00:00:00 Dr Sara
Loving has so many different very specific qualities to it. It needs to be exclusive. I’m not talking about monogamous relationships, I’m talking about exclusive acts that you have only with that person. Certain way of kissing, greeting, certain way of holding energy around each other. Touch, the exclusive touch that we give to one another. Then language. People say I love you, and then they say to their dog, I love you, they say, I love you to their socks, they say. I love you to their favourite dessert. How do you differentiate that? So all of those ingredients, I tried to make them as tangible on a daily basis so people can actually measure themselves to see whether they are showing up with those or not. The other thing that came out of this was the 360° review of a couple, the 360 language and even the idea came to me because I work with a lot of corporates, and within those they have annual reviews of 360. And I, I was actually thinking… very frustrated, I was thinking why don’t we have that for relationships?

00:01:13 Rosemary
This is The Gifts of Trauma podcast stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry^®. 

Rosemary
Welcome to The Gifts of Trauma podcast by Compassionate Inquiry. I’m Rosemary Davies-Janes, and today I’m delighted to be speaking with Dr Sarah Nasserzadeh. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:41 Dr Sara
Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:43 Rosemary
Oh, it’s a pleasure. Now, would you like me to address you as Sara or Dr Sara?

00:01:48 Dr Sara
I think as we are trying to hold our friends out there to ground themselves, it would be more intimate to go with first name.

00:01:56 Rosemary
That sounds wonderful to me. Now Sara, you’ve developed an impressive and vastly extensive body of work, so I’m just going to share a few key points that are relevant to our conversation today. You’re an award-winning social psychologist specializing in sexuality and relationships, a highly regarded scholar, a global thought leader and relationship expert, an innovator, educator, consultant and thinking partner, a keynote speaker, media commentator, and the author of three books. Wow, your full bio, has… Yes, there’s much more… will be included in the show notes. But Sarah, may I ask, and if you’d rather not answer, that’s totally okay. Who is the being behind these impressive credentials and accomplishments? Who are you as a human being?

00:02:46 Dr Sara
Well, that’s very kind of you with the big intro. First of all, I think the bio matters only because it gives people an idea which lens you’re looking at certain issues that you’re discussing. But the being behind this, I believe that we are all reflections of the source. And I’m not just talking about a God, I’m talking about anything that anybody believes in. I really believe that we are, at least myself, I believe that I’m the reflection of the source. So that is the being behind it. That’s what fuels me every single day.

00:03:19 Rosemary
What a beautiful answer, thank you. Now every Compassionate Inquiry session starts with an intention, and it serves as a focus for our conversation. So I’ll share mine and then Sara, I invite you to share yours. So my intention is that people listening who’ve struggled to relate to others in intimate ways gain insight, self compassion and freedom from self doubt or judgment about their past experiences. That your words offer them new insights, optimism, and tools that they can use to enrich their relationships.

00:03:53 Dr Sara
Beautiful. I take that to heart, and let’s build on that. My intention, not agenda, the intention, hopefully, because we don’t know how things land on everybody, that… individual people. I would love for people to know that when they want to cultivate loving relationships, any kind of thriving relationships, there is a way to do that and there are many ways to do that. And also I would love for people to know where to put their efforts because I believe that everyone deserves to be in a loving relationship they desire. The only thing is, at least based on my years of work with clients, I realized that it’s not because of laziness that people don’t have that. It’s because they don’t know where they should put their efforts. So my intention is to introduce at least my body of work, so our friends out there… and whether they take it or not, at least they have it.

00:04:47 Rosemary
Beautiful. That’s perfect. Now, speaking of your body of work, I’m curious about what led you to the work that you do today. You share in your new book, Love by Design, that when you were a child, it’s a funny story…. Your parents compared marriage to a watermelon. And I grabbed this quote. “You don’t know what it will look like until you open it up. Will it be tasteless or red and juicy?” And you also recall that as a child, that was not a satisfying answer. And so you went on to grill your mom and dad with questions about why they married, but their answers never really satisfied your curiosity. So I’m wondering, did this drive to understand love and relationships inspire you to study social psychology and eventually specialize in sexuality and relationships?

00:05:38 Dr Sara
Absolutely. So it is a true story that my parents… and these are educated parents. It’s not just the parents who just come up with some ideas. Yes, that was not satisfying, for sure. I was always interested to see what can create a thriving life. I was never interested in mediocre, in anything because I believe in the intelligence of the world and that larger entity that people call God, Hoda, Allah, Jesus, that… whatever that people believe in. There is a reason we believe in the better, the bigger, the more complete, the perfect. There is a reason. So in human relationships, I figured there must be a way not to be a statistic in the divorce section of the laws or newsletters. There should be a way that you are with somebody and you don’t call them…  Aw, you know, but I don’t feel like that anymore. So goodbye.

Or I just didn’t want that life for myself. So that was the selfish part. The second part of it was, or maybe I don’t know which one came first, but I would assume maybe in parallel because I grew up with a lot of paradoxes around me. So I grew up with the revolution in Iran, which meant inside the house we were somebody, outside the house we should be somebody. And your life was on the line if it wasn’t the case. So you learned as how to navigate, how do I keep my integrity and sense of values and what thriving means to me, while I’m trying to survive this system. Little by little, as I grew older, I started observing that when you have one meaningful relationship, it could be described by attachment style, earlier on. It could be described by that loving person who really cares about you. Somebody cares about me in this world. People acted differently. This is just a child’s observation. People acted differently. They seem to be kinder. They seemed to be adding more language to express their feelings, they’re more emotional intelligent, so in my child brain. I thought if I help people communicate better in this world then they are going to have better lives. They are going to have, not the survival life, but not mediocre, but that thriving life. So actually, my first degree is linguistics. So I started with linguistics because I figured if I can figure out how to work with language as power. So I’m going to help people communicate better. That’s going to make the world better and then little by little. I realized that no, actually that is very conceptual. I need to get in there, learn about what pains people, what mobilizes them, what paralyzes them. And then when I left Iran, and then I did all of my studies in England, I studied research methodology because I wanted to be able to have access to a scalable amount of material. So that was one piece of it. And then I worked with people who were called ‘hard to reach’. In my opinion, nobody’s hard to reach, it’s just that you don’t know how to reach them. So that was the whole idea. So I did that study, and then I studied a human motivation model. Then as a part of my social psychology and policy PhD, I studied that human motivation model as what motivates people to seek help, to seek advice, what advice sticks? Why is it that people go after changing their lives in this phase of life rather than that phase of life? So all of these came together. And then clinically, I studied couples counseling and psychosexual therapy because that figures sexuality is one of those areas. That is it for many people, it’s the most vulnerable place that they connect with another human and then little by little, over all these years, I came up with this just one piece of sentence to describe everything I do. I help people thrive in their relationships from bedroom to boardroom.

00:09:47 Rosemary
Nice and succinct. You’ve drilled down a massive amount of research and learning into one simple sentence. That’s actually such a challenge to do but you’ve done it beautifully. I wonder if I could circle back. The first thing you said that really caught my attention was, when you grew up in Tehran, you had to be one person outside the house and another person inside the house. I’m curious about that because, would that not lead to some sort of bifurcation of how you show up in the world? Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

00:10:19 Dr Sara
It’s very interesting. It goes back to… really credit to my parents the way that they would decode the messages we would receive. So I never remember that… our dinner table was a sacred place. We would all come, I have three siblings. We would all come around the table with the parents. We started together, we finished together and around that dinner table, many things happened. So we shared of our observations. We shared of our concerns and the messaging and what we saw what we heard from the TV, from the teachers, from the spiritual leaders at school. And then I even remember one time I was a teenager, I came home and I was very ambivalent. I said, “Mom, I have a friend who is of different faith, invited us all to her birthday and then such x, y and this and that and said I’m not going because they don’t cook a certain way, they don’t offer in a certain way”. And I never forget my mother held me with my arms and looked into my eyes and said, “Sarah, humans are humans. If I ever hear from you that you ‘other’ another person, you’re not my daughter.” I never forgot that. And I went to that birthday. So that that was yes, I really do feel blessed because of the parents that I had because they really, they didn’t fight the system. They knew where we were growing up, but they were really trying to insert their own values like the existential views that they had. Their epistemologies into all four of us to make sure that we are not taking sides or having that dual personality that then where do I live? Who am I?

00:12:03 Rosemary
Yes, yes. And it’s interesting you say that and that you studied in the UK because I come from British parentage, and I remember being so confused as a child that what was said in public, and that means just outside the home was not necessarily the same as what was said in private. I always remember it was never talked about. And after spending time in the UK or you would have a sense of that culture and it… it’s better now than it was when my parents grew up. But goodness, you observe and sometimes you make sense. It didn’t seem okay to ask anybody why this thing that happened here, was talked about this way here and this way here. So I’m going to come back to your curiosity about what motivates people to ask for help, and perhaps what stops them. Can you speak a little bit about that?

00:13:00 Dr Sara
Of course. So based on evidence, research evidence, not just a personal opinion. People look for information or help when they think they need it. So we could be talking about anything. I was a part of so many campaigns with the United Nations work that I do. So we go to different communities, we give information, even food. If a person doesn’t feel hungry, if  a person doesn’t feel they need a piece of information, they reject you. So I think it’s very important for people to expose themselves to different literature, podcasts, information that is out there. And then if something resonates with them, they just sit with it quietly. Because we are also living such rushed lives, that even when a pearl of wisdom is shot towards us, it might fall flat on the floor. So we don’t really catch it. So that would be one thing that I would say that everything that comes your way, depending on your spiritual belief, there’s a purpose, or you can make it purposeful for yourself. So if you’re reading something in a book that you feel uncomfortable, you feel it tickles me a certain way, stay. There’s an arousal in the nervous system. Why is that? So just paying attention, I would say, that’s a starting point. 

Rosemary:
Thank you.

Dr Sara:
Of course.

00:14:21 Rosemary
Paying attention to what triggers you as much as you pay attention to what attracts you.

00:14:26 Dr Sara
Yes, absolutely. And may I just actually offer something? I often tell people to pay attention to their routes of arousal, the sensation of arousal, because we talk about triggered and trauma so much in the culture now that I honestly feel they are noise at this point. And people really get confused as, am I traumatized or angry or frustrated or sad. What is really happening here? So I think it might be an idea. And I even taught that to my own child because I think like, little by little, culture beats this out of us. Especially if you are in a culture that you are not, as you mentioned, like you’re not supposed to feel a certain way or ask certain questions. Then I think over a period of time our gut gets a little bit confused. And then when people ask me, can I trust my gut, I say yes. But first you need to polish your gut, so here is one of those exercises I give to people to do that, if I may introduce it.

00:15:29 Rosemary
Please.

00:15:30 Dr Sara
Lovely. I’m not sure if people are listening to us on the go, or they’re sitting down. They can rewind and listen to this again, but I often ask people just to pick a quiet moment, sit down, and then, as they’re breathing. I don’t want them to change their breathing in any form or shape, just as their breathing feels. Is there any part of my body that feels uncomfortable? It could be I need a little bit of a stretch on the neck. It could be, I need to go to the loo. I need to eat something. Whatever that is that I feel uncomfortable, there’s something that I can do to make my body feel a little bit more comfortable. And then imagine which part of you is telling you that you are uncomfortable, and record that memory. Because sometimes we’re talking to somebody. The first line of arousal is discomfort, and many of us culturally are taught to override it. Just carry on. If we catch that, a lot of fights won’t happen. A lot of things that we say and we regret later, they don’t happen. So if we can just catch that level of discomfort, uncomfortableness, then we can attend to it before it escalates to anything else. That’s one. Now imagine how would that be different in the body as a sensation. When you feel annoyed, where in the body do you feel, this person annoys me. I’m annoyed by this thing that doesn’t go well or whatever that makes you annoyed. Differentiate between discomfort and being annoyed. The other one is in a situation you feel hurt. Or bruised. How is that different from being uncomfortable or annoyed? And think about when you are offended, like somebody punched me in the gut out of you. So for me, clearly it feels punching, getting punched in the gut, but for somebody else it might be something else. So how is that different from being uncomfortable, annoyed and hurt? Now imagine the situations from memory. Or just imagine it, that once you go from the point of 0 to 100 in a split of a second, you don’t even know what happened. And usually the language is, I don’t know what happened or I lost control or this really gets me certain languages that people usually use. Or my breathing changes. So that’s trigger, actual trigger if people know how to distinguish between these sensations of arousal in the body. And there are many more, but these are the main ones, in my humble experience, they will manage their communications and relational spaces with more intention and responsiveness rather than reactivity.

00:18:39 Rosemary
Absolutely. That was beautifully broken down. And I know personally that whenever my gut says go this way, go left, and my brain says no, don’t listen to the gut. That’s silly. When I listen to the mind, it doesn’t go well. When I listen to the gut, it goes much better. And there’s no need often to make an immediate decision. You’ve got time. You can sit with it, you can breathe with it, just as you described in that exercise. So thank you for that. It’s really helpful.

00:19:12 Dr Sara
Of course.

00:19:13 Rosemary
I’d like to really dig into the topic of intimate relationships. You’ve worked with thousands of couples across 40 countries over the past two decades. This is probably a difficult question, but I was going to say, what is a typical interaction you might have with an individual or a couple who are struggling with relationship issues in an intimate setting? But maybe I’ll reframe that and just say what tends to come up a lot, you’re sitting with a couple and they bring their issue to you. And it’s like this again, this is coming up again. What are the struggles? The couple struggles with relationships that you encounter most frequently.

00:19:56 Dr Sara
So that’s a great question, a very thoughtful question and a big one. So I would say if I’m thinking across the board globally, I would say the process is usually there, the process of talking. It’s rare that you see couples that, they don’t talk or maybe they don’t come to us because they don’t like to talk. But the couples who come to us, they usually would like some sort of communication, some sort of alignment, that either they do it or you help them do. So the process of talking and communication is usually there, for me the problem is the content. So the way that we talk, and that was what sparked my whole research, and writing this third book that you mentioned. Because I realized that people talk about sex, people talk about anger, respect, trust, love, all of these big concepts. And we assume that the other person knows exactly what we mean. So couples come to me and say I love them, I’m not in love with them, or I respect you, what do you mean? Okay, do we mean the same thing? And I give you a very exact example to bring the message home. So answer your question. Basically the process is there. The content for me is… really needs a lot of work. So one time I had a couple, this is a heterosexual couple, man and a woman and married for a long, long time. I don’t remember how long, this is like a long time ago, but I think it was more than 10 years that they’ve been married. The husband just had this tendency that would go travel for work and slept with other women and then every time the wife found out, got hurt, supposed to stay but got hurt. As they are discussing this with me in the room, there are three people in the room. The issue is what, somebody is having extramarital sex casually and then coming back and somebody gets hurt. So this is the issue. I took it as lack of respect because for me, you signed a marriage contract, you are declaring that you are monogamous and you didn’t even have a prerequisite or a conversation about open marriages of any sort. And you still choose to go and sleep with other women? For me, lack of respect. For her. For the wife in this scenario it was lack of compassion because she would get hurt over and over again with no regard to compassion. For the husband in the situation it was a lack of shared vision, because this is my vision of a marital life. What are you talking about? So even the three of us in the room wouldn’t agree. What is the anchor that is not working here? So the content for me matters a lot. That’s why I say a lot of people that you see, that the rule of 80:20, and this is not an exaggeration. I’ve seen it time after time and in some cultures more than others, OK, granted. But overall, what I see is people put 80% of their efforts behind some things that matter 20% in a relationship, and I would love for them to swap them around. Now we have research, we know better, as where to put your effort as when you’re having a conversation and you actually get something out of it at least.

00:23:24 Rosemary
Yeah, that’s so interesting. And if I’m understanding you correctly, since you had this conversation with this couple so long ago, were you immediately aware that your perception of a respect issue was being perceived differently by each of them? Or did it… was this one that emerged?

00:23:42 Dr Sara
No, it emerged. Everything in, in my work at least, emerged. That’s why I called the love model emergent love, because there’s no hypothesis with human behavior. You go in and things emerge and you need to keep an open mind just to be.. go with the flow and see what comes out of it and work with it.

00:24:03 Rosemary
We’re taking a brief pause to share what’s on offer in the Compassionate Inquiry community. Stay with us, we’ll be right back.

Rosemary:
If you’ve been listening to our podcast, you may have heard guests connect their birth experiences with enduring subconscious behavioral and emotional patterns. To help break this cycle, Compassionate Inquiry^® offers The Portal, a 28-week trauma-informed training for perinatal health professionals; such as midwives, obstetricians, nurses and doulas, who want to empower their patients to trust their innate ability to birth, bond with and nurture their child. To learn more and register, just follow the link in the show notes. 

Rosemary:
Yet in the book outline that you sent me, when I read about the shared vision or actually it struck me that a lack of shared vision played a role in ending my marriage. We were already struggling in our relationship when my ex-husband announced. My now ex-husband announced out of the blue that his vision for the future was buying a gas station out in the country and running it with the family. I was shocked because at that time I was leading the marketing department for a well known multinational retailer. I didn’t share his vision and I never really talked to him about it. Not seriously. First, because I wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t joking around, and second, if he was being sincere, I didn’t want to sound judgmental. What was going through my mind when I heard his vision was, okay, he’ll manage the gas station and the kids, well, I don’t know, maybe take turns pumping gas, stocking the shelves, or maybe even selling behind the counter. But what’s left for me? And the only thing I could think of was like, I guess I get to clean the washroom. I made-up that whole story in my head and decided that we couldn’t repair our relationship, that we didn’t have a future together because I didn’t share his vision. Wow. We can really go off the rails when we have these different perspectives of what the other is saying. And I think that’s really the key point you’re making.

00:26:23 Dr Sara
But I wonder, what do you sit with when you feel like, I never challenged that assumption or scenario?

00:26:29 Rosemary
Yeah, it’s such a huge thing sitting here with you today. I wonder, where did my curiosity go? Why didn’t I ask more questions? Why did I just take it in and feel devalued by being downgraded from my corporate executive role to a janitor? It was all in my mind. And yeah, he could be a joker, but at the same time, he was someone who was very absolute in the way he spoke, as if this really would be the best future for us. And what happened inside me was, after the shock, I decided I’ve got to get out. I don’t want that future. And once I’d decided that, I started testing with other things. I’d bring up other topics. How do you see this? What do you think about that? And so again, all in my mind, I created a case, which we can do. I created a case that showed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he and I had such different perspectives on so many topics that there was no possible way to move forward together. Yeah.

00:27:39 Dr Sara
So the brain has the capacity to when it’s convinced of something. It just gathers information to support that case and go to the corner, preserve safety. So that’s what we do. But by the sound of it, it wasn’t 100% the decision that you’re sitting with and thinking, okay, that was a good decision moving on. So I’m sorry that happened.

00:28:02 Rosemary
Yeah, it was. It was one of many things. It was just that was the tipping point for me. There were many things where we were on different pages and then that was presented. And it’s OK. There’s no way I’m doing that. Anyhow, we’re not here to talk about my stories. And I’m curious too. When you talk in your book about high conflict and low conflict couples, and I’m wondering about the impact of that on the children. So how is being raised by a high conflict couple different to being raised by a low conflict couple?

00:28:34 Dr Sara
So a high conflict couple is something that you can visualize, right? Loud noises, so basically heightened everything around your sensations, the energy that is held around you, it’s a very dense energy, unpredictability, when people have explosive fights, for example, around you. And what it leads to is hypervigilance of the children because they need to preserve safety depending on what age the explosion happens in front of them or not. And some of them, unfortunately old advice that many couples received from their previous generation was, never fight in front of your children, never disagree in front of the children. And if an explosion happens, they do that sometimes, because it’s out of their control. They do that in front of the children. But when the reconciliation happen, behind the closed doors, there have been conversations actually how to resolve them, even resume their sex life and intimate life, all of that, none of that the child, poor child, is aware of. So they are left with this really high confusing situation that OK, you exploded. I thought when you explode like that you need to go separate ways. So why are you coming out of the bedroom smiling? What is happening here? So we don’t show them the resolution. That’s another thing that happens in, especially high conflict couples and we have multitude of research that advises that Instead of exposing your children to those unpredictable explosions, it might be a better idea to separate. It might be a better idea if you can financially, socially, culturally. It might be to the benefit of everybody if the situation keeps calm and collected rather than just keep going with just those explosions. So that would be for a high conflict. Just a few points.

00:30:31 Rosemary
Thank you. That was a very clear explanation and what I’m leading up to is a really big question on trauma. The definition of trauma that we use in the Compassionate Inquiry community comes from Gabor Maté, who says trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. So bearing that in mind, when you look at the relationship between personal, collective and or ancestral trauma and our ability to maintain loving, healthy, intimate relationships, what do you see?

00:31:08 Dr Sara
I would say trauma, if it happens, and leads to resiliency, which is for many people, although I know that again, our culture is really bursting with this idea that everyone is traumatized with everybody. Yes, if you look at all of us, we are carrying, it in one form or the other, but usually we build resiliency because of it. If trauma leads to building resiliency, and also if the resiliency is there, there’s more neuroplasticity of the brain. So with the resiliency comes a lot of strength in the human body, in the human psyche and body. Then that’s  a mobilizer in life. It brings grit, you bounce back when things happen. But on the other side of it, if trauma is unattended too, so we are not attending to it or we are just ignoring it, pushing it under, then it could lead to open wounds that get infected, reinfected or get a little bit of a cross on the top and then scab on it and then go on. And then that could be at times, paralyzing and misguiding. So that would be my take on how trauma shows up in our relationships in general. 

00:32:26 Rosemary
Yeah, thank you thank you, now Gabor’s perspective is that you can love deeply when you’re holding trauma, but you can’t love completely. Yes. And what he means by that is you can deeply love another, but you can’t love yourself when you’re holding drama. So that love is going to be incomplete. Does that resonate with you? 

00:32:46 Dr Sara
Absolutely. And that leads to, the way that I see it in my practice, that leads to wishy-washy boundaries. So you could be there for the other person. You can love the other person, love on them, but when it comes to being in a reciprocal relationship, what for them to restate your boundaries or for you to respect your boundaries for that matter, then that becomes a point of confusion for many people. So they become passive aggressive with their boundaries. They give until they have nothing left and then they become aggressive, so passive aggressive. And people often ask me how do we know when the trauma work is done? I gently remind them that whenever that you are going to put a boundary in place and you can do it lovingly and firmly, then your job is done.

00:33:34 Rosemary
Thank you. And I’m smiling because I’m thinking of Gabor, who’s, I guess he’s 81 this year and he still talks about when he was young and stupid, like last year when he was 80. So maybe we’re done or maybe we just keep working through it and gain skill in our ability to work through it as we journey through life.

00:33:56 Dr Sara
Absolutely. It’s like the immune system. So some people think that if I’m not sick, then my immune system is asleep. No, your immune system is working. That’s why you’re not sick. Yes. So it’s the same thing that it’s constant intentional work that every day we need to choose to show up for ourselves and our lives.

00:34:15 Rosemary
Absolutely. And that goes back to the exercise or the practice that you described earlier. It’s like when something comes up for us, notice what’s happening in our bodies. That’s a great tool as we move forward. So thank you.

00:34:27 Dr Sara
I hope so, of course.

00:34:29 Rosemary
Now I’m wondering if you’ve worked with people, if you could possibly share some stories, non identifying stories of clients you’ve worked with whose trauma response interfered with their ability to relate intimately to their partners, spouses or perhaps other loved ones in their families.

00:34:48 Dr Sara
So I can actually put them maybe into different categories. One of them is when a person shuts down. So the channel of communication is completely gone. One of them is reactions that even the person called them reactions, like, “I reacted in a way, oh I regret. Oh, if I could redo it.” So these are the things that I hear, so reactions that the person regrets often and it… out of control, rage, shut down, being overly anxious in certain situations that are not really logically required so you’re not in an immediate danger, but a sense of control. I want to control or escape, which sometimes leads to distractions. Numbing of the body with drugs, with cutting, with all sorts of things or practices that people want to feel or people want to not feel. So over association or dissociation, that happens.

00:35:50 Rosemary
Can you share how this might play out? That’s a very analytical perspective. Does anything come to mind where you could describe how this might play out for someone?

00:35:59 Dr Sara
Yeah, absolutely. Like for example, we have… Some people might be familiar with the works of Dr Terry Real. So Terry talks about how when you’re working with a male population, that is his specialty. When you’re working with male population and you see that, a lot of men get referred to anger management classes. But he’s actually talking about how about looking at the early childhood traumas that are reactivated in certain situations. So let’s say for example, a couple of comps, I’ll give you a very tangible example. I have quite a few couples, they come to me and it could be heterosexual, it could be gay, it could be any sort of sexual orientation or relational orientation. They come and say… one of them says, you know, but I just, I was very hot for my partner, but I’m not anymore. They’re not talking about sexual chemistry. That is fizzling out and many of us know,  no problem. It’s a problem for some people, but that’s a different conversation. But in this scenario specifically, I was, for example, consulting a couple and the woman was saying, “I really don’t know why, but I just can’t open up when we have sex, even if we have sex. When we have sex, I have to close my eyes to go inside my body.” And then we kept having a conversation and then never this one came up. Never. But as we are having a conversation, I’m seeing a couple over Zoom and then the gentleman in this couple has a drink and then the drink spills on the computer. The reaction I saw from him was out of this world. I was miles away. I was over Zoom, nothing to do with me. My body was shaking because of his reaction. So after that, they came down, cleaned the computer, nothing broken, fine. They came back. I looked at the wife and said, “Is that the reason you don’t want to have sex with him? You don’t feel safe with him?” It never occurred to her that because of those explosive moments that they have with him, every time that happened, intellectually, emotionally, relationally, she wanted to be intimate with him. But what does her body remember? That this person within this body is violent, is capable of this explosion. Okay be on guard all the time. So how’s that going to help the sex life? Yeah, but that’s a tangible example.

00:38:29 Rosemary
Yeah, that’s beautiful because I am aware of someone who had a difficult relationship with their husband and he would get excessively angry as well. And he would turn around and punch a hole in the wall, and she was like, why does this disturb me so much? He’s not hitting me, but it’s just witnessing that violent response. So thank you for sharing that. I think that’s going to be so helpful to our listeners.

00:38:55 Dr Sara
Oh, Rosemary, may I just give another example which might be actually very common? You know how people play video games, so some of the video games are violent. You’re killing people and you’re talking to your troop-mates and like the opponents and whatnot. I’m also seeing more and more bodily distances created because of those, although the partner is not even a part of it, but they hear that their partner is capable of using that language with that aggression. They are capable of this and that at the body doesn’t understand. And what people don’t really pay attention to, is that if you want to be intimate with another person, affectionate with another person, forget about sex, just be in the presence of another person, your body needs to consider their body safe. Yeah. And those are all the ones that are going to poison that space. Please be mindful of that.

00:39:54 Rosemary
That’s a really good point. And I’ve often wondered, there’s so many people who are, they call themselves addicted to. It’s not the language we would use, zombie movies or the types of experiences that are really scary. And you’ve got to wonder how that’s landing on their nervous system. How over… like how much cortisol gets released, how stressed do they get when they are enjoying this favorite pastime. There’s so many cultural influences. Like I don’t watch news coverage anymore in today’s world. I think maybe a lot of people are on the same page, but can you speak just for a moment about how what’s coming at us in these current times can affect us? That, just like that example you shared, maybe we wouldn’t think about.

00:40:42 Dr Sara
Sure. So here’s what I observe. People who are drawn to horror movies and high action zombie movies, things that are, sometimes they are completely dissociated from their own bodies to begin with. So for me, that’s an equivalent of somebody cutting themselves. They want to feel something. They want to go there because that’s what the nervous system knows. Some other times they want to experience something that in real life they don’t allow themselves to do. So a lot of my clients who go for these movies, they tell me that there’s nothing exciting going on in my life. I need something to rattle my nervous system, to wake me up. Sometimes that’s what they do for the adrenaline rush, for the cortisol level, all that. And some couples have really hot sex after, I have to say. So they say, oh, we go to this action movie and then, I don’t know, is a rushing, very good? And the same with the theme parks. They go to ride a roller coaster and then they come home. They have really good sex. It depends on the person. But to address your point, especially with the current circumstances in our world, we get bites of the news. Nobody knows the depths, but we don’t know how everything is processed, to get to that one sentence, one quotation mark, one news feed. We just get on the surface. What that does to the brain is that activates the brain without having enough information to process. That is the danger.

00:42:22 Rosemary
Yeah, I’ve heard others refer to what’s going on in the world right now. The horrific events being broadcast as being compared to psychological carpet bombing. So you know that there is that risk. And I also had the experience when I was a student in South Africa during apartheid. What actually happened that I knew people who had eye-witnessed was very different to what was reported in the local papers, which was very different to what was reported in the international news. So yes, it gets very complicated. So what would you recommend? We just trust our bodies and if our body is responding in an uncomfortable, dysregulated way, that we pause and take a look at what we’re subjecting ourselves to?

00:43:15 Dr Sara
So as a general rule, I always say you are the average of what you’re exposed to. It could be linguistically, it could be psychologically, it could be physically. So we are the average of the things that we are exposed. If you really think of it that way. Asking people not to follow the news is a little bit difficult because people have loved ones trapped in certain places or they have their interests in politics. So that, I find that works for some people but a really limited amount of people. Now, one thing that I recommend, pure brain science, neuroscience, is for people to carve time and space, and play. For example, if you want to read the news, do it, but not first thing in the morning. And that is the tendency we have because we want to acclimate ourselves to our surroundings and then go to the day. The day needs to start by just catering to the physical primal needs. Many people have bowel movements in the morning. Many people have their breakfast in the morning. Many people have their shower in the morning. Whatever the primal need, take care of the body first and then they are going to look at the agenda or the intention for their day. Here are the things that I need to do. This will pump up your body. Believe it or not it will pump up the body to show up for all the pieces that you have to show up for. The other one is if you’re reading the news and you have the luxury, I highly recommend that you read it. You watch the news on TV, because you’re looking up instead of down on a very limited screen on your phone when you’re looking at it… Just based on evolutionary perspective when they did their studies, there’s so much reference that I can give to people for further educating themselves. But I think this is suffice to say today that if you look at this little screen in your hand and you are limiting the peripheral vision…

00:45:21 Rosemary
Yes, peripheral vision, yet we’re very focused in as opposed to having a wide screen vision.

00:45:27 Dr Sara
Yes. And so when we narrow that perspective, there’s a high chance for you to develop anxiety because the brain doesn’t have a way to spot any dangerous situation around you. Therefore, there’s a level of cortisol that you know that goes higher. But if you look up and far, you are restoring the peripheral vision. So on a very primal level, the brain is going to say I’m safe. Nothing is coming at me, to eat me at that very primal level. So that’s one. The second one is if you can, pick a space for yourself. So for example, some people check their phone or news in the bathroom. Some people check it in bed. That I absolutely don’t recommend. Actually, I go against, I recommend against it because your bed needs to be associated with the rest, recharging. So for any mind space and role that you occupy in the world, there needs to be a space, ideally. So let’s bring it all together. You want to listen to the news? Watch the news. Good for you. The way that I would love for you to do it, if you accept my invitation, is just pick a place for yourself that, you know, it’s dedicated to that. So when you walk out of that, you know that’s not my life, that is not my everyday life, right? I’m listening to this as an aware citizen. Whatever that serves you, in that space, and then you leave it behind, you go to the other room. The other thing is I would love for people after they’re indulging in the news, put it in the box, have a transition ritual. Let’s say for example, when I started working online, so we all, in COVID, many of us worked at home. So one thing that I’ve done for myself, I thought, OK, what is going to remind you that you are not the provider, you are the mother, you are a partner. You are hosting people tonight. So who am I right now for that? I had rituals for myself. I dressed up. So when I look at the mirror, my clothing is different. I was joking. I was actually teaching colleagues about this. I had this one colour lipstick that I wore for my client. I thought, OK, so whenever that’s on, this is your role, whatever that helps you. Or in between finishing the day, and going to my family, I would take a shower and then emerge as the mother or as the partner. So anything that people can have power, place and space. Don’t let it bleed all through your day, one. Think about transitions, clear transition rituals, between roles and between spaces and mind spaces, and hopefully you will have a much, much calmer life.

00:48:14 Rosemary
Yeah, thank you. It’s so it’s almost like creating vivid visual boundaries for yourself.

00:48:20 Dr Sara
Absolutely.

00:48:22 Rosemary
Beautiful. Let’s talk about your book Love by Design. Six Ingredients to Build a Lifetime of Love. Now the title is quite different to your two earlier books, which were The Orgasm Answer Guide in 2009 and The Sexuality Education Wheel of Context in 2017. Going back to Love by Design, like you’ve referenced it a little bit, but was there anyone’s major thing that inspired you to write this book which seems quite different to the previous books?

00:48:52 Dr Sara
Yes, because within this book, one of the things that I wanted to achieve was to really capture that essence of thriving relationships from bedroom to boardroom. I made it about love because love is a concept that is so misunderstood and under served, and it’s as if when we study love, we bring it down from that space of the pedestal, because love is so sacred. You shouldn’t really. You should really just experience it, but I can’t sit with the pain of my clients. One thing, if there are many things, but one thing that really inspired me for real, to write this, I cannot bear the pain of my clients anymore. We know better. I can’t just sit there and hold the space for them. I know better. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with so many people. This is such a privileged place, and if I can’t offer something different, then who would? So I think, you know, that was definitely behind it. Also, I was thinking selfishly of my son. When he is at the age that he is going to look around him and say, OK, so this is what I’m observing from my mom and dad and uncle and aunt and whatnot. And what am I going to do with my life to have a thriving relationship? And I’m tired of people thinking, I fall in love, I fall out of love. Falling is for when you’re not paying attention. So could you preserve that language and use it for the most important thing in life?

00:50:30 Rosemary
That’s a beautiful motivation, a mama’s heart. How old is your son now?

00:50:34 Dr Sara
11.

00:50:34 Rosemary
Oh, you have lots of time to model and inculcate the wisdom from this book into his life lessons, so that’s wonderful.

00:50:44 Dr Sara
Thank you. I’m hoping for him and the generations to come, hopefully. And I’m not saying that this is for everyone, but at least we are going to because this is a whole new model of love.

00:50:56 Rosemary
I’m just going to say, because you referenced it earlier, rather than submergent love, which is what was there before you created this book, you’ve called it the Emergent Love model. Yeah, I invite you to share about it. As I said in the title, 6 relational ingredients which are attraction, respect, trust, shared vision, that came up earlier, respect came up earlier, compassion came up earlier, and loving behaviors. So please yes, tell us about how you developed this model. I know you spent a decade conducting research for this book, so please tell us how all these pieces came together.

00:51:33 Dr Sara
Sure, thank you for the opportunity to share this. The first piece of it is that I would like for people to know, is this was done with actual couples. We didn’t go after convenience sampling and we didn’t go after… I have so much respect for all the other research, but when you do research around love and relationship with college students, I love college students. How much experience do they have? So that aside, so this research was 312 couples that I worked with. Retrospectively, I looked at all of the accounts that I had from them and the criteria was they had to be together with me for at least a year. Out of that research came this emergent love model. So instead of love comes first, the rest will follow. There are ingredients that need to be in place to… for love, to even have a chance to even emerge. Meaning, imagine the spark and the log come together in a conducive context. Oxygen, warm dry weather, it gives you a cozy fire. It keeps giving for as long as you keep giving what is needed, the log the spark. Now, starts raining a little bit, or you wet the log a little bit. Take the spark out. You don’t have a fire. And people don’t pay attention to that. They come to me and say we lost attraction. Attraction is not the first thing that goes away. Liking-ness is the one that goes away. We stop liking each other and then that escalates down. So there were so many words that are used like respect and trust, and people say, Oh yeah, we heard about that. But if they bear with me, they will see that we define them differently. So hopefully this is just a limitation of language that we have the same word. But I’m hoping that people really take this, not just another conversation about love, Just give it a chance. And if it resonates with them, I’m hoping that they can cultivate that loving relationship. Now after the 312 couples, then we took the results of that, with Dr Oza Amina. We put them into another research that was with 159 US representative couples. They’ve been together between one year to 40 years. So we got them together and this is their way that we’ve planned. I wanted to see, that first one could have been just an account of a researcher and a therapist, but I wanted more. I wanted to make sure that this is scalable. I can’t just say, you know what, this is my observation, why don’t you do it? As a scientist. I can’t do that. And then so we put that and then amongst those people, we also broke them down into individuals. So more than 314 individuals also took part in the survey. When I say US representative, it means that the representatives of the races, sexual relational orientation and all of those, gender, ethnicity, all of those we included, accounted for, education level. But then obviously there are limitations to the research because they didn’t speak English at a certain level to be able to take part. So there are limitations to it as well. Out of that came new definitions of reciprocal compassion, reciprocal trust, reciprocal loving behavior. So these are the ones that we are trying to define. So that log and spark, what are those? Remember how I said I’m interested to give people practical tools that tomorrow, what do I do? What do I do differently? What do I do more of, less of? That was the whole purpose of bringing this whole thing together and then giving these six ingredients, and I called them ingredients because they’re not pillars. They move with us over different phases of life. One day I need to sprinkle more compassion. One other day I need to sprinkle more respect, or different phases that you go through as a couple. So that is the research. So submergent was 1 + 1 = 1. Find your better half, other half, another half in all of that. This is emergent love. 1 + 1 = 3, so the third being the fire.

00:55:53 Rosemary
That makes sense because if you look at the difference, if you think back in a relationship how it was when you first got together, there would be flowers, there would be dinners. It was just such a different dynamic. And then maybe you’ve been married for 10 years and it’s, I haven’t had my shower yet. I’m tired. The kids have been driving me crazy. Take the garbage out, clean up after the dog and it shifts. But being conscious of the elements and being able to… sure, there may be some of that day-to-day take out the trash, but there would also be consciously created moments where you bring back the flowers and the dinners and how you felt about each other early on. Am I understanding that correctly?

00:56:34 Dr Sara
Absolutely. And also, so for example, taking out the garbage for me is respect. I describe it in the chapter of respect. People talk about the language of love. Language of love was an amazing model. Many people were really helped by it. But we need to go further because when I asked my couples, how do you know your partner is attracted to you? That I put gas in the car? No. And then we talk about touch lexicon, for example, different type of touch that we give to each other, invites different type of being around each other. So if your language of love is acts of service, you might come and give me a cup of tea, but that doesn’t invite me to have hot sex with you or even come watch a TV show with you. So it’s very interesting to me that we can’t really be reductionist. We need to make sure that people have enough agency to create their own soup that they want with the ingredients. But they need to know what is non-negotiable. And they need to know when I say, oh, I love you Rosemary, what does that mean? Loving has so many different very specific qualities to it. It needs to be exclusive. I’m not talking about monogamous relationships. I’m talking about exclusive acts that you have only with that person. Certain way of kissing, greeting, certain way of building energy around each other. Then language. For God’s sake. People say I love you and then they say to their dog I love you. They say I love you to their socks. They say I love you to their favorite dessert. How do you differentiate that? So there are little things that giving benefit of the doubt is another one of the loving behavior showing up for the other person, making their life a little bit easier that day. Certain nicknames that we create for one another. Touch. The exclusive touch that we give to one another. So all of those ingredients, I tried to make them as tangible on a daily basis, so people can actually measure themselves to see whether they are showing up with those or not. And then we came up out of this research with eight different relational configurations that it’s not just again 1 + 1 = 1 that works for everybody. That’s submergent love model. Some people aren’t together because they’re religion says so that’s OK. Even within that you can cultivate a sense of fulfillment or for example friends with benefits. There’s so many configurations just to normalize as when we say couples, who is the couple in the modern world that we are talking about. And people can pick and choose, but at least pick and choose intentionally. So that’s one. The other thing that came out of this was the 360° review of a coupledom. It’s a validated questionnaire that they go in and then just take it. It’s 30 minutes. It’s called the Relationship Panoramic Inventory. They take it, they know what the strong laces are, what are the ingredients that are actually working really well, and what are the ingredients that they need to work on. So for example, one person says, puts a very high record in that graph that says I respect you a lot, but then in front of it, you say I don’t feel respected in this relationship. So it’s how it’s expressed, how it’s experienced by the other person so we don’t leave room for misunderstanding and also assumptions. Hopefully, if people really choose to really have. All I’m saying is there is another way. If you are suffering, or even if you’re not suffering, you really would like to have thriving, loving relationships, please don’t settle. There’s a way

01:00:30 Rosemary
Yeah. I’m curious, just a quick question, the 360 assessments that I’m aware of get input from others as well. Did yours do that as well or was it all self reporting?

01:00:40 Dr Sara
No, we stopped before the… actually it is really funny because the 360 language and even the idea came to me because I work with a lot of corporate entities and we have those. They have annual reviews of 360 and I was actually thinking very frustrated. I was thinking why don’t we have that for relationships and there was that are out there for me is the predictor of the problems. So like almost pathological because it’s like a psychological oriented. For me, I wanted to know what is working? Because in any relationship we’re going to have cracks over time. As long as you attend to the cracks and you’re aware of them, they don’t become chasms obvious. That was my idea that if we are going overtime, I can’t constantly with the busy life I have constantly keep checking the relationship. I want to have something go to take an X-ray of the relationship, make sure everything is fine. OK, more tweaking here and then a little bit more effort here and then carrying on. So that piece of it. But there’s no input from others. It’s only people involved in it. And another thing is some people ask me if we have multiple partners, how do we do that? You do it in dyads. 

Rosemary:
That makes sense.

Dr Sarah:
Because it’s only validated for dyads, pair dyads, and then you can put them all together, but it’s for two people at a time.

01:02:05 Rosemary
That would be very interesting to read the results of that. Thank you. You’ve been named one of the best love doctors and one of the 10 best sex and dating experts. You also hosted, or perhaps you’re still hosting. I’m not quite clear. The Whispers, for BBC World Service. Is that still something you’re actively doing?

01:02:26 Dr Sara
No, the show I’m not doing. The last one I did was last year. OK, well that was the last one I did.

01:02:33 Rosemary
OK. And I’m just going to explain for our listeners, it’s, The Whispers is a first of its kind program on sexuality and relationship issues to the broadcast in the Middle East. And even though you’ve recorded the last episode, it continues to reach millions of Farsi speakers globally. So tell us about how this came to be and how was The Whispers born and how is it impacting listeners around the world?

01:02:59 Dr Sara
That’s one of the projects that remains in my heart forever. First of all, I called it Whispers because we all talk about sexuality, but we whisper. So I wanted to bring it out and I want to call it out. So that’s one. The other thing is going back to my childhood, my father always said don’t complain, change it. So if you don’t see something, go create it. You don’t see sexuality education, evidence informed sexuality education. Can you do it? Do it. So that was the whole idea behind it. 

Now, the way that they changed the culture, I feel so honored because initially it was a radio program, meaning that people could access it anywhere. Even the remotest, remember hard to reach, that was the whole idea in my head that nobody’s heart to reach if you know how to reach. And I’m forever grateful for BBC to give me that opportunity forever. Even they were so kind to me that when I told them the content, they sensitive, send me to a class, I want to edit my own show because it’s very sensitive. They did ask that. I’m forever grateful. And then the number of people who called us. Even one time a member of Taliban called the show on a voice messaging system that I had, and it was me and another producer in the room. It was really late at night, tired and hungry. And this voicemail came up and with very thick accent said, I’m translating. “Uh, Hi, Doctor Sarah, this is a message for you. And I came to the town to buy bread for Taliban. I have this question.” This was back then before they take over and all of these. But for me as an educator, a lot of people think we should not even educate people who are not of us. They are the other. They don’t get it, They’re not respectable, whatever. And I’m always thinking if I don’t talk to them, who would? Then they would be surrounded in their own bubble, getting nothing. What do we achieve? So that was one example that I still, it brings goosebumps to me. So that’s how I hope that the culture changed. And since then, I hear people talk about, this is like almost 19 years ago when it first got out radio and then it became a TV show. People use terminologies that they didn’t have. So I worked with The Academy of Languages in Tehran to come up with certain words, for example, for orgasm, for foreplay, for so many different things that we didn’t specifically have the language. And the problem with that is, if you don’t have a word for a concept that is not yours, you can’t have responsibility, accountability, you can’t negotiate consent around it. So the language matters. Now people talk about these and they don’t even know where it came from. That warms my heart.

01:06:01 Rosemary
Beautiful. Wow. You have such a rich, diverse background. We’ve only barely scratched the surface. Is there anything you’d like to speak about that we haven’t touched on, that I haven’t asked you about?

01:06:14 Dr Sara
One thing is I’m grateful every day. I don’t take anything for granted. I feel privileged and blessed with everything I do because it’s not mine… Reflection of the source. And I would like to finish our conversation, if I may, on my part, by reading a poem from a Persian poet, Saadi [Shirazi] the one that is written on the gate of United Nations. And I think in this day and age it might, hopefully it touches people’s hearts.

01:06:43 Rosemary
Thank you, wonderful. 

01:06:47 Dr Sara
Lovely. “Human beings are members of the whole in creation of one essence, and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot retain.” Wow.

01:07:15 Rosemary
Wow. I will reference that in the show notes for our listeners because sometimes I take things in audibly, but I really take them in when I read them. So thank you so much for that. We have a bit of a tradition on The Gifts of Trauma, where we ask our guests to leave our listeners with a phrase. You’ve just given us a beautiful piece of poetry, but a few words or a phrase or a concept that they can reflect on, contemplate, and perhaps will move them forward in their lives. What would you like to say as you offer that to our listeners?

01:07:51 Dr Sara
First, I would like to convey my gratitude to you, and also to the listeners who’ve been with us and spending this time with us. And secondly, I would love everybody to know that true love gives your heart a break, not heartbreak.

01:08:10 Rosemary
True love gives your heart a break. True love does not give heartbreak. Beautiful. Thank you Sara, it has been an absolute pleasure having you with us today. I highly advise all of our listeners who have been interested in this conversation to check out the show notes. There will be resources there for you. All of Sara’s books are listed and so much more. Sara, thank you for all you be and do in this world as you are reflecting source, you are bringing so much good to our planet and our people.

01:08:47 Dr Sara
Thank you kindly. The same to you. Thank you.

01:09:01 Rosemary
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen on Apple, Spotify, all podcast platforms. Rate, review and share it with your clients, colleagues and family. Subscribe and you won’t miss an episode. 

Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for personal therapy or a DIY formula for self therapy.

(957)
My intention… I would love for people to know that when they want to cultivate loving relationships, any kind of thriving relationships, there is a way to do that and there are many ways to do that. Also I would love for people to know where to put their efforts because I believe that everyone deserves to be in a loving relationship they desire. Based on my years of work with clients, I realized that it’s not because of laziness that people don’t have that. It’s because they don’t know where they should put their efforts. So my intention is to introduce my body of work, so our audience have it, whether they take it or not.

When I was a child, my parents, both educated people, compared marriage to a watermelon. “You don’t know what it will look like until you open it up. Will it be tasteless or red and juicy?” That was not a satisfying answer. I kept asking mom and dad why they married, but their answers never satisfied my curiosity. 

I was always interested to see what can create a thriving life. I was never interested in mediocre, so in human relationships, I figured there must be a way not to be a statistic in the divorce section of the laws or newsletters. To not ‘fall out of love’ with somebody… So my drive to understand love and relationships inspired me to study social psychology and eventually specialize in sexuality and relationships.

I wanted that life for myself, that was the selfish part, but another parallel part came from living with paradoxes. When I was a child, the revolution in Iran was happening. To survive, we had to be different people, at home and out in the world. Our lives were on the line. So I learned to navigate, to keep my integrity, values and sense of wellbeing, while doing what I needed to do to survive. 

As a child I also observed that when people have meaningful relationships they acted differently, they seemed to be kinder, more emotionally intelligent. So in my child’s brain, I thought if I helped people communicate better they would have better lives. So my first degree is linguistics. I started there to figure out how to work with language as power, to help people communicate better to make the world better. But over time I realized that what I actually needed to learn was what causes people pain, what mobilizes them, what paralyzes them. 

When I left Iran, I studied research methodology in England, in part because I wanted access to a scalable amount of material. After working with people who were ‘hard to reach’ which I perceived as, nobody’s hard to reach, it’s just that we don’t know how to reach them. So I studied a human motivation model. What motivates people to seek help, to seek advice, and when they do, what advice sticks? Why do people change their lives in this phase of life rather than one? And then clinically, I studied couples counseling and psychosexual therapy because I figured sexuality, for many people, is the most vulnerable place that they connect with another human. And after all these years, I came up with one sentence to describe everything I do. I help people thrive in their relationships, from bedroom to boardroom.

Getting back to what motivates people to ask for help, we seek help when we think we need it. If we don’t feel we need a piece of information, we reject it. But if something resonates with us, we may sit with it quietly. Everything that comes our way has a purpose, or we can make it purposeful for ourselves. So if I’m reading something in a book that feels uncomfortable, it tickles me in a certain way, I stay with it. There’s an arousal in my nervous system. I often tell people to pay attention to their routes of arousal, the sensation of arousal, because we talk about being triggered and trauma so much in our culture now that I honestly feel they are losing their meaning. And people get confused: am I traumatized or angry or frustrated or sad? What’s happening? I even taught this tp my child because little by little, culture beats this ability to sense and feel out of us. Especially cultures where we are not supposed to feel certain ways or ask certain questions. Over time, in cultures like that, our guts get confused. So then when people ask me, can I trust my gut? I say yes. But… often the first part of arousal is discomfort, and many of us culturally are taught to override it. If we catch that sensation, and pay attention, rather than overriding it, a lot of fights won’t happen. A lot of things that we say and regret later, won’t be said. So if we can just catch that level of discomfort, we can attend to it before it escalates to anything else. 

Now imagine what happens in your body when you feel annoyed. Differentiate between feelings of discomfort and being annoyed. Imagine being in a situation where you feel hurt. How is that different from being uncomfortable or annoyed? And think about being offended. For me, that feels like being punched in the gut, but for you it might be something else. Then,how is that different from being uncomfortable, annoyed or hurt? Being aware will stop us from going from 0 to 100 in a split second, without even knowing what happened. If people know how to distinguish between these sensations of arousal in the body, they will manage their communications and relational spaces with more intention and responsiveness rather than reactivity.