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LOVE SAFETY
NET
Transcript
of August 3, 2009, program
“Peer Attachment & Emotional Stupidity”
STEVE: Hi everyone.
Welcome to The Love Safety Net.
KIM: I’m Kim. STEVE:
And I’m Steve. And today’s show is titled “Peer Attachment and
Emotional
Stupidity”. KIM: We are
hoping on today’s show that we can really motivate you to do
what I know
is sometimes the hard work, but that is work that is needed in
creating strong and healthy
attachments to your family and to keep your family close to you.
STEVE: And also to start choosing more healthy friends for
yourself. KIM: Mmm. I
also hope that in this show we can get you curious enough to buy
and
read my new eBook, which is called Emotional Stupidity.
STEVE: Congratulations for getting that finished, Kim. I
know you were under a lot of
pressure the last couple months getting that done.
KIM: (laughing) Yeah…it has taken a bit of time. So
today’s show is called “Peer
Attachment and Emotional Stupidity”. So I guess they are
slightly different topics, but
they do tie together quite well, don’t they?
STEVE: They do. Emotional Stupidity is the name of Kim’s
new eBook, so we will
leave that for the second part of the show. Let’s get straight
into it right away, Kim. Peer
attachment…what is a good definition of peer attachment, Kim?
KIM: Well, peer attachment—as Gordon Neufeld says in his
wonderful book Hold
Onto Your Kids, that we refer to all the time and we just love
his work. I believe it was
him who coined the phrase ‘peer attachment’. It is when someone
is attached to people
their own age and friends of their own age rather than having
healthy and strong
attachments to people who are older than them in their family,
in their community, and in
their life. STEVE: And he
talks about the idea with teenagers in his book, Hold Onto Your
Kids. KIM: With
teenagers, yes. But, my theory is narcissism as it’s described
in the
detrimental effects on relationships and as it plays out in
relationships really is just an
extension of peer attachment, I believe. A peer-attached
teenager, if they don’t get
through that, will grow into a narcissistic adult.
STEVE: Absolutely. So why is that dangerous, Kim? I mean,
what is dangerous about
learning about the world from your peers.
KIM: Well, I think you just said it yourself. I mean, is
it a smart idea to learn about the
world from people your own age, or should we really be learning
about the world from
people older than us? STEVE:
Well, I think that question sort of answers itself, doesn’t it.
Gordon Neufeld in
his book Hold Onto Your Kids really does go into that in a lot
more depth. We highly
encourage you to read it, if you haven’t already read it. I know
a lot of people who have
bought our eBooks have gone ahead and borrowed it from the
library and purchased this
book. It is really, really powerful for you to learn about and
to read. It will help you—
even if you don’t have kids. It will help you for your own
benefit in knowing just the
basic theory of what we are talking about here in peer
attachment. KIM: Yes.
What Gordon Neufeld talks about—when you asked what’s dangerous
about
this, Steve—he talks about how as a psychologist he goes in and
he is given the job to
work with families of teenagers who are suicidal and with their
friends—a very
unenviable job. It must have been horrible work. But when they
first went in and started
doing this they really didn’t know what they were going to find.
And they said, okay
what’s causing this. What are the contributing factors? Why is
teenage suicide on the
rise? And when they went in I think what they discovered really
surprised them.
Because what they found in100% of the cases that they
studied—and this was many,
many cases over many years—that in 100% of the cases it was peer
rejection that was the
cause of teenage suicide. And they were thinking, OK, so we see
this but how can this
be. Not all teenagers commit suicide when their peers reject
them. And peer rejection is
extremely painful, but it’s such a—
STEVE: Well, it’s part of growing up, isn’t it? I mean all
of us experienced some peer
rejection at some stage. KIM:
Yeah, well we all have had a boyfriend or girlfriend dump us or
friends decide they
want to hang out with someone else. So they dug deeper and what
they found beneath
this was that it was the kids that didn’t have a strong
attachment to a parent or a parental
figure in their life were really hit the hardest and this was
when the suicides were
occurring. This really isn’t always the parent’s fault either. I
mean, it’s easy to point the
finger at the parents in this case, but it’s really difficult to
keep our children attached to us
now. There is so much competing with us. The kids have social
networking and the kids
have their mobile phones. And so much emphasis is placed on
friendship for kids. The
assumption is, whether your kid has friends or not is the most
important thing in the
whole world. Gordon Neufeld argues quite convincingly against
this. He says that
friendship is very overrated in children and teenagers. He
believes it is actually
impossible to have a true friendship with someone until you have
grown up. And I do
think I agree with him and understand that now.
STEVE: Yeah, I think I understand what he is getting at
too. That’s a really good point.
That is not to say that kids shouldn’t have friends.
KIM: No. STEVE: We
are not trying to take this too far in the other direction, and
neither is
Gordon. KIM: No. But you
need to be aware of whether your children and your family are
attached to you or not. If they are being rude to you, if they
are being disrespectful of
you, if they have no desire to spend time with you, you don’t
have a healthy attachment.
It is very, very important that this becomes your primary
objective is working on that first
before you worry about their behavior, before you worry about
discipline, before you
worry about anything else, particularly in a teenager. I mean,
in any family member there
are different methods. We go into them in our work and in
Gordon’s book, Hold Onto
Your Kids, there are different ways you can work on bringing
that attachment back. STEVE:
So a lot of the people who listen to our show are in troubled
relationships. They
are having difficulty with their partners and not their teenage
kids. KIM: Mmm.
STEVE: So can I just stop you before we move onto the next
topic and ask you how is
this relevant to somebody who doesn’t have a teenage kid? We are
trying to build a bit of
a profile here (I don’t want to answer my own question) but what
we are trying to do is to
give you an idea where somebody’s head might be at when they are
peer attached as a
teenager and don’t grow out of that into their 20s and beyond?
KIM: Yes. STEVE:
Sorry, I did answer my own question.
KIM: That’s okay. And I should say I so look forward to
talking to you about all of this
once a week. It’s great. STEVE:
Yeah, I enjoy getting on the radio with you too, Kim. It’s good
fun. KIM: (laughing) I
think what you are saying here is that yes it is important and
it’s
something that needs to be tackled. I think too often they will
see how their teenager is
behaving and will see it as some kind of a phase that they are
going through. I think that
is very dangerous because at what stage do you decide, well
maybe they are not going to
grow out of this. STEVE:
Yeah.
KIM: And are you still going to be in a position of any
influence once your kids have
grown up and moved out and they still don’t listen to you, have
any respect for you, or
want to spend any time with you. It’s going to be much, much
harder for you to collect
them and bring them back to a warm and loving relationship with
yourself. The effects
down the line as an adult I think is very clear to our audience.
Because really this can
wreck havoc on people’s marriages, people’s relationships and
can lead to some pretty
disastrous results. You know, narcissistic adults don’t tend to
be suicidal as a whole. But
they do very often end up bankrupt, they end up divorced, they
end up alienated from the
rest of their family. So there are some fairly serious
consequences. I might add it was really in the 60s with
the baby boomers when they started growing up that peer
attachment first really took hold of the planet in a big way.
And you could argue this has had some fairly disastrous results.
I mean, this idea of don’t trust anyone who is over 30 became
popular. I mean, at least people aren’t talking about that kind
of nonsense now. But it is really important we have
relationships beyond our peers and with older members of the
community if we want to be healthy.
STEVE: The idea that this whole thing took off in the baby
boomers in the 60s and 70s is
a really good indicator of what we are talking about. Before
that, Kim, I saw a statistic
once that before the turn of the 20th century—well before the
Industrial Revolution, let’s
just say in the mid 19th century—96 or 97% of the world’s
population was involved in
agriculture. The work force was agricultural. And so what this
translated to in terms of
families and how people related to each other and in communities
is that you would have
young men and women working with their fathers and their
mothers, and also working
with their uncles and their aunts, and also working with their
grandfathers and
grandmothers, and possibly even beyond. So there was this
amazing social fabric that
was based on people working together, being close knit, relying
on each other. KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: In terms of their income and in terms of what was
going to be on their plate for
dinner that night. That was 97% of the entire workforce.
KIM: Yeah. STEVE: I
don’t know what the agricultural workforce is now, but it’s
drastically
shortened. And we don’t have those same opportunities to work
alongside our different
generations anymore. KIM:
And I think if we look in the society around us, it’s not hard
to see how much
security and accountability we have lost because of that. There
isn’t the same
accountability when you are just working with your peers as when
there are vertical
attachments and when there are people older than yourself
looking on at what’s
happening. And there is security. So what I would really like to
give an example now is
how people can really do something practical to work on their
families with this.
Because I think we are pretty proactive and we always want to
come from that position.
You really can take a proactive role in choosing what kind of
relationships you are going
to have and your family is going to have and foster positive
relationships with the broader
community. Obviously work on a healthy attachment with your
family members. That is
what always comes first. Being friendly, being polite, making an
effort to show your
family members you are interested in them and you like them
regardless of how they are
treating you. Because you are going to have some resistance
against this at first if there
isn’t a healthy attachment. It is going to take patience, and
it’s going to take time. We
are always coming back to the one of greeting your partner
warmly every time you see
them.
Hi, Steve. STEVE: Hi,
Kim. KIM: Great to see
you.
This is very, very important. You will notice if you look
around, this is what popular
people do. They greet their friends. They greet each other very
warmly when they see
each other and by name. They will say, “Sally, hi, great to see
you!” And look them in
the eyes. STEVE: Eyebrows
raised. Smiling face. KIM:
Yes, smiling. Absolutely. This is very, very important. But you
can also really be
proactive in choosing what kind of relationships you are going
to promote within your
family. There will be some relationships that you need to sever
if you want your family
life to become healthier and better adjusted if at the moment
it’s dysfunctional. And as
difficult and as sad as you may feel about that. You may think,
well I don’t have very
many friends; sometimes allowing some relationships to end will
make room for better,
new ones. Particularly if that relationship is built on
addictions you want to get past and
you want to get over. If you want to stop drinking or become a
nonsmoker, you are going
to have to leave those friends behind.
STEVE: Yeah, the drinkers and the smokers are going to
have to not be your friends for a
while. And look, there is a grieving process there, too. You
have to be honest. If you are
at that stage and you really want to leave behind drinking,
let’s say. You are going to
have to leave your drinking buddies behind. You are going to
have to grieve that part of
yourself and that relationship. That is gong to be part of the
healing as well. KIM:
Now, if you are working with your partner, who may not have the
same motivation
that you do, there are still things you can do. I mean, this is
probably the biggest
stumbling block that anyone has ever faced with our program. We
get letters from people
all the time having difficulty with this. I will go into this
for just a minute, okay Steve.
We talk a lot in our eBooks about how to get help from the
police if you need it. Because
obviously if there is physical abuse in your family or in your
home, you need to know
how to get help from the police. We certainly don’t advise you
try to stand up to that or
deal with that without the support.
STEVE: The police are basically your only option.
KIM: But then a lot of people will write and they will say
my partner isn’t doing
anything that warrants me calling the police. And they think
then that somehow the other
things we are offering aren’t going to work. I mean, I get
shivers sometimes when people
say I just wish he was hitting me because then I could do
something about it. And I
think, crikey, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t ever wish that. And
really you are in a much
better position obviously if things haven’t deteriorated to that
stage. And then I will refer
people to our Personal Bill of Rights exercise, which is in The
Love Safety Net
Workbook. This is a very, very effective exercise at limiting
abuse—whether it’s
emotional abuse, whether it’s how your partner is talking to
your kids. This involves
forming a network of people around your partner in the community
that are also keeping
an eye out and if necessary having a word with your partner
about these things. You need
to talk to these people. But either way you are talking to these
people. You are saying “I
am concerned about my partner”. It’s not like you are dobbing
them in or you’re not on
their side. So when people
start working with this, the next response we get is there isn’t
anybody
like that in my partner’s life. There aren’t people around them
who they will listen to or
who will hold them accountable or who can have some kind of
influence on my partner’s
behavior. This may sound complicated and it may sound time
consuming, but this is
incredibly important. If your partner doesn’t have those kind of
people around them in
their life, you need to start introducing your partner to these
kinds of people. And that
was exactly what happened to you, wasn’t it, Steve?
STEVE: That’s right. I mean, my attachments were peer
attachments, so there wasn’t
really any leverage you had with those people.
KIM: Well, they were just as irresponsible as you.
STEVE: That’s right. They weren’t really going to help you
to help me. KIM: No. And
I was living in the Bush on my own—not on my own, but I mean, I
felt
very much on my own a lot of the time. You were away at work. I
had three very young
kids. We had moved there from a different state so I didn’t
really know anyone. We were
right in the middle of nowhere. So if I could reach out and find
other people to introduce
you to, I don’t think anyone’s got an excuse. We were very
isolated, but I made the effort
to attend business networking meetings in the city nearest where
we were living at that
stage. I saw a magazine article about a medieval re-enactment
group that was operating
nearby and I gave them a call and said, “Do you want to come and
do an event on our
property?” and then sat back and watched very carefully and
decided who in that group
looked like good people to form relationships with. I really
spent a lot of time doing this.
There was also an elderly gentleman who was an ex-minister that
I actually met I think in
a business networking meeting, who had an interest in gardening,
and so did you, Steve.
I introduced you two, and you actually did become friends. And
without that relationship
I don’t think I would have had much hope in turning things
around with you. Tom was
not only a positive influence on you, but he was somebody who
you didn’t want to know
about the other side of your life and things that were
happening. STEVE: Sure. I
think we need to make this point here. Let’s just stay on our
story here,
Kim. Because I was acting so poorly, you needed to do something.
But the thing was I
just needed that chance to grow out of it as well. So when I was
completely peer
attached, I wasn’t presenting that choice for myself. There was
no chance for me to
grow. There was no need for me to grow when I had that peer
attachment and I was being
egged-on perhaps to remain the irresponsible person that I was
and not allowing any truth
to come out. So when this new relationship started forming—and
some other ones
started as well—I was able to say, okay well I am able to step
up to the plate now. I can
show myself, as well as Kim, that there is room for me in this
family. There is room for
me to be the person you need me to be.
KIM: And there were other people encouraging you to do the
right thing instead of just
myself.
STEVE: Yes, that’s
right. And it’s very emotional for you to try and get me to
grow.
Because that was such an emotional need for you—you were needing
me to treat you
better, you were needing me to show you that I loved you more—
KIM: Yeah. STEVE:
Because that was so emotional, there was not a lot of chance for
you to do that
in a way that was going to have any leverage because you would
get too emotional, too
sad, too overwrought, and the message would get distorted
through that emotion. When
the message was coming through from other people, it was able to
hit harder. It was
clearer for me. It was like, okay, I can grow.
KIM: And they didn’t even necessarily have to talk to you.
There were people around
who were just a better example and who you knew your bad
behavior and your
childishness wasn’t going to cut it with. I liked when you said
the people you had been
peer attached to had been egging you on, and that’s exactly
right. They were actually
working against you growing.
STEVE: That’s right. KIM:
Any time you wanted to be a better father, be more responsible,
spend more time
with us, you had these people around you that were completely
discouraging you and
pulling you back, even if you had wanted to. So these
relationships are extremely
important. Unless you are aware of them and whether they
positively or negatively
impact your family, you are not really going to have much hope
of moving forward I
don’t think. It is worth the time, it is worth the time to go
out and meet solid people in
your community. People who are a little bit older than yourself
who can offer you some
advice and stability and get involved in some activities.
STEVE: It is really so powerful if you can do that. If you
do have a difficult partner—if
you are a woman—many people that are listening to this show who
have a difficult
partner, you’ll really have a lot of benefit from picking out
stable people who are older
than you. And people who are older than you are usually really
happy to come in and
share with them. Older people, that is what they are here for.
They are here to say, hey,
I’ve got this wisdom. Let me help you. Older people are more
into service than you
think. KIM: And my
experience is that particularly narcissistic men are usually so
very much
craving a positive father figure. They really are craving that.
So if you do find an older
solid man who has some kind of similar interests to your
partner, it really isn’t going to
be difficult to foster that friendship and that relationship.
STEVE: Oh, that’s for sure.
KIM: I think you’ll find that your partner actually just
soaks it up. STEVE: And
it may sound scary too, thinking I’ve got to go out and find an
older friend
for my partner. It really is a bit of a terrifying thought,
isn’t it. But as long as you don’t
have any fixed ideas about who it might be, or get too attached
to what the outcome
might be. KIM: Or be
patronizing. I mean, you don’t go to this person and say, “My
partner is an
irresponsible child and could you please be his father.” I mean,
that’s not going to work.
STEVE: That’s an emotionally stupid thing to do.
KIM: (laughing) You need to actually do this with you
being respectful as well, and
giving your partner a chance to come up to the plate. You need
to introduce them as
equals. I mean, with you and Tom it was you both had an interest
in horticulture so that
made it really easy. You were living on a big property and he
ran a local horticulture
group, so he was quite happy to come out and talk gardening with
you—all day long!
STEVE: That’s right. So it wasn’t so confronting with me and
there was a little bit of
pressure off you, Kim, even though you had made the connection.
It was because of that
connection we had through gardening that we were able to get the
ball rolling with
getting along. And it wasn’t such you in the hot seat any more.
Even though you were
masterminding some things. KIM:
And then it became easier for you to see that a lot of the
behavior that I was
unhappy about was behavior that maybe perhaps needed to end
because you would have
been embarrassed for Tom to know about that. And the fact that
you would have been
embarrassed brought it more clearly into your mind that these
things were wrong. When
you are surrounded by people who are peers who are just egging
you on to do the wrong
thing, it’s easier for you to go what’s wrong with me being out
late drinking at night and
what’s wrong with pornography and what’s wrong with that.
Suddenly when you have
older, more responsible people around you and I could just say,
whoa, am I going to have
to talk to Tom about this problem? I remember that’s when things
really changed with
you. You just went completely white. It wasn’t really so much
like I was threatening
you. It was more like you seeing yourself.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right. It was a reflection of my own
behavior. KIM: You saw
yourself that you were ashamed of yourself and you didn’t want
Tom to
know about the other stuff you were doing. You would have been
really ashamed about
that. STEVE: Sure. And
that didn’t really give me a chance to have a tantrum and blame
you
either, which would have been my old way of dealing with it.
“Oh, no, she’s only saying
that because she’s jealous.”
KIM: Oh boy, that threw you off when you knew I was
friends with the local police.
STEVE: Sure. And the four-legged stool exercise, which is
also in The Love Safety Net
Workbook goes into all of the steps that help out with this step
at the same time. It’s not
that just taking these steps we just described now is going to
solve everything. KIM:
No. STEVE: There are a
whole bunch of other steps. And that’s why we write books about
it, is because it isn’t something we can just wrap up in one
radio show. KIM: I wish
it was that simple, but unfortunately it’s not and we do our
best to describe
how we turned things around, because really we have. We get so
many testimonials from
people saying that they have too. I definitely know that there
is hope, if you are in a
dysfunctional relationship and you are having troubles with your
family. But we are
certainly not saying it is easy. It’s not going to happen
overnight. And it’s probably
dangerous to hop in too quickly and try to implement these
things. As you say, Steve,
really do make the small investment in our eBooks. They were
written with so much
love and what kind of heartache and experience did we have to go
through to win the
experience that we gained to write those. And that is why the
four-legged stool exercise
is there, because there are four major elements to our work. And
you do really need to be
working on all these aspects.
And this is not just for your partner. It is not just to help
them. It is for you to learn
better relationship skills. It is really going to benefit every
aspect of your life. STEVE:
That’s right. Your relationship comes first and that’s a nice
way to finish our
discussion about peer attachment, because the relationships
still do come first. Whatever
you are trying to do, it doesn’t matter—whether it’s in your
family, in your community, in
your business, in your street where you live, the building you
live— KIM: Yeah, the
relationship comes before the deal. (laughing)
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
KIM: And if you really learn and practice that, you will
have a healthy business. It really
matters who you do business with. It really matters that you are
in relationship with
people you do business with. It goes right through the community
what we are talking
about. STEVE: So, Kim.
What about the new eBook. We are going to talk about emotional
stupidity now. Emotional Stupidity is the title of our new eBook.
KIM: I never thought you would ask.
STEVE: We have just about got it ready. It should be out
very soon, if not already. KIM:
Well, it will be available by the time this show is archived. We
are going to have a
bit of a pre-launch special for Global Talk Radio listeners to
read it first and hopefully
send us in a few testimonials. It would be nice to have a few
testimonials before we do
the official launch, so you have a chance to actually be one of
the first people to read the
book at a discount. There should be an add for that on the page
where you see this show.
Wow, emotional stupidity…what can I say? It was so big writing
this book. It took me
so much longer than I thought it was going to. It took me to
some extremely dark places,
but I as always attempt to keep it very readable—and I couldn’t
say light. (laughing) But
to offer the subject in a positive context. I was really happy
to finally have a chance to
write about something a little bit broader than just narcissism,
because I have been
speaking about and writing about narcissism for over two years
now. This is still
extremely relevant to anyone living with narcissism in their
family or in their life. And I
think what is great about it is it really demonstrates how these
same problems that are
happening on a smaller level with families—it’s like an
onion—the layers just keep going
out and out. The same situations are happening right through
society to the highest levels.
Things that seemed small and maybe even perhaps laughable—just
stupid things people
do and ways they handle their emotions badly, you can look at it
and go, “oh, that’s so
stupid” and then you think, hang on I remember a time I did
that. And just how quickly
this unwinds. And how quickly tragedy can set in or things just
really get taken down
very quickly when we don’t have the right emotional skills.
STEVE: That’s right, we were talking about relationship
skills before, and I think a big
part of that is managing your emotions and having emotional
intelligence. I guess the
book Emotional Intelligence had something to do with Emotional
Stupidity, Kim? KIM: Oh
of course, I am an enormous Daniel Goleman fan, as who anyone
who reads
any of my books or listens to our shows would know. What I guess
I tried to do—
Goleman’s work is fantastic but it is very academic and his
books are quite long—so I
tried to sort of boil this down into something that is a faster
read and easier to look at.
But there is a real mechanism at work in this book. It’s from
one of Daniel Goleman’s
books itself, it’s called Vital Lies, Simple Truths - The
Psychology of Self-Deception, .
This is really quite difficult to understand and complicated
book. But at the heart of it is
saying how we perceive ourselves and how to look at things that
are embarrassing to
ourselves. We don’t want to look at ways that perhaps we are
stupid. STEVE: Well,
emotionally stupid. KIM:
Yeah. So this was sort of the premise of the whole book,
Emotional Stupidity, is
that if you have the courage to look at the different chapters
of the different emotionally
stupid things that we all do, it may cause a bit of a grimace
and you may feel a little bit
squirmy reading some of these things. I don’t think there are
any of us who are not guilty
of some of them. But this emotion of embarrassment is really
underrated because it is the
most powerful thing for creating change in us. So rather than
always looking at things
from the positive, I thought if people want fast change, the
idea of looking at this from
the other side. Rather than something that is emotionally
intelligent, let’s just look
straight in the face of what emotional stupidity looks like.
STEVE: Let’s face it. We’ve all done it. We’ve all been
there. And it’s not something to
be ashamed of necessarily. What you are saying is there is
something very powerful in
that for you. KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And part of your book, Emotional Stupidity is about
trying to help us
understand how we can work that to our advantage or how we can
implement that into
our growth. Because that is basically what our whole show is
about—and this book is
about too—it’s about growing past that. All of our materials in
general are based on that.
There are some really horrible junctures in our lives where we
are at odds with each
other, we are at odds with ourselves, and we need to be able to
just get through it and not
get stuck there. KIM:
Yeah. STEVE: So the
embarrassment and shame—I think there are even some people who
suggest, and there are theories, that shame and guilt have been
one of the biggest
currencies in our civilization for a long time. And we have been
manipulated to be
fearful of shame and guilt, whereas I think this new book you
are talking about is saying,
okay, let’s look at it. We are all capable of being emotionally
stupid, we have all done it
and we may just do it again, but let’s just take a look at it.
KIM: Well, I think anyone who has the courage to read and
look into these things—and I
really encourage at the beginning of the book for people to look
at themselves and not use
the book as an excuse to point the finger at other people.
STEVE: Wow, that’s a good point.
KIM: (laughs) Yeah. And I think anyone who does that and
has the courage to say okay,
I’m ready to look at myself in these things, there really is a
lot in there to be gained at the
personal level, at the level of family, and also at the level of
a lot of the world and global
problems we are facing at the moment. When you look at it—and I
guess that’s what
surprised me writing this book—is how much emotional stupidity
is just at the center of
all of that. It seems to be at the center of just about
everything that we are doing wrong.
STEVE: (laughing) KIM:
(laughing) Maybe that’s just because I have immersed myself in
it for too long
writing this book. But even though I am pointing out the
emotionally stupid things, there
really is a lot of room in this for hope. Because some problems
that seem really
enormous and insurmountable, when you break it down really can
change quite quickly
with just a different understanding of our emotions and a
different understanding of how
to regulate and manage them better.
STEVE: Sure, so can I just say that since I have been
doing quite a lot of customer
service and quite a lot of answering reader’s questions over the
past nearly 12 months we
do get a lot of people writing to us, asking specific questions.
It’s not that we feel these
people are stupid, and the material for your book Emotional
Stupidity hasn’t come from
any of those questions. KIM:
No. STEVE: But I do just
want to make the point that Kim and I just moved into a phase.
Kim has been trying to write this book for a long time and has
had a lot of difficulty
getting the time because our business is taking up so much of
our time. We do get a lot of
people writing to us, so we have put on some staff to help
manage some of that mail that
comes in. KIM: Some more
staff.
STEVE: So we may not be answering as much mail as we used
to, but I just wanted to
make this point because people that do write to us and want to
get any kind of personal
feedback from us in our own situation, the times it has happened
over the past couple
years we have discovered, Kim, that we haven’t really helped
them.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: When we work personally with people and go back and
forth with emails. KIM:
Not nearly as much as the people that just read the material in
our eBooks and get
in and do the work. And don’t make excuses, and don’t worry if
it doesn’t exactly fit
their situation. They just get in and they work on it. And we
know that that works
because we get the testimonials from people.
STEVE: Absolutely. KIM:
And then there are other people we worked with for really long
periods of time and
answered so many questions and tried to help them personally.
STEVE: And they have become friends almost. We have gotten
to know their situation
really intimately. KIM:
And then we feel bad because some of those people have not had
the same results
and they are still really struggling. It’s really great that you
brought that up, Steve.
Because it’s not that we don’t want to have time for people. It
has gotten to the point
where we just are not physically able to manage all the mail we
get. It is also that really
after two years we have seen that. We are not counselors. We are
not able to give people
personal advice. And really the heart of our advice is taking
action. If you do read, we
really encourage people get both Back From the Looking Glass and
The Love Safety Net
Workbook if they are part of an abusive relationship that they
need help with. I
recommend they read both of them completely first before they
come up with a plan and
before they start deciding what changes they are going to make.
It is not necessary to
take every action we talk about. Some of them are not going to
be appropriate in every
situation. If you are not in a situation where it is appropriate
to call the police, by all
means don’t call the police. Read through and look at what is
appropriate.
But yeah, the amount of testimonials we get is just amazing from
people who just get in
and try it. They say this is going to be hard, this is going to
be difficult, but I’m going to
do it. STEVE: And I
wanted to mention that too, because the new book Emotional
Stupidity is
a bit shorter than the other books we have. But they are all
quite short. They are all
books you can read reasonably quickly. They are books you often
have to read two,
three, or four times. And it’s not a big imposition on you
because it’s not 900 pages, they
are quite short. There is a lot of material in there. And Kim is
quite a good writer
because she cuts to the chase. I wanted to mention that too,
because Emotional Stupidity
—if you are one of the people who take advantage of the offer
this week and grab a copy
—do take the time to read it, and read it a couple of times.
Because there isn’t a lot we
can help you with personally. We supplement the information that
we write in our books
through this radio program. But we can’t supplement it in
personal emails. And I wanted
to mention that too, because you will get an email from one of
our staff. There are about
four or five people on our staff now.
KIM: If you write to us.
STEVE: If you do write to us. And look, they will send you
to the right piece of material
or a nice link or somewhere else in our site where we may be
answering your specific
question. But in a nutshell, take the time to read the books,
take the time to let it sink in,
and take the time to adjust it to your specific situation.
Because we know everybody out
there is in their specific situation. And that’s the problem
with domestic violence and
domestic discord is because every situation is different. There
is always an anomaly
here, or a discrepancy there, with everyone’s story and it is
something we can’t just throw
out a blanket solution for.
KIM: And you need to use your own intuition when deciding
which of our points and
which of our steps and exercises are going to help you. But you
also have to be aware
that some of the ones you are the most scared of are probably
the ones you need to work
on the most. STEVE: Like
the one we were talking about before with peer attachment,
finding
somebody a little bit older than your partner. That can be
terrifying. I’m sure it wasn’t
easy for you, Kim. I’m sure you didn’t have a clear idea of who
that was going to be. KIM:
No. But the thing is that the other thing we get quite regularly
from people is that
their partner is not worth it and why should I do all this work
to help them. But quickly,
Steve, really it was just as much for me that I did those
things. I mean, back at that time I
didn’t know you were going to get better. I had no idea you were
going to get better. I
was doing those things to save myself. I was doing these things
so at the end of the day I
could say this did help and things are great with us now, but I
had to face the fact that I
was somebody who my whole life had let people put me down. My
whole life I had let
people walk all over me. I didn’t know how to handle criticism
from people without just
becoming a mess. And I really didn’t know how to stand up for
myself without either
getting angry or running away. And I couldn’t run away anymore.
People say why did I
say, and I should have just left you and such. But it was as
much for myself that I stayed.
Because how many situations had I run away from before. So I
just really want to put
that across. Doing this work is not just for your partner’s
sake, but you are doing it for
yourself. Whether you save your relationship or not, nobody can
guarantee that. I can
guarantee if you work on all the steps and exercises we offer,
you will be in a much
healthier situation and you’re going to have a chance of having
better relationships in the
future, even if the relationship you are in now doesn’t work
out. STEVE: That’s right.
There is a road to personal growth. And we really highly
recommend you take it. And it’s not at all easy.
KIM: (laughing) Certainly not.
STEVE: So, Kim, is there anything else you wanted to say
about Emotional Stupidity
before get this wrapped up, because we are in the last couple
minutes of the show. KIM:
No…it’s still my baby. No one has read it yet. (laughing) I just
can’t wait and I
hope some people really do take up this offer and read it. And I
am really interested in
your honest testimonials of what you think. I look forward to
the bigger full release. STEVE:
Okay, Kim. Well, we are going to keep moving ahead with our busy
little
family. KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: Here in winter time in Australia.
KIM: Yep. STEVE:
And wrap it up here. Thanks to everybody for tuning in again.
Thanks to
everyone at Global Talk Radio for making this happen. We really
appreciate your help
and we really appreciate everyone tuning in. Until next week,
take care! KIM: Bye!
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