Dr. Stan Tatkin and Kara Hoppe, psychotherapists and co-authors of Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, join the podcast to share their wisdom on creating secure, purposeful relationships in a world that is indifferent to us.  They explain why this relationship is so imperative, especially when it comes to raising healthy, happy children.

Stan and Kara both bring a wealth of understanding of neurobiology and personal relational experience to this conversation. We talk about the importance of humor, how suffering can motivate us toward change, and how we can shift from being feeling-centered to purpose-centered in our relationship.  All of this ultimately makes us better parents and creates a secure relational foundation for our children.  In other words, this is how we parents can make it through the overwhelm, heal wounds for future generations, and begin to create the world we want to live in.

Whether you’re expecting your first child, are deep in the throes of raising children already, or just want to be a parent someday, this conversation is for you. 

RESOURCES:

Learn more about Dr. Stan Tatkin, his upcoming trainings and retreats and more at https://www.thepactinstitute.com/  Follow him on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Learn more about Kara Hoppe and her upcoming virtual retreats for couples at https://www.karahoppe.com/  Follow her on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Buy their book, Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Listen to Rebecca’s conversation with Dr. Stan Tatkin from Season 1 of the Connectfulness podcast, Episode 6 “Why Are Relationships Difficult? With Stan Tatkin”

connectfulness.com

If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining one of Rebecca’s online offerings to deepen your relational skills and expand your Self care. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offerings

Also, please check out the new WHY DOES MY PARTNER short form weekly podcast.

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:

I'm really excited to be here with both of you today. Dr. Stan Tatkin and Kara Hoppe, welcome. I'm so excited for this new book that you've just released, Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents. Can you both just jump in and tell us a little bit about this collaboration of yours.

Kara Hoppe:

Sure. Thanks for having us. It's really nice to be here as well. Stan and I have known each other for about a decade. I started working for the PACT Institute about a decade ago. The PACT Institute is Stan's Institute where he trains clinicians on his approach to couple therapy. So we've been colleagues and friends for a long time, before my Baby Bomb pit.

Kara Hoppe:

I've been trained in his institute, a huge fan. He's been made a huge impact on my work with couples, and then also on my relationship with my husband. So it was inevitable when Charlie and I, my husband and I, had our son Jude, and we were in the throes of the early parenthood partnering and parenting jam, and really experiencing the intensity of it and the difficulty of it and the crisis parts of it, along with the joy and the gratitude and the appreciation and all the bomb aspects of it. I would approach Stan and say, "This is real. This is a thing." Managing pain part-

Rebecca Wong:

It's so real.

Kara Hoppe:

It's so real. I didn't have the lived experience of it until I did. And I said to Stan, "We should write a book about this and help people." And luckily he was game.

Rebecca Wong:

Awesome.

Stan Tatkin:

And I really believe that it was important for couples to prepare for their first child or their second child or the third child, because I had so many people who weren't prepared at all. And I thought, this is important. This is important to help couples remain a couple from the very beginning and to predict and plan and prepare for the first child, which is stressful.

Rebecca Wong:

There's so many books out there on parenting and on bringing home a new baby and all that. But there's not very many, I know of like just a few books that are really written for the couple and how they're going to survive growing their family.

Stan Tatkin:

Correct.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. It's so important and it really is a very necessary conversation to be having.

Kara Hoppe:

Yeah. That was my experience too, as a new parent, once Charlie and I were struggling, we were having a hard time connecting again and staying a couple, amongst both of us being very preoccupied with learning how to be parents. So as a couple therapist, I went to the literature. I was like, "I need help." I found a lot of helpful things, but I didn't find anything that was inclusive to both partners, and speaking not just to women, but for hetero partnerships to both partners, so they can both be included and coming together and investing in their relationship.

Kara Hoppe:

I mean, like I said, writing Baby Bomb, like this is the book Charlie and I needed. We needed a book that spoke to both of us and helped us, like Stan said, with the preparation. You can do a lot of preparation, but nothing can really prepare you for what it's like to be a parent when you're in it. And so it's also about doing some triage as well for couples that are in it and needing help. Being like, "Wow, this isn't working. Let's figure out how we can make it work."

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. You just mentioned being preoccupied, Kara. I think that's such a big thing. And you talk about this in Baby Bomb where you're talking about how even when you're pregnant, even when you're expecting, the focus is not on your couplehood, it's not on your partnership, the focus is on this little one that's going to be coming into the world. That preoccupation is such a big piece because that's one of the things I kept seeing you talk about, and I love the way you put this. You said, perfect partnerships don't exist. And so it's that piece about, how do we refocus so that we as a couple are on the same page? And that's so much about what you talk of in this book. Is, how do you get the partners on the same page?

Kara Hoppe:

Right. And that's the dance. Right, Stan?

Stan Tatkin:

Yes. I did think of one thing that does prepare partners a little bit, and that is partners that start off with pets, particularly dogs, because dogs are forever toddlers.

Rebecca Wong:

You need boundaries.

Stan Tatkin:

Yes. I've met many a couple that starts off with their dogs. They're conscious of this. That doesn't exactly prepare them for the baby, not precisely, but it gets closer.

Rebecca Wong:

I think that's a wonderful observation.

Stan Tatkin:

Then comes cats and then sea-monkeys and then chia pets, I think it was.

Rebecca Wong:

I wish this was a video podcast and everyone can see the beautiful hat you wore for a little while before, because the humor is just so apparent here. And I think that that's a piece of this, because the humor is a form of co-regulation. It's a way that we help each other's nervous systems to just settle.

Stan Tatkin:

That's important because secure functioning couples tend to retain their humor and they use their humor as a co-regulatory function. Couples that are insecure functioning, often lack of sense of humor. That makes the system much more brittle. Part of the reason we emphasize secure functioning, and we emphasize that the couple learn to be really good with each other under pressure, under stress, under load from the outside, from the inside, so that they can retain their flexibility, their humor, because it's going to require a lot of humor to raise a baby, raise a child.

Kara Hoppe:

Yeah. I think what you're saying also about couples that are practicing insecure functioning, they are so preoccupied with trying to get their sense of security and their needs met. They just don't have any space for play or humor. It's constantly like looking out and assessing for danger and being vigilant. And so when their partner can make a joke, it's always falling flat. It's like, that's not funny. It's just throwing it back. Like there isn't that sense of the co-regulation or experience of the co-regulation, right?

Stan Tatkin:

Yes. And we should probably establish that all human beings, like all mammals, but human primates in particular have an acute sense of threat detection. And because we're very good at predicting and thinking ahead, we use often these senses to predict danger. Well, that's very good out in the open and out in the field, it's not so good in love relationships because we're constantly sweeping for any kind of threat cue, and couples are ripe for providing those threat cues for each other because of the nature of an attachment relationship, primary attachment relationship. But also because of memory. We're memory animals, and it's very easy for us to misunderstand each other to make errors of communication and memory and perception. And so this is why I think the adult romantic attachment relationship is one of the hardest relationships on the planet.

Rebecca Wong:

And also one of the spaces that has the most potential for healing.

Stan Tatkin:

Most potential for healing and for harming. Nature does not care. People talk about adaptability. We're adaptive animals. Talk about neuroplasticity. That's always the case, but nature doesn't care which way the wind blows. And so we are much more set up, I think, for war than for love. I can argue that. And that's why we're trying to educate people on how to override human systems that make us want to shoot first and ask questions later. And while we stay safe, we think, we also create great problems for ourselves, and that takes some wisdom and some knowledge education. And that's what we hope to provide.

Rebecca Wong:

I have a tiny little vignette of a personal story that might help to illustrate a little bit of what we're talking about. And that's, I had this tendency throughout many years in my relationship with my spouse to react whenever he would bite his bottom lip with, what's the matter? And finally one day, I paused, I was learning a lot about that self-regulation piece of the work. And I paused and I sat with myself and I took a look over at him and he was doing a crossword puzzle. The biting his lip had nothing at all to do with me.

Stan Tatkin:

No.

Kara Hoppe:

Right.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Stan Tatkin:

Could have been gas.

Rebecca Wong:

It could have been. In that case, I don't think it was, but still my point is just that my reaction, what I learned really strongly from that particular exchange between us was that my reaction and a history of many reactions and the dance that we would get into around those reactions were often old stories, old things that my system knew, but that weren't actually things that were happening in that moment.

Stan Tatkin:

That's right. And it could also be too that that's a remnant from even before you met, your vigilance to paying attention. Even people who are paying special attention to the lower part of the face, the mouth, some people pay a special attention to the upper part of the face. Some people pay a special attention to gross movements of the neck and the head or the arms and legs. We're amazing animals in our acuity, at being able to pick up environmental cues of all kinds, at lightning speeds. But we're not that good at error correcting if we are feeling threatened.

Stan Tatkin:

For feeling threatened, error correcting areas of the brain actually are not operating because they don't have the time. Time is a crucial factor. And so people will automatically interpret what they see here and feel and go, oh, I know this. I recognize this. And this is either good or bad. Yeah. That's just the human condition. There's nothing wrong about that. It happens so fast.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. So one of the things that I picked up through reading Baby Bomb, Kara and Stan, is Kara, you were talking a lot about getting to know these tells, getting to know these cues. What is it that I tend to do? What is it that my partner tends to do? And so the knowing of this becomes a foundation for how you begin to work with that.

Kara Hoppe:

Exactly. How you begin to understand yourself. I mean, of course there will always be mystery and more to know. Beginning to understand yourself and beginning to understand your partner. And much like the example that you shared, Rebecca, not taking it personally. I hear in this story that you said about seeing your spouse bite his lip, almost like it activates in you, I need to help him what's wrong. I'm going to come towards you, and that's my impulse.

Rebecca Wong:

There you go. There's my attachment style. We can blow that up.

Kara Hoppe:

Right. I can relate. Like the scanning of the, what's happening here. What gaps do I need to fill in, et cetera? We introduced in the book, the attachment theory to help people get an orientation about attachment. And then the next chapter was on becoming experts where we brought in the tells and the nervous system and getting to know each other, the animals that they are and who they're with and how they can best care for themselves and each other.

Rebecca Wong:

And I think that's such an important piece to do. Can we back up at this point in our conversation and go back and talk a little bit about the attachment theory? Because I think that's such an important piece and I don't want to glaze over it for folks. There's a few different pieces here. I know the two of you have different languages that you use. Kara, you use these colors, and Stan, you use the island and the wave and the anchor, I think it is. Am I getting that?

Stan Tatkin:

Yes.

Rebecca Wong:

There's other language that's just out there in literature. So I'm wondering if both of you would maybe just jump in with a very brief overview.

Stan Tatkin:

The literature actually is research literature, starting with Mary Ainsworth who termed insecures as anxious avoidant, or anxious ambivalent. And people make the mistake today by referring to one side as anxious, and the other side is avoidant. However, both sides by definition are anxious because they're insecure. So we have anxiety over a feeling that our primary attachment relationship or relationships are not supporting either clinging or distancing my autonomy and my wish to stray from the mother figure, the primary, without negative consequence. And my ability to cling and run back and be dependent on that caregiver without consequence.

Stan Tatkin:

And so we have an adaptation to a cultural style, really a lineage, of how relationships go. That is conveyed through thousands and thousands of interactions from infancy on through really childhood. And that forms what Bowlby called an internal working model of how relationships work, how I move toward in a way, upon whom I depend.

Rebecca Wong:

Would it be safe to say that this is also a part of, kind of like the internal knowing of am I safe or am I not safe in the world?

Stan Tatkin:

Well, it is absolutely about whether I am safe or unsafe in the world because my world is my primary attachment relationship. And that is my world. And so children, let's say, who are neglected on an attachment level, not a material level, on an attachment level, where the family does not value attachment features such as skin to skin, face to face, eye to eye, close proximity interaction play for long extended periods with a caregiver who is fully resourced, attentive, fully present, and curious about finding the baby's mind. Those conditions have to be there.

Stan Tatkin:

And anything other than that will cause the baby, we don't know, because we're not in the baby's head, but we see behaviourally, the baby to make adjustments according to its own sense of safety and security. We'll see behavioral adaptations that the baby will make. This is how we can study babies and understand that this is normative. This is not personality. This is just the baby's way of doing what is expected in the family. It's a culture.

Stan Tatkin:

There are other fancy terms people will hear. There's preoccupied, there's angry, resistant for the clinging side, there's avoidant and dismissive and derogating of attachment values on the distancing side. There are all sorts of research terms because everyone who studies babies see something a little different. It's the same animal, the same reaction, but every time we look more deeply, we see finer and finer nuances, and that gives rise to more descriptive terms.

Stan Tatkin:

Now, when we went to island/anchor/wave, we wanted to make it easy for people to not use it in a pejorative sense. So we picked this nautical model. And that would be something that maybe people could identify with, without pathologizing themselves or their partner. Kara went further and used what is called the AAI or the Adult Attachment Interview colors that we use for coding babies and for coding adults. That is what I have used. Kara wanted to use the colors to even emphasize more, the idea of a continuum, rather than people just pigeonholing themselves or their partners, and to see themselves basically on a continuum which I think is actually much more helpful.

Kara Hoppe:

Yeah. We wanted to take the concept and take it further. And to also instill hope in partners that if you're identifying as red, that would be wave and wired for love, or we do, or anxious ambivalent in a relationship or in a work situation or in a life situation, that you can move. In the book it's black and white, but how we had it made it's in this gorgeous color, like a color wheel. So you can move from red to orange, like you would around the color wheel showing that there's hope for change. You and your partner may start being blue or red. By meeting those sense of security needs and establishing that sense of trust and love and belonging, you can move each other or yourselves to yellow.

Rebecca Wong:

And that's a big piece of it, because first you have to understand, where do I tend to fall? Where does my partner tend to fall? And then what is the need underneath that? When you're talking about partnerships. Because these attachment theory is started by looking at babies and infant parent dyads, and then we moved into talking about the adult attachment stuff, and now we're talking about how are we using it in partnerships. So to extrapolate all that, there's a piece of this that begins with a lot of reflection. And from that reflection point, it becomes something that you can put into some kind of skill based practice. And that is, I think, a really interesting piece for us to talk about because it's those practices that start moving us into, I think, more security. Am I right about that?

Kara Hoppe:

Definitely. Yeah.

Stan Tatkin:

And also what I need as a wave or as an island or somebody who's in the red or in the blue is driven by fear. It's not that I'm seeking something. Well, I am. I'm seeking safety and security. And the way I'm seeking safety and security is the manner in which I protected myself when I was little. However, that same way of protecting myself from what I fear most is interpreted in the adult world as threatening. We have a memory system of what it is like to depend on somebody, and a set of fears that are known and predictable based on development that create defenses that are insecure functioning in a relationship. In other words, they're too unfair, too insensitive, too much at the time, and focused on the self, rather than the relationship. That is an impediment to secure functioning.

Stan Tatkin:

So I have to know what I'm afraid of. I have to know that I defend myself reflexively in this way, and I have to know that the way I defend myself is not safe for another person. And then I have to take responsibility for it. But as a partner, I have to also know your fears. This would be the case, no matter what. Everyone has a history. And I'd have to understand your fears and understand how you protect yourself and handle you in a way that doesn't amplify your fears and increase your defense, otherwise I'm not safe. So a lot of this is understanding of not just how I work, but how you work.

Rebecca Wong:

How I work, how you work, how we work.

Kara Hoppe:

Ultimately, how we work.

Stan Tatkin:

How we work is quite different. How we work is how we've decided our new culture shall be. How we're going to run things, how we're going to comport ourselves for the benefit of each other and for the relationship that contains us. So that is a conscious decision and effort to make this culture, not like the one I grew up in, but the one that is brand new, co-created, co-constructed by each other. But then we have to watch ourselves to make sure that we keep each other safe and secure. There's more than the other thing going on. We're creating something brand new that benefits and protects us both.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. And so when you're talking about culture, you're talking about this family system, this unit?

Stan Tatkin:

Correct.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Kara Hoppe:

Right. I like to think about it in the book, but then also my clinical work is the first family culture that both partners have. And then their second family, the one they're creating. And I think like a lot of the work that we do, I could speak for myself, but I learned this from Stan, so I feel like I can say we do. That we do as clinicians is offer our clients, and then, of course, the readers in Baby Bomb, a new paradigm. We inherited these different cultures from our first family. And unless we learn that there's another way to do it, we don't know there's another way to do it. We're just repeating these patterns unconsciously, like with each other, without an awareness about it.

Kara Hoppe:

And what I thought was so great, knowing Stan for the past 10 years, like serendipitously, I met Stan and started working with him right before I got married. It was literally like I had this life experience where learning about secure functioning from Stan and then sharing it with Charlie, my husband, it was just like, my mind was blown. Like I was like, I knew intuitively I did not want to do what my first family did. And Charlie knew that too, but we didn't know another way to do it.

Kara Hoppe:

And that's where Stan, his work came in for us as a couple where I was like, "Charlie, there is another way. We can do this. I'm learning about it. This is so exciting." And he was like, "Yeah, let's do this. Let's create something different." And then there was like the whole idea of secure functioning is really providing couples, me and Charlie, but the couples in my practice and then the readers of Baby Bomb like guideposts of this is another way to consider this. This is a new paradigm to be in relationship with each other if you guys want to do something different.

Stan Tatkin:

And they do it. Kara and Charlie are the very example of secure functioning. They practice it. Tracey and I practice it. I think that is the way to go with a union that expects to last a lifetime.

Rebecca Wong:

So let me ask this question then, the first culture, the first family that you grew up in isn't necessarily secure. It might be. If you're, Kara, in a secure relationship, if you're practicing the security, your child is going to grow up inside of that. There's this kind of legacy work that's encompassed in this, because now you're raising a human in a more secure functioning. They're not going to have as much work to do to figure out what security feels and looks like. It's going to be kind of more known to them in a way that maybe it wasn't known to you and your partner.

Rebecca Wong:

So I know for myself, an example, I grew up without that type of security. There was a lot of other stuff. I had to really work and claw my way through to try to figure out, what does security look like? How do I do that healing for myself? How do I bring it to my relationship? How do I bring it to my family? And all of it layers upon each other. But so where do you start with somebody who is really coming to this work like, I need this. I need what you're talking about right now. I don't have a model for security. I mean, the book, it lays it out. It helps you see what security looks like. And it gives plenty of case examples. It talks about the type of conversations you can be having with your partner that are really helpful. Some of it might just feel for some people so foreign. So I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit, that foreignness.

Stan Tatkin:

It is foreign because we're animals that are energy conserved. And Kara said that we don't know that we're doing exactly what we know, and what we know is what we have experienced. And we do that, particularly when we're under any modicum of stress, we're going to always fall back on our earliest plan, our earliest culture. And that is-

Rebecca Wong:

Hence the Baby Bomb.

Stan Tatkin:

Hence the Baby Bomb. And so we might think of that first family or the parents as the originals. Now their family, they have originals as well because a lot of this is handed down. It's not pernicious. It is simply nature repeating itself, which it does in all things, in biology. Since we're part of nature and since we're energy conserved, meaning we do the least amount necessary. Very few people ever try to think about, are they marching to their own drummer or are they marching to somebody else's, like their parents, or their grandparents.

Stan Tatkin:

Very few people want to think about that because there's many other things to think about. Only when we're in an enriched environment where we're interested, even then, we don't want to do very much. What forces us is suffering. And when partners are suffering in their relationship and they want to stick together because the attachment system is a biological mandate that says, I can't quit you, even though I should. That biological mandate often forces us to move up a level in complexity and wisdom. And then now we have reason to explore ourselves and to think more deeply about why we are suffering because we can't quit each other, but we can't live with each other.

Rebecca Wong:

If I'm extrapolating a little bit from what you're saying there, Stan, it sounds to me like suffering is almost like this gift that brings us towards growth.

Stan Tatkin:

Sadly it is.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Stan Tatkin:

Sadly it is. Those of us who suffer learn compassion, learn that we're not the only people. We start to see that all human beings are suffering in the same way. We're not that special, but that we do have a responsibility to move towards complexity and to move the bar up and to become better people with better character. And secure functioning is basically two individuals acting as adults, setting the bar as high as they wish, and getting each other to do the right thing always, when the right thing is the hardest thing to do, and that builds character and discipline.

Stan Tatkin:

Now we know that systems like the military or paramilitary organizations where people have to band together and their lives depend on each other, the weakest link could jeopardize many people. That's inculcated into the culture. You're not important. The person next to you is more important than you because they're going to save your life. That is a focus on interdependency. We are interdependent and those relationships, because they rely on each other for life, become extremely close. And these people get along very well because they have a reason to not worry about the small stuff. They have bigger fish to fry.

Stan Tatkin:

In couples, we don't have that. In couples, we have all sorts of reasons why people pair, bond, none of it having to do with shared purpose. None of it having to do with shared meaning and none of it having to do with shared vision and a plan for how we're going to do this together without harming each other.

Rebecca Wong:

That last bit there in particular, without harming each other.

Stan Tatkin:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah.

Kara Hoppe:

I think that that's also like what you were saying, Stan, about like, in these stressful moments about having the courage to do the right thing, even though the right thing is probably like the scariest thing to do. It could be as simple as like asking for help and being very open-hearted and honest about, "I'm not okay, can you help me?" In a family culture where that wasn't encouraged, it was dismissed or shut down or ignored or pathologized, et cetera, occupying that space and saying, "I need help," it's the right thing for the couple, but it can feel in the body, terrifying. How do we help couples have the terror or the fear and embody the courage to say, I need this from you, for us. For the better of us, I need help. Or, do that right thing.

Stan Tatkin:

We're trying to shift people's culture to being purpose-centered and not feeling-centered. Purpose-centered is something that we both can agree on. We can achieve regardless of how we feel. But if we are feeling-centered, then it's the wild west. Then it's chaos. Then it's everyone for themselves. I'll do it if I feel like it. If I don't feel like it, I'll do what I want. And that's the, again, the human condition. We need to focus on shared purpose. We do this because we can. Because we both agree it's the best thing to do. And we do it regardless of how we feel, because it has to get done.

Rebecca Wong:

All right. So where do you place feelings then? Because I understand where purpose goes. I understand that there's this shared purpose, the shared meaning, this new culture that you're co-creating. And that to me sounds a little bit heady. It's cognitive. It's like a meta conversation that we're going to have with each other. We're going to sit down when we're kind of in a calm place and we're going to come up with the shared purpose, the shared meaning. And then my feelings come in or your feelings come in, or somebody's feelings come in, and they shift us around. Like when I'm a new mom and I've been parenting all day and I'm just feeling completely touched out. The feelings are there. And so how do you work with that part? What do you do with that part that comes up?

Stan Tatkin:

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Kara Hoppe:

Kara Hoppe:

For me, it's a north star that helps me reorient myself in my feelings where I'm not dismissing of my own feelings of being fatigued or overwhelmed or anxious or whatever. Like Stan keeps saying, like the human condition, but I can hold both at the same time. I can hold, I'm tired. I'm upset with you, and in my heart and in my gut actually like right now saying it to you guys, and I want to get through this conversation on the right side with you, not by myself. I want to do this with you. And that actually does feel, I don't know, Stan, if you experience it this way, but it actually does engage my body.

Rebecca Wong:

I feel that as you're saying it, Kara.

Kara Hoppe:

Okay.

Stan Tatkin:

Here's an example from my life. The other night I was angry with Tracey. I was so angry. I felt all the feelings of wanting to punish her. I felt all the feelings of wanting to stay angry with her to get it across that what I was angry about was legitimate. She went to sleep without us resolving it. As she went to sleep, I was sitting there and I was thinking how much I wanted to punish her. And I started to realize, first of all, we have an agreement that we don't go very long at all without signaling to each other that despite being angry, we are okay. Because we know that that is an existential fear that we do not want to experience for very long. So I'm sitting there and realizing I'm suffering. As I'm doing this, I'm suffering. And also we have an agreement.

Stan Tatkin:

So I reach over and I grab her hand. She's still awake enough to grab my hand. And this is a signal to both of us, we're okay. We're good. It's not that I'm not angry, but we're good. I immediately feel a relief. I immediately feel that I'm restored back to safety and back to a feeling of security. I would not have done that years ago. And so when we talk about setting up principles that have purpose, that protect us from each other and ourselves, we end up doing the right thing sooner than later, even though we don't feel like it. And that is what gives rise to a better human being and to character and also to reduced suffering.

Stan Tatkin:

That's an example of there's a purpose that has to be fulfilled. And the feeling that comes from meeting that purpose is going to follow and it's going to be better than the one than I would feel if I did what was driving me to show my anger, act out, punish and so on. Does that make sense?

Rebecca Wong:

Very much.

Kara Hoppe:

It's so sweet.

Stan Tatkin:

Principles protect us from suffering, but principals also allow for the amplification, the budding of earned love and respect and trust. And that's what we're after, not the kind of love that just comes and goes. But the kind that we can't forget, because I can feel it every day. I can feel Tracey doing things for me that are above and beyond, even when she doesn't feel like it. Even if she's upset with me. I do the same for her. We trust each other increasingly through life. And we fall in love with each other in a more in-depth way as we move through time. And that's because of how we set things up.

Rebecca Wong:

Right. So that earned love, that earned trust, that's like a form of earned security.

Stan Tatkin:

Yes. That's a research term specific to Mary Main. But yes, it's earned security or secure functioning. Secure functioning is as a set of behaviors that are consistent with secure attachment. Therefore we're creating a milieu that releases resources that are used otherwise for threat protection that are now available for development to move forward.

Rebecca Wong:

Stan, is it okay if I go back to the example you shared and pull out one particular piece of something you said in there?

Stan Tatkin:

Sure.

Rebecca Wong:

When you reached out and grabbed Tracey's hand, you said something about how that shifted, how you felt inside, how it changed. I think that that's a key piece of this work, is to figure out, it's not just about decreasing our partner’s suffering all the time, which is certainly important, but it's also about, how do I step out of the suffering that I'm inside of? What do I need? What can I do that would decrease my suffering and our suffering? That's something that I think you really just beautifully illustrated.

Stan Tatkin:

Well, this is where there's a misunderstanding. We don't do anything well by ourselves. We certainly don't repair past injuries by ourselves. And we certainly don't become secure/insecure by ourselves. And so all of this is done inter-personally with another person upon whom we feel we depend. And that is why it's a practice. That is why both people have to be on board with the same idea, because two people can achieve this. One person can't. And so I know that if my partner suffers, I suffer. I know that if I do something to hurt my partner, I will be hurt as well. I know that anything I do that affects my partner is going to affect me very soon, if not immediately. And she knows the same.

Stan Tatkin:

We are intertwined, not fused, not merged. We are interdependent. We move in lockstep. It's as if our legs are bolted together and we would have to move together in order to be effective. We share a nervous system in some ways. That's biology. And ignoring that actually causes our own suffering. So most of what we do to hurt our partner is self-inflicted, is self-harming, we just don't realize it. We just don't realize it.

Kara Hoppe:

Right. Yeah. I think that's such a good point, Stan, because it can be like, in our bodies, like what happened with you the other night, and what has happened to me with Charlie, it can be in my body this like really wanting to push away, when that's the last thing I need. It's so destructive of my own self to push away from Charlie when I actually need care. And so it's really like being self-aware of that, just like you reaching out for Tracey's hand. So similarly, Stan, of like me actually, and I had to do this recently too, feeling all of the feelings in my body. And most of them were fear for me in that moment. Charlie is like literally holding his arms out towards me, beckoning me, and I just still wanted to push away. That was what I wanted to do.

Kara Hoppe:

And I knew, like with you, Rebecca, in that example, you shared about your husband biting his lip, I knew if I pushed away, it was not in the best interest of me or Charlie or our marriage. But most importantly, I needed care. So I moved towards him, and I tell you what, it was a similar thing as what Stan said. Once I took that first step towards him, my body felt better.

Rebecca Wong:

It was a shift.

Kara Hoppe:

It was a shift. And then when I was in his arms, my whole body relaxed, I started to cry. I was getting the care that my body needed. But there was a part of me that was like, no. And it was like, it comes back to attachment theory. I can't depend on this. I need to push away. And it was like really practicing all of the things I know in my head, but doing-

Rebecca Wong:

Putting it into practice.

Kara Hoppe:

Putting it into practice. And it's like right there. And that's such an intimate moment.

Rebecca Wong:

So intimate. I'm thinking of a teaching that I've learned. I study a lot under Terry Real, who wrote the foreword to your book.

Stan Tatkin:

He's a good friend of ours.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. And he talks a lot about getting off the train of contempt. How contempt, whether it's moving outward towards someone else, your partner or whoever, or it's in towards yourself, like in a form of shame, either way, it's toxic. And when we live inside of that, and I think in many ways, in all of these examples we're sharing, that's kind of what we're talking about when we're living inside of that space, how damaging it is. And when we can shift the energy there, and I like to think it's about shifting it towards compassion. Compassion outward, compassion inward. That's the counter to it. That's the thing that moves us into more security, more health, more relationality. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Stan Tatkin:

Well, the first thing always at the top of the list is to reduce threat. You cannot do these other things if partners are feeling threatened. If they're feeling threatened, this is what people will do. They will begin to amplify threat. They will begin to accrue memory of unfairness and resentment. That will begin to take up all the space. If they don't trust each other, they won't be able to influence each other. If they can't influence each other, they can't change anything. They're becoming adversaries. They're becoming dangerous characters to each other, and that will kill all goodwill. That will kill any effort to do something that is loving.

Stan Tatkin:

Unfortunately, what happens with most couples is they begin to slowly withdraw all the good. So not only are we left with terrible things, but anything that is good and worthwhile has now been withdrawn, and now there's no leverage. There's nothing to play on the board. We have nothing to lose at this point, except the attachment system, which is, like I said, mighty. It's a biological inheritance of our species, and so I can't quit you. That doesn't mean that I'm going to be happy.

Stan Tatkin:

And so we have to deal with threat reduction and people have to learn how to reduce threat, how to work together as two separate individuals who are irritating, annoying, disappointing, impulsive, unreliable, moody and fickle and selfish and self-centered. That's who we are, now let's deal with it. And let's learn how to play together in a way that is friendly and actually work together to get things accomplished and to create things, not staying in the mud where we are always at war, the wars in the foxhole, which is of course sad, because the war isn't in the foxhole, it's out there.

Rebecca Wong:

That brings me to, if we're reducing the threat and we have this new baby, this baby bomb has gone off, and our systems are, unconsciously perhaps, noticing all of the things that go along with having a new baby as the threat. And maybe we're living through a pandemic and we have less people we can rely on outside of ourselves, outside of our family. It means that we really have to be in this foxhole together. We really have to have each other's back.

Stan Tatkin:

Absolutely.

Kara Hoppe:

Right.

Stan Tatkin:

And most people who are in imminent danger know this. We of course have not been an imminent danger. We have unseen fear and looming danger of global warming, maybe an oncoming civil war. All of these things are not happening right now, and we think we have the luxury to create fires at home. This is not reality. Reality is that we live in a dangerous world. We live in a world that is indifferent to us. That is opportunistic and that is unkind. Life is unkind. The two of us can make an agreement that in our world, in our bubble, in our fiefdom, we are completely loyal to each other, have each other's backs. We know each other better than we know anything else. We're experts on each other. We do that because that's the world we want to create, even though we're in a world of madness.

Rebecca Wong:

So when I hear you say that, I'm coming back to what Kara said earlier, when I was asking the question about feelings, and Kara brought us back to how the intention here brings us right into that heart and belly space. And there's that grounding that happens there. There's like a reset button. This is what we want to co-create. And these principles.

Kara Hoppe:

Right. Rebecca, like you said, introducing a baby to the mix does up the stress. It ups the EMT. It does up the opportunities for misattunement between partners, for all sorts of stuff, pain, remembered trauma in the body to be brought up, witnessing a baby being born and a toddler growing up. Again, this falls under that umbrella, but nobody talks about it, how becoming a parent can trigger memories, and it does. That's real.

Kara Hoppe:

And that's why we wrote Baby Bomb. It's short. It's pithy. There is no wasted words. We know your resources are limited as new parents. And we started with like a couple agreement. You and your partner considering creating a different culture. Like just consider that as an idea, as a shared vision, as a new culture. And we introduced some things of inspiration points for couples to explore together, different ideas. Like what would that be for the two of you? I mean, it's great if expecting couples are reading this before they have babies. That would be incredible. I don't know how often that happens.

Rebecca Wong:

It might happen more once the suffering hits.

Kara Hoppe:

Kara Hoppe:

And it's a living, breathing agreement that we practice every day. We're revising and editing every day and talking about it and having this renegotiation that does provide comfort in my body and Charlie's body. And I know in my son's body, because he knows what our couple agreement is to each other. He relies on us to live up to that couple agreement. And it's very containing for him, as it's containing for Charlie and I, because it is the something bigger that we have invested in and believe in and provides us with, like I said, the north star, our path forward.

Kara Hoppe:

I guess I wanted to say one other thing about like, and when it is agreements, it's not personal. It's like we have an agreement that we care for each other. I mean, this is like just one of our agreements. I agree to care for Charlie. And I also agree to receive his care. It goes both ways. I can be a handful and I can be red, and it could be easier for me to offer care and more difficult for me to receive care, Charlie can easily pull back our agreement and say, "Kara, we agreed to care for each other. I want to care for you right now. You need my care." And that calling to the agreement can set me and be like, oh, that's what's happening. Thank you. Let me-

Rebecca Wong:

It's a beautiful illustration, Kara.

Kara Hoppe:

One of my mantras is, let me receive this care joyfully. Receive this care gratefully. Okay. That's just calling to an agreement we had. And that makes it really easy, fast, quick to navigate. It's not like an ongoing thing. It's a quick, like coming back together and like in early parenthood, let's face it, that's all you have are these moments. You don't have this time for this long dialogue about things. That's why we guide people in Baby Bomb, how to make these agreements and then how to hold each other and themselves to the agreements on a day to day basis. I mean, this is an ongoing practice.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's beautiful about that is there is this framework that you lay out for us. That you talk about, about, well, what might these agreements look like? Here are some examples. But also like you got to sit down and make these, because they become the container that holds you later.

Stan Tatkin:

Yes. We're thinking ahead. We're not so naive as to think that love or any feeling will will out. We're moving through time, bodies changing, ideas changing, moving through changing times, but we're a constant. We hold to the same principles that support life for us. And that ensure that we stay in good stead throughout troubled times. We're able to deal with the vicissitudes of life together, because we've set up the architecture that way. And as you said, this is what actually thinking ahead and creating these principles is what provides us safety and security and trust, and actually good feelings.

Stan Tatkin:

Notice that Kara is talking about deeds that they do for each other. So many couples that I hear when I ask, what's so good about your relationship? Most will say, there are times we really enjoyed each other. We had a really good time. We had fun. But there are no statements of what we actually did for each other. That's what's memorable and that's what's irreplaceable are the things we do for each other day in and day out that serve one another in a way that the world, and maybe our parents never did.

Rebecca Wong:

The ways we have each other's back.

Stan Tatkin:

That's right.

Rebecca Wong:

Yeah. Yeah. That feels like a really beautiful place for us to land today. Yeah. I want to thank you both for joining me and for sharing this conversation with our listeners. And I'd like to ask both of you to share anything that you have coming up that you might want our listeners to know about, or that they might be interested in.

Stan Tatkin:

Go ahead, Kara.

Kara Hoppe:

Sure. I am going to be teaching virtual couple retreats based on the books. So if you are an expecting couple or in the throes of parenthood at any stage, we really want to empower couples to know they can change the script of their book at any time. So you could have an eight year old and a six year old, and it's not working, Baby Bomb is like that different paradigm that is building in principles to make it work, to make it different. So I'm teaching the book to expecting couples and parents. And you can find information about that at karahoppe.com. You can find me on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, all @karahoppe.

Rebecca Wong:

Wonderful.

Stan Tatkin:

Just to drill down that point, the book is really about parents first, the couple first. If the couple is really good, if they have their created ethos, their culture, this is how children become happy, and this is how children learn relationships by watching their parents. This is for the kids, but the couple has to be in good shape, and Kara is going to teach that.

Stan Tatkin:

You can reach me at the PACT Institute, P-A-C-T, pactinstitute.com, and there you can find trainings. We do a psychobiological approach trainings to therapists, physicians, psychiatrists, all over the world. And we also, my wife and I, who co-founded PACT, we do couple retreats, again, all over the world. We have one coming up in Spain next year at a monastery, if all's good, knock on wood, but you can find us there. And I'm throughout social media as Dr. Stan Tatkin.

Rebecca Wong:

Wonderful. I am so grateful to have had this conversation here with you. Stan, I want to thank you for joining us again. You joined us a few years ago. And Kara, I'm so happy that you joined us today.

Kara Hoppe:

Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Wong:

Totally a pleasure. Totally a pleasure.

Stan Tatkin:

Thank you, Rebecca.

Kara Hoppe:

Me too. Thank you.

Rebecca Wong:

Thank you.