Finding Tenderness While Facing Relationship Challenges with Molly Reagh

Episode 106:
Finding Tenderness While Facing Relationship Challenges with Molly Reagh

In this episode, I welcome relationship coach and associate social worker, Molly Reagh. We discuss the intricacies of how relationships act as mirrors and messengers for personal growth. Molly shares insights on differentiating between pain and suffering and emphasizes the importance of tenderness towards oneself during challenging periods. The conversation delves into the value of parts work, understanding and embodying personal values, and how to cultivate self-compassion. Molly also provides practical advice on how to navigate complex emotions and relationship dynamics consciously and intentionally.

00:00 Understanding Pain vs. Suffering

01:44 Meet Molly Reagh: Relationship Coach and Social Worker

03:09 Diving into Relationship Dynamics

07:03 Exploring Bonobo Relationships

13:06 Navigating Emotions and Relationships

27:33 Connecting Physical Sensations to Memories

28:08 Healing Through Self-Energy

28:35 Wisdom from Past Experiences

28:50 Acknowledging and Greeting Your Inner Child

29:48 No Bad Parts: Embracing All Aspects of Self

30:05 Humanizing Our Behaviors

30:27 Unshaming and Tenderizing Our Experiences

31:38 The Role of Safety in Our Actions

32:38 Internalizing Safety and Judgment

34:34 People Pleasing and Relationship Dynamics

37:29 Empowerment Through Self-Reflection

38:41 Cultivating Self-Compassion and Tenderness

40:43 Values Work: Guiding Principles for Authentic Living

43:59 Embodiment and Attunement to Values

45:07 The Importance of Quiet Time and Self-Care

47:57 Connecting with Molly and Her Work

49:46 Conclusion and Podcast Information

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Transcript

Molly Reagh: 0:00

This is a very basic, even Buddhist, principle. The difference between pain and suffering is the pain is just the experience and the suffering is the judgments and all of the other stuff that we overlay on top of the experience of pain, of disappointment, of should or should not-ing ourselves, of oh, I shouldn't feel this way, or this is bad, or this is good. And I think when we are able to be with that initial pain or thought or the initial experience and say, okay, this is welcome here, when we can, over time, slowly, gently welcome whatever arises inside of us, going to that piece of tenderness, now I really sit with that pain and now I can metabolize it.

Carrie Jeroslow: 0:45

Welcome to the Relationship Diversity Podcast, where we celebrate, question and explore all aspects of relationship structure diversity, from soloramory to monogamy to polyamory and everything in between, because every relationship is as unique as you are. We'll bust through societal programming to break open and dissect everything we thought we knew about relationships, to ask the challenging but transformational questions who am I and what do I really want in my relationships? I'm your guide, Keri Jaroslow. Bestselling author, speaker, intuitive and coach. Join me as we reimagine all that our most intimate relationships can become. Today's episode is part of our conversation series. I'm just one voice in this relationship diversity movement and it's important to bring more unique perspectives into the conversation. And it's important to bring more unique perspectives into the conversation. Today I'm so excited to share my conversation with the amazing Molly Ray, who's a relationship coach and associate social worker. We talk about relationships being mirrors and messengers for powerful self-growth as well as finding tenderness towards ourselves during these challenging growth periods. I really needed their wisdom and had some huge aha moments during our talk. But first a little about them. Molly Ray is an associate social worker and relationship coach specializing in working with queer and non-monogamous folks. They are trained in somatic attachment therapy, narrative therapy and integrative change work. She believes that everything is relational and that we can shape a better future for our communities through focusing on our relationship to self and others. Molly is a mushroom forager and loves spending time with their incredible mycelial network of beloveds. Let's get into the conversation.

Carrie Jeroslow: 2:52

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. I've got another incredible guest for you today, and what we are going to talk about I'm telling you. I'm super excited because I need it right now. I have my friend, molly Ray, here today and we are going to talk about how relationships are mirrors and messages and tools for growth. And, oh my gosh, I am realizing this. I have realized this for a while, but it seems to get more intense and I think, when I've accepted that relationships are going to reflect certain things that I'm wanting to work on within myself, that I can breathe in and get excited about the work that is coming my way instead of resisting it. But we're also going to talk about tenderness towards ourselves. Molly, I need this so much. So welcome, molly, to the podcast.

Molly Reagh: 3:56

Oh, thank you so much, Keri. I am ecstatic to be here today to be talking about this with you. I'm just so honored and grateful.

Carrie Jeroslow: 4:06

When we first met, we started talking about some of these ideas and I was feeling like I needed it then, but over the last few weeks between that time and this recording time, I've realized I needed a lot more. So we're going to get to all of that, but I would love for you to introduce yourself to everyone listening and tell everyone a little bit more about your awesome self.

Molly Reagh: 4:29

Wonderful. So hello everyone. My name is Molly Ray, as Carrie just said, and my pronouns are she, they. I am a relationship coach, mostly working with queer and non-monogamous folks, but really anyone who wants to do relationships more consciously, who wants to get to know themselves better as relational beings, which we all are. I live in Sacramento, california. I'm a California girly born and raised. I've been, I would say, obsessed with relationships forever and realizing in the past few years just how that relationships forever and realizing in the past few years just how that relationality has impacted my life. I've always been interested in stretching of the bounds, finding the edges of relationality, and I first came into non-monogamy in my late teens, early twenties, when a roommate of mine was like oh, look, the ethical slut. And I was like what is this?

Molly Reagh: 5:22

And this was 17, 18 years ago at this point and it just unlocked something for me of wow, this is possible, it's possible to do relationships differently, and it really felt immediately so right in me, and similarly with my queerness when I officially came out again around the same time. It just felt like a rightness of ah yes, there is something about the questioning of norms that sits so beautifully in my system and the evolution that I think queerness and non-monogamy, which I see as a big fat man diagram.

Carrie Jeroslow: 6:05

Yes, I've talked to different people about that. Definitely, there's a lot of intersection between those two identities.

Molly Reagh: 6:13

Yeah, and so I think from then it's been an evolution of how to relate better to people, and more recently it's been this I don't know if full circle's the right word, but this experience of, oh, this helps me symbiotically relating better to myself, helps me relate better to others. Relating better to others helps me relate better to myself and better writer, more fully, more authentically, and so that's, I would say, the past few years really been where I've been rooting into pontificating, thinking about talking with all my people in my life about these concepts of relationality, and I love it. It's just the juiciest, most exciting relationships, because that's such a broad term feels so exciting to me. I have a relationship coaching business called Bonobo Relationships. I've been doing that for about two and a half years. I am a counselor and therapist as well. I have my master's in social work and I work with a really incredible organization providing counseling to folks who work in the mental health field providers and direct service folks.

Carrie Jeroslow: 7:23

Will you talk for a moment about the name Bonobo? You said Bonobo Network, no, so Bonobo Network also exists.

Molly Reagh: 7:32

They are a wonderful sex education play party organization. They're in the Bay Area and they're fantastic and I think we both understandably so. When I talk about Bonobos it makes a lot of sense why we would both choose that name. So in my undergrad I studied anthropology and I had an anthropology of sexualities class and we learned about bonobos. So there's chimpanzees and bonobos which are humans' closest evolutionary relative.

Molly Reagh: 8:00

Chimpanzees are this is all very anthropomorphized, very broad strokes. Chimpanzees are a lot more violent, patriarchal, territorial groups and creatures and bonobos are more altruistic. They have a lot of sex and across sex. So there's like male male sexual interaction, female female sexual interaction as well as the procreational sexual interaction, and so it's again anthropomorphized. You can't really put the labels of humanity, of queer, onto animals, but it's fun to play with and see that bonobos are this very expansive animal experience and when I think that there's some connection to that and humans of course are animals the symbolism of bonobos really speaks to the world.

Molly Reagh: 8:51

I want to see and I think on a deeper level, even again broad strokes. But bonobos are, like I mentioned, more altruistic and again empathetic. I don't know if that word quite maps on exactly to what it is, but they're way less territorial. They also grew up in a lot more resource-rich area, and so even my ideas around capitalism come in of like scarcity and when we have abundance and resource we can be more altruistic with each other, we can be more empathetic with each other, because when we're resourced we feel like we don't have to guard as much, we don't have to control and protect as much, and we can be more open-hearted. So there's a lot within the anthropomorphizing and symbolism of bonobos that really resonates with my heart and it's just a fun word, it is. I love it All of that?

Carrie Jeroslow: 9:39

Yeah Well, thank you for explaining that. I had read about that in I think it was Sex at Dawn with the history, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who had never heard about that and was like, but no, what is that? So that makes a lot of sense. So you have gone through your evolution personally, with your relationships and your focus with queer and non-monogamous people, and you've been doing that for how many years?

Molly Reagh: 10:07

So in this capacity about two and a half years.

Carrie Jeroslow: 10:09

Two and a half years I started in 2022.

Molly Reagh: 10:13

Yeah, January of 2022 is when I opened the proverbial doors started an Instagram account and was like I don't know. Let's share some ideas and offer coaching.

Carrie Jeroslow: 10:23

Yeah Well, there's a lot of opening that happened during that time. That was right after we were all trapped, so we had to break free and I think it's a pretty amazing time and also very scary time. So it's like there's an opening, but there's also a lot that is going on to keep people in a box. Are you seeing that kind of experience in the world through politics, social climate Are you seeing that affect the people that you're working with?

Molly Reagh: 10:57

Oh, you're in.

Carrie Jeroslow: 10:58

California. So it's. I know that you have more of a liberal environment there, but I'm just curious what you're seeing with your clients critical lens.

Molly Reagh: 11:07

But also I do see a tenderizing in many spaces of people saying I still want to fight the good fight and I also want to do it in a way that feels a little more humanizing of all parties involved.

Molly Reagh: 11:37

In some ways I see both.

Molly Reagh: 11:39

I see along that spectrum people who are a little more in black and white thinking, but I do feel and maybe it's just because my lens is more attuned to this these days as I try to grow and heal and tenderize of like okay, and there might be some ways to engage with the hardness of the world, the difficulties of the world, the really hard parts of humanity such as war and genocide, and in a way that is still tender and that's a hard balance to strike and I think we're all muddling our way through it.

Molly Reagh: 12:11

And I do work with a lot of people who are very deeply impacted by what's going on in the world and that absolutely comes up in our sessions and even working with couples who are sometimes very much on the front lines or very involved in movement work and that impacts our relationships when we're seeing such devastation, that is dysregulating, that reduces our resources, because we're heart people, we're heart humans and we're always in environment. Our environments always impact us and so, yeah, I think I'm always seeing the kind of symbiotic relationship between environment and individual. It's all relational. We have a relationship to politics, we have a relationship to our government, we have a relationship to the world's unfoldings and that impacts so many things it really does.

Carrie Jeroslow: 13:02

And you're right, we are in relationship with everything, and so one of the things that we were going to talk about is something that you had said is how relationships are a beautiful and devastatingly challenging tool for growth. That resonated with me so much, because it is both. So how do you help people navigate the beautiful aspects of what this experience is asking me and what it is asking of me to do to grow, to heal, and also honoring the challenging and the total dysregulation also honoring the challenging and the total dysregulation which I have been through recently being completely dysregulated and not knowing how to find my center. Can you talk through that a little bit and how you help people navigate? That's such a huge topic, but maybe we can slowly chip away at that.

Molly Reagh: 14:00

Yeah, my mind goes in a million different directions because I'm like where to start. Let me just take a deep breath and just take that in, because there is so much there. So let's start with the beauty of, I think, the human experience, because everything that a human goes through is part of the human experience, because you are a human experiencing a thing and your response and reaction to that is normal in the sense of based on your history and what's going on in your environment. All of that has coalesced into this moment for these feelings to arise in you. And there has to be beauty in that to me, because it shows us something that was inside. It brings to the surface something that was either never going to show up, which is fine, but it's been there, it's been in some little crevice and crack of our heart or nervous system or psyche. And so there is a beauty in making something explicit and saying, okay, this is something that I now know about myself, I now know about other people, I now know about my relationship to other people or to these experiences, or to the world, or just about humanity itself. And to me there's so much richness, there's so much beauty in just saying, okay, I'm a human having an experience, and there is a level of okayness here. There is a level of, well, I'm a human and it's happening to me, so therefore this is okay, and so we have just the basic experience of whatever the thing is.

Molly Reagh: 15:52

Often that is painful, because life is painful, and so we have that base experience of, okay, something has come up in us. Then often we can judge those feelings and that is also because of our history and our environment and our culture and our subcultures and all of these experiences. And even that is still beautiful in the sense of that is still a very human experience principle. The difference between pain and suffering is the pain is just the experience and the suffering is the judgments and all of the other stuff that we overlay on top of the experience of pain, of disappointment, of should or should, noting ourselves of, oh, I shouldn't feel this way, or this is bad or this is good.

Molly Reagh: 16:40

And I think when we are able to be with that initial pain or thought or the initial experience and say, okay, this is welcome here. These words are all simple, these are not easy. Right, these concepts are simple, these are not easy. I have worked with so many people and I was like okay, what happens if you extend a welcome? And they'll be like I cannot do that. I cannot welcome this anger right now. This anger feels dangerous to me.

Molly Reagh: 17:10

And that makes so much sense and we don't push past that and when we can, over time, slowly gently welcome whatever arises inside of us, going to that piece of tenderness, it's tenderized to be like, oh, oh. Now I really sit with that pain and now I can metabolize it. Now it's something that can be turned into the meaning of life, as opposed to the judgment of life.

Carrie Jeroslow: 17:37

It reminds me of the Carl Jung what you resist persists, because when I'm feeling something and I don't want to feel it, or it feels too heavy, I don't know how to feel the bigness of the emotion, and then there's a resistance and then it gets even bigger. And I work with my clients in a similar way of welcoming, of saying hello to it, of finding the sensation in my body and saying hello, I see you and it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And when I do that work I just feel a little crack. There's a little like space, and that's sometimes the little space that I need to get into to start metabolizing some of these huge emotions of really feeling, the pure experience of feeling an emotion, a sensation, without a lot of the judgment around it.

Molly Reagh: 18:50

That opens us up to being able to be present with other people's emotions and that to me is like the relationality, because when I'm not overwhelmed by my own I don't know let's say anger or sadness and I can be like, okay, I can sit with my own anger or sadness.

Molly Reagh: 19:04

And then I have a friend, a lover, a partner who comes with big anger or sadness and I can be like, okay, I can sit with my own anger or sadness.

Molly Reagh: 19:05

And then I have a friend, a lover, a partner who comes with big anger or sadness because of something I've done. There's this ability to say, oh, I know what that feels like, I know what my experience of that is, I can see you in a more full humanity kind of way. I believe that this can help us differentiate and see each person's including ourselves, each person's human experience as both relational but also very personal, and we can just be generally less overwhelmed by the experience of emotion, less overwhelmed by oh gosh, I did something and someone had a response to this, and be like, ah, yes, that's a human thing and there's just more empathy, that's accessible, more ability to sit with and be with and validate each other and to not internalize it or personalize it or say, oh shoot, does this make me a bad person? Because we know that. No, we see ourselves as full, rich, complex humans. We can see other people and it makes the experience of relating, I think, more full, more humane, more compassionate.

Carrie Jeroslow: 20:17

And so I think what you're saying is that if I'm working on my own big feelings and my own response to it, then I'm more able to handle big feelings from anyone else my children, from my partners, from my friends because I definitely know that my little girl doesn't like conflict and when there is conflict it's my fault. That's a very old pattern. So, again, looking at the relationship that I have and what comes up and how that makes me feel as my way for growing and healing that little 12 year old who thinks everything is their fault, that's what I think I'm hearing you're saying.

Molly Reagh: 21:01

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, and you've made the meaning of your adult experiences.

Molly Reagh: 21:07

You've seen how they're filtered through a lens of your inner 12 year old. You said, ah, I see how this adult experience with this person and correct me if I'm wrong but what I'm gathering is that might be a little distorted because my inner 12 year old has the reins of the situation and being able to see that and tend to her, tend to that inner 12 year old and be like, ooh, my love, what did you need that you didn't get? And then you can say, oh, okay. And now I update her from, however, 30, 40 year old Carrie, saying let me show you a little bit of the world I've created, what skills and tools I have now. A little bit of the world I've created, what skills and tools I have now. And then she doesn't have the reins as much and you are able to say, okay, I have a different relationship, I can build and cultivate a different relationship to really scary emotions that at that time, I needed to protect for all of these reasons because I was a 12 year old.

Molly Reagh: 22:02

You developmentally did not have the resources, we don't have the same autonomy as we do as adults. That's the nature of being a 12 year old and so now you can say okay, I see that I have space and distance and love and tenderness for my 12 year old and now I can also have a little more choicefulness, values, alignment, I can do work to then be able to have a different relationship to emotions, to myself, to other people, and know that there's a little more agency in this space.

Carrie Jeroslow: 22:35

I had this image while you were talking of all these people walking around as 12-year-old kids, as three-year-old kids, as five-year-old kids, and we're all relating to each other, from our little kids, where maybe certain developmental leaps stopped because something happened and it just stopped the development. And so here we are, these little kids trying to be adults in these world, relating from our little child issues, and our skills never got developed.

Molly Reagh: 23:06

You hit the nail on the head and I also. What I love about that is I can have so much more compassion when I see people's responses like, oh, that's a younger part of, or even that's a part of, them. That's why I love parts. Work and internal family systems is because it doesn't totalize people. It says, oh, we all have these parts.

Molly Reagh: 23:26

No matter how much healing and growth or whatever anyone does, we're still gonna have parts of us that show up and like, oh, yep, that's my little angry part. And when we can see that and say, oh, yeah, that's like and we don't have to say that we don't wanna that could be really condescending to someone who doesn't have that shared language. But just knowing in our hearts and being like, oh, there's a part of someone coming up that is probably really protective right now. Something about the situation made that person feel a need to protect some scary or sacred part of themselves, and that's interesting. And then we get to choose is that someone we want to be in relationship with or not? I think this is also a practice of discerning. Well, I think sometimes when we talk to be in, relationship with or not.

Carrie Jeroslow: 24:06

I think this is also a practice of discerning. Well, I think sometimes when we talk about relationships being reflections especially, like I hear, in the energy or spiritual world it's like if I just heal myself, the relationship will be okay. And although I have seen that happen, it does not mean that I need to be in this relationship and that only when I'm healed the relationship will be good. It doesn't look like that at all. The lesson might be I need to walk away from this. I need to move away. I was wondering if you would explain parts work, because I kind of understand what it is, but I have never heard an explanation and I wonder if people out there would be interested in learning what that is.

Molly Reagh: 24:52

Absolutely so. Parts work it also is known as internal family systems, which is a therapeutic modality, and parts work is the generalization of that. And it's this idea that we are all born with these different parts of ourselves and sometimes we can even imagine them as like little creatures inside of us or little human. They can show up in many different symbolic ways and we have these parts and as we develop, these parts get brought up or another word, is burdened with different environmental ideas or schemas or worldviews, sometimes based on traumatic experiences, difficult experiences, because, especially from a young age when, again developmentally, we're not able to make sense of the world in the ways that an adult is these parts of us develop to have these very strong worldviews on what is safe, what is not safe, what we need to protect. And so we develop and we have these parts of us that have these very strong worldviews that can oftentimes take over our behaviors or how we show up, because they're protecting something that feels very dangerous or they're protecting something that feels very vulnerable. And so there's this idea of the eight C's of the self, and I always forget exactly what they are, but it's compassion, calm, I believe, caring, creativity. They're this self-energy that our parts can sometimes block us from accessing or block us from being able to experience or fully live into the self-energy, because it doesn't feel safe to show your full, authentic, most full self, and so our parts protect us. It feels like, okay, the world has been shown in different ways to be scary or unsafe, or it's not okay to show my fullest self until these parts grow up and we can, as we grow and as adults, kids can do this too but we can look at these different parts of ourselves and see, when they show up, what their behaviors are, what their beliefs are, and often they're tied to a very specific time and place in our life, and sometimes it's even what's called like a legacy burden, which is something for like intergenerationally. So that is also, I think, we know, and that can be systemic environmental systems of oppression that impact us. And so, as we look at these different parts and connect to them and say, okay, what is this? Where do I feel this?

Molly Reagh: 27:33

For a lot of people they can feel like, oh, I feel a pain in my chest or in my gut or in my throat or in my hands, I don't know, it could be any part and we connect and we say, oh, and what memories or what images arise.

Molly Reagh: 27:46

And oftentimes for a lot of people not everyone it can be a very diverse experience, but for a lot of people they'll say, oh, that reminds me of being six years old on the playground and being teased, and this part developed in protection, in response to this part of me coming out that was chastised by my peers, or sometimes it's our parents or siblings or whatever. And so we can then go back in time and, from an adult perspective, our self energy can heal that part of us and update it or unburden it from all of those schemas and say, look, things can be different now. And then it's. We now have the reins, and that part of us, that 12 year old part of you, no longer has the reins, and that's not to say it doesn't come up, but then it also has wisdom. There's wisdom there. And so we take the wisdom from it and say I want to hear what you have to say, but I'm still going to make the choices, I'm still going to be able to lead from this more full, felt place.

Carrie Jeroslow: 28:50

That sounds like really powerful work and brings consciousness into our actions, our thoughts, our feelings. I know that sometimes I've done something that sounds really similar, but I didn't know that I was doing parts work where I say hello to that. Again, I use hello a lot. It's an intuitive tool that my first husband taught me. But just saying hello and acknowledging the 12 year old to say I'm not 12 anymore, hello, I see you, I see where you got stuck and we are safe right now I am not that 12 year old girl, but I like the part about the wisdom, the wisdom from that time, because I think there is, with each of these very, maybe challenging, painful experiences that we have all through our life, there is wisdom that is birthed from that, a learning that can really help us evolve as human beings.

Molly Reagh: 29:48

And I think it's the book that Richard Schwartz, who's seen as the creator of Internal Family Systems. The book is called no Bad Parts. It's that none of this is bad. Maybe society deems certain behaviors or certain things as bad or that can cause harm to other people, but when we can humanize it and I think this goes back to humanizing all the things because we're a human having an experience and saying, okay, yeah, once I connect more deeply with myself and my values, maybe I see how my behaviors aren't actually serving me or the people around me, but removing the shame from it and seeing, oh, this is happening for a reason there was an explanation here when I can unshame that explanation, be able to sit with it, probably cry a lot because there was a really hard experience that caused this behavior to be my norm or to show up a lot.

Molly Reagh: 30:41

I think this really goes back to that tenderizing and that being able to sit with and being like, oh man, I do this thing because it wasn't safe for me to do anything else. It didn't feel safe for me to do anything else and so how can I? Again, this is easier said than done, but very fruitful when we can sit and look at that and walk ourselves through over time of being able to be like, okay, I see this coming up, I see how this is overwhelming right now and I'm just going to even 2% more each time, get a little more okay with this experience, and that often can tend to even melt it away a little bit, because it doesn't have to fight so much against maybe other parts and there's just, ah, we can all be here together and then we can connect more to the prefrontal cortex part of ourselves the choice fold Right right the conscious.

Carrie Jeroslow: 31:38

Well, something that you said that really hit me was that the decisions that we make are always from a place of wanting to be safe and feel safe, and that, to me, is something that can help take the shame off of the judgments, because I am most judgmental about my own actions. I most judge myself. I could have done that better. I really struggle with doing things that I have deemed as quote, unquote, wrong, bad. All of those words and what you just said was a big aha. Is that the reason why I do things? Is it's an unconscious thing, reaction to just trying to keep myself safe in every experience? Just trying to keep myself safe.

Molly Reagh: 32:36

Absolutely. And as young people, it's a little too overwhelming to think of our caregivers as bad or deficient or not good, because if that is the case then the world is unsafe and that's just overwhelming to our system. And this is not conscious. This is all unconscious and so for so many of us we internalize because I'm bad. That's just a little bit more accessible to grapple with than to think that the whole world and the people in my life are unsafe and so many of us, a lot of us, socialized female there's a lot of our social locations that impact that. But even just as a human experience, I can't grapple with the fact that these people in my life are not safe and so it all comes crashing back internally.

Carrie Jeroslow: 33:23

That's huge. Okay, that's another really big one. I see, and I think my parents were safe, but it felt like my whole world was crumbling at 12. And it was just like everything that I thought was safe had completely erupted, and so the experience felt very unsafe, and so I can see how it got internalized unconsciously.

Carrie Jeroslow: 33:45

There's tons of aha moments that I'm having here, molly, thank you so much, and I hope everyone listening is maybe spurring some aha moments of why so many times we are our wounded selves in relationships when we're unconscious, and if we can bring more consciousness and identify the parts of ourselves that are wounded and leading the interactions and the relational experiences, that there could be some huge healing. And again, I will say, that doesn't mean that you're staying with your person or people, but it means that you're having more intentionality and creating more of an environment of the ability to have a healed relationship or one that is more conscious and intentional.

Molly Reagh: 34:34

Yeah, A lot of my personal work over the past couple of years has been working with my people-pleasing parts.

Molly Reagh: 34:40

A lot of us have those because it felt safer to just do what someone needs than what feel safer to my system. And so in doing that kind of work with my people-pleaser are really understanding why and being like, oh I see why you come up. You want relationships so badly, you want to be loved and cared for and you want to give that back. Oh, you have such a beautiful intention. Also, this has really impacted your relationships.

Molly Reagh: 35:10

I went through this breakup about a year and a half ago almost two years ago. That was surprisingly very devastating to me because we needed to break up for a variety of reasons. But in the healing it was easy for me to blame her and put a lot on her and when I really sat I was like honey. It takes two to tango. And here are all the ways that your people-pleasing parts and other parts for sure, and other behaviors were absolutely in play with what she was going through and it washed all over me almost like domino effect of like ooh.

Molly Reagh: 35:47

We can look at all of our relationships and see how people-pleasing has been a factor in this and how there has been unintentional but there's been manipulation in that there has been some shady behavior and resentments have built up and it could be easy to be like, oh, I was the quote unquote victim in these relationships.

Molly Reagh: 36:07

I don't believe that and I don't think I even ever did, but I could see how someone in my situation could be like man.

Molly Reagh: 36:13

People just walked all over me, they were so mean to me and I'll just speak for myself that was my shit, that was my stuff that I needed to work on, because I was allowing that to happen, because there was something in me that was not healed enough or that wasn't aware enough to say, yeah, this is how you are playing, this is your part.

Molly Reagh: 36:33

We each got to keep our side of the street clean, or whatever the saying is. Because even when it feels like there is someone who's doing more harm than others and I'm not talking about abusive dynamics, but I think there's a lot of this black and white thinking of they did something to me and I always have the question what part of you is allowing that to happen? What part of you has a funky boundary around what it allows? And I think there's a security that comes in oh, I'm not going to allow this behavior without demonizing someone, without saying, oh, they're so bad, they're a terrible person, just being like, okay, they have a part that really doesn't interact well with me and it might be painful because there might be an attachment there, but just saying, okay, I also know that for my own wellbeing or the wellbeing of my community or my children or whatever, that this isn't working anymore and that again, easier said than done.

Carrie Jeroslow: 37:29

Sure, I've gone that journey of blaming someone and then taking the blame off and shining the mirror back at myself to say what part of me met this other dynamic and what part of me is wanting to be healed. And I'll say it is so empowering because then you're really taking back your power and saying, oh, this is how I contributed to this and I have all the power over me to make changes. Yes, it may take time, yes, it might be challenging, but I am empowered to make my own changes. I can never change another person. That is so disempowering. So to put the blame on someone else disempowers me and I feel like I can't get out of this. I have no power in this situation.

Carrie Jeroslow: 38:16

And at the moment where someone realizes something as big as what you realized, which is, oh my gosh, my people pleasing. Part of myself was a big part that contributed to this dynamic it can lead to a lot of self-blame or self-shaming, judgment yeah Right, judgment which leads right into what I want to ask you about tenderness, compassion, self-compassion. If someone has just realized this really big thing about themselves and they're going to start down the okay, this is for me to look at within myself. What are some tangible things that people can do to show themselves and to cultivate more self-compassion and tenderness?

Molly Reagh: 39:05

I think we've touched on a few things so far that we can put into this. Initially we talked about knowing that any human experience you're having is a human experience and just knowing that, okay, there is a normalcy to this, there is someone else in the world who's experienced this I'm not bad or broken and really saying that, okay, this is a thing that is okay to be happening. And then we talked about the hello, the welcoming, and, again, that is not always easy, but even sometimes it's like fake it till you make it. I'm just okay. I see this really uncomfortable experience or feeling coming up and seeing how we can be present to the core of it and even start noticing what is that voice? Whose voice is that? That is judging this, because often I hear, when I ask clients, what voices are there, like Ooh, that's my mom's voice, or that's my second grade teacher's voice, or that's my religious teacher's voice. It's not actually our voice and for some people they're like I don't know, it's just it's so my voice because it's been cultivated, and that's okay too. But often the root is there's someone else's voice that has been transplanted into your psyche and has that judgment and become an internalized sense of what is right or wrong or okay in the world. So being able to parse apart what is mine and what are more of those environmental inputs and then being like, okay, do I agree with that or not. Taking some time to be like is that a voice that I actually agree with Before even that step not that this isn't by any means a linear kind of experience it's different for every person. I find that values work can really help. That is something I do with the majority of my clients. Can you explain that more? Yeah, our values are essentially our guiding principles, our guiding sense of how we want to operate in the world. That bolsters our own sense of authenticity and rightness with our engagement with the world, how we want to be treated, certain things that are really important to us in terms of our engagement with the world.

Molly Reagh: 41:11

I have a worksheet that I walk people through or give them as homework. That has a series of questions of what are times when you feel like you've most abandoned yourself. What are times where you feel the most joy and authenticity in yourself? Who are you with? What are you doing? Who are people alive, dead, fictional or real who you hold in high regard? What do you want to see more of in the world. So I have these questions.

Molly Reagh: 41:32

And then there's a list of words, a non-exhaustive list, because values could be anything that getting a sense of which words here don't resonate with you. For me, things like power doesn't really resonate with me and things like generosity and generosity of spirit really do. And there is no judgment here. Anything can be used for good, no bad parts, no bad values.

Molly Reagh: 41:53

And then going through and getting a sense of what is my orientation, what are my guiding principles to how I operate in the world and this can really help, and I believe it's also an embodiment practice of what does it feel like when I am embodied in my values, when I am living my values, when challenging situations come up in my life and I'm able to leave them feeling like, yeah, that was hard, but I acted in my integrity. Values are really about what shows us that we're acting in our integrity and again I really want to highlight, that doesn't mean that we'll never feel pain or hardship or confusion ever again, but it's that at the end of the day, most of the time, values are also aspirational. I really like to give a lot of grace. Humans, fuck up, we didn't get sleep one night and we're under resourced any given day and we say something we're like, okay, I wasn't really aligned with my values because I freaked out at someone or whatever.

Molly Reagh: 42:45

I also really like to give a lot of ampleness and grace and space, for values are always aspirational, and when we start really rooting into what are our guiding principles, what are the ways that we want to interact with the world, there is an ease that can come with that and a sense of yeah, okay, that was hard, or I have this big decision to make. How can I use my values to really help me connect back with my center, with myself, to know these are the types of relationships I want to be in. This is how I want to relate to different people. This is why I'm making the decisions I'm making in my life. It adds a level of intentionality to life that I think is really helpful.

Carrie Jeroslow: 43:29

Right, because if you identify what your values are and then you go into an experience and something feels off, then you can look at well, how did this diverge from my values or how did my values not support it? And actually look at it from that perspective. Look at each circumstance that doesn't feel right in your body system from that perspective. Look at each circumstance that doesn't feel right in your body system from that perspective, absolutely.

Molly Reagh: 43:57

That's it. It's an attunement process, it's an embodiment process. I see sometimes values come up with a list and you're done and I'm like, ooh, no, I've been doing values work with myself for the past couple of years and it's a continual evolution, not so much that the values themselves change, but even now it's like the words themselves have melted away and it's like I know on a felt sense level when I'm in integrity and when I'm not. And I can sure come back and be like something feels off here. Maybe my values will help me suss that out.

Molly Reagh: 44:27

But as I've been like, I have a general understanding of the relationship and generosity and care and the values that I have chosen. I know when they're out of alignment and I think it helps me again in choosing which relationships to engage with, to be like I could see that there's a values misalignment there or the way that that person treated me. It doesn't sit well with me and I may or may not need to really get into the nitty gritty. I can just be like that doesn't feel right in my system and that's okay. It's to me a process of discernment as well, and discerning who do I want to spend my time with. What do I want to spend my time doing? How do I want to spend my time doing life? Yeah, definitely.

Carrie Jeroslow: 45:05

And when I'm thinking, about this and I always line it up with myself and I'm thinking about this and I always line it up with myself and I'm thinking one of my values is quiet time, because I'm an empath and I take on a lot of stuff and a lot of times my life is moving at a hundred miles per hour and something happens and I don't have the time to really figure out.

Carrie Jeroslow: 45:28

Oh, something happened, and I feel off, I pick something up and I just kept going, and so I really value alone time. And when I don't have alone time to sit with what just happened and why do I feel off? And I do that through self-care, through my yoga practice or through just a walk outside or even through a shower. Taking a shower, just feeling the water helps, because I also feel like my brain works differently and sometimes, if I try to figure something out, I get lost and my brain starts being like well, what really happened? So I got to bring it down in my body. These are the things that I was thinking about as you were talking about values. What are my values? My values are feeling in my body, having rest time, having quiet time, and I can totally tell in my relationships when I don't have that.

Molly Reagh: 46:19

Absolutely and knowing am I engaging with people who respect my quiet time? And even going another step further you have kids. Kids are notorious for not respecting quiet time. But even knowing and being secure in yourself that I know this is a need of mine. And when it's not able to happen, there can be almost like a lightning or levity of oh, I know why this feels so bad. It's like an understanding of, yeah, the situation where my kids are being kids and they need something from me, because kids are dependent.

Molly Reagh: 46:48

It's like I see you, the part of me that's needing this quiet time, and I can't give that to you right now, but just know that I see you. And even when you can't give that to yourself, there's still this acknowledgement of I see you there and as soon as I can, I will get back to you, Cause sometimes life be life and life doesn't always allow us to just be like, oh, I'm going to live my values every single minute because I'm a very grounded and that's not it. That is not going to ever happen. But just being like, oh, yeah, this part of me is really needing something and I cannot give it to it right now and that sucks, and I know that I might be a little dysregulated, but it's still maybe within capacity and just saying I see you, buddy, I see you.

Carrie Jeroslow: 47:26

That's a huge piece of the puzzle. Thank you for that, because there are many times where it takes me, I don't know, five, six, seven hours till I can, or sometimes 24 and a crazy weekend or something that I have time, yeah, sometimes, and to just say, hi, I again, a hello, I see you, I know that you need that and I'm going to get that to you as soon as we can, as soon as we can, and that's a huge piece. So thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, molly, you have so much beautiful medicine that you bring into this world. How can people find you and work with you if they're feeling really resonant and called to your work?

Molly Reagh: 48:10

Yes, I think the best way to just see my work is probably through Instagram, which is bonoborelationships, which is B-O-N-O-B-Orelationships, and my website is bonoborelationshipscom. The best way if you're interested in coaching or working with me is to fill out the contact form there. Those are the main ways to engage with me. Right now I have every month kind of group unfolding, always evolving space called the Bonobo Playground, which is really a little bit of group coaching. People can come and bring their relationship challenges or joys and talk about them and get a little coaching, or sometimes we're just talking about the world. It's a really fluid space. If you want to get a sense of what it's like to be in space with me and, yeah, feel free to DM me or engage I love relating to people who are open-hearted and curious and, yeah, hearing about what's going on in people's hearts is very fulfilling and gratifying to me.

Carrie Jeroslow: 49:10

Oh, I love that and I will say your Instagram has so many resources. You provide so much on that page. We're going to have the links to your Instagram and your website in the show notes, so it's going to be really easy for you, listening out there in wherever part of the world you are in, to click on that link and connect with Molly. Molly, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom here. This has been such a delight and I personally have gotten so many tools that I'm going to bring into my evening and my weekend and the rest of my life. So thank you so much.

Carrie Jeroslow: 49:49

Thanks so much for listening to the Relationship Diversity Podcast. Want to learn more about relationship diversity? I've got a free guide I'd love to send you. Go to wwwrelationshipdiversitypodcastcom to get yours sent right to you. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to the podcast. You being here and participating in the conversation about relationship diversity is what helps us create a space of inclusivity and acceptance together. The more comfortable and normal it is to acknowledge the vast and varied relating we all do, the faster we'll shift to a paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships a paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships. New episodes are released every Thursday. Stay connected with me through my YouTube channel, where I'll give you even more free resources and information all about relationship diversity. I'm super excited to go deeper into YouTube because I'll be able to connect and have conversations directly with you. You'll find the link in the show notes. Stay curious. Every relationship is as unique as you are.