When conflict arises in our relationships, what does it mean to shift from 1st consciousness to 2nd consciousness? It has a lot to do with shifting from a preoccupation of the self into self-awareness of our own “going up” and “going down” as well as curiosity about other perspectives. This alone is a complex conversation, but believe it or not, it’s one that can be grasped and practiced quicker than you’d think.  And once you have an understanding of it, it’s like someone’s turned a light on and you realize there’s so much more you can see clearly. Full disclaimer though: this is only the beginning! Self-awareness and 2nd consciousness is a life-long practice with many more lightbulbs to turn on along the way. Like all new things, it’s wobbly and awkward at times. Perfection just isn’t a thing when it comes to being human. (Does that disappoint you to hear or does it release you?) 

Vickey Easa and I love musing on these things and we really dig in this week on the podcast. Tune in as we talk about the message perfection is really sending, both inwardly and outwardly, why contempt is always the thing behind being less than or better than, and how Vickey and I are both still working on all of this in our own lives.

RESOURCES:

Learn more about Vickey Easa at VickeyEasa.com and download her free guide at YourDecisionDiva.com

And, if you haven’t already, be sure to check out our podcast, W,hy Does My Partner, that Vickey and I cohost along with our dear friend and colleague Jules Shore.

Ready to transform your relationship?  Join Vickey, Jules, and me at our upcoming Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp on Nov. 20 & 21. 

If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, Rebecca has a few online offerings to deepen your relational skills and expand your Self care. Learn more at connectfulness.com

This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.

Mentioned in this episode:

WDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

WDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

Rebecca Wong:

Hi, everyone. Today's going to be a treat. I'm here with my dear friend and bootcamp co-facilitator, and co-host on Why Does My Partner Podcast, and... Gosh I feel like she's a sister in many ways. Vickey Easa. Vickey is a licensed clinical social worker in Massachusetts. She's been a therapist for over 12 years and we met through our practice of relational life therapy. Vickey sees both adults and individuals and couples. Her practice is in Norwood, Massachusetts, and that's where she lives with her husband and two children.

Rebecca Wong:

You can learn more about Vickey's work at vickeyeasa.com, and we'll have a link in our show notes. Welcome, Vickey. I'm so happy to have you here.

Vickey Easa:

Me too. And it's so funny to hear you introduce me and our roles with each other, because when I'm trying to describe you to people, I'm like, "My friend and my business partner, but I think she'd be offended if I just said business partner, because she's more my friend." There's so much that we do together these days-

Rebecca Wong:

There's so much, yeah.

Vickey Easa:

... which has just been a lovely experience for both of us, I'll go ahead and say it, for both of us.

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey Easa:

It has, and which shows that it can work. There's downsides to the virtual world, I get that, and there's upsides. Because I actually think had the world not shut down, we wouldn't even... Because we wouldn't have done virtual-

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah, I don't know.

Vickey Easa:

... we wouldn't see each other as much. You're in New York and I'm in Massachusetts and we would find a way to get together, I'm sure. But it wouldn't have been what we did with Zoom.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. And so, so much of what we do together is that we teach.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

Whether it's through the Why Does My Partner Podcast, which we do also with Jules or it's through our bootcamps, which we are also a part of.

Vickey Easa:

I was going to say, which we do also with Jules. Yes. The three of us.

Rebecca Wong:

We do a lot of teaching, the three of us.

Vickey Easa:

We do, and I think that the reason that the three of us have formed such a bond, my own opinion, is that this lens of relational life therapy really is life changing. And changes you individually and then affects every relationship that you're in.

Rebecca Wong:

And that right there, that it changes you individually, I think each of us have gone through our own personal transformations, our own relational transformations, and it makes it so much richer.

Vickey Easa:

Right. Yeah. The three of us are therapists, that might make a difference too, but I talk about topics with the two of you that I don't talk about with my other friends. It does change things. I actually do recommend to all my clients, teach your friends this language, teach your friends these concepts. Because the more immersed you get into self-esteem, and boundaries, and relational mindfulness and all this, the more you want it to be part of everywhere you go. And it does affect and ripple-

Rebecca Wong:

just come to our bootcamps with your friends. Listen to our Why Does My Partner Podcast and come to our bootcamps-

Vickey Easa:

With your friends.

Rebecca Wong:

... with your friends.

Vickey Easa:

Rebecca Wong:

And your sweeties.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah. And it's so true. When you can talk to your friends, it's big about at all these different things.

Rebecca Wong:

Because it starts to change how you-

Vickey Easa:

It does.

Rebecca Wong:

... see things.

Vickey Easa:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rebecca Wong:

Instead of just being in a, "Ugh, this is hard," kind of place, it's like, "Oh, well, can you do a little U-turn there? What's your side of it?" And so what you start learning is the stuff that we're really going to talk about here. I'm so excited to talk about this here today. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm going to start at the back of our conversation and then we'll work our way back to it.

Rebecca Wong:

But one of the things that you really start to learn when you and your friends are developing this language is this thing that I think in many ways, we all need to develop-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

... more of. This ability to observe yourself.

Vickey Easa:

Yes. And to really... It's a different part of your brain, and to be able to cultivate it and come into this different part of your brain, it's a muscle. Your brain is a... I don't know if your brain, is it a muscle? Is an organ, and it has to be developed and worked on. The first few or few 100 times you try to do this new thing, it's not as effective. And then the more you do it and the more you do it, then the better you get. Actually, I've had... They don't say it to me anymore, but I think I have clients who've seen me for a while.

Vickey Easa:

When clients have said to me, I'll recommend something and they say, "Easier said than done." And I literally pause and smile and say, "If we're going to use cliches, it's actually practice makes perfect. It's not easier said than done." And I'm on this journey with my clients, and as, Rebecca, you know and some listeners might know part, part of my method with therapy really is to share my stories as well. So my clients know that I'm on this journey with them.

Vickey Easa:

Hopefully I'm a few steps ahead, that's why I can guide them on it. Because I've been doing myself RLT for five and a half years now and most of my clients have not, so I'm farther ahead. But the more you do it, the more natural it starts to become.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. And there's an awkwardness when we start learning a new skill.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

I'm thinking of myself when I was a young kid and trying to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels, and having a parent run behind my bike and trying to hold it up, and all the falls I would take. Then when I started learning how to do something else like snowboarding and more recently, I'm trying to learn how to skateboard on a long board, and that's just as awkward. Right?

Vickey Easa:

Right.

Rebecca Wong:

Right? So whenever you're starting to learn something new, there's always an awkwardness that goes with it.

Vickey Easa:

Right. And it's so interesting. Why do we stick it out with some things and not with others? Some people wouldn't even stick it out with like I do kickboxing, same thing, when I was first learning the punches and some people don't keep coming back.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. And so I think this comes back to the fact that so many of us have grown up in homes where we were taught that on some levels we couldn't be awkward. We had to be-

Vickey Easa:

Good and perfect.

Rebecca Wong:

We had to be good and perfect. Or that we were bad and rebellious, but there wasn't really that space in the middle to be awkward. I'm learning stage. And so can I just come back to that cliche for a minute? Instead of practice makes perfect because I think-

Vickey Easa:

Oh, good point.

Rebecca Wong:

... perfect is like another... I wonder if it's like practice makes

Vickey Easa:

Better.

Rebecca Wong:

.. better.

Vickey Easa:

I'm just thinking that as you were pausing. That's a much better term to be using because no, we're never going to get perfect at this. And perfect is actually... I would even say the striving for perfect is unhealthy and is a form of, or believing you can be because perfect isn't going to exist for us humans. Striving for perfection is a form of grandiosity, which is by definition, better than. Healthy is, and I always use my hands at knows with my clients that I realize people can't see here, but healthy is a circle in the middle.

Vickey Easa:

And then when you go into better than, you've gone up and it really... Picture what the term is, you really are in a state of thinking you're better than someone else. And I do have people push back on me sometimes and say, "That's not where I'm at.' The other person can feel it, trust me. And the opposite of that is when you go into less than. A less than state, neither of which is healthy.

Rebecca Wong:

Less than is like shame-

Vickey Easa:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rebecca Wong:

... toxic shame. And another piece that I think about when we think about perfection, like yeah, it goes into that more better than kind of place and it's tied together with this like, "Because I can't be less than."

Vickey Easa:

Right.

Rebecca Wong:

Right? That would be a really long way for me to fall if I was. And I'm up here looking down my nose at all of you, but if I were to be down there, I'd be really afraid of how you looked at me.

Vickey Easa:

And how I'm looking at myself.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Vickey Easa:

When I'm in less than I'm judging myself.

Rebecca Wong:

It's really murky and messy. We all have grappled with perfection somewhere in our lives.

Vickey Easa:

It's funny. Even those of us who think we don't, because mine doesn't show up as perfectionism, and-

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey Easa:

Mine shows up as what I like to call the other side of the same coin and it's, I can't mess up. And it's really isn't perfectionism. The interesting thing is I do look like a perfectionist to people who know me. When I was able to explain this to people, it was eye opening. Because like, "Oh you do look like a perfectionist, and now that I know you, I totally understand what you're saying." So mine is like as long as I get something done, it doesn't have to be perfect. That's why I say I'm not a perfectionist.

Vickey Easa:

I always say, how do I phrase it? "I'm not always efficient, but I'm effective." I can get it done, but the world closes in on me if I'm going to mess something up. So there's my less than, I can't mess it up, I can't do it wrong. I can do it good enough, I can get it done, but if I get it wrong, oh, it's-

Rebecca Wong:

The world closes in.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah, it's bad.

Rebecca Wong:

I want to just hold that for one minute, because I think that's probably a feeling that a lot of folks here can relate to.

Vickey Easa:

I think so. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rebecca Wong:

There's a heaviness to that.

Vickey Easa:

And it's fear.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Vickey Easa:

Because on the flip side-

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey Easa:

... what's going to happen if I do it wrong? And the big answer is, I don't always know.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. But that we have like these old scripts in our head about if I do this wrong or do whatever wrong, then such and such will happen. Someone will get mad at me, I will be embarrassed. There's an old script there.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah. And it's interesting you say that. Speaking of old scripts, my kids are eight and a half and... Actually nine and a half and eight, 18 months apart, and literally something happened just yesterday. I wish I could remember the full story, and Michael, my son said, "Mom, were you humiliated?" That's their word? And they both used it different times, "I was humiliated." And I've had to talk with them about, one, what does humiliated mean? Because that seems like a really big word for an eight and nine year old.

Vickey Easa:

And then why did it matter that you messed up, or said the wrong word in class, or sang the wrong song at chorus? Why? My kids do know the language of better than and less than, I've taught them that because I'm really trying to teach them at a young age what healthy is and that the other stuff doesn't matter. When I ask my daughter something about how she was judging a girl at school like, "Is she the same as you, is she equal to you?" She goes, "I don't know. I don't know enough about her."

Vickey Easa:

And I said, "Sweetheart, that's a really good answer because you do know enough about her. She's equal to you because she was born. That's all you need to know." But that's not how her brain already works.

Rebecca Wong:

And so I think this might be a place for us just to explain what we mean by in that same as-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

... equal to position. Because there's a lot of folks I'm imagining who might be listening to this and those words, they are a lot to digest and to make sense of. So let's spend a moment there, Vickey.

Vickey Easa:

As I was saying that healthy is the circle of in the middle with this lens, let me put it that way, with this lens. Healthy is a circle in the middle and you can feel better than other people and you can feel less than other people. When you're in that circle of health, that is when you can say from a gentle place, "I stand equal to all, eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe. We all have different strengths, we all have different weaknesses. My weaknesses don't make me less than, and my strengths don't make me better than. They simply make us different."

Vickey Easa:

And I like how you use the term same as. I don't often use the term same as, I use equal to. They're the same thing. I like yours, I'm going to start using it as well. That's why I say that, I like that, because that's really what it is. We stand equal to everyone, no matter what we know about them.

Rebecca Wong:

I like to think of this as we all are born into this planet with inherent worth. We all matter. I think it's Carl Sagan who says we're all made of star stuff and star stuff is literally matter, and so we all matter. Quite literally.

Vickey Easa:

Definitely.

Rebecca Wong:

And also, I matter, you matter. I don't matter more than you and you don't matter more than me. I don't matter less than you, you don't matter less than me. We all matter.

Vickey Easa:

And it's such a different concept. And I don't even remember-

Rebecca Wong:

Well, it's a different concept because our society is built upon like power over power over power over. Somebody has to have power over another in order for anyone to know their

Vickey Easa:

Place.

Rebecca Wong:

Feel good about it.

Vickey Easa:

Where do I fall? And where you fall is equal. It really is that simple, we fall equal.

Rebecca Wong:

And if our world actually revolved around that, this healthy idea, it would transform so much of what we have come to know.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

It would be revolutionary.

Vickey Easa:

Which is why I'm trying to teach my children from this young age. I was talking to some family members last weekend, basically prepping a presentation I'm going to give. And I taught them the sentences, I have worth because I was born and I stand equal to all eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe. And one of them said, "I have worth because I was born, does anyone know that?" I chuckled and said, "No, none of us were taught this from birth." And I am teaching my children that you have worth because you were born.

Rebecca Wong:

Well, some of us were taught that, but I also think that those who were taught that are not the ones who are going to be struggling with it as much.

Vickey Easa:

True. I only pause because I have yet to meet someone who was taught that. God bless them, but I haven't met them yet.

Rebecca Wong:

Well, I certainly haven't met them in my therapy office.

Vickey Easa:

Right. Well, I haven't even met them in my friendship circle.

Rebecca Wong:

They're not the ones who come.

Vickey Easa:

No offense to my friends at all, but my friends weren't taught that either. This is new information to everyone I've spoken to. But great for the people who already know it, I really do praise you and great job on your parents.

Rebecca Wong:

One of the pieces that I'm thinking of here is like, if I matter and you matter, if we both have inherent worth, if we stand equal to each other, then there's nothing, there's nothing that I or you could do that could add to or subtract from our worth.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

Nothing. You can't take away from or add to it.

Vickey Easa:

Period.

Rebecca Wong:

That's yeah. I could really, really mess up-

Vickey Easa:

And it would be okay. That's not my world on the inside. I want it to be, that's the work I'm on, but that's not what I deal with in the moment when it happens. The brain and I do.

Rebecca Wong:

Well, I guess what's coming up right now as I'm thinking about it is like if I want to be healthy in relationships, then I also... There's another piece, there's another layer here, and that's that I need to be accountable to any harm I've done.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

Any ways that I've hurt somebody. Which is much what we talk about when we talk about like the art of apology. We just did a great episode on the Why Does My Partner Podcast, it's not out yet. But we talked about the apology trifecta, which is all about empathy, accountability and vulnerability. Right.

Vickey Easa:

I'm just pausing and thinking, because I know I apologized to my husband for something yesterday, I just can't remember what it was. It'd be a better story if I could remember the whole thing, but yeah, it happens.

Rebecca Wong:

That's okay. Yeah. But harm happens, and then it doesn't mean that we're better or less than, it means that we need to show up and be accountable. And so accountability is a big part of this, and I think it's also that kind of being vulnerable and empathic and accountable is when we're in a one down position, we're so afraid of showing up and being vulnerable and accountable.

Vickey Easa:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rebecca Wong:

And same with the grandiose like, "I don't want to be accountable, it's going to pull me down. It feels good to be up here." It's like when I think about grandiosity, when I think about the one up, I think about being drunk and having the keys to my car and thinking I can drive.

Vickey Easa:

Well, and you know at our bootcamp that my husband and I went to as participants, he did ask Terry publicly, "How will I know when I'm up?" And Terry knows me, I work with him. And my husband was sitting next to me, and so Terry said, "Is Vickey your wife?" He said, yes." And Terry said, "Ask Vickey, she'll tell you." And the whole room laughed. It was wonderful, just like you are. I blew Terry kiss. It was wonderful, it really was. I kid you not, three years later, I came downstairs to my husband and said, "Terry never answered your question."

Vickey Easa:

Took me three years to figure it out, and he looked at me and said, "I'm very well aware of that." And I said, "Okay." And then I went up a little bit and I said, "Okay, if you were aware of that in the moment, then your job was to push back publicly and say, 'That's a funny answer, but you didn't answer my question.'" Because it was a valid question, how do I know when I'm up? And if you're not cultivating this other part of your brain, you don't realize, oh, I'm being gossipy right now, I'm up. I'm being judgey right now, I'm up.

Vickey Easa:

You have to really tune in to know it because as you just said, it feels really good. And I admitted, I'm a gossip. We're at a point now where I will look at him while I'm gossip and say, "And I'm up and I know it." And sometimes I stay there, and sometimes I bring myself back down. It depends on my mood.

Rebecca Wong:

I have this funny little story. There was this time my husband and I were in a therapy session, a couple session together. He was talking about something, I don't remember the content. But I remember part of my brain was turning on and I was going like, "Ugh, I can't believe I did that. Why would he say that about me? That's not who I am. He's really being ridiculous right now." "Oh, Rebecca, what are you doing? You're down in that."

Rebecca Wong:

I was just like catching it in the moment while he's sharing a story. I was like, "Oh, I'm going up and I'm going down and I'm going up and I'm going down." He stopped talking and I was like, "Guys, I'm sorry, I wasn't listening. This is what was happening inside of me."

Vickey Easa:

Well, and that brings up a good point too of how the up and the down are the preoccupation with ourselves.

Rebecca Wong:

So much, so much.

Vickey Easa:

You missed this whole side of it because you were stuck in your own loop.

Rebecca Wong:

I totally... Well, I was learning something-

Vickey Easa:

You were.

Rebecca Wong:

... but yes.

Vickey Easa:

Absolutely, that was beneficial for you. When we can get into our healthy place, we can focus on the other person.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. And that is so big right there, because what usually puts me in a conversation like that with my husband, what was probably putting me in that up and down was that he was probably sharing his perspective to something and I was going, "Yeah, no, that's not how it went. Why would he say that? That's ridiculous." And the other side of it is if I can hold us both equal, and remember that we have different perspectives, then I can like enter into listening to his perspective with different curiosity.

Vickey Easa:

Right. To reach a point of like, "I wonder what it was like for him."

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. Maybe my preoccupation doesn't matter so much then.

Vickey Easa:

In that moment. And you'd also... You said something earlier that I want to go back to about when we stand equal and we are the same as nothing adds to that or detracts from that. To me, that also alludes to one of the unhealthy forms of self-esteem, and I think I'm actually going to start calling those flawed forms. I don't like the word forms either, now I'm pausing, but flawed sources. That's actually the word for it, a flawed source.

Vickey Easa:

Those flawed sources, because healthy self-esteem from the inside, I have worth because I was born. Nothing I say or do adds or detracts from that. And the flaw sources are performance based or other based or attribute or asset based, which I've also renamed just because they go well with my name. I will say, "My last name is Easa." For your listeners' sake E-A-S-A. E is for esteem, A is for achievement, which is why I just called performance, so they're the same thing. S is for society, which I just called other, and a is for assets or attributes. It just goes with my name.

Vickey Easa:

But if I'm in sales and I get my sales done, if I'm in sports and I win the game, if I'm a stay-at-home mom and I cook a good meal, those are my achievements. And that's a source of flawed esteem that I'm not... I don't have more worth because I cooked a good meal. I actually do gratitude every night before bed, and I realized a couple nights ago, very recently that a lot of my points in gratitude for that day are things I got accomplished.

Vickey Easa:

Now, oftentimes it really is just healthy pride and feeling good, and I am grateful that I got the laundry done and my kids had clean clothes, and it is just gratitude. But sometimes at the end of the night, it's, "I'm happy because I achieved today and I got a lot done," and that's where it can tip a scale into unhealth. And it really is a fine balance between pride in what we do, which is healthy and endorphins, and that's awesome. Versus what--does self worth--Does how I view myself stem from what I got done today? Do I look at myself less on the days I don't get as much done for my healthy place? No. And for my unhealthy place, yes.

Rebecca Wong:

There's the achievements and then there's the other based, the societal-based stuff, which is also like it can show up like, "Does the person I'm with agree with me? Are we seeing things the same? Do they like me?"

Vickey Easa:

Do they like me? I was just going to say that one. I had to be the teacher's pet in school, had to be. I had to be my boss's favorite back when I had a boss. And you know what's funny about that?

Rebecca Wong:

You still are.

Vickey Easa:

What's funny about that, is that, so I don't have a boss anymore because I'm in-

Rebecca Wong:

You still have a favorite.

Vickey Easa:

Well, I still have to be, and what happened was I've skated through for four years thinking, "Oh, I'm healthy because I didn't have other..." And God bless my husband, I do love him. He was never the other and I don't know why. I thought I was okay, and then some family drama happened with my extended family a year ago and I was shattered all over again. And I remember looking at him going, "I'm still in other based, I've just been missing the other for four or years, and here we are." It can be so easy to not see it when, like I said, I had no boss. So if I-

Rebecca Wong:

Right. It can be really easy if you don't notice it at times.

Vickey Easa:

I totally missed it and then here I'm thinking, "I'm all healthy." Nope, I was right back. Nope, I don't even wanna say right back where I started, because I wasn't, there was some awareness-

Rebecca Wong:

But still not necessarily in the healthy circle-

Vickey Easa:

... but not in my healthy circle-

Rebecca Wong:

... in that.

Vickey Easa:

And then attribute and asset-based are-

Rebecca Wong:

God, it's marketing.

Vickey Easa:

It's marketing.

Rebecca Wong:

It's like, "You will be a better person if you buy this car."

Vickey Easa:

I always say like, I have worked because of my house.

Rebecca Wong:

If you have the skin cream-

Vickey Easa:

Exactly.

Rebecca Wong:

... people will like you more.

Vickey Easa:

If you have the right outfit, if you have the right face, if you have... Yes, that is attributes and assets. And what's interesting to me is, when I did learn this one, I can't even remember, you might remember. Which one does Terry call? Does he call it attributes? How did we learn it? Because my husband pointed out that it was like... Yes, he calls it attributes.

Rebecca Wong:

I think it's attributes.

Vickey Easa:

And I said something about a house and my husband says, "A house isn't an attribute." And I went, "Okay, attributes and assets." If someone needs to be rigid in their verbiage, so it's the right asset and/or attribute. Like you said, skin cream, I have worth because I'm pretty, I have worth because I have pretty hair or the right house. None of those things should affect our core. But when we're in our healthy place, those things aren't what matters.

Rebecca Wong:

When we're in our healthy place, they have less-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

... impact on us. Speaking of Terry, I love what he says, is that if our society became healthy today. If we became healthy today, then this whole like commercialistic, capitalism part of our society would collapse.

Vickey Easa:

Including commercialism, absolutely would collapse because that's what it is.

Rebecca Wong:

Totally.

Vickey Easa:

And then he jokes and says, "But that's not going to happen tomorrow"

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah, they're selling off of it's... Right.

Vickey Easa:

But there's also little by little, like I do like to look at the balance of things, of where does it go from healthy to unhealthy. I don't want people to think I'm saying you can't be entertained by your stuff. Entertainment is healthy and if I really like my Coach purse, I'm allowed to have it. And if I care what shoes like Rebecca does, I'm very obsessed with my nails. They don't change my worth, but I do like it when I've pretty nails. So I'm allowed to be entertained by things, it's when does it tip the scale and become where do I place my own value? And what do I...

Vickey Easa:

Do I have less value as a person because my nails weren't done today? No, when I'm in my healthy place with others. It's healthy to be in connection with people and to enjoy being around people. That's healthy, I encourage that. Does my value come from what those people think of me? Then it tipped into unhealth.

Rebecca Wong:

Let me take you on a little journey and ask you a question, because I know that much of your work lives around decision-making. And so I want to know more about how ourself-esteem, how the way we... And I often will read... I don't love the word self-esteem-

Vickey Easa:

Me neither.

Rebecca Wong:

... so I will talk about this much... Yeah, I talk about it really how much I love myself or I value myself, or how much I know that I matter. So how that affects our decision-making, right?

Vickey Easa:

Well, A, like I was saying, when you said it, I don't like the term self-esteem either, so I like how you just introduced that, where do I place my own value? And it affects our decision-making, I do want to point out first in ways we usually are not conscious of. Because it's little things like, am I allowed to say no to this? Am I allowed to have a difference of opinion?

Rebecca Wong:

Hold on. When are using the word allowed-

Vickey Easa:

Good.

Rebecca Wong:

... whose permission are we talking about?

Vickey Easa:

So if I'm being healthy, it's my own, and if I'm being unhealthy, it could be my husband's. And I don't mean in an abusive way, I want to explain this.

Rebecca Wong:

And even when it's your own, am I allowed?

Vickey Easa:

I'm not allowed to disappoint my husband. He can handle it, I can't.

Rebecca Wong:

So I'm just going to-

Vickey Easa:

Please do.

Rebecca Wong:

play with you here-

Vickey Easa:

This is fun.

Rebecca Wong:

... if that's okay. All right. Okay. Is that a healthy place?

Vickey Easa:

Oh, no. Thank you.

Rebecca Wong:

Okay, I just-

Vickey Easa:

No, and also I'll trickle this in too, it gets into boundaries. So even though self-esteem is my favorite area, it links in with boundaries all the time. So true story, last week, my husband wanted to go on the back porch and have a drink, and maybe a cigar, but I'm not sure, and I just didn't want to. And for the past four or five years that we've had the furniture back there and he loves going out there, I always, always, always, always, always say, "Yes."

Vickey Easa:

And the healthier I get and the more in tune I am with me, last week, I had literally just sat down on the couch. And even in the heat, I like to put a blanket on me because we have the air on, so I just got my blanket on, I'm all cozy and he says, "Can we go outside?" And I looked at him and said, "I don't want to." That was huge for me. And sometimes when you get healthy and start making decisions, it does rock the boat in relationships because he's not used to me saying no.

Vickey Easa:

And he looked at me almost crestfallen and went, "Wait, what?" I said, "I'm really sorry and I don't think you're going to like it as I get healthier." He goes, "Yeah, no, this doesn't work for me at all. No." He was totally laughing, but it was like this is a very big change in our dynamic of, "Honey, I just sat down on the couch and just got my blanket on." And he said, "You can bring the blanket outside." And I said, "I don't want to get up right now." And we're fine and that was a no.

Rebecca Wong:

I love this idea that when we say no to someone else or to something else, like I will sometimes, in my sessions grab a Sharpie and write no on the palm of my hand, and put my hand out and say, "No." And then on the back of my hand, I write the word, yes. So when I say no-

Vickey Easa:

Oh, it's interesting.

Rebecca Wong:

... to somebody else, I'm saying yes to me.

Vickey Easa:

Yes, that makes sense.

Rebecca Wong:

And that is like, it's completely radical.

Vickey Easa:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, it was hard for me to say no to him because I, the yes to me was me-

Rebecca Wong:

I bet, it was.

Vickey Easa:

... was I don't want to get up right now. And the truth of the matter is we can't go back in time.

Rebecca Wong:

Yes, because I want to stay right where I am.

Vickey Easa:

It was, I want to stay right where I am. Had he asked two minutes before-

Rebecca Wong:

Uncomfortable.

Vickey Easa:

... the answer would've been yes. Now, I didn't tell him that, but he knew. But-

Rebecca Wong:

But you had settled in.

Vickey Easa:

I had settled, and I call it melting into the couch, I had just melted in and I was not getting up. But I love that about saying, yes to you. I've never thought about that perspective, but that's exactly what it is. And when we are in our unhealthy, less than place, this is really subconscious, by the way, we don't believe we deserve the yes. I do have this voice inside my head from my own childhood stuff that says-

Rebecca Wong:

Well, because we don't believe that we're equal and we don't believe that-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

... we matter.

Vickey Easa:

Because I am here to appease you. So I'm not even aware-

Rebecca Wong:

That's how I would get my worth.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

I get my worth when I appease you. And so if I get my worth when I appease you, and I say no to you, there's no space for me to say no to you. Because if I say no to you, I don't gain any worth, I don't feel enough. I feel even more less than.

Vickey Easa:

I feel even more less than. So-

Rebecca Wong:

There's the fear.

Vickey Easa:

... the fear. So if you can-

Rebecca Wong:

The fear that I'm going to disappoint.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah. So if you can breathe yourself up into your equal place, and like I said, with a protective boundary of knowing I'll be okay-

Rebecca Wong:

Is it as easy Vickey, as a breathing yourself up?

Vickey Easa:

It is by the fourth year.

Rebecca Wong:

Okay, great. Four years in.

Vickey Easa:

That was a really good... I like that you just said that, yes. No, at the beginning of learning this, I don't even think I was doing it. I was teaching it and it was mental for me, but I don't know that I was really embodying it yet. And now it's a deep breath and really I have worth because I was born.

Rebecca Wong:

For me, because it's a constant piece of work in my life too, it's really taken, like that particular therapy session I mentioned before, where I was bouncing, and then I was able to share that in session. And that piece of awareness became like the, okay, Rebecca, that was awesome. So much love and compassion for myself for noticing that and being vulnerable and sharing it. And it transformed how I do relationships, at least with my husband. Because I can acknowledge like, oh, I'm up or I'm down. He can also point it out to me at times.

Rebecca Wong:

There might be something that we're talking about, where maybe with like a relationship with somebody else and he's helping me to process it, and to see it through. And he's like, "Oh, if you do that, it's going to come off a little bit like you're up."

Vickey Easa:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wong:

Right?

Vickey Easa:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wong:

He's helping me to observe myself. And when I can open up to him in a way that allows me the spaciousness to be real. And I think that's a big part of it, it is like, we all go up and down. We all go up and down and we can cycle through that in a conversation.

Vickey Easa:

Right, right. Yeah, and I'm here.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. Well, I'm just guessing that our listeners, as they're listening to this right now, they may even notice as they're listening to this like, "As I've been listening and Vickey and Rebecca have been describing this, I'm cycling, I'm doing this up and down thing, where I'm judging myself for the times when I..." Awesome. Awesome. Because where does this work begin? It begins with that awkward observation. It's not going to feel comfortable at first, it's going to feel awkward.

Vickey Easa:

At first, I like how you said that. Because again, in more time it becomes more natural and I find myself... I love how you just mentioned you and your husband. Because I took Terry a little too seriously. So after our bootcamp, which was four years ago, we would come home, and my husband was a really good sport because when he would go up, I would call him on it. And it would usually, not... I guess it might have brought him down a little bit because I would say to him, "Do you feel it, do you feel that you're up? Because I feel it, because you're spewing contempt at me right now, so do you feel it?" And he would-

Rebecca Wong:

Wait, I was just going to pause for our listeners and say, "What was this guy doing?"

Vickey Easa:

And I was just going to say so, where was I in those moments? And I find myself realizing literally right now, which I will tell him later today and he'll love it, for those first few months that I would point it out to him, never realized I was doing it myself, and he handled it. He never looked at me and said, "You're doing it too." He would look at me and be like, "Oh yeah. Yes, I do feel it, and yes, I do feel it towards..." He would say, "I feel it in me and I feel it towards you right now," and it was great.

Vickey Easa:

And every once in a while, his big pushback to me was that it's not contempt, and let me tell you what I mean by that, because I've softened on this a lot. Terry taught us in the general consensus is that the emotion behind... Well, the emotion behind both the up and the down is the same. I do believe it's questionable what it is because Terry tells us it's contempt and my husband will tell me over and over again, "Honey, you're right. I'm up right now and it's not contempt. I can't tell you what it is, but it's not contempt. And I'm there and you're right, I'm in better than."

Vickey Easa:

We had way too many fights with me saying, "Well, Terry said it was contempt, so it has to be contempt and you're going, 'But I'm the one feeling it and I'm not.'" So I finally softened, I think it can be judgment, which I think could be contemptuous anyway. And I've gone to the point where I'm like, "Okay, it's negative." I'll just go with it's negative. The fact is it is the same emotion if you're up or you're down and where you're pointing it. And when I was calling him on it, I was pretty much in the same place. I'm surprised he never called me on that.

Vickey Easa:

And I spent so much time preoccupied with his journey and getting him out of what he was spewing at me that I wasn't focusing on my own journey.

Rebecca Wong:

Or on your relationship.

Vickey Easa:

Or on the relationship. Well, the relationship would have improved-

Rebecca Wong:

Great.

Vickey Easa:

... if he would've just gotten healthy, so I think I was very focused on my relationship.

Rebecca Wong:

If he just wouldn't, then we would've hand on the hip the whole time.

Rebecca Wong:

... the whole time. Cocking the head. But here's the thing, I do believe it's contempt and I'm going to hold higher ground.

Vickey Easa:

Okay, I'll let you have that conversation with him-

Rebecca Wong:

Here's why.

Vickey Easa:

... because I talk to you about that.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah-

Vickey Easa:

I want you to.

Rebecca Wong:

I totally will. Yeah, okay. And here's why I think it is. Because when I'm looking out at you and I'm thinking I'm better than you, you don't know what you're thinking. There's something wrong with the way that you are. When I'm in that kind of place, that's the only thing I can really name as that energy, even if I don't want to name it fully. And when I'm in the other place where I'm not good enough, that's what I'm directing back at me. It's the, I'm not enough or you are-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

... not enough. You don't matter or I don't matter, and that is a violent energy. Whether it's from me to me, as Terry says, between our own ears, or it's what I'm tolerating from you, or it's what I'm giving out to you. In any direction, there's an element of violence.

Vickey Easa:

I like that you're using the word violence, I really love that word, more so than I like my softened word of negative. I would go with whatever we call it, it's still violent. And my buffering is only because I can't sell contempt in my house, I can sell contempt to my clients. Because my clients also look at me differently than my husband does. Thank goodness for that, maybe.

Rebecca Wong:

Hey, we need a night around this. But still-

Vickey Easa:

I see what you're saying.

Rebecca Wong:

... I don't want to soften there, because I think the other side to it, the antidote to this contempt-

Vickey Easa:

Is compassion.

Rebecca Wong:

... and that's the softening.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

And so I don't want to soften our understanding-

Vickey Easa:

Oh, sure.

Rebecca Wong:

... of what that energy is because we need to soften to shift gears.

Vickey Easa:

Yes. And we can only get compassion from a healthy brain. Compassion-

Rebecca Wong:

Say more.

Vickey Easa:

... I was going to say it doesn't exist in our unhealthy brain, but I'm not sure that's true, so I won't go that far. But Terry describes the first consciousness, really because it happens first. And what Terry didn't know, so I didn't know when I was first educated by him, but now Jules says taught me brain science, is that there is this part of the brain, your subcortical part, your limbic area that does happen first and it is your knee jerk reaction to something.

Rebecca Wong:

Whoosh.

Vickey Easa:

I don't always describe the whoosh because I don't have one, but my clients do and that's-

Rebecca Wong:

That's another whole story that we discuss in depth on the Why Does My Partner Podcast.

Vickey Easa:

But I do introduce it to my clients, the whoosh. I have a whoosh mentally, so I know when I'm there. And the relationship-

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey Easa:

Oh.

Rebecca Wong:

And I got chills through my whole body and my face got red. That's a whoosh. That's one example of a whoosh, but they can show up in smaller ways too.

Vickey Easa:

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah, there, it is.

Vickey Easa:

The observation state that you were mentioning earlier, when we can pause and breathe, we can activate and get into what Terry calls our second consciousness, which is our neocortex. And it's a higher level of thinking and it's where... I like to emphasize to my clients, it's where emotion and logic are integrated. So it's not emotion versus logic like my first consciousness is my emotions and my second consciousness is logic, not at all. It's when I can see things clearly and be emotionally in tune and connected.

Vickey Easa:

And it does, this is that muscle we were talking about at the very beginning, it takes cultivating and practice and work, and that's where connection and compassion live. That's where I change my agenda to-

Rebecca Wong:

Great.

Vickey Easa:

... I want to be close with you again, not I want to prove my point.

Rebecca Wong:

And so, I'll sometimes think of this like, how that starts showing up in me that... And I like to call this an observational self.

Vickey Easa:

I like that.

Rebecca Wong:

I like to label some of my different parts and my adaptive parts and stuff, but I like to have this observational self on board too. And if I can pull her on, then it's like I have these moments where I'm like, "Oh, Rebecca, what just happened there? Did you just go down or did you go up? And how are you treating this other person? How are you treating you? What's the need that you're needing that's not being met right now? How can I show up for you in that way?" So I'm speaking to myself like this and if you could hear the shift in my tone-

Vickey Easa:

I did hear it, I was going to point that out. The whole thing shifts.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. And that's often, I think I can only give myself that if I do believe that I matter.

Vickey Easa:

Right. Because otherwise, why would you bother-

Rebecca Wong:

Like oh-

Vickey Easa:

... you're not worth it, anyway.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. Like, "Oh sweetie, slow down a minute. Let's just take a look." Which is the same way, like if my kid was falling apart, the same way I would want to meet them.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah. It's funny you say, my kid. How I talk to myself sometimes in my healthy, gentle moments of self-correction like you're saying is how I imagine I will talk to my now nine, 16-year-old son if he's mean to his girlfriend. That's really the image I have in my head, is talking to him that night and saying, "Sweetie, that's not how we talk to people." That's how I try to talk to myself. You can only, not be overly redundant, you can only make healthy decisions that are true to you from this healthy place.

Vickey Easa:

And here's when we're talking about, if I'm being ridiculous. And that's how I call myself, that's my negative voice like, "I think you're being ridiculous." So much for me of those negative voices were buried. My big thing has been knowing that I'm in less than, like when I learned this lens, knowing that I was there and feeling the internal judgment, but having no words to go with it. So part of my journey has been to find those words and figure them out, and then work through them.

Vickey Easa:

I had gone to my own therapy session last Monday and was in a loose, loose, loose, light panic when I got into my therapy session. And as I was telling her why I was all riled up, I literally said, I said, "And I'm being ridiculous." And then I realized, oh, yeah, that's how I talk to myself, "You're being ridiculous." And then I realized, and I literally said this to her, I said, "Not that right now is about me as a therapist, but as that comes out of my mouth, I realize the verbiage for a lot of my clients is, 'It's fine.'"

Vickey Easa:

When I'm sitting in session looking at this client going, "It's not fine. Everything about you was saying that it's not fine and you're trying to shush up some part of you, like shushy you, it is fine." And so I want to help people get in touch with why isn't it really fine right now? Can we talk to that part of you for a minute? So, so much of coming out of the less and better than is finding the verbiage that's happening in your own head and that curiosity, like you said, where is this really coming from? What's going on for me right now?

Vickey Easa:

Oftentimes, when I or my husband goes up, it's because we felt attacked to begin with and went really far down.

Rebecca Wong:

And so let's just notice that for a minute. Oftentimes, we go up as a protection when we're feeling that contemptuous energy coming towards us.

Vickey Easa:

Yes. Yes. Well, because I find myself thinking right now the two examples on my head, one for me and one for him, we were making up. The time that he did it, it wasn't coming at him at all, it was an innocent question. The bounce down did not necessarily come from the partner, it was our own, "Oh crap, I failed. I'm this horrible, horrible person. How could I have let this happen?" "Oh no I'm not, it wasn't my fault." That's the defensiveness going back up, "It wasn't my fault." "No, no, no, this was your fault and here's all the reasons why it was your fault."

Rebecca Wong:

So the compassion coming back in is we both have room to make mistakes and we're going to learn from them together.

Vickey Easa:

And learn from them. Yeah, I literally just had this conversation with my child last night about, "Honey, you don't have to..." My children try so hard to be perfect all the time for good or for bad. And then when they get exhausted from trying too hard, then their behavior plummets was the word used last night, plummets for a week. They literally just go, "I give up, I can't even be a good kid anymore," and so they're just monsters for a week. And so, I was talking to him last night, my nine-year-old and I said, "Sweetheart, stop trying to be perfect all the time. Make healthy decisions and know that you're going to mess up, and that's okay. And just messing up one day doesn't mean you have to mess up for a week. Let's stop being so extreme with it here."

Vickey Easa:

I don't know how well that conversation went, we'll see what really happens in the real world. But I was so happy he was able to articulate that to me. He was like, "This is what happens, mommy, it's too hard to be perfect all the time." "I don't want you being perfect all the time."

Rebecca Wong:

It is hard to be perfect all the time for all of us.

Vickey Easa:

For all of us. And impossible.

Rebecca Wong:

Right.

Vickey Easa:

We humans.

Rebecca Wong:

And just to come back to where we started, that when we try to show up as perfect all the time, inadvertently we're telling everyone around us, "I'm holding you in contempt if you're not as good as me."

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

And if-

Vickey Easa:

And I don't know if lot of people realize that. I've had clients push back on me, "No, I'm not really saying that." You are. Some people I think, maybe do realize it, but some don't. But that is the energy behind it.

Rebecca Wong:

It's the energy, yeah. Yeah.

Vickey Easa:

Well said.

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey, this has been so yummy, I think for both of us. Our hope, and our joy, and our work in this world is to help more people bring that observational self on board-

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

in all realms of life and relationships. I think in many ways for you, it's around how they're making decisions.

Vickey Easa:

Yes. Yes, from their healthy place. I guess it really does boil down to... I keep saying it's about the yes and the no, and I'm not... I think it is, but it's probably way more about the nos, that no-

Rebecca Wong:

Oh yeah, in case, you're rocking the boat.

Vickey Easa:

... that it's okay to say no. Yeah, you're rocking the boat and someone might be disappointed. And how do we deal with their disappointment? And that their disappointment is okay and not a reflection on me.

Rebecca Wong:

Beautifully said. And so you have a free guide on your website.

Vickey Easa:

I do. If you go to yourdecisiondiva.com, there's a free guide on the self-esteem, those lenses and decision-making, and how they relate. And I do want to say a little funny thing about Your Decision Diva. My husband came up with that term and it was The Decision Diva. And I come from a less than place in my unhealthiness and I couldn't get behind being a diva. Then I was on a coaching call and someone said, "What if you were Your Decision Diva?" And I went, "That I can do." I can help people become more confident in their decisions, as long as it's Your Decision Diva. So I am Your Decision Diva.

Rebecca Wong:

You know what I love about this is, we're even ending on this note of like, "We're all working on this stuff."

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

None of us escaped this journey.

Vickey Easa:

Correct. And journey, I don't know if there is a destination. It's a constant... Not constant, that's too harsh of a word, but it's continuous. It's continuous work and you're going to have moments of success, which are glorious and you're going to have moments of not. I wouldn't even call them failures, they're not, messiness. And so it's how quickly can we bring ourselves into our healthy brain of equality? And that's where the work is.

Rebecca Wong:

That is totally where the work is and as we're wrapping this up, I want to come back to that earlier part of the conversation, around contempt. And I want to just help us to squeeze this part together and make sense of it, because another way to describe contempt, you just did it, is harshness.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

I was being harsh towards you, I was being harsh towards me.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah. And there's nothing that harshness accomplishes that loving firmness doesn't do better.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. And that's the work right there.

Vickey Easa:

Yes. Loving firmness. Again, and this example doesn't work with a lot of my clients and that's okay. It does work with a lot of my clients, even my child loves clients right now. How would I correct my 16-year-old son for talking not nicely to his girlfriend?

Rebecca Wong:

How about this? When you were 13, 14, 15, 16 and you did something that wasn't so good, how do you wish that somebody had corrected you?

Vickey Easa:

How do you wish somebody had? That's a great way to say it.

Rebecca Wong:

Right?

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

Because that right there it's like... Oh, I got into it with my 12 going on 25-year-old last night and I had gotten a bit harsh. You need to, and my child came up to me later and said, "What I really needed was a hug and for us to slow down."

Vickey Easa:

To slow down.

Rebecca Wong:

That's it. "Yeah, you're right. That would've been a better approach in that moment and I can still keep growing." And so are we refining our language together? But that's exactly what it is. It's harshness versus loving firmness toward out of me and in towards me.

Vickey Easa:

And in towards me, yes. Living non violently-

Rebecca Wong:

Yes.

Vickey Easa:

... both with other people, and I always use my hands and between my own ears.

Rebecca Wong:

Yes, yes, yes. That nonviolent living is working ourself away from that harshness into that loving firmness.

Vickey Easa:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Vickey Easa:

Always a pleasure to chat with you.

Rebecca Wong:

Always. I hope that folks get a lot out of this episode.

Vickey Easa:

Oh yeah.

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey, thank you for joining me.

Vickey Easa:

And thank you for having me.

Rebecca Wong:

And so, we'll send folks over to yourdecisiondiva.com or vickeyeasa.com.

Vickey Easa:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wong:

Both.

Vickey Easa:

That's fine too, too. Thank you.

Rebecca Wong:

Vickey Easa:

Yes. Bye.