Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
I want a divorce because you are dishonest!
Allie shares her transformative journey from nearly divorcing her husband due to addiction and dishonesty to discovering how her own fear of criticism was causing her to walk on eggshells in her marriage.
• Discovering that her "confirmation bias" was constantly seeking evidence of criticism from others
• Learning that she had developed the habit of manipulating situations to avoid facing potential criticism
• Recognizing how her dishonesty about her needs and feelings mirrored the dishonesty she resented in her husband
• Understanding how walking on eggshells robbed her of joy, authentic relationships, and peace
• Developing the ability to speak honestly about her needs without fear
• Practicing "generous listening" to hear what's actually being said rather than filtering through criticism
• Taking responsibility for her own "backyard" rather than focusing on her husband's behavior
• Finding that true joy comes from internal changes, not expecting others to behave differently
If you're walking on eggshells in your relationship or constantly anticipating criticism, examine your own patterns. The path to more joy and connection begins with owning your voice and being honest about your needs.
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Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of hey, julia Woods, I'm so excited you are here and excited to connect you with my guest today, who is Allie. She and her husband, eric, have been married for 12 years and they have two children, and the topic we're going to talk about today, I think, will very much relate to so many of the listeners and that is our inner critic basically how we listen for criticism, and Allie is going to share the impact and what has opened up for her, as she has really looked at criticism in her life and how it was impacting her, and I'm excited for you to hear more about that. So welcome, allie.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm excited you're here. So you and I had a coaching call recently that brought me to want to connect with you more about this, because we were talking about how you were walking on eggshells with your husband and so let's talk more. We kind of let the cat out of the bag already that it's connected to criticism. However, I want you to to share more about kind of how you discovered what was driving it and and, ultimately, how you even discovered the aspect that something was driving your tendency to walk on eggshells with Eric.
Speaker 3:Yes, so, eric, my husband and I started coaching with you, julia, after I told him I wanted a divorce due to addiction. So that's the symptom, that kind of popped up, and I felt trapped in a cycle of mistrust. That's what I was feeling. I felt deep betrayal, I felt emotionally unsafe. Every night I felt really lonely, despite having somebody lying next to me, and it was a very empty life that I was feeling. And what hurt me the most wasn't the addiction itself. For some reason I felt like I could handle that, but it was the dishonesty surrounding it.
Speaker 1:I could handle that, but it was the dishonesty surrounding it.
Speaker 3:That was the betrayal that I was feeling. So in coaching, we uncovered that I held a lot of resentment because I felt like I was walking on eggshells. I couldn't be my true self. There were secrets, there was a lot to peel back and we peeled back a lot was a lot to peel back and we we peeled back a lot.
Speaker 3:So what I discovered is my tendency to walk on eggshells was recognizing my own confirmation bias, which is something that you taught me, that belief that our subconscious is always looking for evidence of through our lens. So my confirmation bias, my lens, was always looking for evidence of criticism, and this is something that I have been holding onto since I was a very, very little girl, way before my marriage. So it was a deep and I held the belief through that that other people's words were more powerful than my own words, and so, because of that, I would manipulate others into coming up with the idea that I wanted to create, because making it their idea instead of mine lessened the resistance to my idea. If they believed it was theirs, I could create it through them, not me.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, there's such elaborate, elaborate work in there, right, and and I on the outside I know we talked about this on your coaching call but, man, the sheer exhaustion of trying to get come up with an idea and then get it to come as though it's the other person's idea, so that also that you can not need to face your fear that if you had an idea it would be criticized, it is really quite powerful. So do you have an example, so that the listeners can connect with a specific example as to what that would have looked like?
Speaker 3:Yes. So the most recent example is we were just on vacation in Florida and my husband asked me what appetizer I wanted and I let him know I want I don't even remember what it was now Spinach artichoke dip or something like that. He's not a creamy person, right Like he would never pick that. He would pick the shrimp or the oysters. So I wanted this spinach artichoke dip and, uh, he actually didn't order it. He ordered the oysters.
Speaker 3:So I felt unheard in that moment. I felt like my voice didn't matter. I was seeing that evidence. So when it came to ordering, I kind of said, you know, kind of convinced him hey, we're going to have steak tomorrow, let's order the seafood tonight tonight. You know, like, um, I had to convince him. You know, we're gonna have steak tomorrow, so let's have a seafood night and order. Since we already ordered oysters, let's, let's do that. So it's something very small, but at the same time I am having to convince him and get him on board of what I want, because I don't want him to reject my needs Well, my desires.
Speaker 2:So you did want seafood for dinner and you were afraid he might not get the seafood that instead he would get he would order a steak, yeah. So you decided okay, well, I really want seafood. So in order to get him to get what I want, I've got to remind him or use tomorrow night as the reason that I steer his decision in the way I want it to be steered, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's so subtle, but it is extremely debilitating. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Tell me more. Like what was it robbing you of? Like what was it costing you? Or what does it right? Because it's not like it goes away, it's just we become aware of it, we become more aware of it.
Speaker 3:So I was robbing myself of my voice. I was robbing myself of my relationships, my family, my joy. I was so busy bracing for disapproval that I couldn't fully relax, like I was robbing myself of just that. I was always in fight or flight. You can never fully relax. I felt like I was constantly being evaluated and never quite measuring up to that evaluation and it stole a.
Speaker 2:As you said before, I was exhausted, very exhausted, yeah yeah, so, um, when you think about being at the restaurant that we were describing. So when did you notice what you were doing?
Speaker 3:Now I notice it right away.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Before I had no idea. Okay, so now I'm starting to say, after the fact, I actually told Eric I said, when you didn't order, when you asked me what I wanted and you didn't order it, it made me feel like my voice didn't matter. He didn't even realize that's what he did. So he actually appreciated that I said something and he, once he he's, he told me you need to tell me that in the moment. Yeah, so he's willing to see through my lens so he can make different choices, which is so freeing, like it makes me happy in my marriage again, because I just I don't know. I was always I don't know. I never thought he would be willing to do that for me and he's working on it every single day. I just have to communicate that to him, which I wasn't, I was fearful of doing that before that to him, which I wasn't.
Speaker 2:I was fearful of doing that before. Yeah, yeah, did you let him know what you?
Speaker 3:were up to with telling him you wanted it to be a seafood dinner. Oh yes, how'd that? Go'm doing it. But uh, one thing he said is it actually makes him feel bad when I do that.
Speaker 3:How so and I I never understood his side of it yeah uh, because he wants me to use my voice and tell him, um, when I'm not feeling heard, so he can change it and we can, you know, give me the space to use my voice. Right, he wants me to use my voice. I just need to take charge and use it. Yeah, and he feels like he's the bad guy, like because I'm making him the bad guy and I'm not standing up for myself and using my voice yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you were using your voice. So let's say, you know, he, which um seems very human, right Like you he says what, what do you want? What appetizer do you want? And you tell him you want this and he orders something different. It's pretty human to do that. So if that had played out the way it did, and then you really wanted to have your voice heard around the seafood dinner, if you were just owning your voice, what would that have sound like?
Speaker 3:If I was owning my voice, I would have stepped in and said we're going to add another appetizer, we're going to add the chicken, or the chicken, the spinach artichoke dip, and for dinner I would have let him ordered his steak and I would have gotten something different. I would have ordered the seafood. Yeah, but it's that. I mean, it's so simple. But to somebody who has not been confident in her voice, it's the hardest thing to do, because you're showing up in a different way than you ever have before, showing up in a different way than you ever have before. So you have to step through fear in order to show up as that more aligned, true version of yourself that you never allowed yourself to be before you started healing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and we can't transform what we can't see, and these survival strategies this way that you learn to navigate around not having your voice.
Speaker 2:It's so ingrained we literally don't see it in ourself, like we are blinded to our own survival strategies and we think that the way that we do things, the way that we communicate, we think that's the way the whole world communicates, and so 80% of the work is seeing it. And then there is the other 20% which is facing the fear and saying, okay, I, I can see what I'm doing. If I keep surviving in this way, if I keep choosing this survival strategy, that future coming towards me is not what I want. So I'm willing to face the fear, to try something new, and it's usually not near as hard as we thought it was going to be. But it's the willingness to face the fear, and, as human beings, the thing that brings us to face the fear is the pain of getting honest about what happens if something doesn't change. So what in that like, did you get honest with yourself? What is the future that you feared coming towards you if you didn't start owning your voice?
Speaker 3:Lack of communication. It's ending up in the same place we've been in right for 11 years. It's the mistrust, it's the lack of communication, it's the bitterness that I hold for him because I'm feeling like a victim. I don't want to be a victim. I feared being a victim. That's really what it was, and I'm learning how to step out of that victim mentality for the first time. And that's what I want for my future. I want to feel empowered. That's the qualities I want to instill in my children and teach them that nobody, you're not a victim. You are not a victim to somebody else's words or expectations.
Speaker 2:so that's what I wanted for my future well, it's interesting to connect the dots, because you said that the biggest thing for you when you started coaching was the awareness that the dishonesty about the addiction is what was driving you nuts. And yet what you uncovered is your own dishonesty with him yes, right, that's massive Is that you were in despair, feeling he's not being honest with me, and as we did the work to uncover, what stood out to you the most was how you weren't being dishonest or how you weren't being honest with him.
Speaker 3:Not at all. Yeah, I wasn't being honest with myself, definitely was not being honest with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so talk about that a little bit that your dishonesty with him was the work that you needed to do in order to address the dishonesty you were fearing from him.
Speaker 3:Really, it started when a physical sensation I noticed myself tensing up, right Like when I noticed myself tensing up like he'll walk into a room or he'll say something, and I notice myself like shaking and tensing up myself like shaking and tensing up. And you told me in those moments that's your sign that you're in victim mode. So I started becoming aware of those instances where my body was tensing up and I started asking myself am I hearing what was actually said or am I hearing it through a filter of criticism? And with that awareness, I've started practicing also generous listening, which you teach, where I really hear what's being said without letting my wounded lens of criticism distort it. And I'm not perfect, I'm still working on that but that has allowed me to uncover this. Yeah, and if I do hear criticism when my husband is speaking, I can let him know in a very calm way. You know, when you ask me what appetizer I want and then you don't order it, it makes me feel like I don't have a voice. So we can have those conversations now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, and it's powerful because often, you know, the way we work as humans is that we usually, when something isn't going the way we want it to go, we have one finger pointing at our spouse and four pointing back at ourselves, but we don't want to look at the four that are pointing at us, spouse, and four pointing back at ourselves, but we don't want to look at the four that are pointing at us.
Speaker 2:No, but the power of recognizing that when you could acknowledge your own dishonesty, right, if I'm willing to say you're not being dishonest with me, okay, how am I not being dishonest? How am I not being honest with you? Right, honest with how am I not being honest with you? Right? Then, all of a sudden, we become two human beings, shoulder to shoulder. It's no longer you're dishonest, it's wow, we're both dishonest. And all I can control is my backyard. So let me start showing up honest in my backyard, which then frees the other spouse to now feel human again, like, oh, I'm not the problem here, we're just two humans. We can both start being honest with each other and we have a whole different dynamic in the relationship. Share a little bit for you as to how that, how you're experiencing that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so his backyard and my backyard they're very different, like, I think, a lot, of, a lot of people in marriages. You're just different people, right, and you're constantly growing and your backyard is constantly growing and you're morphing into different individuals and it's important to allow him, his backyard, to grow in his backyard and it's also important to grow in your own backyard. So there was a point where I felt like I was knocking on his backyard door and he wasn't answering, like I would ask him to go on a walk or something and he wouldn't want to, or I felt like he wasn't available. So then I would lean on my friends because they would want to play in my backyard. I would play with other people like in a very ethical way, would want to play in my backyard, I would play with other people like in a very ethical way.
Speaker 3:So I think, allowing there was a point where I was like allowing him space to be in his backyard and then allowing me space to be in my backyard and that allowed me to be free to kind of do what I wanted, right, feel joy for myself for the first time in a very long time and him to do the same, like he's signing up for golf. That's something that brings him so much joy and I want him to do that in his backyard and support him in that. But with that predicament that I noticed myself in, it really came down to having communication again saying, hey, I'm knocking on your backyard and you're not answering, and that makes me feel neglected. So it's the communication piece again. But I think your question was it is spring, it is spring knowing that I only have to care for my backyard and then I can knock on his door and he can decide to play or not to play. Yeah, I love that visualization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for listeners, just, we talk about backyard a lot on here, but just want to make sure for anyone who might be new to that. So the way I describe marriage is marriage is a neighborhood and each spouse has their own fenced-in backyard, and in each of our backyards is our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own attitudes, our own judgments, our own all of the things that make us up. They're in our backyard and we often, as a spouse, will stand at the fence looking in our spouse's backyard, telling them what they need to change or fix or weed out in their backyard. But while we do that, our back is turned to our own backyard, where we have weeds growing and things that we need to address. And so, yeah, each spouse is 100%.
Speaker 2:We, as individual spouses, are the only ones that can take responsibility for whether we're showing up in honesty and telling the truth, and if our spouse isn't at a place in a conversation where they're able to be honest, it is then my responsibility to take care of my work, which is okay.
Speaker 2:My spouse is not being honest. Well, let me look at what that's creating for me. First, am I being honest with them? Where might I be being dishonest? Or they're not able to show up honest in this conversation. I need to find a resource that is safe and good, that I can be honest with, and ultimately I think that led you guys to wind up getting coaching because you realized that you weren't willing to keep working with the level of dishonesty and surprise. What got revealed is oh, as humans, we're all dishonest, and the dishonesty here around the addiction is ultimately because we haven't created a safe space where we're both humans being honest about our dishonesty as humans that we all have. We can see it much more easily in our spouse than we can see it in ourself 100%.
Speaker 3:He was my mirror.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah. So you shared a little bit about the difference it's making that you can now have conversations that you weren't having before, and things. What else are like? What are the day to day differences for you and as you own your voice and recognize that criticism isn't the big scary monster you thought it was. It's simply feedback, and you get to decide if you want to hear it as feedback and find gold in it, or if you want to see it as judgment against yourself that you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 3:Yes, the differences that it's making for me is, as you do this work, I notice I'm not constantly anticipating criticism as much. You start to work this out on a subconscious level somehow. So I have seen that diminishing. It does show up and I'm able to recognize it, and that's when I ask myself am I hearing this from you know an open place or a place of skewed criticism that lens. So I've noticed that I'm less reactive and more emotionally available to listen. I wasn't listening before because I was always on guard you know anticipating others.
Speaker 2:right If you're, if you're listening, for I'm doing something wrong, I'm being criticized. That's all you can hear. So you can't hear the other person. You can only hear what you're making up about yourself in what they're saying. But if you're not making that up about yourself, then all of a sudden, oh wow, I hear what you're saying in a way I've never heard it before.
Speaker 3:Yes, and it's very freeing. It feels good. It feels really, really good and it opens the door to a better marriage, more intimacy. I feel a lot more safety than I ever have before, and that was one of the biggest things is, I didn't feel emotionally safe that is massive.
Speaker 2:That is amazing. I was trying to put massive and amazing together. Because you started coaching, because you felt so unsafe, and what created the safety? Was you choosing to get honest and stop listening to everything, as though it was a slant against you?
Speaker 3:yes, because it's not a slant against me. It's just how I take it. Yeah, and as I communicate, more and more of the of that lens as I communicate, this is how I'm taking this. I just need you to know other people are more understanding, whether it's a relationship, a friendship, a boss, a colleague, the other person is just knowing where you're coming from is huge. So I've I've learned that using my voice in that way is so powerful because you know they're more aware of your lens and your triggers so they can choose to approach you differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and they also feel human, like when we are honest about hey, here is something I recognize I need or here's something that doesn't work for me. Then, okay, great, that person feels now more safe with me because they know. They know what I need and I'm not. They're not just seeing reactions in my face or in my communication that don't make sense to them. Now they understand why I'm acting that way and what I need in order to act the way.
Speaker 3:you know that you feel safe with Exactly. And now I feel powerful enough to own my voice in that way where before I would have been too scared. And so I own my feelings, I own my boundaries, I own my triggers. Now I'm still working on it, but I'm doing it for the first time, so yeah, it feels really good.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, we never arrive. We just get better at seeing ourself so that we can choose the version of ourself we want to be that actually creates the connection and the relationships we want.
Speaker 3:Yes, Powerful Feeling, more joy, learning how to own my voice that's the journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that in one of the first conversations we had when we were coaching is I just want to feel joy, and who would have thought that this was the journey to feel more joy? We think that, well, if they'll stop doing what they're doing, then I will feel more joy. But that's not how it works. It starts with what am I doing that's robbing me of my joy, because regardless of where you're at or what's going on for you, I can have joy If it's coming from the inside out, and as long as it's externalized, then my life becomes exhausting and very chaotic, because my whole internal state is based on everything outside of me.
Speaker 3:It's so, so true. My intention throughout our entire coaching time together was joy, to feel joy, to bring joy. And I thought, you know, going to yoga class with Eric was going. If he came to class with me, we would have joy. If he would do breath work with me, we would have joy. If he went on a healing retreat with me, we would have joy, all external things. And you called me out on that one time and I was like, okay, we'll see. And then the internal work happened and it totally was an internal thing.
Speaker 2:Eric wants to spend more time with you. Imagine that it was me. Yes, yes, well, that's the gift is we have zero power to change anyone else and 100% power to grow ourself. And that's the beauty when we can learn, gain the tools to do the work where we actually have the power to make a difference, it changes a whole lot.
Speaker 3:It sure does. It's been a blessing.
Speaker 2:Good Well, allie, thank you so much for sharing with us today. I'm excited for other listeners to consider how this might be impactful for them and create joy in their lives and connection in their marriage, which is ultimately what I'm most passionate about. So thank you so much. Thank you, julia, you.