Summary
Joe explains why we repeat toxic relationship patterns: we’re attracted to what we learned as love. If criticism was love, we’re attracted to critics. If abuse was love, we’re attracted to abusers.
The breakthrough: you have to stop the abusive relationship with yourself first. Using Fritz Perls’ framework of “upper dog” (you should!) and “underdog” (yeah but…), Joe stopped the internal critic by responding: “No, thank you. You could treat me with more respect.”
As the internal criticism decreased, external boundaries became possible—including a year-long boundary with his father that transformed their relationship.
Key Concepts
Key Quotes
“The thing that I was creating in my life was also being created internally. I had to stop having an abusive relationship with myself.”
“When I heard the upper dog—‘you should do this’—I would say, ‘No, thank you. You could treat me with more respect than that, please.‘”
“If you learned criticism was love as a kid, you’re going to be attracted to somebody who criticizes you.”
Transcript
You are in a pattern in a relationship that you’re repeating over and over again that causes you a tremendous amount of pain. And most likely you know what caused it. You know that you had this kind of relationship when you were a kid with your mom or your dad or an uncle or a teacher or something like that and you keep on coming back to the pattern over and over again. And knowing where it came from is one thing, but knowing how to end it is a completely different thing. And so that’s what we’re going to explore in this video is how to end that toxic relationship pattern that you have and how to do it with actually very very little effort. And let me tell you a story that when it like really hit me that this is such a like a ubiquitous phenomenon, meaning that you’re not alone in this at all. I was in this rock and roll band. It was like in the I was in my 20s. It was a long time ago. And the drummer said, you know, I can walk into any room. I can close my eyes, throw a dart behind my back, and I will hit the woman with daddy issues, and that’s the person I’m going to be attracted to. That’s like, right, we all know this thing about, all right, I’m attracted to the person who is not going to be good for me, and I keep on being attracted to that kind of a person. And so, typically, what you’re going to see is that you’re going to be attracted to the thing that you learned as a kid was love. So, if you learned criticism was love as a kid, that love came with criticism, then you’re going to be attracted to somebody who criticizes you. Or if you as a kid were abused, then what’s going to happen is you’re going to have that love and abuse wired together through a parent and then you’re going to be attracted to people who abuse you. And the data here is tremendous. It’s like if somebody was sexually assaulted as a kid, the chances of them being sexually assaulted as an adult go way through the roof. So, this is this is like that’s a very pronounced level of it, but we’re all doing that on some level. So, we’ve got this thing wired together and and it feels like we can’t escape it, but it’s actually quite easy to escape. Let me tell you the story about how I broke through it. And I was awkward about it. like it didn’t go smoothly for me, but since then I’ve been able to walk enough people through it that I can tell you how how to make it a lot easier. So, but my story is as follows. One day I was reading Fritz Pearls, who was this uh like 1970s therapist. He was like this chain smoking German guy. And uh and he talked about how in our heads there’s an upper dog and an underdog. And the upper dog is you should do this, you should do this, why aren’t you doing this? And the underdog is the yeah, I should, but I’m not going to go yourself, right? Like this is the conversation that’s happening in our head. And I realized, oh, okay, so I am not going to do that anymore. I thought to myself, and the way that I I went through that wasn’t to try to stop the voice from happening. It’s just when I heard the voice, you should do this. When I heard the upper dog, what he called the upper dog, I would say, oh, no, thank you. You could treat me with uh more respect than that, please. And so the should started to go down and down that that upper dog, that abusive voice started to decrease. And as it started to decrease, I noticed I started doing things like drawing boundaries. And I think it was maybe just like a year later, I called up my father and I said, “Hey, every time I come home, you’re criticizing me and I don’t want to come home because who the heck wants to go to a place where they’re criticized all the time. So I’m happy to come home if you can.” uh not criticize me. So just give me a call and say, “Oh, hey, I’m ready to hang out with you without criticizing you and I’ll be home.” And up until that point, my dad had constantly guilt tripped me to come home. And uh so it got awkward. Uh it took like a year, maybe a year and a half for him to call me and say, “Okay, I’m ready.” And then I came home and lo and behold, he didn’t criticize me. Or I think maybe he criticized me once and we both caught it and he went, “Oh, okay. Stop.” And that was the beginning of me seeing what actually needed to happen for me to stop abusive relationships, which was I had to stop having an abusive relationship with myself. That’s the most critical piece. I had to see that the thing that I was creating in my life was also being created in me. So that was the first piece. The second piece that was really important was to realize that there was an emotion that I was having that I didn’t want to have and that I was inviting in the exact way that I was trying not to have the emotion. Right? So, one of the things as an example that I was doing was I kept on uh having this feeling of abandonment and that was an abandonment of me as a kid. Love came with abandonment. Love meant that you didn’t take care of yourself. love meant that you took care of somebody else. And so, every time I was in a relationship and I was faced with the potential of abandonment, like, oh, maybe I’m going to have to feel it, I did one of two things. The first thing that I did was go, “Fuck you. I don’t need you anyhow.” Which of course makes a person abandon you. So, then I’m in abandonment. Or I was like, “Oh, what can I do to help? Like, how do I keep you here?” Which of course makes me needy. Nobody wants that. And more likelihood of abandonment. And I realized, oh, the only way I’m going to get out of this trap is if I lean into the feeling of abandonment. So that was the second thing. The second thing was my entire pattern was based on trying to avoid something that in the avoidance I was bringing in. So I started to learn how to fall in love with abandonment. Oh, that feeling of abandonment. Like what is that signaling for me? And whatever the emotion is that you’re avoiding, for me it was abandonment. And for me it was, “Oh, I’m abandoning myself.” When I go, “Fuck you. I don’t need you anyhow.” I have to cut off a part of myself. Or if I’m like, “Oh, come and like please let me look. Is there a way that I can?” And I get needy. I have to abandon a part of myself. And so I started to really lean into that feeling because it told me exactly what I needed to do, which was to be in myself. I started getting excited for feeling abandonment. And then I stopped inviting the abandonment by trying to avoid it. So that was the second thing that was really important for me to stop these abusive cycles. So the next thing your brain is going to do is it’s going to say, “Okay, these are the two things. Lean into the emotions and stop the self-abusive talk.” And then you’re going to say, “I have to stop the self-abusive talk and lean into my emotions.” But that is just more self-abusive talk. It doesn’t work. That’s just more shoods that you’re putting on yourself. that’s just more of that voice. And so then you’re in that abusive situation again. So it’s far better to just be aware that it is happening. That’s all that’s required really if you just become aware of the abusive voice when it’s occurring or that you’re running away from an emotion and you become aware of how much that hurts. So you stick with it. And the thing is you’re already aware of it, right? You’re already aware of that voice in your head or you would have stopped the video by now. and you’re already aware of the emotional avoidance. You can you know what avoidance feels like. So you’re you’re aware of it. The only difference is that when you are aware of it, you sit with it. You just sit with it. You just put attention on it without running away from it. That’s the only thing that you have to do. The pain that brought you to the video is the pain that you’re paying attention to. So you don’t just pay attention to the phenomenon. Pay attention to the pain behind the phenomenon and really allow yourself to feel it because it’s as simple as if I touch a hot stove and I’m aware of it, I’m going to stop touching the hot stove. So just become deeply aware of the pain that it creates. Feel it and go, “Oh, that’s not what I want to feel.” And if you do that on a consistent basis, the behavior just changes. the behavior is stuck in place when you tell yourself you should do that because it’s just more abuse and so you’re just continuing the cycle. The way to break the cycle is to go ouch that hurts. Ouch that hurts. Ouch that hurts. So, I’m going to give you a simple experiment. And if you’ve watched my videos, this is an experiment that I’ve given for a couple things, but it’s just such a good one. I’m going to give it to you again. And it’s the following. Your job is to sit 20 minutes a day, listen to the abusive voice in your h head, and every time it says something, your job is just to go, “Ouch, that hurts. Please don’t treat me like that. Ouch, that hurts. Please don’t treat me like that.” You can do it right now. As a matter of fact, just close your eyes and you’re going to hear that voice in your head talk. It’s going to take probably no more than 30 seconds. And as soon as you hear it, it’s going to say something that you would never say to another person. It’s going to say something that’s just mean and you’re going to go, “Ouch, that hurts. Please don’t talk to me like that.” And it’s as simple as that. So, you do that and immediately you’ll it’ll start becoming quieter. And that’s the entire job. It takes no effort at all. The more effort you do, the harder it gets. The easier it gets is just by bringing the awareness to the pain. That’s it. That’s all that’s required.