• The three systems all of us use (sometimes without realizing it) to regulate our emotions, and what happens in our relationships when we get “stuck” in one system or another. (1:01)
• How to know which system you tend toward during moments of conflict or stress and when it’s more helpful to shift into another one. (6:07)
• The biggest mistake we make when someone we’re in a relationship with is blaming, shaming, criticizing, fixing or controlling us — and what that behavior is really a sign of. (8:11)
• The most important thing to understand about someone you’re in a relationship with and how that understanding changes everything. (8:32)
• Why it can be even trickier to regulate emotions inside our closest relationships. (9:06)
• The one thing we all really want from another person when we’re having a hard time. (12:06)
• The surprising role that compassion for yourself and others plays (and what it makes possible!) when it comes to regulating your emotions and skillfully dealing with the emotions of others.(12:30) 
• A practice to support you in disengaging from reactive behavior, tending to your own needs and responding to your loved ones in alignment with your core values. (13.17)

Hi Everyone, today I’d like to explore the topic of how we regulate our emotions, especially as it comes to relationships.  Paul Gilbert, developer of compassion focused therapy, has done a lot of work on how we manage our emotions.  In fact, in the book, Mindful Compassion, which he wrote with Choden, he does an excellent job of explaining these systems.  He notes that we have three types of systems.  The first is the threat system.  This system helps us detect and respond to threats and harms.   It is the source of emotions like fear, anxiety, anger, jealousy and disgust.  When we perceive a threat, it activates fight/flight/or freeze.  It is protection and safety seeking.  This is important for our survival.  If we can fight our way out, or put enough distance between the threat and ourselves we can restore safety. So, this system is activating, it releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol.  It gets us ready to fight or flee.  If we can’t fight or flee, however, then we may be able to restore safety by freezing.  This is what we see when an animal rolls over, shows its belly and plays dead.  The hope is that if the predator thinks we are dead, we will no longer be a threat to them and they’ll move along.  Also restoring our safety.  So, the freeze system also has an inhibiting aspect to it.  The basic function of the threat system is to restore safety.  It isn’t designed for pleasure.  

The drive system, on the other hand is driven by the pursuit of pleasure.  This system helps us detect, be interested in and take pleasure in securing important resources that help us survive and prosper, such as finding food, sexual partners, friends, money and careers.  It is the source of emotions like excitement and pleasure.  Every time we achieve a goal, we are dosed with dopamine.  Dopamine feels good, but it doesn’t last long.  It requires that we continually seek new resources to get another dopamine hit.  It is also an activating system.  It is characterized by wanting pursuing achieving ad consuming.  When we are in it we can feel driven, excited, and a sense of vitality.  

Often, however, we use this system as a way to get out of the pain of the threat system.  The threat system is painful, so we move into the drive system looking for a way to fix the pain and feel better.  We often use the drive system in an effort to get rid of our pain.  In fact, this system is overutilized, and since pain in life is inevitable, eventually we just find ourselves back in the threat system. When we are using the system as an attempt to get out of pain, often we just feel the underlying threat system.

Luckily, we also have the care system.  This system is characterized by feeling content, safe, and connected.  This system is not driven by wanting and pursuing.  This system is affiliative focused.  When we are connected we feel safe, and our pain is soothed through connections characterized by kindness.  Physiologically, we are wired both to comfort and soothe and also to be comforted and soothed.  This is important because as a species, we don’t survive on our own.  When we are infants, we need our caregiver to take care of us.  Even as adults, we fare better when our resources are pooled with others.  Belonging is an important aspect of this system.  Whenever we feel safely connected, the brain releases oxytocin, often called the feel-good hormone.  Oxytocin actually changes the areas in the brain that help us form safe connections.  We can use this wiring ourselves by utilizing kind touch or kind words toward ourselves.  The MSC program teaches soothing or supportive touch and self-compassion break as ways to activate our own care system.  This system, the care system, is underdeveloped and underutilized in our culture.  

Paul notes that each of these systems is important, none of them are bad, the trick is in how we work the systems.  The care system is actually designed to comfort and soothe us, so when we are in the threat system, unless we really do need to fight/flee/or freeze to save our lives, the behaviors we choose in this system will inevitably cause us more pain.  That said, if you are on the battle field and someone is shooting at you, please don’t stop to comfort yourself.  Fight/flight/freeze is a much better option.

In our modern society, however, many of our perceived threats are threats to the self rather than life or death situations.  And the best thing we can do in that case, is to notice when we are in the threat system and activate our care system.  After we land squarely in our care system, we feel content, safe and connected.  From here we can move into the drive system and get things done, gather resources and solve problems.  But it’s a whole different thing engaging the drive system from a place of feeling content, safe, and connected than it is from a place of pain and reactivity in the threat system.  

My specialty is looking at how we utilize compassion in our relationships.  And I’ve noticed that Gilberts emotion regulation systems also show up here.  When we are in the threat system, for example, we find ourselves fighting which looks like arguing your point, blaming, even shaming.  We also flee, by withdrawing.  Refusing to see or discuss the issue and instead seeking safety by leaving.  This is often a strategy to protect the relationship as well.  If I leave neither you nor I will be able to say something that might further damage the relationship.  Of course, feeling abandoned is in and of itself damaging.  The other strategy we may use relates to freeze.  Making ourselves seem like no threat by placating.  I may just agree to whatever you say, just to keep the peace, so that you feel safe and then hopefully, you won’t harm me either.  

It feels awful to be on the receiving and of any of these strategies, actually.  Usually, as is human nature, we take these strategies personally when our partner uses them.  That is a mistake!!!  And I can’t emphasize that enough.  When our partner moves into one of these strategies, it isn’t actually about us, though they may insist it is.  Actually, it is a sign that our partner is suffering.  It is a sign that they are in their threat system.  When you really get that, it changes everything.  The partner that is blaming me, is actually acting out of their own fear, or shame, for example.  Or the one that sneaks away and doesn’t return my phone call, is also acting out of their threat system.  When we avoid taking them personally, we often avoid sliding down into our own threat system and creating, or reinforcing a downward relational spiral.  

The closer we are to another person, the more we feel their pain.  And we don’t to feel pain ourselves, and we don’t want our loved one to feel pain either, so we may move into the drive system to fix the problem and get rid of the pain.  However, this also backfires for us.  When we move into the drive system in our relationships there are at least three main things we try.  The first is to control the situation, which often means controlling our loved one. It is actually rooted in wanting to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from harm, but it causes more harm.  Having someone try to control us is a vote of no confidence in us, whether they intend it that way or not.  Often, we have high expectations of ourselves or our loved ones, and an illusion that doing things properly will keep us safe from the threat system.  It is a system that is primed for failure.  The standards are too high, and they are built on a shaky foundation.  No one can actually prevent all bad things from happening.  It also invites overfunctioning and burnout.  Often in the face of someone who over functions we find that the loved one will under function, and that imbalance is painful for everyone.  The over functioner gains confidence, but lacks connection, and the under funcitoner is primed for fear of failure, and dependency.  Dependency breeds resentment.  So, it turns out control doesn’t work so well.  We also may try criticism when we are in the drive system.  Not because we want to harm our loved one, rather we criticize in an attempt to make them better.  But criticism doesn’t usually motivate us to do better.  Most often it shuts us down.  Far from restoring safety, it adds insult to injury-literally.  And it causes more of a riff in our relationships.  Finally, with the best of intentions, we can turn to fixing our partner.  They share with us what is bothering them and we tell them how to solve their problem.  Trust me, no one likes to be on the receiving end of that.  It is lonely to be vulnerable and reach out or someone to comfort you, only to feel like you are too much for them, or they aren’t interested in what is bothering you.  When we set out to fix someone, we are saying they aren’t acceptable as they are.  What we really need is to be seen, accepted and loved just as we are.

There is another way, however, and that way is to activate the care system.  When we are in the care system we feel safe, connected and content.  Our physiology relaxes in this system.  So, when our loved one is in distress, they only need out attention.  Attention that sees them as they are, accepts them as they are, and loves them.  When our affiliative system is activated in this way, we can hold whatever pain is in front of us.  We can hold each other, and together we are much stronger.  This is the heart of compassion.  

Kristen Neff defines self-compassion as having three components: self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness.  My shorthand for this is loving, connected, presence.  Kindness-loving, common humanity-connected, and mindfulness-presence.  That’s really what we need from each other.  When we can see our suffering and that of our partner, when we understand that our unskillful behaviors toward each other are signs that we are hurting, it changes everything.  We have a responsibility to tend to our own safety and that of our loved one.  Tolerating harm doesn’t help anyone.  But once we find or create safety then the heart can open an we can tend to the suffering beneath the difficult behavior.  We can root our actions in the wisdom of responsiveness rather than reactivity.  And we can practice STOP & LOVE.  STOP disengages reactivity and tends to our own needs, and LOVE helps us see our loved one and choose a response that is in alignment with our core relational values.  We will share that practice in our Well Connected Community.  

That’s all for today’s Well Connected Relationships podcast.  Thanks for being here.  I’ve got so much more in store for you.  In our next episode, we’ll talk with Chris Germer, a renowned expert on mindfulness and self-compassion and a psychologist about his work on shame and how that impacts our relationships.  He has some excellent ideas about how to recognize and work with shame as it presents in our relationships.  I hope you can join us.  Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.