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For this first episode of the new season, we get to chat with Onsite Clinician Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass and set the stage for the conversations to come!
Ryan, Lindsey, and Mickenzie explore the connection between our relationship patterns today and our earliest, formative relationships. She provides us with an expansive look at our relationships and invites us into deeper connections with ourselves and others.
Mentioned in this episode:
Ryan, Lindsey, and Mickenzie explore the connection between our relationship patterns today and our earliest, formative relationships. She provides us with an expansive look at our relationships and invites us into deeper connections with ourselves and others.
Mentioned in this episode:
3:37 – Expanding our understanding of relationships beyond romantic partnerships
5:12 – All roads lead back to family of origin
10:19 – How our childhood impacts our current relationships
15:50 – Navigating how to name the pain of our past
20:30 – How reparent ourselves as parents
23:32 – Identifying what we need in relationships
28:07 – The fundamental differences between Onsite’s Healthy Relationships Program and Living Centered Program
32:34 – How attachment plays out in various relationships
40:42 – Finding the right therapeutic resources for your relationships
43:26 – How TikTok informs our understanding of mental health concepts like gaslighting, codependency and boundaries
Onsite Experiences mentioned in this episode:
Onsite Experiences mentioned in this episode:
Onsite's Living Centered Program
There’s always room for more — depth, contentment, healing, love, purpose.
Whether you’re feeling stuck or broken, overwhelmed or ready to dig deeper, we can guide you to the more you’re seeking.
There’s always room for more — depth, contentment, healing, love, purpose.
Whether you’re feeling stuck or broken, overwhelmed or ready to dig deeper, we can guide you to the more you’re seeking.
Break up with destructive patterns and learn how to give (and accept) the meaningful affection we all deserve. We’ll tackle the tough stuff, support your healing, and set you on the path to authentic connections that will light your path forward.
Discover the Right Onsite Experience For You
Whether you’re in a challenging season or just want to learn and grow, Onsite has an experience to meet you right where you are and guide you to the more you’re seeking.
We pair the finest hospitality with the best clinical minds in the country to guide you toward lasting transformation. Our holistic care is thoughtfully designed to help you connect to yourself and the community you form at Onsite.
You deserve healing. We're here to guide you! Start the process today or connect with our Admissions team at 1-800-341-7432 to discover the right experience for you!
Whether you’re in a challenging season or just want to learn and grow, Onsite has an experience to meet you right where you are and guide you to the more you’re seeking.
We pair the finest hospitality with the best clinical minds in the country to guide you toward lasting transformation. Our holistic care is thoughtfully designed to help you connect to yourself and the community you form at Onsite.
You deserve healing. We're here to guide you! Start the process today or connect with our Admissions team at 1-800-341-7432 to discover the right experience for you!
Creators and Guests
What is Living Centered Podcast?
So many of us go through life feeling out of touch with ourselves, others, and the world around us. We feel disconnected, overwhelmed, distracted, and uncertain of how to find the clarity, purpose, and direction we so deeply, so authentically, desire. The Living Centered Podcast in an invitation to another way of living.
Every episode, we sit down with mental health experts, artists, and friends for a practical and honest conversation about how to pursue a more centered life—rediscovering, reclaiming, and rooting in who we truly are.
And when connection is inconsistent, absent, or painful, or we're not appropriately near, and we don't get these opportunities to feel that safety and closeness and to begin to learn who we are, we start to make up stories and try to figure it out the best way that we know how. And the way that we do that becomes our strategy for finding connection later on. And whether that is connection in keeping people close or maintaining a connection to ourselves and trying to keep ourselves safe, all of the stuff that happens throughout our early development just creates this kind of blueprint that we then carry into relationships.
Mickenzie Vought:Welcome to the Living Center podcast, a show from the humans at Onsite. If you're new to this space and just beginning this journey, we hope these episodes are an encouragement, a resource, and an introduction to a new way of being. If you're well into your journey and perhaps even made a pit stop at Onsite's Living Center Program or one of our other experiences, we hope these episodes are a nudge back toward the depth, connection, and authenticity you found. In this series, we sat down with some of our favorite experts and emotional health sojourners to explore the that make up our lives. From our friendships to our families or families of choice to our relationship with ourselves, part practical resource and part honest storytelling that will have you silently nodding me too, this podcast was curated with you in mind.
Mickenzie Vought:Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Living Centered podcast, friends. It is our first episode of this new series, and I am so excited to be coming to you with Lindsay. We get to introduce you today to Onsite clinician, Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass. And if you've listened to the podcast before, you may already love her, but she's so brilliant and so tender, and I couldn't think of anybody else to come in and help us launch this season and really set the stage for what is ahead as we look at all the relationships that make up our lives.
Mickenzie Vought:So I am so excited for you to hear this conversation and for the conversations ahead.
Lindsey Nobles:Yeah, I think that Ryan does a great job of just sort of helping us see the connection between the relationships that we're, living out right now and some of our really formative relationships. And she does speak with such grace and compassion and empathy, and I think it allows us to begin to look at ourselves and those forming relationships with that same lens. And I'm really excited. I think it could be easy to hear that this series is about relationships and think, oh, I'm single right now. This isn't for me.
Lindsey Nobles:And I think Ryan, like all of our guests this season, do a great job of talking really expansively about the concept of relationships. So, I hope you'll love it.
Mickenzie Vought:Well, Ryan, thank you for sitting down with us. I am so excited to have you kick off this series that we have all about relationships. And I think I just wanna start there. When we talk about relationships, a lot of us think immediately to, like, a romantic relationship, when in this series, we wanna broaden to all the relationships that make up our lives. And so I wondered if you could help us broaden our understanding of what it means to be in relationship with people and why at Onsite in particular, we think relationships are just so important.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Yeah. That's a great question. So the conversation around relationships, I think, unintentionally takes this very binary intimate lens anytime that we talk about it, even anytime I talk about it. And the reality is we are relational beings. And so if we are relational beings, we are in relationship all the time.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:I am in relationship to my job. I am in relationship with my friends. I am in relationship, both as a noun and a verb to be in partnership with people and then how I show up in that partnership in all of the places and spaces. So when we really want to look at relationships, we want to think about the umbrella within our life, all of the different attachments, connections, bonds that we have just so many different types of relationships that we have in our life. Yeah.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And often the way that we show up in one ripples into the way that we show up in all of them. And so looking at how do I tend to show up might also shift the way that all of those relationships that I'm in seem to be going around me.
Lindsey Nobles:Mhmm.
Mickenzie Vought:That's interesting. So you're saying I mean, I almost think of, like, the Taylor Swift thing of, like, the common denominator here you is Taylor. But like, so we are the common denominator, how we show up in our relationships. In some of our workshops, do you find that people come particularly working on like specific thinking they're gonna work on a specific relationship and then end up working on their relationship with themselves first? Is it kind of like a
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Oh, completely. Bait and switch? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a few sayings that I use.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:All roads lead back to family of origin, and all roads lead back to me. And so looking at what is the template of relationships that I learned, and then what is my relationship with myself? And how does that inform the way I show up in all of the places that I do show up? And so often people come. And we even say at the opening, yes, you are here for whatever it is that you are here for, and open your heart to the miracle that you don't even know the words for yet.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Because often it's something slightly different or deeper than we even believed it was when we're thinking of I'm here to work on my relationship to work, or I'm here because I'm struggling in my marriage. And really, there's so much happening within me, but I've been so focused beyond
Mickenzie Vought:myself. Yeah.
Lindsey Nobles:Yeah. I feel like, the gift of relationships is that they sort of are catalyst for us and mirrors to, like, some of the areas that we can begin to grow and change or we need to grow and change or we deserve to grow and change. But it's it feels like in the day to day of life, if I was just, like, alone operating in the world, I would just continue to be kind of as I am, but the gift of my toddler son and my friends and my parents is that, I begin to hit against some of my own deficiencies or, like, challenges. And so it's like they're like entries into this, like, journey of evolution of, like, who I'm becoming in a way that I I both sometimes, like, feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall and sometimes I'm just grateful for the opportunity, you know? Mhmm.
Lindsey Nobles:So, yeah, I think it's just interesting that to imagine, like, us being in the world without relationships, which is, like you're saying, kind of impossible, but it it would be we wouldn't be able to become who we're becoming kind of
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:completely. And I even think, you know, we get so many folks who come in who feel like they've been really isolated. And that in itself is a way of relating to so even in isolation, I'm still in relationship to people, whether that is close or distant. But we all exist in this place together. And even as you said, especially children, but every person that we come across is a mirror for ourselves.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And the more mirrors that we get, the better understanding we have for who we are, our strengths and our challenges. And I love that word becoming of who I'm becoming.
Lindsey Nobles:So you mentioned some of the way some of, like, our early relationships, like, you talked about, here I'm reading the word that you used. It was, like the frameworks of relationships or the patterns of relationships that we find ourselves in often echo back to our past. Can you, like, begin to sort of spell that out for some of us around, like, how does that work and why does this happen and maybe even some, like, examples from your own story of, like, barriers that you started to hit up against in today that, like, harken back to a previous relationship?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Yeah, of course. So if we think of just the tiniest little person that comes into this world and doesn't know that they are separate from their caregiver, They view themselves as the same person. They don't yet know how to care for themselves or what this big world holds. They begin to learn who they are through the mirroring and the attunement from people around them. And so there's positive, negative and neutral mirroring, Meaning positive is, you have done such a good job.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:You are so smart. You are creative. You are let me just affirm you. Fill in the blank. The negative being that's not the right thing to do.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:You made a mistake. And neutral is just the facts of the world. I have blonde hair. I have blue eyes that I begin to learn all of these parts of who I am through the feedback that I'm receiving from people around me and my relationship with them, as well as the relationship that I see them in becomes the template for what I learned to expect of myself and others. And so if I have a caregiver who is very well attuned with me, meaning that they have an in touchness with themselves, they can be in touch with how I'm doing and have a safe connection and also separation.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:If I can have that and also be near it appropriately, I can learn not only all of these wonderful things about who I am, but by feeling safety and connection, I begin to feel safe then in exploring the world around me. And if I also see them modeling a healthy relationship in their friendships or their partnerships, there's no air of codependency, whatever this white picket fence image is, then I am able to grow up with this picture of that's what it means to be in relationship. That's what it means to be loved. The reality is that many of us were raised in homes where people were struggling. They were working.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:They were grappling with addiction. They were just dealing with the challenges of life. And so maybe that didn't happen all the time. And when connection is inconsistent, absent, or painful, or we're not appropriately mirrored, and we don't get these opportunities to feel that safety and closeness and to begin to learn who we are, we start to make up stories and try to figure it out the best way that we know how. And the way that we do that becomes our strategy for finding connection later on.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And whether that is connection in keeping people close or maintaining a connection to ourselves and trying to keep ourselves safe, all of the stuff that happens throughout our early development just creates this kind of blueprint that we then carry into relationships. And so for me, I was not raised by my mother. I was raised by my father and my grandma, and my grandma was pretty sick. My brother was struggling with addiction and my father was doing his absolute best and working a lot. And so I really began to develop this kind of no needs take care of.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Because also if I have needs, who is there to hear them?
Mickenzie Vought:Right.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:But if people are around and I'm able to be of service, then I get that mirroring, that validation that says I'm doing a really great job. Mhmm. And so taking even that little picture into the rest of my life, I found myself in relationships with people that I didn't wanna be in a relationship with, but because I was feeling validated from them. And then unintentionally almost sabotaging it, it's like my internal world knew that I didn't wanna be in it. And so I I really developed this kind of anxious attachment style, meaning that, I want the closeness, but the closeness is scary.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And so I'm I'm moving in this push pull kind of way. And I remember I had this one relationship in college and I did not wanna be in it. It was an intimate relationship. I didn't wanna be in it. And yet I knew that they really cared for me and that felt good enough.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And then all of this stuff kept happening that would just try to push them away. And the second they moved away an inch, I was so afraid to let them go. And the reality was I wasn't clear on my needs because I had never been really clear on my needs. And I had always been used to taking care of whoever is in front of me, meaning that if this person likes me, sure, I'll go on a date with you. Or this person wants me to help them move, even though I'm busy.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Yeah. I've gotcha. And not really attuning to what's happening within me and my, my truth, my real feeling was just seeping out. And so my work over time was really beginning to notice that it's not the Taylor swift high on the common denominator. It's more, all I can change is me.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Yeah. And there's something within me that's telling me I'm unsatisfied with the relationships around me. And so if that's true, I need to take a pause and really take a deep dive within to understand who am I to begin with? What are my needs? And undoing that messaging that says I'm not allowed to have needs so that I can really begin to show up differently.
Mickenzie Vought:That was really beautiful. Thank you for kinda I think it was such a really apt and really beautiful example of just a little bit of your story and how it kind of rippled out and inform that. The three words that I heard you say that I just kind of wanna return to is that it's absent, inconsistent, or painful.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So when connection is inconsistent, absent, or painful, we will do our very best to get that connection back.
Mickenzie Vought:Yeah. And I loved the, even the word you used was like strategy for connection. Like, of course, it makes sense. And I think a lot of times when we run into, let me say it myself. A lot of times when I have run into patterns of like, I always find myself here.
Mickenzie Vought:I I take on a lot of shame and a lot of guilt. And a couple of years ago, I just had someone say to me, of course, that's how you do it. That's how you were taught to find connection. And it was such a graceful and kind way to look at these patterns, not in a a way of I'm not gonna take agency or responsibility like you were saying, but to say, okay. I keep seeing this in my relationships.
Mickenzie Vought:I'm unsatisfied in how this pattern is playing out. Let me get curious. But I really appreciated just even that language of what is the strategy that we use to find connection because we will. A phrase we sometimes say at Onsite is, it's not about blaming, it's about naming. I believe this is so applicable to so many areas of our lives, but especially when we're looking at our past.
Mickenzie Vought:I asked Ryan how she helps people who might feel overwhelmed or intimidated or frankly, just resistant to the process of reconciling their past and naming the ways their caregivers didn't provide what they needed. Here's her encouragement.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:What we go through can feel so personal and so painful, And I'd argue many times it has nothing to do with us. That that which hurts me most may actually have very little to do with me. That doesn't mean that it's not my pain to validate, but it means that maybe there are things that happen merely by people being human. That you replace me with my sibling or another person walking the same path, they would end up having a similar experience. It's not Ryan is the problem.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And so if I can look at my story really from almost an unbiased as though a friend was telling me it, the same story, but through their eyes perspective. And I heard that someone was living in a home where for some reason they were not raised by their mother, which may be challenging and also may have been the best thing for them, their grandmother cannot help being sick. Addiction is a disease that can plague anyone. And a single parent working so much to care for their family is an incredible thing. All of those things make sense in context and have nothing to do with the little girl who wanted people home.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And yet that little girl who wanted people home really did want people home. And we can also see that by removing it from myself, I was able to look at, yeah, she really didn't understand who she was or what was really happening. And everyone was just doing the best that they could, but not really speaking into what was going on. And so then we're all just making up stories. And the story that she made up was just make yourself small, be of service and don't have needs.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And if someone wants to be near you, whether you'd want it or not keep them close and taking that story into the future. And so being able to look at our story with that idea in mind that maybe it has little to do with me, even though it feels so personal, I can have a little grace and compassion for the system around me. And there are many, many examples of a painful family system. And it's not to say, just give everyone grace, but by looking at what is maybe happening in the culture, in the family culture, in the social culture, we could talk about families in a pandemic all the time and how that impacts just the stress level in the home. But maybe then I can really grieve what it was that I needed that I didn't get.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And so I know from my process, many of us have different emotional journey. My process was getting mad because I went to grace without blame. And not to say that we want to go to blame first, but maybe there's a piece of blame that says, oh, I just want to be angry that something didn't go the way that I wanted or deserved it to go. And so can I be angry without casting blame because there is a reason that things happen And I can also then grieve what didn't happen, what I got that I didn't need or what I needed that I didn't get? And by releasing all of that that's been pent up, I can just have a more clear understanding of everything I'm carrying with me.
Mickenzie Vought:At this point in the conversation, we began to discuss the weight that the 3 of us feel as parents, shaping young children who will someday grow up and have their own unique vantage point on our parenting. At Onsite, we often say, we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. So I asked Ryan to expand on this reality and help us both as adults who are reparenting ourselves, and if you are a parent, how to do it well knowing that our children will have an opinion and a perspective on the parenting that they received.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And a couple of things come to mind. One is as folks, especially in our program or any part of their healing journey, it's really looking at what is the lens that I see the world through now. And that may shaped by people who did the best that they could, people who were overtly abusive and harmful. And it can be shaped by so many different things, living in a world where I experienced prejudice that another person may not, the list could go on and on. And so really seeing how is it that I'm viewing the world and then my body, my nervous system is reacting to all of that from that lens.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:I am wearing my daughter has these, like, these, like, heart shaped glasses that are bright red and the entire world turns red, and she loves to wear them. And I always think that they just they would just give me a headache. But if I were wearing she loves them. But if I'm wearing those bright red glasses and I'm seeing everything the color red, a color that despite wearing it right now, isn't my fan favorite color, that would cause a degree of stress.
Mickenzie Vought:Yeah.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And so what is the actual lens that I'm seeing the world through? And then also knowing that we are, especially us 3 all being parents on this call, we're parenting the way that we probably wanted to be parented. And we're learning these little people. And so no one is going to get it right. Research shows that all one needs to embody resilience and to end up well, whatever that means, is to have one good enough parent.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And that good enough parent could be a good enough role model or being good enough for myself. There is no expectation of perfection. There is no expectation of a dual parent home. There is just a good enough support system. And if I have not had that, and yet my innate resilience has gotten me through it, can I be good enough for myself and then create a chosen family that does mirror me, that does attune to me, that does help me maybe put down those bright red lenses and get some that allow me to see all of the colors of the world?
Mickenzie Vought:Yeah. That's so good. You've mentioned a couple different times, like, we didn't get what we needed. Like, what, from a therapeutic standpoint, do we need, and what could that good enough look like?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:It's just such a complex question. So if I were to try to give it a simple answer, we all need to be seen, heard, valued, and to feel safe. Yeah. Within that, what that looks like or what that feels like might be different because the way that I feel seen might look different, where if you asked someone in my life, did you really see Ryan in this moment? And they'd say, yeah.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And actually I was sitting there feeling very unseen. So there's this subjective piece of what did it look like for us to get that need met. But there's obviously, if we can even think going to Maslow and his hierarchy, we need some ability to feel safe, to be nurtured and cared for. We need to have some sense of belonging. There's the essentials for life that we need.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And then there's the emotional essentials where we have someone who's present and attentive with us, that they are caring for us versus us having to learn to care for them or to learn, to find a way to receive their attention and care. Yeah. I'm out of pause because it's I love this question and it's such a huge question. I don't think there's been a time where I say here's a list of what it is that you deserved or what it is that you needed. It's more of was I safe?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Was I cared for? Was I nurtured? Did I get an opportunity to learn who I am as separate from another and that still be good and right. And then also I was recently reading Gabor Mate is the myth of normal. They're often systems and family systems that feel normal and to us what's normal gets acquainted with good and healthy.
Mickenzie Vought:And so
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:there's also this piece that comes to mind for me around. Was I in an environment that even if it felt normal may not have been good, nurturing or healthy? And that's such a complex question to answer. And I think so often the evidence of it's easier to see, I'll say this, it's easier to see the lack of getting what it was that I needed than to look back and say exactly what it was.
Mickenzie Vought:That's good. And I think sometimes it's easier to see this health than it is health sometimes for me in my own relationships to say like, this felt unhealthy. But I can't necessarily articulate what is healthy. What is a healthy relationship? So I don't know if anyone else relates to that.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:I really try to take this perspective of not labeling what health looks like to another person, then I'm not the one who gets to decide what feels good enough for them. And so if someone were to ask me what does healthy look like, I'll say, here's what a healthy relationship to me looks like. I had utilities all the time. I had food. I was not getting yelled at.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:These are things that did not happen. There were people there all hours of the day to read me stories and play with me and, you know, hug me if I fell down. There were all of these things that happened. For someone else, it might look very different for what it was that they really needed. And that's the piece going back to what Lindsay said of like, there's the essentials, yes, that we all know every person needs in order to survive and to thrive.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And then there's the human subjectivity of, we are caregivers raising these people that we are just learning. And I am beginning to see that my son is a very highly sensitive child and my daughter is 1 and her personality is just continuing to blossom and they themselves are very different. And yet I'm one person trying to parent 2 very different children.
Mickenzie Vought:Yeah, totally. Knowing and identifying the ways that our earliest experiences with our caregivers didn't provide us what we needed is a beautiful first step in understanding how we show up in our relationships today. But we wanted to take this conversation a little bit farther and even connect it back to the work we do at Onsite. Lindsay asked a really insightful question that I believe helps create clarity around our different in person workshops that can help individuals who are running into some relationship snacks. Ryan gave a phenomenal explanation and an invitation to lean into this work with more intention and curiosity.
Lindsey Nobles:It's all just so complex. Like, we're so complex. Mhmm. And I think that for me as someone that has been single for a long time and, like, very I'm very grateful that about, you know, 6 or 7 years ago, I did the Living Centered Program before joining the Onsite team and began to, like, piece together some of the messages I did and didn't receive as a child that, like, were causing patterns. And I Yeah.
Lindsey Nobles:The place that I saw those patterns kinda show up the most was in, like, professional relationships. Like, sometimes I wouldn't advocate for myself the way that I'd advocate for other people, And I I think I didn't realize that I deserved that, you know? And so I feel like the work that I was able to do in the living center looking at just my life growing up and my family of origin. My mom, I'm a second child, so my with a large age gap, my sister and I had their 5 years and 6 grades between us. So we were like just in different orbits.
Lindsey Nobles:And my parents both worked and had big jobs and were very busy. And so, well, I had a great upbringing. Oh, and then my mom had breast cancer, and she was diagnosed right as I was a baby, which I never really thought about because I wasn't really present to it ever because it happened right around my birth. But I think that that and then the fact that she started working she worked predominantly she just started working predominantly after I was born. And so, my early childhood years, my mom was working, you know, and my sister, it's so interesting because
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:there is
Lindsey Nobles:a lot that my sister and I have in common about, like, how we relate to the world. But the way, like, the way that we saw our family growing up was just so different. Like, how I interact with my mom versus how she does and how I interact with my dad versus how she does, so different. And I just assumed that that would have been in the same experience because we were in the same home, but it's a whole different world. And I just am grateful for all of the pieces that I got to put together looking at that family of origin, doing that work in the living center program.
Lindsey Nobles:But I feel like I've never, like, gone back and done work around my singleness and, like because honestly, in some ways, it doesn't aggravate aggravate me, you know? Like, I've learned to be adaptive and fully functioning and I'm independent, and it doesn't feel I'm I'm not used to anything else.
Mickenzie Vought:Yeah.
Lindsey Nobles:But I haven't done a lot of look at, like, where does that desire for independence come from? And I've always been curious about doing, like, the healthy love and relationships program. So I'm curious, Ryan, as somebody that loves both those programs and leads both of them, and they both do relationship work and help people connect the dots. How are they different and how would, like, the Healthy Love and Relationships program serve someone like me? Sell me on it.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:There's so much in your share that I so appreciate. So the living centered program, I'll start with that. The living centered program I view as really this beautiful foundational in-depth catchall that just touches on, I think all of the things that are important on our path of healing. It talks about trauma, our relationship with ourself, our inner child, the way that we show up and navigate relationships and conflict, really looking at family origin and how that early template shapes today. And it really is.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:It's our foundational program. I think it's a foundation in healing and is really beneficial for so many different folks on their path. The healthy love and relationships program specifically is really geared towards looking even more in-depth at those attachments and how they inform all of the ways that we show up. And so there's still, of course, sprinkled in information on trauma. But really looking at what is that lens?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:What is that ingrained template that I have begun to carry through the world? How can I look at that? Maybe even that piece of depersonalizing it and finding some kind of grace, some kind of release and building a different relationship with myself as I practice what I want to embody in life outside of me. And so how that supports different people, it depends on where they come in. Some folks come in and they're struggling with their relationship with their child, that it's just really hard to connect with their child or maybe their child is at an age where their trauma occurred and it's creating this rift between the 2 of them.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Some folks come in because they found themselves either in a pattern over time that they can't seem to break despite the best of intention, or just wanting a curiosity of what is it within my story that is leading to the decisions relationally, as you said, that I'm making today. And so it's this opportunity to look at attachment in a much more fine lens. And all of those messages and all of that, that I gained and seeing it as a strategy, how it served me, how it's maybe hindering me and what I'm able to retire and shift, knowing that I can only control a 100% responsible for my 50%. I can only control what is happening with me. If we really look at, the family of origin template, we really look at codependency, how to navigate all forms of intimacy, which we often still, as I say that word listeners probably think romantic intimacy or sexual intimacy.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:There's so many layers to it. And beginning to see where am I comfortable? Where am I stuck? What maybe is something that feels foreign to me because I haven't experienced that yet, just so I have more opportunity to choose what that healthy relationship looks like for me. That's really helpful.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Thank you. Sold? Are you sold?
Lindsey Nobles:Yeah. I I do. I think it's I feel like sometimes the attachment stuff has been hard for me to, maybe because I need to do the program, but, like, really, understand or, like, I I have such flourishing friendships and and, like, so many different types of intimacy in my life where I have, like, such great secure relationships that it really has been that the idea of, like, the romantic relationship or, like, needing or wanting a partner. I think it it feels like I don't know if I'm avoidant of it or if it feels
Mickenzie Vought:risky. If you're insecurely attached in general, this is a question I have. Like, let's say I have insecure attachment. I'm, I'm I would say I'm actually avoidant in situations. But does that anxious avoidant apply to all of my relationships?
Mickenzie Vought:Or and then play out like differently based on the relationship? Or is it like, I could be anxiously attached in a romantic relationship, but avoid at work?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And that's what I was actually just gonna speak into. So we do talk about I'll preface it with this. We do talk about attachment styles a lot, and I will name what those are. My hesitation sometimes with doing it is anytime we give a label for something, we can say that is the reason why I am the way I am. That is all of who I am, and it as a previously anxiously attached person, I showed up differently depending on the situation that I was in, that it just looked a little bit different.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And yet I still being an anxiously attached person had that degree of push and pull everywhere that I did show up. That maybe I wanted to leave my job, but I felt important when I was there. I definitely didn't wanna be in this relationship, but I'd rather that than be alone. I was listening to friends talk about anything all the time, never saying how I was feeling. All of that was happening and it looked different in the different situations.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And yet that anxiety was still present all throughout. And then part of that healing journey, even as you both had said earlier, the re parenting myself is healing and tending to that inner child that was given that attachment style. And so as I do that work, maybe first it shifted with friendships and I began to set boundaries and lose some friendships and maybe gain different ones because I also created this dance that I wasn't willing to do anymore. And then I started setting different boundaries with work and still it ripples a little bit into the intimate relationships. And so part of that healing journey in my perspective is it begins to take different forms wherever we show up.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Where I heard Lindsay, you say earlier, at one point it was such a challenge with work and now maybe it's an intimate partner. And I know even years into my own work, I've done a lot to have really good boundaries and a secure relationship with my friendships. Yes. I have also done a lot of work and I think Onsite for that too, around my relationship with work, still my marriage at times I can get this feeling of, oh, I'm upset, but I don't want to say it, or I want to be close to you, but I'm going to sit on the other side of the couch because I also don't want to at all. Or there's just this feeling.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And it spiked a little bit for me again when I had my daughter, because that's also just this really intimate experience that you have with someone. And then I'm in this bond with her. There's so much that happened. And so we might find that in different seasons in our life, that old attachment wound comes back up. So it can look different.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And I may view myself as a securely attached person all throughout that anxiety still ripples in romantically from time to time as well as shows up as the perfectionist professionally or however it does. But I'd say that it begins as a way that I am showing up everywhere. And then as I heal, it begins to diminish less and less. And often we see that it still lingers in the relationships that feel the most important to us because that intimacy is so precious and something that's that close. Also, we want to protect it.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:We want to keep it safe. We want to use all the things that have been so, strategic for us in the past. And so it's just always coming back to what is happening with me. What does little me want and need in this moment and every relationship, regardless of the type takes a degree of faith and risk. And so if that is venturing away from singleness to a partner, there are some risk in that and some faith in that.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:If that is setting a boundary with work in a place that I haven't before, there's also risk and faith in that too.
Mickenzie Vought:In this conversation, we don't dive very deep into attachment styles. But if you'd like to learn more, we have 2 really fantastic episodes around attachment. So head back in the archives to check out episodes 6171. As we rounded out this conversation, Lindsay helped us further explore the interventions and resources available to us when our relationships are struggling and how to know if individual or couples or group therapy is the next right step.
Lindsey Nobles:I have another question. I feel like a lot of times it's hard to navigate, like, what is, like, my individual work versus, like, work that I should be doing with, like, a friend or partner, like, in, like, a couple's intensive or a coupleship program. How do you navigate, like, the individual versus the collective work in which you need at the time if you're feeling having problems in your relationship?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Yeah. That's such a good question. So I think that the the most simple way to say is that individual or coupleship work is whatever the problem is, are we both able to talk about it and work on it as some kind of team while staying connected to myself? If there is something, and I'll just because it's been top of mind lately, a betrayal trauma. If there's been some kind of infidelity in a marriage or relationship and it recently happened right away, we're not going to do couples work because it will be so hard for me to partner with the person who hurt me, because I still really need to look at and understand what even am I feeling?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:Can I grieve? Can I be angry? I need to be able to feel all of that in a safe container and that relationship is no longer a safe container. I need to be able to feel that in a safe container so that now we can do this work together. Whether that means that we are reconciling or we are uncoupling, whatever that looks like.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So whatever the problem is, grief, tragedy, trauma, just general upset. Have I been given the space to really sort through and process my feelings about it? I deserve to do that in my own space versus if I do that first and foremost with my partner, I'm just going to project all of my feelings onto them. And we're going to end up in more conflict. If we have both taken time in some capacity to really sit with and process our own reaction to it, I can come with a much clearer perspective and open heart to some degree and do this work together.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And so we, we sometimes see folks who come to a couples intensive and it ends up just being so much blame towards one another because they haven't yet been given that space. And so we really try in that situation, how can we get each other the space, even when we're right here in the room together so that we can process it together versus at each other. Sometimes our unintentional way of trying to build a bridge is to point fingers. And it's that old saying, one of you, there's 4 pointing back at me, 3 pointing back at me. And so how can I first look at all of the stuff that's reflected within me?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So I'm not just trying to project it on the outside?
Lindsey Nobles:That's helpful. Thank you. Mhmm.
Mickenzie Vought:You're saying that makes me think about kind of this collective time we're in, and I know we're running out of time, but I feel like Instagram and therapy, TikTok and all of that there's a lot of words and there's a lot of head knowledge. And I think a lot of us aren't integrating it and doing our own work. And I think it's a lot of pointing and I've noticed with them myself to identify like, oh, yeah, this is activating to me, or this is whatever. So I think there's a couple words that just get thrown out that I thought maybe you could help us ground
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:as we go into
Mickenzie Vought:this conversation. Like, what actually is codependency? How do we know if someone is gaslighting us? Do we need to set boundaries? Like, how do we start to separate and take the agency that we need in some of these situations?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:It's like
Mickenzie Vought:gaslighting, narcissism, codependent. There's so many words
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:that just get thrown around so much. So codependent, the TN Dayton describes it as a trauma related loss of self. And so if we go back to that template that I've been given, if I, which I did, learned a template of I don't have needs, but I'm of service to another. And that is how I get value. And then my challenges in relationships today or whatever is happening is that I'm just giving, giving, giving, and I have no groundedness within me or how I'm feeling is so dependent on how another person is where I feel value if I'm needed.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:I'm okay. If they're okay. That all of my understanding and gauge of what is happening for me is based on the other. That is codependency. If I am taking care of someone, because I know I have the capacity to do it and I'm willingly doing it and consciously doing it, that's different.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So a really great way to understand or begin to wonder, is it codependency is, am I intentionally giving this or doing this, whatever it might be? Because codependency can also look like control. It can also look like not playing, struggling with boundaries, poor self care, lack of it can look like so many different things, whatever it is. Is it hindering true connection with myself and with others and myself being the biggest part of that? Is it really hindering my connection with myself?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So gaslighting is when people intentionally kind of crazy make. So there's an intentional way of trying to get us to feel like our perception is wrong. We are to blame. There's a really high intentional degree of manipulation in it. The way that it gets misused is around the intentionality that maybe someone is harming us, but they're not doing it in the intentional manipulative way, where even, you know, we all said younger people, children, family, sometimes there's friction.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:And by merely having a conversation, there can be a repair. And so there are times that it gets overused. And it's a very real, very upsetting experience. When you have a relationship with someone that it's just hard to gauge what is real, what is mine, what is theirs, and it seems like everything is being put on my shoulders.
Lindsey Nobles:So is there intentionality around the behavior or intentionally trying to like make people feel crazy?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So that would be both. If I am someone who's wanting to manipulate the person in front of me, I am going to be really it's like, what's the there's a quote that I'm trying to remember, but it's basically that folks who embody this can be really charming. So how can I do it? But it appears that I'm not. So there's this really smoke and mirrors feeling of there's something that's so deceptive and it feels so wrong and yet it's hard to pinpoint because it just is this, enigma.
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:So there's an intentionality in the behavior, and there's an intentionality in the manipulating to not be at fault for it.
Lindsey Nobles:Okay. That's super helpful. I've never heard it positioned that way.
Mickenzie Vought:Well, thank you, Ryan. This has been so good. I was just gonna ask one final question to kind of run us out. Yeah. We often ask people what is one practice that keeps them centered, but I wonder what's one practice that keeps you centered in your relationships?
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:A practice that keeps me grounded is, let me think, I always come back to it, which is why I was trying to think of something more creative than the ones I say before, but I try to just do something for myself. If I can do anything for myself, whatever that is, I can have a better relationship with me, which means I can have a more intentional response versus reacting from maybe a wounded or a reactionary play. Whether that's in conflict with work in conflict, in my marriage, whether that's in conflict with work, in conflict in my marriage, with a friend, whatever that might be, I really try to take time and breathe and sit with what is happening with me
Mickenzie Vought:so
Ryan Bloch-Snodgrass:that I can speak from a place of truth versus just whatever my nervous system wants to say. That's really helpful. Thank you so much for having me.
Mickenzie Vought:Thanks, Ryan. This was so fun.
Lindsey Nobles:Thank you, Ryan. You're so smart.
Mickenzie Vought:Thanks for listening to the Living Center podcast. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love for you to consider leaving us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen. It only takes a few seconds to navigate to the show in your app and select the stars to begin your rating. It helps more people find the show, and we really appreciate it. Thanks so much.