Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage

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Dr. Erin Smalley: Welcome to Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage. I'm Dr. Erin Smalley.

Dr. Greg Smalley: And I'm Dr. Greg Smalley. Last time on the podcast, we featured Debra Fileta. She was sharing so many helpful insights. I love her information about the levels of communication that we can have and build upon with our spouse.

Dr. Erin Smalley: I loved it when she talked about the four levels of communication. She talked about the shallow end, which was the who, what, when, and where. Kind of the small talk. The second level was opinions and ideas, which was really understanding what the other person thinks. And then the third level was feelings, and that's learning how the other person experienced the issue and how they're processing it.

But the fourth level was interesting, which was the underlying beliefs. That's really how the issue affects them, how it plays into our relationship with God, ourselves, and others. So some really good, insightful information.

Dr. Greg Smalley: You talk about that a lot, like under the water line. When she was saying that, I was thinking about how you use that phrase all the time.

Dr. Erin Smalley: Feelings and our underlying beliefs are under the water line.

Dr. Greg Smalley: What was helpful for me was just her encouragement that we can't just live our life always in the deep end at that deeper level, emotions and underlying beliefs and all that, because that would be exhausting.

Dr. Erin Smalley: And I would even agree with that. I couldn't live there all the time. I could live there for a while. I think you would be a happy Erin if we existed there a lot of the time, more often. But it just would be too difficult, which means that there's real value in those other levels. So all that to say, if you didn't hear the last episode, it was really, really good. So take the time, go ahead and listen to that. We've got a lot more that we wanted to cover with Debra, so we're going to jump right into day two right after this.

Well, Debra Fileta is a licensed professional counselor. She's a bestselling author, a relationship expert who has helped countless people build healthier connections with God, as well as she helps couples come together when their marriage is struggling.

So Debra, we are so grateful that you're spending more time with us. Last episode, you said something that really struck me, and it's really made me think about this. So I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about it. You talked about helping people as a way to learn how to begin to identify your emotions, become aware of your emotions, this idea of understanding your relationship with emotions from growing up and what that's looked like over your life.

For me, growing up, part of my relationship with emotions was that it was acceptable to show the positive emotions. We did a lot of laughing. We talked a lot about the good. When there were hard moments within my family, there was a quick turn, a pivot to "What's God teaching you?" Let's treasure hunt. Let's talk about it. I know that's hard, but look what He's doing. God promises us that, which is all true. But I think what my relationship with emotions became is that really the only ones worth having a relationship with are the positive ones.

So maybe help us understand, as you're working with someone, how do you really help them to understand that relationship around emotions that they've had their whole life?

Debra Fileta: In counseling, we call that spiritual bypassing. Rather than facing the emotion and sitting with it and experiencing it, we want to bypass the difficult emotion. We bypass it with a spiritual phrase, a Bible verse, something cerebral to help us around the emotion rather than feel our way through it.

I understand the logic behind that. From the outside, it's like, why would I feel this horrible feeling if I don't have to feel this horrible feeling? But I think the way that I have experienced difficult emotions is more like I'm digging a hole in my heart. The deeper the hole, the more room to be filled with the presence and power of God.

So if the hole is only about a foot deep, I'm only going to get a foot of comfort, a foot of peace, a foot of God's presence. But if it's ten feet deep, how much more? That's why the Bible says that God is near to the brokenhearted. Why? Because their hole is deep and in need of filling.

Sure, I can bypass those feelings, but what if in bypassing them, I'm also bypassing the presence, the power, the intimacy, the nearness of God? So we want to see emotions as something that allows us to usher in God's presence, not just the good ones, but also the really difficult ones, because both of them are from God. Both of them are signals. God is saying, "Hey, pay attention. There's something here that I need you to pay attention to." So if we could just reframe the way that we think about it, I think it would help us sit with them and feel them rather than just try to work around them.

Dr. Erin Smalley: I like how you're saying that, because so often we will categorize good emotions and bad emotions versus there's some that are difficult to feel and some that are easier to feel. You're saying with these difficult ones, there's also a gift that comes with really just feeling them and sitting in them and digging that hole so the Holy Spirit can come and be close to the brokenhearted. Is that part, would you say, does that go hand-in-hand with what we utilize to bypass emotions, cognitive distortions? We utilize these things to skirt our way around having to experience some of those difficulties?

Debra Fileta: I think sometimes we can try to be logical about emotions and almost think our way through them rather than feel them. I think ultimately cognitive distortions are the lens with which we see the world. Sometimes I think of that lens as a pair of glasses that's a little fuzzy, a little cracked. We don't even realize that we see the world through a distorted way.

But the beautiful thing about walking with Jesus and being in alignment with Him is that the process of healing is also the process of sanctification. The more we become like Him, the easier it is to take off the faulty glasses and see life through His perspective, our negative beliefs, what we feel, what we're experiencing. So ultimately, they all kind of work together. But we do have to be careful not to be overly analytical about our feelings rather than just allow ourselves to feel our feelings.

Dr. Greg Smalley: I remember seeing this movie, and I couldn't even tell you what movie it was, but there was a line. These two guys were talking, and this one guy, his daughter had been murdered. That was the experience of his friend, too. So both had experienced that level of trauma, that level of loss as fathers.

The one dad was just sharing that he really wasn't into counseling, but he went to the support group. What he remembers that so helped him was the counselor's encouragement to take the pain. You can't just avoid that. You've got to feel it. Kind of like you're saying, you've got to allow yourself to really lean into those emotions, experience them, feel it, take the pain. Otherwise, your heart will just shut down and you'll lose all these memories of that person.

I remember really liking that idea of around emotions, taking the pain for me means just sitting and allowing myself just to be with that emotion, not rushing it, not getting rid of it, not trying to move so quickly beyond it. How do you help someone really learn how to not just be aware of the emotion, but once you put a name to it or know maybe what it is, how do they sit with that? Take the pain in that sense.

Debra Fileta: Isn't it interesting that Jesus Himself took the pain and allowed Himself to experience emotions, even ones that logically He knew were short-lived? I think about when Lazarus died and Jesus allowed Himself to grieve and to weep. But it's like, well, didn't He know, logically, spiritually, the power, the resurrection? Yes, absolutely He knew.

But to dig a hole of grief in His heart allowed for the Spirit of God to then fill Him with gratitude. So it's not just taking the pain for no reason. It's taking the pain believing that in that pain, God will meet us to the depth of our pain with the depth of His presence. There is something really meaningful about that.

After Jesus wept, which is by the way my son's favorite verse when it comes to memorizing scripture because it's two words, after Jesus wept, the next verse talks about how He looked to heaven and gave gratitude to the Father. So the depth of His pain paved the way for the depth of God's presence.

So there's something to that. I don't want us just to think, oh, well, it's just suffering, I just have to feel these horrible feelings. No, it's not just that. It's that God meets us there. God Himself meets us there. I think about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I think about Jesus on the cross. I think about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. I think about Jesus feeling wearied with His journey. He always felt the feeling and expressed it and felt it thoroughly and then responded to the feeling and invited God into the feeling.

There's an intimacy that comes with God when we're open and honest about what we feel. Feelings are signals, but they're also connectors. They connect us to God and others in a really significant way that facts can't do, opinions can't do. If you really want to sit down with somebody and connect with them, you don't spend an hour sharing your opinions back and forth, debating whatever.

Why doesn't political conversation and theological conversation work at the dinner table on Thanksgiving? Because they don't cause us to feel more connected. If anything, we feel more disconnected from people. But feelings, they usher us in to a new realm. So if we think about that in our relationship with God and our relationship with others, you realize, okay, maybe there is something to this.

And I think also emotions connect us with ourselves. Because otherwise, we live pretty disconnected. One thing I will often say to a man who is in my office and is discounting emotion, "I'm not going to do it, men don't feel emotion." I'm like, then why did God give you tear ducts? You have tear ducts just like your wife does.

Dr. Greg Smalley: So we can weep when our favorite team loses. That's why.

Debra Fileta: Absolutely. And there's other emotions besides anger, which is often what men are taught is an appropriate emotion.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Anger and lust, yeah.

Dr. Erin Smalley: And so there's more to that. Part of what I'm wondering, because I know this is part of your expertise, Debra, how does trauma impact an individual as well as their experience with emotion?

Debra Fileta: We mentioned it before, but I think it's worth repeating, is that if our feelings are like a volume dial, going through trauma for many people causes them to put their feelings on silent, on mute. When you go through really hard things, sometimes your body is so overwhelmed, your nervous system is so overstimulated and activated, that the only way you can get through those things is when your emotions get dialed down a little bit. It's a survival mechanism.

What's interesting, though, is that though it may help you survive, what helps us survive in one season of life can sabotage us in another season of life if we never face it and heal from it in hindsight. So for many people, especially people who've went through some really difficult trauma, it can cause your feelings to really be put on mute.

Or the opposite can happen. You can be so hyper-aware of every little feeling because you're trying to protect yourself. You're trying to stay ahead of it. So it's almost like if feelings are that volume dial, that alarm system, you're false alarming left and right. It's just false alarms everywhere. One of my little boys, he's five, is going through some anxiety right now. I've been teaching him about false alarms, like how there's true alarms in your body, but there's also false alarms based on the things you've gone through before.

So your body has to recalibrate and make sure the alarm is only signaling when there's actually something dangerous. When we go through trauma, because we've been through something dangerous, sometimes the false alarm just continues to fire even in times of safety and security. So these are important things for us to understand because trauma kind of throws a wrench into things if we're unaware.

Then we spend the rest of our lives thinking that something is wrong with us, or living with our feelings on complete mute and wondering why am I not connected to anybody or anything. Why do I not feel close to God? Why do I not really understand myself? Or we're living with a hyperactive nervous system and we're just feeling frazzled, overwhelmed, overstimulated, hyper-alert all the time. Neither of those are God's intended best for our lives.

Dr. Erin Smalley: How do you encourage then someone who has experienced that very traumatic event? How do you encourage them to begin that healing process, that healing journey?

Debra Fileta: Well, first of all, awareness. Being aware of where I'm struggling and what I need. What do I feel? What do I need? Those are two really important questions to ask ourselves on a daily basis. But I really believe in the power of working with a good counselor, somebody that can kind of help you, especially if you've been through trauma that you've never faced.

Often when we invite Jesus into our lives, we welcome Him in to heal us and save us from this point forward. But we often forget that He wants to do the same from this point back. All of the stuff before, He wants to go in there and heal and transform and align and help us there. So many of us have come to Jesus and we're walking with Him and we don't know why we're stuck. Why am I still stuck? Why am I struggling? Why am I addicted? Why can't I get over these bad habits? Why do I have these anger issues?

Because there's a whole half of our lives that's untouched by His presence and power and healing. So this takes some work and intentionality, but it's the beautiful reality of who Jesus is and what He wants to do in each one of our lives. Why this matters is because when we heal, it overflows into every part of our life. It overflows into our marriage. It overflows into our parenting, into our ministry, our careers, our jobs. Healed people can guide other people into healing. Just like the phrase says, hurt people hurt people, but healed people can help others heal. And there's something really beautiful, meaningful, and spiritual about that process.

Dr. Greg Smalley: I love it. That could be a nice little bumper sticker, healed people heal people. Let's talk then about, so as we work on ourselves, as we learn to better manage our emotions, how do you help couples then start to apply that to their marital relationship? So I imagine there's some good things. Last episode you talked about kind of your Sunday night check-in. I imagine there's some other ways to help couples really begin to build that emotional connection to each other.

Debra Fileta: There are a lot of ways. The weekly check-in is really important. I encourage you to go back and listen to that and start practicing it in your marriage. The other thing that I think is really crucial and I have seen a huge impact in my personal marriage is what I call connecting points.

All it takes is 90 seconds, but basically I teach couples that when you walk into a room, I want you to find your spouse and stop what you're doing for 90 seconds and offer three things. Offer affection, so that could be a hug, a kiss. Offer attention, so you're not doing anything else. You're not looking at your phone. You're not finishing up a phone call. If you're in the middle of an email, you close your laptop. I give you full attention and eye contact.

And number three, emotional connection. I share a level three deeper conversation of, "Hey, how are you feeling and what do you need?" Not just, "How are you? How was your day?" But maybe go a little bit deeper. What was something special about the day? What was something stressful about the day? How are you feeling in this moment? What is something you need from me?

All it takes is 90 seconds. But imagine you did that five times throughout the day in different points in your day. How connected you would feel to your spouse and them to you. When you feel connected to your spouse, you tend to see and interpret everything they do either through the lens of feeling connected or the opposite. If you're feeling disconnected, you're going to interpret everything they do through the lens of disconnection.

So it not just affects how you feel in the moment, but it actually contributes to how you will feel because it's going to affect how you interpret everything for the rest of the day and maybe even into the next day. So I say try to get to five connecting points a day and it will radically change your relationship.