposite, truths, truths that we're defending with external validation to beginning to see the other person perspective on it, but without invalidating yours in the meantime. So I'm not coming to you going, no, you're right, there's no bears at all.

You were always right. It's like, no, sometimes there aren't. I'm beginning to see that. So I'm also right. Sometimes there are, because I've had an experience. You were talking about mountains or flatlands. There is an upbringing. In my upbringing, there were loads of bears. The forest I came from was full of bears. So that's a possibility that I'm not talking nonsense. There is a possibility, but it's also possible.

that sometimes there are none. So we start sharing the point of view rather than have these two absolute truths that are never meeting in the middle.

speaker-1 (25:32.578)
Hmm. This is definitely not. It's just coming to me now. Even in that story, I hadn't thought about it. But the mountainous regions, that's almost like the high emotionality. And the flatlands is like a low emotionality and it's the swearing of truth. I know in my relationship, but I've seen this in hundreds of relationships and it can be sort of more classically, but

Definitely not an absolute truth where guys, husbands, you know, it's the flatland. Hey, that's truth. I don't do drama. Why are you doing drama where the feminine can be, hey, we do mountains, we do the highs, we do the lows and everything in between. And when we're doing that, we're feeling fully alive. That it's almost metaphorically perfect to represent the high emotionality of the feminine with the cool, calm masculine.

And there's two different realities where it's there's a truth in both. There's a coming together. And that's the step to when you've got that base of humility. And when we had that, I know when I had that point of humility where maybe, maybe there is a truth there. There's a softening and that allowed it's the external curiosity.

An external curiosity is just that. It's a curiosity outside of oneself. That opened my nervous system up conversationally with you to go. What are you seeing in this situation? I remember coming back from a social event, simple social gathering, and I was having a conversation with this woman.

and coming back in the car, you were angry. I could feel you were upset. And I distinctly remember that experience because it was, if not the first time, it was one of the first times where I explicitly went, don't go with your normal blame shame bullshit mark off. there was nothing there. You know, why the hell?

speaker-1 (27:56.504)
God, I was just having a conversation. I was having a conversation about my work, the podcast, and I get, I classically got lost into the passion of that. I love speaking about it. But I didn't go with the immediate judgements. They were there in my mind, but I was like, hold on, Mark. Park the judgment, park the defensiveness, in the car driving, and hey, babe, what were you noticing in my behavior?

with that woman. What is it that your nervous system was picking up that to your wisdom, to your perspective, might not have been ideal and I'm just not yet seeing it? Do you remember that event?

speaker-0 (28:40.642)
I do remember that. I do remember and I remember the feeling of wow is like is this happening? It's like my

That gift, which we said at the beginning, where the hypervigilance and the anxious attached can be turned into a gift, started emerging in that. And we didn't know yet what the gift was, but it was like, there is an experience. So if you're going into a forest with someone that has been in a forest before where there are bears, and you ignore their wisdom in spotting where you could possibly see a bear.

you're not going to go that far because if there is an actual bear and you're just avoiding it altogether, you're actually going to get eaten. You're going to get killed. in that moment, was like, there is the hyper alert, there is the anxiety, there is obviously the nervous system, dysregulation, a lot of work that clearly that's personal for me to do. It's to play really well and that remains. But there was also, there's something there. You have an experience

Experience and wisdom and and you're noticing things my upbringing I mean I have been I come from a family where Everyone's divorced. Everyone's cheated. Everyone had no boundaries It was like a free-for-all mess of hurting each other through Having no boundaries with the other sex ever

speaker-1 (30:16.236)
And that was the disaster zone for me in marriage because it was so damn easy to just point the finger going, hey, you've got all this jealousy issue. You're jealous because your mom, your dad, your granddad, they're all shagging around the old divorce. It's like you're wounded clearly. Just just give me a break. It was it made my life hell because it was too easy. And I camped out for so long just judging going, hey, sort your shit out. This isn't on me.

speaker-0 (30:42.092)
Yeah, but at the same time, you came from a family where that was non-existent. mean, like parents that have been together, whatever, if they had a shadow, but they never actually expressed it in any way that was that the same. So you had no reference for any of that. I had accumulated a crazy amount of wisdom into, well, you know, when you start behaving a certain way, you're actually opening doors to...

misunderstanding, getting some kind of a kick or validation from somewhere else. You start opening doors, you start and again, if you're aware of it, it's the same as with the bear. If you are agreeing with me that there is a possibility that there is a bear, means you're going to be on the lookout as well. So I can relax. I don't have to be that hyped up. But if you are point blank, constantly denying that that's a possibility, then I need to be constantly alert for the both of us.

and just try to drag you, like, you know, hold on to you by the sleeve and go, don't go behind that rock because you're still walking naively. Like there's nothing there. And I'm like, you know, I'm definitely not going to let the kids go with you in the forest. Yeah. So that's that moment. That film, conversation you're talking about was like, you're actually tapping into this not as a problem, but there is a wisdom underneath.

And then it becomes again a shared conversation that we can have together.

speaker-1 (32:15.244)
Yeah. And the revelation for me in that was, my God, that went so fucking easy. Because my experience in all of those and I look back, it was because of my trigger happy church mentality, trigger happy defensiveness. There's no bear there. What are you saying about that woman? There was nothing. I was just having a conversation about work. I was just having a conversation with the girls. mean, they were talking. Are girls are friends with them? I mean, I've got to be able to talk to these people.

I now know looking back that it was my defensiveness, my judgmentality, my history of you've got to sort this problem out that was amping your nervous system up to say there is a fucking bear, are you stupid, are blind? When I approached it with that external curiosity, I was astounded to feel how relaxed you were.

your whole, your eyes, was astoundingly loving. Not only was it not, was it a nudge down in the criticism that would come my way, et cetera. It was a switching off and a switching on of sweetness and compassion and love. I was there going, fuck, this is I've been wanting. mechanistically, what I figured with my work for a number of years, I was saying it would

to guys always, it holds, it's a human principle. In this situation, people listening in, there are two people at point A and you both want to go to a point B. Deep connection, deep trust, deep love, and coming from different things. know, somebody who resonates with the hypervigilance again, they want to get to a point B where...

Hey, you're tapping into my wisdom. You're seeing my human experience. You're seeing that there's a value in this. Wow. And this, the partner who's holding space for it wants to get to the point where social events can be a relaxing experience. Connection can be easy. We can do these conversations like with flow with ease. Wow.

speaker-1 (34:31.992)
But no partner, no human will go to a point B, which is different to point A until the field seen, heard and safe. And that is what allows the shift to happen. That is what allows when you start seeing and hearing and holding a safe space for the human experience, it naturally evokes your partner to go, he's meeting me there. She's meeting me there. you're seeing my wisdom too. And now there's this upward spiral.

So that's external curiosity. And that shifts it to the real deepest juice is the internal curiosity, where the external curiosity is, hey, I'm asking you. I've went through, there's a softening, there's a humility, point one. Now that opens up a part of my nervous system and you and people listening in, it opens up to the external curiosity. Let's literally.

Ask the question, what was that situation? What were you seeing that I wasn't? The third one is where the gift, the juice comes out. It's internal curiosity and it's asking yourself. What is the life lesson that I can learn from my partner's perspective?

And why that's so important is that's the juice of progress. That's the juice of growth. know, Tony Robbins says the first human need is certainty. If we don't go into the external and the internal curiosities, we are locked and imprisoned into certainty. Same shit, different day. And the majority of

married couples on the planet are living in same shit different day. Nothing has really shaken their individual perspectives. And it's it's like a flat line. It's fine. It's together, but there's so much expression still left in the bag. There's so much of the growth and progress as a human being that is left there.

speaker-0 (36:51.498)
Yeah, the question of what's the life lesson? is what the other person's seeing? Where is the truth in that? There is a little bit of truth. Because that was one of the biggest mess for me. And I know with the women I've worked with, this is actually the question I get the most. How, because we said the hypervigilance comes from trauma. How do you separate?

your reactivity because of trauma from actually your intuition. That is the biggest puzzle to actually solve because they can feel the same and very often the two are there together. So there would be my load of I'm seeing certain I'm seeing bears everywhere because of my family and where I'm coming from. But underneath that, there's also I

I am seeing some patterns in you that I know are not conducive. I know that that's going to lead to a bear killing you. I'm seeing that happening. We were talking about the other women and relationship and boundaries.

There is like, okay, there's my reactivity and then that it can be called, you're paranoid and you're this and you're jealous and all of the labels. But there is actually, there's something that's happening that it's causing that too. And there is a fine line. So when the other person, in this case, you, with this example, you started going, okay, so what, what's the lesson for me? What work could that be through? You unpacked it on.

speaker-1 (38:40.008)
The lesson for me and I have seen it with what guys have coached in helping unpack there's been experiences of hyper vigilance both in guys and in their partners. What I'm seeing as this universal underlying gift in hyper vigilance for the partner who's holding space for it, for the partner like myself, and there's going to be a lot of them.

who's been I've been experiencing this hyper vigilance in my partner for years and life has been such a struggle. One of one of the greatest gifts is the gift of observation. Where my nervous system wanted to go, hey, I've got blinkers on.

I'm not seeing this, I'm just seeing what I want to do and no there's no treachery, there's no bear there. When I soften in with the external curiosity then the internal curiosity brought me to an inconvenient truth, a really uncomfortable truth.

Hypervigilance actually as a term is, I think, wrong. Hyper. It's intrinsically saying it's too much. The great gift for me was going, fuck hyper, take that out of there. And there's tons of terms out there about hypervigilance. It's maladaptive. Maladaptive, no it's not. It's wonderfully adaptive. When you understand the upbringing that a person has had,

You've got to see that for me was beautiful to go. It's not maladaptive, it's adaptive. It's not hypervigilance, it's vigilance. And the gift is observation where you could see things to the n degree of precision within a nanosecond in an environment. My avoidance self was like, yeah, whatever, you know, I'm just going in and but I wasn't seeing my own behaviors with women. I wasn't seeing the behaviors of women with me.

speaker-1 (40:48.898)
And that's on one topic. It's one of the core things in my relationship with you, the so-called jealousy thing and the hypervigilance that was driving that or my lack of realizing the deeper elements of it. The gift that that has brought me is you helped me start opening my eyes and go, yeah. And then turn and be like, hey, Mark.

There's a lot more happening in that situation.

I started observing my own behaviours, my tone of voice, my posture, how I was relating with women and how they were relating with me and it was wonderful and enriching to go, yeah, that's totally different than, Mark, if you're sitting with an 85 year old sweet old woman at the table, the dynamics are completely different and you've got to look at this, Mark, because you're a good man. You love Matilda.

You love your kids. You love your family. You don't want to fuck around. You don't want to play Russian roulette. So I started seeing these signs and it wasn't just in relating with the opposite sex. You had so-called hyper vigilance. I used to get stress on money. God, you're always, why are you talking about money? I was

pretending to be blind. My woundedness was avoiding the topic of money and you were saying, see there, see there and what you need to do. And I was feeling God, just relax woman. Now, the gift of observation is like, Mark, she's seeing things that you're pretending to be blind to. So start looking. As I've done that, you're trusting me completely. We went to an event guys, just in the last, what, four or five days that

speaker-1 (42:46.22)
was rife. was a dinner dance full of, it was my old football club, their dinner dance and it had, you know, all the ladies football team there, these young women and just elegantly like with a lot of flesh on show, very classy and beautiful and lovely, but that a few years ago was a disaster zone.

that like the beginning, middle and end of that would have been arguments, would have been tension. I probably would not have went to it. I would have said, no, screw that. I don't need to go to that because the stress that was inherent in it, because when I was there, I was. Calmly energized. Present. And observing all the dynamics in a very relaxed way.

and you were... you didn't even have... I don't even think there was one cell of you that was...

speaker-0 (43:46.382)
No, because I actually, you said, oh, that went, you know, that went well. There was like, I think you made some comment as to sort of acknowledging me. Oh, you did well. And I'm like, yeah, well, what did well? Like, yeah, that was fine. I was super chill through it all. And you were like, yeah, but we were sitting at the table and there were all this. I'm like, what? There was like zero. It actually, was the funny thing was like, it's almost as if that was never an issue.

Yeah. In my nervous system that was like, are you even, why are you even making an issue out of this? Like, you know, that's not an issue. we can, which can be infuriating because of course, if you've lived with me for that amount of years, but it, that is the magic of it. When, when we have a shared, my nervous system doesn't have to be in high alert anymore because you've got my back.

I've got your back. both, we have a shared thing. I'm not the only one that's aware of bears anymore. You are aware too. And that's shared language. I actually know, and I didn't need to even been on the lookout for anything, but I know at any given moment that I can go, know, they're maybe just, you know, touch base with me. I've noticed something, but I don't even need to do it. It's like, it's...

And I know that from listening in this can feel, well, so you're controlling him or... No, because actually when we were on opposite truths, either I was suppressing and as I said, I was just shutting up and pretending that that was not a thing and that was my problem to fix silently inside of myself or my...

controlling part was coming out full force. Like you said, we wouldn't have gone to a thing like that. I actually wasn't at your side for the entire dance mode. Like there'd been plenty of times when you were chatting to people, I was doing my own things. But I would have been needing to be there because if I'm constantly having to pull you away from a bear, I need to be there all the time. That was not present at all. So it's actually not controlling is the opposite. There's such a, I don't know what you did.

speaker-0 (46:02.688)
We talked about it. You experienced it that way as well.

speaker-1 (46:05.46)
zero controlling. see like, and that's the marvel in this, the partner of somebody who has had that pattern of hypervigilance, that's what they're looking for is just the freedom to be. just, can I just be? The magic is, is making sure your partner feels seen, heard and safe in that hypervigilance. And it's not hypervigilance in their vigilance. And from there, what's the wisdom? And then

the internal curiosity which goes, hey, what life lesson have I got to learn from this? And there's going to be more beyond observation. There's tons of lessons. That's the main one I've unpacked. What I'm curious in this, is what's the life lesson that you, who's had this long standing, I'm still using the term hypervigilance, it's it's a term that's widely out there. What has been the gift that you have unpacked?

when you practice that internal curiosity, what's that life lesson for you in all of this?

speaker-0 (47:08.894)
There's a different reality available. I think that was the biggest gift. Beyond actually being finally not seen as a problem. That really was like, that got me emotional. Even as we were thinking about this episode, I was getting emotional because, know, for finally...

after years and years and years of you are Voldemort, you are the problem, you are the darkest bunch of fears and no one wants to be with you because of that. You'll never have a relationship because of that. Actually, well, you you have a keen capacity to observe and you've had a lot of experiences. And yes, we can support your nervous system to feel more relaxed, but there is a wisdom underneath it. That was massive. But to get to that place where,

There is a different reality. I can actually trust another human being to have my back and not judge. That's like, I mean, that's massive. It's so precious. And I know for anyone listening in that have been going through that experience as I have, like the hypervision and the anxious attached, we get some amount of crap out there constantly. That is like, if you're feeling that,

There is a different reality. You can soften, you can trust. Your partner can see you as wise rather than a problem. I know you know, I know you're feeling it, that that's like such a relief. So that was my lesson in all of this.

speaker-1 (48:52.174)
Yeah, it really goes to the root of trauma. We have all individually and collectively been traumatized in this profoundly sick society. One way and that simple root of it is trauma is disconnection from authentic expression, who you truly are. We've had it heaped on all these shoulds, all these shoulds. This society is all about you should be able to go off by yourself, be completely independent. It has this

speaker-0 (49:03.07)
and one way or another.

speaker-1 (49:21.858)
The pillar of social achievement is radical independence. I can function in any situation online, Instagram, in the party, in the workplace, in the bedroom, in perny, it's like I've got my shit sorted. They're the idealized independence people. They're the avoidant, the extrovert. There's all of these labels that are seen as being

the most valuable, the most sought out and all the rest is just brushed in underneath the carpet. universally, what we're all seeking is our authentic human lived experience has deep value. And in marriage, fuck me if you're not showing up to give that with a willingness to take the step into humility and go, hey, mountainous region.

Flatland region, I might just be seeing this not fully. I am clearly biased. So I'm going to wonder, hmm, maybe there could be a bear there or maybe there mightn't be a bear there. And then you shift into that.

the external curiosity and you go, Hey, what are you seeing there? And then you go to the deeper. What's the life lesson? This beautiful person that on some, at some stage said, so that do as part or whatever vows you did that unique person, there's only one human on the planet. You're my queen and people listening in. There's that one person. If you're listening in, there is that one person. How sacred, how special, how unique is that? So

God, know, like just to look at them and go, what's the life lesson I've got to learn on this whole hyper vigilance shit? What can I learn from their experience? What's of deep value? And it's guaranteed that you're going to find something, but not just in hyper vigilance and everything. There's great hope. There is great hope.

speaker-0 (51:33.55)
Yes. I think we... Are we done? Have we come to an end?

speaker-1 (51:39.618)
I think we have people that have listened into the end. You have the phases there. That's last thing is big dreams, small steps. Go into it with the humility to know this is an episode to listen to again and again. And it's to practice pretty much like forever more. This is something that you can keep on coming back to when you bring that beginner's mindset, that approach.

every single one of you listening in, can unpack the genius and the love and the trust and the chilled out social situations that are going to come to you pretty soon.

speaker-0 (52:18.11)
Yes. And the invitation is to share this episode with your partner. Absolutely. Because that's we we couldn't do this if we didn't do it together. So it's a shared conversation. There's such power in actually just bringing your partner to this and let them listen to this episode, listen it together, start a conversation on this together, whether you're the hyper vigilant in the couple or not. But there's

There's a shared conversation here that can unlock the next level of connection. So that's the invitation. Go share it with your partner. yeah, till next week. Have a wonderful time. Bye.

speaker-1 (52:59.48)
Bye guys!