Helping couples discover the why behind the what in their marriage with Chris and Beth Bruno and Tracy Johnson of ReStory Counseling.
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Welcome to the Thrive Marriage Lab with Restory Counseling, where we help you explore the why behind the what. Because guess what? We believe that your marriage is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be explored and enjoyed. We believe that the more you explore and know your story, the deeper your marriage connection will be. This podcast is now the audio version of our new YouTube channel, Thrive Marriage Lab.
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where each week you can expect us to help you cultivate connection and belonging without the fixing and tips and common things you often hear in the marriage space. So find us on YouTube or listen in.
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One of the things that we fully believe here at the Thrive Marriage Lab is that there is always a why behind the what. There is always a story that goes behind the what of behavior, the presenting issues, the presenting problems that are showing up in your marriage. There are stories kind of buried in the background of our lives that show up unawares in our marriage relationships. And especially here as we are talking about emotional unavailability, I want to invite us to really a posture of curiosity.
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that kind of helps us uncover what some of those background stories might be that produce the unavailability in a person. Welcome to the Thrive Marriage Lab. My name is Chris Bruno and I'm a licensed professional counselor and together with my wife Beth and our colleague Tracy Johnson, we post videos to help you know the why behind the what. Because we believe the more you know and explore your story, the deeper your connection will be. So, behind...
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Every current behavior is a story that drives that behavior. So think about it in a sense of like addiction, okay? I'm not talking about addiction in this video, but I just wanna use it as an example because I think we can get our minds around it a little bit easier. So addiction, and I'm just gonna make it super simple, all right, like if I am addicted to alcohol, if I'm addicted to eating, if I'm addicted to working out,
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the actual behavior that's happening, the alcohol, the ice cream, the workout, is not actually what I'm addicted to, right? It's not that, it's some kind of emotional background process that I'm trying to escape, numb out, get away from, whatever that is. So I talk about this way a lot, like you know when you sit down and you've had a bad day and you grab that gallon of ice cream and you go sit down and you watch, you know,
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seven different episodes of some kind of Netflix binging series or something like that. Is it actually about the episodes? Are you actually addicted to the episodes? Are you actually addicted to the ice cream? Or is there something else driving that for you? Is there some kind of emotional space inside of you that you're using the emotional, you're using the addiction, you're using that Netflix series, you're using that ice cream to kind of numb out and get away from?
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All right, so there's usually something else, there's something underneath that that is driving your current behavior. Well, the same way when we talk about emotional unavailability, that might be the issue, the presenting issue, the thing that's kind of out front, but behind that are stories that drive that behavior. Here's what I wanna say, is that emotional unavailability is a trauma response. It is a trauma response.
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And especially from traumas that happened long time ago, traumas that occurred many, many, many years ago in your life or in your spouse's life, where to feel something, to have emotions was in some way not okay. That's the trauma, where the tragedy happened and something occurred, somebody has a rough time at football practice and the coach yells at them.
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Dad's yelling at them mom spanking them. There's some kind of issue Someone's an alcoholic someone dies some kind of tragic thing happens and to feel is not okay Somehow and and maybe it's it is okay generally, but somehow the child Understands that their emotions are not welcome here. Their emotions are not acceptable here their emotions are too much for whatever is happening and And as a result in that little child's mind
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they shut down those emotions. They stop feeling. Because to stop feeling is better than to be dismissed. To stop feeling is better than to, better than having more of dad's rage for your crying or your outbursts of anger or your, you know, the sad feelings that you have, they're just too much for him to bear. To stop feeling is better than showing the emotion that would then lead to more violence or more abuse or more neglect or more something.
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Right? To shut down the emotions is actually the best thing the child can do at the time in order for them to find some kind of safety because to feel them is just too dangerous. And I mean that dangerous in the sense of all the words. It feels too dangerous like it just feels too much for them or it feels too dangerous in the general world. Like I said, my emotions will elicit my dad's rage. Something like that. In order for me to be safe, I need to shut down my emotions.
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I need to shut down what I'm feeling. So already you can begin to feel hopefully that the current situation that you're experiencing in your marriage of your spouse being emotionally unavailable is driven out of stories where their emotions, it was better for them to make them unavailable than to make them available in the past. That is maladaptive. Now, as an adult, it is not helpful as you're trying to have connection, you're trying to have this
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exchange this emotional presence and all that now in your marriage. But it's not, by and large, it's not something that your spouse is choosing to keep you out now. As a spouse, they married you, they love you, there is some sense of connection and desire for you. And as soon as they begin to feel some kind of emotion like they did as a child, that subconscious unconscious kind of response, that trauma response comes online and they shut down.
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So my hope is that you understand that emotional unavailability is a trauma response that is ingrained into and now is the default of your spouse's response to feelings. So if you as a spouse can have some kind of curiosity rather than the feeling of rage or anger of, hey, why aren't you here? Why don't you show up? Come on, turn on. You can have some curiosity towards them.
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and maybe you're engaging them in conversation, but maybe you're just kind of aware of what's going on. Maybe you just have some internal curiosity. You journal about that, you pray about that, you talk to a friend about that, you talk to your therapist about that. Like what could the curiosity lead you to in order to start to bridge the gap and create with your spouse, if they're willing, some level of safety for them to come out? So.
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Emotional unavailability is a trauma response. Far too many people believe it is a choice, and the reality is by and large it is not a choice. It is a trauma response from the past that is showing up now in your marriage. So we'll talk more about what to do with this and how to engage that, how to grow out of it, and how to kind of find each other again in your marriage in future videos. Thanks so much.
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dates that we believe take you beyond your average date night to the kind of connection you really want. So head over to Restory.life/thrive-dates or just look in the show notes to subscribe to get those for free in your inbox for one year. And if you're curious about us, you can find us over at Restory.life where we look forward to hearing about how your marriage continues to grow. See you same time, same place.
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next week.