New Life LIVE

Guest (Male): Welcome to the New Life LIVE podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.

Brian Perez: It's going to be a good week, a good month of New Life LIVE. I'm Brian Perez, and we've got licensed marriage and family therapist, author Mark Cameron here for two hours today, along with clinical psychologist Dr. Alice Benton. Later in the week, you'll hear Dr. John Townsend. That's on Thursday and Friday. 1-800-229-3000 is our number. If you need a breakthrough, it begins the moment you pick up your phone. New Life LIVE hosts have been through it themselves and are ready to share proven strategies. Dr. Alice, what's on your mind today?

Dr. Alice Benton: It's so good to hear Mark Cameron, author. I've had several clients say to me recently, his new book, *Understanding Your Attachment Style*, is so helpful because it's written from the perspective of a vacillator. If your spouse or you yourself are vacillators, you've got to read Mark's new book.

I might have been dealing with some vacillators in my personal life this weekend, and I had to use this phrase, "If you can't or won't speak gently to me, I'll have to back away from you." Most of my clients and our callers here at New Life reach out because they are being mistreated by someone in their lives, often a spouse or children. Maybe the mistreatment is swearing, yelling, threatening divorce, slamming doors, punching walls, or driving aggressively, all the way to domestic violence and substance use.

Boundaries, we talk about this a lot on the show, but they are difficult to implement. I want to remind you how well they work, but maybe it's not how you think they'll work. They do not and cannot guarantee that they'll change the perpetrator in your life. Instead, what they do is empower the victim and clarify standards. They make a way out for the victim. They often do motivate the perpetrator to change, and if that isn't going to happen, they clarify that the relationship may not be worth repairing.

The way to acquire boundaries is to identify what you're willing to tolerate and why you're allowed to decide what you will and won't tolerate. I think for Christian women, this can be very difficult because we might believe we are always supposed to turn the other cheek. The Bible has a lot to say about this. If you allow an angry man to continue to be angry and you save him from the consequences of his anger, he'll be angry again. We are allowed to back away from people that we've warned and that we've asked to change, and they won't.

My son, over the weekend, was harsh and disrespectful to me, and I let him know, "If you can't or won't speak to me gently, I'll have to back away from you and I'll have to remove privileges. You could change right now if you want to be kind to me, but if you can't or won't, you're going to start to lose some things in your life." His friend was on the way over, and we said, "You can't have a friend over if you can't treat Mom well." My husband backed me up in this. Their friend came over, and we had to say, "We're so sorry, we're no longer available for you to hang out at our house." My son still wouldn't break.

Sometimes you have to augment your boundaries or scaffold your boundaries. I let him know he wouldn't be able to see our Friday night movie night or have our fun fast-food dinner with us. He didn't care. It took several hours for him to change his mind. Eventually, he came out and said, "Could I apologize? Could I have a redo?" I asked why he changed his mind, and he said he got bored and hungry. They're not great motivators, but boundaries allow people to get lonely, to get hungry for the pleasure of our company, and if they care enough, they will respond to our boundaries over time.

Brian Perez: If this sounds like your child, or maybe you had an encounter like this over the weekend, call in. We'd love to talk about it. We're going to be in the studio for two hours today. Mark Cameron is here as well. We can't wait to speak with you today at 1-800-229-3000. No topic is off the table. Whatever is troubling you, call in.

Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: A new episode of the *Every Man's Battle* podcast dropped today. JJ West and Doug Barnes explain how five-minute check-in calls help provide accountability that fuels recovery. They even roleplay what a check-in call looks like, so check it out. You can find today's episode at NewLife.com, on our YouTube channel, our app, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1-800-229-3000 is the number to call us today. Alice had a few more thoughts, and Mark wanted to respond too.

Dr. Alice Benton: You all know I'm a people pleaser and a conflict avoider in recovery. I also did not know about boundaries, and I was pretty surprised when I read Henry Cloud and John Townsend's book, *Boundaries*. It helped change so much for me. This is what I needed to build strength in order to say the things that I shared before the break. I needed a community of safe and healthy people that were trying to move in an assertive direction with me. I needed to build purpose outside of one relationship because if my one person won't treat me kindly, I may decide I just have to be mistreated because I have nothing else. As we broaden our life to have many valuable relationships, then we can withstand that period when my son wouldn't soften for me. I had to talk myself through it, pray, and get support from my husband. It crushes me when my child won't come out and enjoy the good things that are right there at his fingertips. It takes a community of healthy people to help a people pleaser build up to the point of being able to say, "Treat me well, or I have to back away from you."

Mark Cameron: I want to make a comment here about vacillators that Alice was talking about. If you don't know what a vacillator is, that's a particular attachment style. It's a learned way of bonding where somebody protests to get the other person to see their hurt, meaning that they act out their hurt in a very obvious way so that the other person sees that they're bothered and moves towards them to repair.

The problem is the vacillator's protest is often hurtful and unkind, and people want to move away. The vacillator can often threaten detachment. They can say, "I'm done," or they can threaten a divorce or separation, or they can act very aggressively. Here's the dilemma they put themselves in. When you threaten detachment or abandonment, or act aggressively, people don't move toward you. They move away from you because it triggers their sense of danger. Why would they move toward someone who they think is about to abandon them? Why would they want to get close to someone who is acting in a way that feels threatening toward them? Others typically move away, and then that leaves the vacillator in this place of stuckness where they don't get what they want.

That's where I was in my attachment style. I didn't realize it, but I had a vacillator attachment style, and I had to realize these strategies that I'm employing are counterproductive to what I want and what my goals were. I had to learn to slow down and tap into the pain, recognize when my hurt was out of proportion to the event, and learn to communicate the vulnerable emotion to draw someone else in closer toward me. Sadness brings someone closer to you. If you walked into a room and someone's crying, you're more likely to move directly toward them, whereas if you walk into a room and someone's banging things around because they're angry, you're going to keep your distance. I had to recognize I was actually creating the dilemma that I didn't want to be in. If that resonates with you, if you're a vacillator or if you're in a relationship with a vacillator, what Alice is saying is just really good language to be able to set that boundary and challenge the other person to reflect upon how their behavior is limiting the relationship.

Brian Perez: If you're hearing all this talk about vacillators, avoiders, pleasers, and attachment styles, and you're wondering what this is all about, Mark Cameron talks about it in his book, *Understanding Your Attachment Style*. It's available for purchase at the NewLife.com store. Plus, in just a couple of weeks, we're going to be doing an online webinar called Understanding Your Attachment Style. Mark is going to be hosting it. What will people learn at this webinar, Mark?

Mark Cameron: People will learn some of what I just previewed here and what Alice previewed. They'll learn to understand that what is difficult and challenging in your relationship may be less about the other person and more about your attachment styles colliding. Everybody has a learned bonding style, and we learn that from our families of origin. We get pushed down one of these paths of attachment. There's only one secure attachment style, one secure bonding style, but there are several insecure styles. Most people fall down one of the insecure styles. Until we recognize how we may be limiting relationships either by being vacillators or people pleasers, we can't have healthy relationships. Each one of these styles is driven by primary insecurities that most people are unaware of. In this webinar, I'm going to be revealing all of this. I'm going to be helping people understand how their attachment styles formed, what they look like, and then the good news, which is we can grow. We don't have to remain this way. There can be healing, and God has designed our brains to be neuroplastic, meaning that we can continually learn and we can change and form new ways of how we bond with others securely and safely.

Brian Perez: This webinar is happening on March 19th, that is a Thursday evening at seven o'clock Central Time. You can get all the details at NewLife.com, or you can call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. You can text the word "webinar" to 28950 and we'll send you a link with more information, and you'll get a free tip sheet on attachment styles. Every one of our webinars that we've done since the summertime has won the prestigious, in my mind anyway, BPA or Brian Perez Award for Webinar Excellence. Just kidding, but every one of our webinars is great. Jill in Fort Wayne, Indiana, you are our first caller of the day and it looks like you are a new listener to New Life LIVE. How'd you find out about us, Jill?

Jill: I just have Sirius Radio and I just got tired of some of the other things I was listening to, so I turned you on. I was just walking through my living room and heard you talking and I thought, wow, that is very pertinent to some of my friends and myself. Everything you were saying really resonated with me, especially one of my best friends whose son is grown. His first wife died of cancer and he remarried, and the woman he remarried got him involved in Jehovah's Witnesses. He now also is using marijuana, so that adds to it. He calls his mother and she's just devastated at the things that he calls her and says to her. They just don't know how to reach him anymore because he's so involved in this cult.

I just wanted to make a comment that at the beginning of my marriage, I had a husband and both of us came from mixed-up families. He had been physically abused, and so at some point, I just because I'd been treated pretty well in my childhood, I just wouldn't take it and asked him to get some help or I was going to have to leave. I did have to leave, and he did get help. He was a man that really wanted to change. So there's hope for a lot of people because he's still, we've been married 45 years now, and I just want to say that we have a wonderful life together now, but he had a lot of problems that he had to work out. We both did, not just him.

Brian Perez: Jill, you're such a testimony to why boundaries can work and yours worked out the way God wants them to. He wants both people to be strengthened and changed by boundaries. But it does risk your husband may have said no.

Jill: At first he did.

Dr. Alice Benton: And you had to wait that out, didn't you? You had to wait it out and you had to leave and let your absence affect him over time.

Jill: Yes, with two little boys that I had to take away. I didn't want them to be like that, so I had to basically, in a way, threaten him that he would have to make himself get some help or I couldn't let him be around my little boys. He's been a really good father, an excellent father, so he loved those boys and they're all grown up now.

Mark Cameron: I'm glad you called in, Jill. I actually used to live right near Fort Wayne. I went to school in Huntington, Huntington University. I'm glad you called in because what you're saying here, too, it wasn't that it was an empty threat. You actually drew a line in the sand and said in order to be able to continue in this relationship, this is what I'm going to need. I'm going to need safety and this is what safety looks like. That's different than what we were talking about with protest behavior when somebody detaches, because when somebody threatens detachment, they're doing that to try and get their own way. They don't have good language to be able to set a boundary. What you did was very different there, and I'm so pleased that it worked out for you and pleased for your husband that he took up the challenge and he leaned into growth and he found healing.

Jill: He still, he was never a churchgoer, but he eventually gave his life to Jesus. He eventually now, we go to a little country church and we're so happy together because we didn't give up. You just can't give up on each other.

Dr. Alice Benton: And separation from a person who's mistreating us is not giving up, especially when it's purposeful with a warning and a path back. So when it comes to your friend whose adult son is mistreating her, I would encourage her to let him know, "Son, I love you and I want relationship with you, but I need a calm tone of voice when we're talking with each other. I'm not able to listen when you're abrasive, loud, and intense. If you treat me in those ways, I will have to hang up the phone. If you can be gentle with me, I want to keep talking to you." That may be too difficult for her to put into place to start off with. She probably has to practice that kind of wording with other people who are not mistreating her. I had to practice with a therapist in the room, speaking to an empty chair to build my courage to actually speak to a chair filled with the person that was being angry with me because it was terrifying for me.

Jill: There's a bunch of us who have been in a Bible study together for like 15 years, and so she can practice on us.

Dr. Alice Benton: That's an ideal environment. When you wondered what can I do for my friend, you can encourage her to practice with all of you. You can have her listen to this call because our shows are recorded and they're available online at our website. All that we've talked about from the beginning of the show right up until now, those are the steps for your friend to build up the strength and courage to be able to take with her son.

Jill: Good. I'm going to get your book for everyone of us in our Bible study and I'm going to see if maybe we all could read it together and talk about it.

Brian Perez: You and your relationships will be better off if you do that. That's a great decision. If you get it through New Life, there's also a little guide to show you how you can do this as a group study. It shows you the reading guide for four, six, or eight weeks.

Jill: We've got to keep on getting better and better until Jesus comes. I don't want to backtrack.

Brian Perez: Thanks for calling in today, Jill. Thanks for finding us there on Sirius XM. I agree, there's hardly anything good on the radio nowadays, except for this show. This is one of the few bright spots. You can hear us at 10 AM Pacific Time every day, Monday through Friday, Sirius XM Channel 131, plus we're heard around the country, around the world on the New Life app. So find out more about us at NewLife.com and yeah, Jill, head on over to our website. You can find out about Mark's book and purchase it there. It's called *Understanding Your Attachment Style*. That's also the name of the webinar that Mark will be doing on March 19th. Maybe you and all your friends can watch that too. Just text the word webinar to 28950 and we'll send you the information and you'll get a tip sheet too. Jill, thanks for calling in today. God bless you. This is New Life LIVE. I'm Brian Perez, and we're going to take a short break, then we'll be back with more of your calls.

Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

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1-800-229-3000 is the number to reach us in the studio for the next hour and a half plus. We've got James, who's also listening on Sirius XM Channel 131. He is in Atlanta, Georgia, and he has called 1-800-229-3000. What's up, James? Thanks for calling.

James: I was calling in because I don't know if this applies to it, but I deal with anxiety and I know where it comes from. I did get the book, by the way, it's a good book. I recently went back to that book. I felt like God was leading me back to reading that book again. But when I start new projects like a new job or something like that, I go through these periods of anxiety or feeling like I'm not good enough because I constantly hear my father's voice in my head saying all the bad things that he said in the past. Then I find myself kind of shutting down and going inside of myself. The new people or the co-workers have no idea what I'm going through, but it's like a personal struggle and it's really hard to deal with that.

Mark Cameron: Wow, well, thanks for sharing that, James. It's good that you start to become aware of where that comes from. Did you become aware because you started to read the book, or were you aware of that before?

James: I was aware that before, but when I read that book, I read the book years ago and I just was looking for it recently because I was going to reorder it because I was telling a friend about the book, but then I found my copy and I started reading it. It really helped me. I know I struggle with that when I have to get out of my own head because I still hear the voices that I heard when I was a kid in terms of when I'm doing something new or even if I meet somebody new. I'm single, so if I meet somebody new, I still have that feeling like I'm not good enough.

Mark Cameron: Which attachment style did you resonate most with?

James: I'm the pleaser, looking for approval.

Mark Cameron: That's exactly what I was just about to say. Pleasers are very approval-based. They are concerned about how others are feeling about them, and they feel a lot of anxiety around whether others are happy. They're picking up on other people's emotions, and that keeps them very other-focused and prevents them from taking that look on the inside because they're just reacting to their anxiety.

It's good that you recognize which attachment style you are because now you've got a diagnosis, and the good news about a diagnosis is it often shows us that there's a treatment plan for us to work toward getting out of that attachment style or getting out of that problem that we're in. What work have you done to try and address your anxiety?

James: I went to counseling years back and I had a counselor tell me he's never met a person that knows themselves as good as you know yourself. But I've gotten a lot better, but I still struggle with that now like I just started a new job and I'm really struggling with that. I haven't started a new job in years because I was on my last job for like eight years. But this new job, I'm really struggling with that. I have to get out of my own head because, for instance, last week I'm a driver, I drive a truck, and the guy was like, usually they tell somebody to help spot you and back you up. I pulled up and he was like, "Get out and look yourself." I was like, "What?" I found myself getting an attitude, but I caught myself too, but it was just like that comment, the way he said it, kind of rubbed me the wrong way or hurt my feelings or something.

Mark Cameron: What happened is it triggered you. A trigger is an association to something in the past, and you'd already shared that with us, that your dad was very critical. When you hear that critical voice, or even a perceived critical voice, it puts you all the way right back to the initial event that you had. For anxiety, you have to learn how to lean in and practice going against that.

We all know that diet and exercise leads to physical health, but how many people actually do that? Knowledge is not enough. Some of what Alice was saying earlier on about learning to speak to an empty chair or learning to practice with a group of friends, that's the experiential work that helps us learn how to overcome anxiety. We also have to do some internal practice work too. We need to learn how do we capture every thought and recognize where it comes from, and then learn not to follow that pathway of interacting with it in the sense of just letting it pull us along and go into anxiety and then go into the panic and go into the fixing.

Learning to pause and say, "Oh, what does this remind me of? This reminds me of my dad's voice. What am I feeling right now? I'm feeling a lot of anxiety. How am I wanting to react right now? I'm wanting to panic and go and people-please. Okay, let me not do that because following that pathway just reinforces what I've learned to do and that's my default." How do I learn to lean the opposite way in this particular situation? Am I really being criticized by somebody else, or is this just perceived in this moment? If I am being criticized by somebody else, how do I learn to address that in an appropriate way?

Maybe you have to learn and put one of these phrases in your back pocket to prepare for these events, to say something like, "I can see that this is important to you, but I'm not willing to engage in this type of mistreatment. I'd be happy to pick up this conversation if we can talk about this in a productive way to solve this in a way that benefits us both." It's having those things prepared ahead of time, often for a pleaser, because when we go into this panic mode, our brain tends to try and shut off and we don't think, or we lose the ability to be able to think critically or rationally. Having something like that written down for you and then learning to practice it, that's the practice work that ends up reconditioning and changing those pathways, but it does take time to do.

Dr. Alice Benton: James, when you cook meat, what do you like to marinate it in before you cook it? What's your favorite sauce?

James: I got several because I cook a lot. Old Mrs. Dash, Old Bay, Italian.

Dr. Alice Benton: You know your way around the marinades. You've been marinating your brain unintentionally in your dad's old messages, and so Mark is trying to help you to see that you've got to change the marinade. You need a new marinade sauce. I'm an anxious pleaser as well. My message in my head was that I'm a screw-up, even though there was a lot of evidence to the contrary.

I went through a kind of treatment called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it really helps us get to some subconscious beliefs and vows that we have about ourselves stuck in because of the history that you've been through like with your dad. EMDR helps us to come up with new beliefs and new vows, healthier ways of believing things about ourselves and interacting with the world. It helped me to go from "I'm a screw-up" to "I'm a courageous risk-taker." I don't just say that now; I actually believe that now because I've marinated my brain with healthier people who are willing to speak truth to me in love. They'll tell me, "Yeah, you did mess up on this one thing, but you're also a great person and you're doing well, and we love you anyhow," and that's what we need to have pouring into the cells of our brain.

When I heard the verse, Galatians 1:10, "Am I trying to win the approval of humans or of God? Because if I'm mainly trying to please people, I'm not a servant of the Lord." That one took me aback; it actually shook me up a bit, James, because I do prioritize pleasing people over God, or at least I did historically, and that got me in all kinds of trouble. So please consider EMDR. Let us get you into a group, let us connect you with an EMDR therapist. James, I take medication to help me with my anxiety. I take an antidepressant called Zoloft, which has been so helpful in taking the edge off my anxiety. A good doctor, a good psychiatrist can help you get on the right medication as well. What do you think, James?

James: Okay, let's do it. Anything that'll help.

Brian Perez: Stay on the phone and we'll get you more information. We also want to send you a tip sheet called *Six Tools to Ease Anxiety*, plus we've got an article at NewLife.com called *Eight Tips to Stop Anxiety Dead in its Tracks*. James, thanks for calling in today to New Life LIVE.

Parents listening, James was talking about how he remembered his dad's voice telling him that he's not good enough. So many of the calls relate to a past experience with a parent or a teacher or an old boss. What can parents do now? They've got small kids, maybe teenagers. What should be their mindset when they're talking to their kids so that they don't say these things that are going to haunt their children 40 years from now?

Mark Cameron: Well, we all say and do things that we regret later on and that we wish we hadn't done, and that's because we live in a sinful world and we're sinners ourselves. There'll be no perfect parent, and so there'll be no perfect children that we raise. The most important thing, yes, we do need to take inventory and learn how we react and practice responding instead of reacting. But what we can do too is when we mess up, the most powerful thing to do is to learn how to repair. How do we go to our children and say, "Hey, I said this, I don't think that was the correct thing that I should have said. I'm very sorry. Can you tell me about how that impacted you?" We know through research that when we practice repairing with kids, that is the template that they need to learn how do they resolve conflicts and how do they learn how to soothe because we first are taught to co-soothe before we can self-soothe. When we can learn how to self-soothe, we're less likely to be reactive in adults.

Dr. Alice Benton: There is what's called a magic ratio, five to one. If we have to give our children critique, which we do, that's part of parenting, to do it with balancing truth and grace, keeping the difficult truth part very brief and then having five positive statements to counteract to counterbalance the one negative that we have to give to our children. If we can strive for that kind of balance, then the positive usually outweighs the difficult things we have to address with our kids.

Brian Perez: Let's go to Steven in Colorado Springs, who's listening to us on the New Life app. What's going on, Steven?

Steven: You guys are the crisis counselors of America. So, attachment. You've heard opposites attract, but later attack. I'm in that mode, and I've been served with a notice of legal separation and that is painful. My wife of over 40 years has pretty much emotionally abandoned me since December 20th, won't even talk to me, and it has been a painful ride. I don't want this and I know that I've contributed to it, but I do feel like I've been controlled and manipulated into a situation. There's no open communication, no transparency, nothing. And of course, it's all me from her perspective, and that's painful as well.

Brian Perez: What happened on December 20th?

Steven: We had a little argument. It was just a party we were going to go to and I couldn't get there in time. When she came home that night, we got into a little fight. I said, "Fran, humor me." I said something, I don't want to repeat it on the air, but I said, "You know, if this happens, do this for me, okay?" I go, "Humor me." She thought what I said was disgusting, I guess, or didn't see anything to it. The bottom line is I feel like she has complete contempt and disrespect for me as a man. That's all a man wants is respect.

Dr. Alice Benton: Steven, I can appreciate that you're willing to say, "I know I did contribute to it," and that's where we can best help you. I want you to think about over the break, if I had a chance to talk to your wife and I said, "Why did you feel like you had to leave? How did it get to this point?" what might she tell me about you, whether or not you agree with it? What would her perspective be? That will help us give you good guidance going forward.

[Para break] Steven, so we'll give you a couple of minutes to think about that answer. You might already have a response for us, but we've got to take a break, so we'll wait for it after we come back.

Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Becky Brown: Hello, it's Becky Brown and I am so excited to launch our 99-for-the-1 partner initiative. Every day we hear from people all over the world who are looking for hope. They've been lost in a relationship struggle, addiction, anxiety, depression, all kinds of ways, and it reminds us of the story in Luke 15 where the shepherd leaves the 99 to go rescue the one. You know, we've seen God work in the lives of so many people over the years here at New Life, and we want to invite you to be part of what God is doing. 99-for-the-1 is our partner program that you can give to the ministry on a monthly basis to make sure that we continue to reach out to the lost. Call 1-800-NEW-LIFE or NewLife.com/9941.

Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: Back to New Life LIVE, also known as crisis counselors of America, at least in Steven's point of view. Steven, you still with us?

Steven: Yes, can I just give you 15 seconds more of my background? My mom, I don't ever remember even being held. I used to rock myself to sleep like an orphan left in an orphanage. My dad left when I was in the eighth grade. I caught him with another woman in the family car driving. That day he left, never returned. So those leave some wounding.

Anyway, fast forward. If I could ask my wife why she left and what she thinks went wrong, she would say I become angry with her, and I do, and that reminds her of her father, who was a raging maniac. She cringes whenever I raise my voice. I get angry because our communication style is so horrible. There is no safety, there's no trust, and we cannot seem to problem-solve on our own. We went to an intensive where there was safety, but on our own in our own household now, the walls are up and we are just knifing one another.

Dr. Alice Benton: Steven, as you experienced what safety can be like, but you only could have it with a moderator in the room, if you are not in ongoing individual therapy and a men's group to work on your anger that you're humbly able to acknowledge you have, I think it can be hard to understand how terrifying a loud, angry person can be, especially to someone who, like your wife, suffered under that with her father.

Steven, because you are just in this legal separation, this is the time to double and triple down on you doing work to become a safer man for your wife. Granted, she may be in contempt of you, and she may be manipulative, but you can't control that. All you can control is working on yourself and letting her know, "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to turn this around and I'll show you proof of it. I'm not just going to talk about it."

Then I'm just going to quickly gently challenge you, Steven. I think you might tend to minimize your part a little bit. You might be slow to get into deep confession about how big you can get in your anger, and even though it's good you told us about your history, I wonder if when your wife wants to talk about her pain, if you point a little too quickly to all you've been through. It's so important, but I think you have room to grow as a quick, humble listener to your wife.

Steven: I get what you're saying. That's why I dared to call in on the radio show. I need outside help.

Mark Cameron: I would guide you to focus less on the activating event of that initiated this. Typically, when somebody comes into therapy, there's a presenting problem or there's an event that happened that finally pushed them over the edge. But I hear you explaining it that you and your wife are stuck in a core pattern. Every marriage has a relational core pattern, a way that conflict plays out for them, and this was just the latest event that pushed you over the edge here. So you're both triggering one another. Your anger is reminding her of her father, and then her pulling away is reminding you of that abandonment.

You said you felt emotionally abandoned, and then you talked about being abandoned by your dad. Your dad suddenly left, and then this emotional abandonment by your mother where you had to learn how to soothe by yourself. There was no one there for you. So both of you are unintentionally triggering a wound in one another that wasn't put there by the other person, but it's coming out in your relationship. You can actually learn how to heal with one another. There's a process called the comfort circle that Milan and Kay developed in a book called *How We Love*. They describe it in there where a couple can learn how to listen and speak in ways that engage and draw out the other person, and that can provide empathy for one another.

It sounds like that's what you need. You guys need to get into couples therapy so that you can learn how to do that. A weekend intensive is great, and we can have breakthrough in a weekend, but nobody transforms into a completely different person in a weekend. It takes doing something over and over again, and that's called rewriting a neural pathway. But she may not be ready to step into couples counseling with you right now. You may have to follow the pathway what Alice is saying and learn how do you look at and address your anger first before she feels safe enough to get into a therapy room with you. I think there may be some hope here too because you said that she served you with a separation notice rather than a divorce notice. That shows that she could be hopeful that a reconciliation could happen here.

Steven: She wrote me and said, "I hope that I'm going to go seek counsel and I hope you do the same." But here's another thing. I try to follow biblical truth as I understand it. How long do we go back before we forget what is behind and push on towards the goal, as I think Paul said? Forget what is behind. I struggle. Can you speak to that?

Mark Cameron: We've got to remember too that the Bible was written in an ancient language and it's being interpreted for us in modern-day English too, so we have different words and different phrases and different customs. What we know about the brain is we can't just forget something and move on. What we can do, though, is we can learn to remember something in a different way, and that comes with healing. When we learn to be able to process something with someone safe and have comfort and have repair, our brain changes the structure of actually how we recall that memory and we experience healing. There's no such thing as being able to forgive and completely forget, but as we do that repair work, we're actually moving forward by doing the repair.

Dr. Alice Benton: I believe Paul is actually talking about his accomplishments, not historical injury, and he is saying, "Let's not sit on our laurels of all the good we've already done; let's push on and do more good." If your wife is this hurt by both you and her dad, you may have to be willing to talk about those injuries for years to come, but Steven, it is worth it.

Brian Perez: Steven, thanks for calling us today here on New Life LIVE. I think we'll send you a registration to Mark's upcoming webinar. It's happening on March 19th, it's called *Understanding Your Attachment Style*. Everyone else, you can register and find out more by texting the word webinar to 28950. All right, that is it for today's episode of New Life LIVE, but we're going to be in the studio for another hour, so keep those calls a-coming.

Guest (Male): Thank you so much for listening. We hope something you heard will help you live in freedom today. If this content was helpful for you, we would love it if you would take a minute, leave a review, post about it, and rate it. Remember, we have resources and workshops online for you as you continue your journey. Go to NewLife.com to find out more information. And thank you for being part of the New Life community. We know that God desires all of us to live a life of wholeness and healing, and we're so glad that you're here.