The Skill No One Teaches Us About Love with Baya Voce

Mark Hyman, MD

Full Transcript

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Dr. Mark Hyman
We're taught how to fall in love, but not how to stay there.

Baya Voce
We've grown up on a diet of Hollywood rom coms and Disney. So you see kind of hashtag couple goals online and it just doesn't map on to your internal experience. We think that relationships should be going to the spot, but healthy relationships feel way more like going to the gym.

Dr. Mark Hyman
We have this fantasy world and there's a reality world, and they don't match up. And so we end up being disappointed, disillusioned, discouraged, frustrated, and actually don't know how to navigate through the landscape to have a fulfilling happy partnership.

Baya Voce
The goal of healthy relationships is not to fight less. If a couple comes into my office and they never fight, I am always more concerned. Conflict in relationships is healthy. The problem gets to be where if we're going into hyperarousal or hypoarousal, we've lost choice. How I think about repair actually, like what is repair, is the ability to have choice.

But when we're hijacked, we don't.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Beauvoje is a relationship repair expert with a master's degree from Columbia University whose work helping couples reconnect after conflict and disconnection has reached millions, including through her widely viewed TEDx talk on loneliness.

Baya Voce
Repair is actually not first and foremost a communication skill. Repair is a capacity skill.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Bea, wow. You're here. Welcome to the podcast.

Baya Voce
I'm so so excited.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So for those listening, Vae is one of my closest friends. We're gonna get deep and personal about life and love and what goes right and what goes wrong and what to do about it. Because we both have had a storied history of relationships. And hence, we're relationship experts. That's what I say.

I've been married four times, so I'm a relationship expert.

Baya Voce
I I always talk about I did not get into the line of work of repair because it came to me easily. I have fought tooth and nail. I still fight tooth and nail to figure out how we do this. And I think it's one of the most important parts of relationships that frankly gets kind of, like, blown over by a lot of teachers.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Baya Voce
It's like it becomes this one part in a four part process. And for me, looked way easier on the outside. And then when I practice it in my relationships, I was like, why does this feel so much harder than the teachers say this?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Like relations one zero one. That was a good course. I learned how to do it. Learned how to do the math.

It doesn't quite work like that.

Baya Voce
Wish. I wish.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, as as you're talking, something occurred to me, and we haven't really talked about this, so I'm just gonna throw it out there. You know, for most of human history, you know, we've been in functional relationships. Basically, in the sense that, you know, the guy had to go do the providing, and the woman had to take the babies, and it wasn't necessarily a love based thing. It was arranged or it was just structural, but it wasn't like we had to actually deal with two independent human beings who had to navigate how to be together in a very new environment. Like, this is kind of a new human environment that we're living in in the twenty first century.

And even when my, you know, parents were married, it was still pretty traditional roles and structures, and all those things have kinda gone out the window. And that's why so many people, men and women, are disoriented about relationships. Is that is that right?

Baya Voce
I mean, listen. I think we have more expectations today of what a relationship should be than we ever have in human history. I mean, for many years, relationship was a business institution. It was, you know, you got married to someone in your same class, arranged marriages to your point. We had very particular roles.

Now listen. It's not like those didn't come with struggles, but the expectation today is that one person will fulfill the role that a community has previously fulfilled. And so you're asking and this is what my colleague and supervisor, Esther Perel, talks about all the time, which is, you know, we want them to be our lover, our best friend, our confidant. That's a lot of things for one person.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But our playmate and our best friend and our

Baya Voce
The whole thing. And and if they're not, not only do we become dissatisfied, we think something's wrong. And then what do we do? We have this we live in this frictionless virtual culture that says things should be easy. Right?

We're online being fed everything that we want. It's like an Amazon package comes to us a day late, and we're like, that's a two day shipping? I'm used to, you know, I'm used to this coming, like, to my door in twelve hours. We have online virtually this experience that's handing us algorithmically exactly what we wanna be fed. I can literally think of a brand.

I don't even have to say it out loud, and it shows up on my feet somehow magically the next day. And then we expect our relationships to map onto that. So we have this frictionless experience that we're that, by the way, is becoming more and more frictionless. Our expectations are now higher than ever. And now the the experience we're being fed virtually, and most of us live in a pretty virtual world, is not mapping on to what happens when we get home from work, and we're now in a bunch of tension with our partner.

And so we think that's wrong, and what do we do? Most of us most of us fall into one of two camps. We will either stay and work and work and work and work and never give up and lose ourselves, or we go into we go swipe. We're like, great. This is too hard.

I'm out because I have endless

Dr. Mark Hyman
Or we go numb.

Baya Voce
Or we go numb. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And just stay and endure.

Baya Voce
And endure. Right? So it's we leave, and then we have tons of options. And then the options are, I mean, dating, like, come on. The options are endless.

So you go on a first, second, third date, and you're like, this thing, we don't really get along here. I bet I could find somebody who I could.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It kinda it kinda reminds me when I when I was with my daughter. She was about nine years old, and Rachel, she's a non orthopedic surgery resident. She said, dad, how come, like, on the commercials, things seem one way, but in real life, they don't really seem like that, and they're not as good?

Baya Voce
What did you say? How'd you

Dr. Mark Hyman
answer it? Well, marketing. You know? It's like, it's all fantasy. It's It's all fantasy.

And I think that's what you're talking about. We have this fantasy world and there's a reality world, and they don't match up. And so we end up being disappointed, disillusioned, discouraged, frustrated, and actually don't know how to navigate through the landscape of relationship to have a fulfilling, happy partnership.

Baya Voce
But it's not just fantasy. This is what we've been taught. I mean, think about it. I okay. So it doesn't matter if I'm literally speaking to an audience of 50 people or 5,000.

I could ask some I could ask the audience. How many of you grew up with models in your from your caregivers or parents that you look at and you want to emulate? And like pretty much two to five people raise their hand.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Out of 5,000.

Baya Voce
Literally. Like, so few people are sitting there. Some people think they did because they because they didn't see their caregivers fight. And so they and so that modeling of no fighting, which is usually sweeping things under the rug or hiding it from them, all of a sudden now we're expecting perfection, Or we grew up in households where there was a ton of fighting and no resolution, or someone wasn't saying something and there was all this resentment and we're feeling it energetically. Right?

So we have the models that we grew up with who, by the way, no fault to them. They had no idea what they were doing. None of us do. Then we've grown up on a on a diet of Hollywood rom coms and social media and Disney. And so you see kind of hashtag couple goals online, and you see a family of six who's looking all put together, and you're there.

You've you may not even have a kid, and you're barely getting out of bed in the morning. You're like barely functioning, and it just doesn't map on to your internal experience. And so this idea, while it sounds kind of silly and trite of prince charming and prince it's this is this is ingrained inside our subconscious for what we should expect. And by the way, if we're not studying relationships, if we're not in therapy, if we're not, you know, going to workshops or reading the books, where are we learning what it actually means to be in a healthy, long term, secure functioning relationship? We're learning from all of these outside forces, and none of those actually resemble what a healthy long term relationship looks like unless you were very, very lucky.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's so true. We just don't have models, and I can't find one in my life. And there's a few couples that I know that I'm like, wow, that's a great couple. Or I love how they relate. But I certainly didn't have that growing up and I didn't know how to navigate love.

And I think, you know, most of us probably find it fairly easy to get into a relationship, but staying in it and navigating it is really hard. And so you talk about how love isn't and it's about avoiding conflict, it's about learning how to repair and reconnect. Right? And repair that disconnection that happens as a natural part of two people being in a relationship. Can you kind of explain how you came to understand that this was sort of a missing piece?

This whole idea of repair, which by the way is the title of your new book, I think, which is coming out soon. Not that soon, but it'll come out and we'll have her back on. So this is really an important framework because, know, conflict is is easy to enter into, but it's hard to get out of. Yeah. And people, you know, dis disagree in sometimes violent ways.

There's often contempt. There's there's judgment. There's criticism. There's blame. There's shame.

There's all these ways of fighting that are kinda dirty fighting. You know? And what you talked about is a different way of engaging with conflict that's actually a positive.

Baya Voce
Here's here's the thing that I think most of us get wrong about relationships, which is that the goal is to fight less. That if we fight constantly that something is wrong, and if we never fight that something is like, that that that means we're we're doing well. I will tell you, if a couple comes into my office and they never fight, I am always more concerned than for than with a couple who does because I'm like, something's going on under the surface. Someone's not speaking up. Like, conflict in relationships is healthy.

It's not like if you are fighting and listen. I'm talking outside of manipulation, abuse, coercion, power, like

Dr. Mark Hyman
Normal messed up people.

Baya Voce
Just just people who are just kinda messed up like the rest of us. Like, we this is part of relational dynamics. Now I I actually think about it in a few stages, and you could talk to different professionals, and some will say there are five stages and blah blah blah. So I'm just gonna map it as simply as I can. So the first stage of relationship is what we all know as the honeymoon stage or the merge.

This is where enmeshment happens where the two eyes sort of or or more eyes disappear, and you start to merge. You're like, this feels so good. I finally I finally found the missing piece. And here we are, and we think we're supposed to stay here forever. And then what happens?

Disillusionment falls upon all of us. And all of a sudden, that creative habit that we thought was just so amazing turns into the fact that they're kinda messy and disorganized. And and so we enter into the second phase of relationship, which is what I might call the power struggle. Oh. So research has shown that the power struggle is basically where most of us end up.

This is where most it's not the final stage, but it's where most of us end up. This is where you were you were you entered into a relationship as two individual people. You came into a relationship. You merge. You're one.

It feels so good to be with this person, and then all of a sudden, something happens. You get into your first fight. You realize that that yellow flag that you decided not to look look at looks a little more like a red flag, and you start to have tension. This can show up in a lot of different ways. I think about like, this is such a common example for that I think most of us can probably resonate with something that has happened similarly, which is, like, the couple who moves in, and one person either likes the thermostat, one temp, and the and the other person like and and or someone likes background noise on all the time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Baya Voce
Right. They're listening to the podcast Is it? And the audiobooks and music just all the time because it calms them down. And then the other person is like, wait a second. I need silence.

Like, that helps my nervous system regulate. And now all of a sudden, this couple is starting to fight about something that's happening on a day to day basis that seems kind of small, maybe mundane, like these sorts of things that all of a sudden start to, like, just gnaw at you. And when we stay at the content level of argument, we don't it's really hard to get anywhere because you don't actually know what's happening under the surface. So if I'm saying, turn the music down, turn the music off, and you're like, I just need give me a break. I just got home from a long day.

Like, let me just have one. Right? If you get under the content and understand understand this helps me regulate. This way helps me calm down. Now you're at the point where you can actually negotiate.

That's an easy example.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But let's Buy headphones.

Baya Voce
That's buy head have have buy headphones. Have a room in the house that's dedicated to being quiet or have times that you're listening. Like, now you now you can problem solve. But, like, that's, you know, kind of easy for some of us, but then we're talking then we're talking about things that show up in every relationship dynamic. Are we gonna have kids or not?

Where are we gonna live? What does our social fabric look like? What kind of place do we wanna live in? I mean, these are things that that Gottman's research shows that 69% of our relationship issues are unresolvable. They will be perpetual throughout our relationships.

That's a lot. That's a lot that will never get resolved. And if we don't understand that

Dr. Mark Hyman
69, not 68?

Baya Voce
Nope. Definitely 69. That's what they say. I've always wondered about that number. Like, do you get to 69?

Couldn't we just round up to, like, a solid 70? I honestly have no idea. But to to me, this is this is a piece of what we get wrong. We think the goal is fighting less, But, actually, there are gonna be tons of problems in our in our relationships that we never quite get over. I'll I'll just actually speak personally here.

My wife, Emmy, and I, we one of the things that we came up against early on that we still work on navigating is I was coming out of a relationship where we did not really have a social life. He was quite an introvert. I that we were in COVID. It was fine. Like, it but by the time I got out that out of that relationship, I was starving for community, and I was starving for going to events and going out.

I meet my now white wife, Emmy, who is

Dr. Mark Hyman
The opposite.

Baya Voce
The toe and she is, like, social butterfly, has all the stamina in the world. And at the beginning, that was awesome because I was starved for it. I was like but little by little, we get out of the merge phase, and all of a sudden, she now wants to be way, way more social than I do. She wants to stay out way later than I do. I am and we're trying to figure out how to navigate this.

Now part of why this is tricky, and this is the under like, is the underneath of the underneath that's happening for a lot of us that we need to sort of that we need to excavate in our relationships. But the truth is a couple relationships ago, I was in I was engaged to a man, and he he broke off our engagement out of nowhere. Like, it it I was completely blind. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. And after he broke up with me, all of these lies started to come out.

I started to realize, wait. He didn't go to school where he said he went to school. He didn't have the job he said he I mean, like, massive lives. And so before that, there was, a before Bea and an after or or before that relationship and an after that relationship version of Bea. And I was pretty trusting before that relationship.

Some might even say naive. And after that relationship, something happened in that shock where I ended up being like around every corner, I started to be like, wait a second. What don't what don't I see? What am I missing? How because I was I was in this industry.

I I was a professional. How did I miss it? And so I was like, what what am I missing? So that became kind of a central question, and my body went into such shock for, like, the next oh my god. It was wrecked.

My confidence was wrecked. So anyway, fast forward to two relationships later when I meet Emmy. Emmy wants to go out. She's done nothing wrong, and her staying out kicks up this this piece of me that just had not been healed from this last relationship. And every time she wants to go out now I don't know this at the beginning.

This isn't what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I can blame it on Emmy. Like, why does she need to go out? Whatever. I can, like, have a whole bunch of reasons, But we were in so many fights about this, about, like, me wanting to go home early.

Can we just can we just compromise and go home? And it just didn't work. It was really, really hard for us until we started to get underneath the surface, underneath her real value and desire for freedom and my real value and desire for safety. Those are things that we are going to deal with for the duration of our relationship. But once I started bringing to her that this is what's happening for me when you leave, and this it was it started to change the game for how we did social events.

She started to feel more compassion. I started to be able to I saw her coming home. Every time I didn't go home with her, I saw her coming home and not springing something on me, which was my biggest fear that all of sudden I was gonna turn around and she was gonna say, hey. Just have something to tell you, and I would be like, how did I miss it? What did I miss?

Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
But you couldn't trust her.

Baya Voce
Yeah. But it wasn't necessarily about her. And the truth is with in relationships, we bring in all of the baggage from every single relationship leading up to that relationship that hasn't been healed. Whether it's from our family of origins or the relationships before, we bring all of that into our partnerships. And what we're really saying is on a totally unconscious level because it's not like we're most of us are having these conversations.

What we're really saying is here is all here are all the places that I'm still unhealed. My hope is that in this dynamic, I offer things these things to you. On the altar of our relationship, I offer these things to you and that you can help me heal them. I'll do my part. You'll do but nobody's having those conversations consciously.

And by the way, vice versa. So we're both just dealing with a bunch of all of us.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Marcy and us are just like two little kids in our little kid selves having the fights, not our grown up adult higher self. Right?

Baya Voce
One one hundred percent.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And those are very hardwired automatic responses that we can change, but we have to first identify them.

Baya Voce
I mean, here's what I would say. So there's also, funny enough, research that talks about how it doesn't actually matter so much how we fight even though it's important. But some people yell. Some people are gonna go quiet. Some people are gonna wanna process more.

Some people are gonna avoid. And we can find couples who are just as happy actually with those kinds of with that kind of tension in the relationship, but they have to come back together. So we might always be fighting with the five year old version that shows up. And the truth is as long as we come back together, we'll we'll likely be okay, but most of us don't know how to do this. Now when we think about why we know so much information about relationships, like using eye language and active listening, but then we cannot practice In that

Dr. Mark Hyman
the moment because we're hijacked.

Baya Voce
We're completely hijacked. So to me, 90% of what we're doing in repair is building our capacity for tension.

Dr. Mark Hyman
The nervous system regulation.

Baya Voce
Yes. It's but it's not just nervous system reg of course, we have to have nervous system regulation, but it's also nervous system expansion.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Capacity.

Baya Voce
Capacity where your window of tolerance if you have a window of tolerance and you're you generally go into hyper arousal, those are my friends who are like, you know, you might yell. You might get hot. You might say too much. You wanna process forever and talk, talk, talk, talk. Those are that's me.

And then on the other side of that window of tolerance is hypoarousal. Those are the people who overwhelm, looks like they completely leave the building. They kind of shut down, dissociate, yeah, literally leave or figuratively. What we're trying to do with repair, the key skill here is expanding the window and then understanding little by little how we can start to to notice in our bodies what comes up before we're at 90%, before we're, like, almost tipping over into hyperarousal or hyp or into hypoarousal. The the problem gets to be where we we if we're in if we're going into hyperarousal or hypoarousal, we've lost choice.

Yeah. How I think about the repair actually, like, what is repair, is the ability to have choice. But when we're hijacked, we don't. And so we might know the tools. We might have read the books.

And when we're in the heat of the moment, we have no ability to use the tools that we actually have because we're completely hijacked. I mean, and your audience knows this better than anybody just like you train to go into a cold plunge. And you don't you're probably not gonna start at three minutes. Like, you're probably just not you're you, like, need to build up. You go to the gym.

You need to build up to the weights that you're gonna that you you cannot go in there and lift a 100 pounds if you have never lifted before. That's just literally not gonna happen.

Dr. Mark Hyman
To love gym.

Baya Voce
That's right. Actually, one of our one of our mutual friends and a colleague of mine, Annie La la, I love this this line that she says

Dr. Mark Hyman
Relationship dojo?

Baya Voce
Well, yes, that. But what she says that I just feel it I just she said this, and I was like, that is brilliant. That we think that relationships should be going to the spa. That's our orientation towards relationships. If we're in a healthy relationship, it will feel like the spa.

But healthy relationships feel way more like going to the gym, and then maybe that gym has a spa attachment.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You get a you get a steam after. Right?

Baya Voce
But you're not going to the spa. You're going to the gym, and then you get a steam after. That's right. And I think that really orients can help orient because so many people come to me with, what is too hard? How do I know if my relationship is too hard?

Dr. Mark Hyman
And you pull the ripcord.

Baya Voce
Exactly. And part of that is are this is gonna be simplifying the whole thing. But to ask yourself, and you can kind of like get the noise out of the way, to ask yourself, am I shrinking inside of this relationship? Am I disappearing? Am I watching myself go away?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Am I abandoning myself?

Baya Voce
100%.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Or betraying myself. Yes.

Baya Voce
And little by little, all of a sudden, like, you don't feel quite as you as you used to. Like, maybe you don't do the things that you used to love as much as you do. You're not as you don't have that kind of spark you used to have. You've given up some of your friends. You you're you're a little you're like a duller version of yourself.

Or am I becoming more of who I want to become? And part of how we do that is by building capacity. So even through fighting, even through tension, am I starting to be like, oh, wow. I breathed just a little bit longer there. I had between stimulus and response, I had just a nanosecond more of time and space.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So that's practice to get there. Right?

Baya Voce
Well, it's training. This is it's practice. It's training. This is what I'm saying about the cold plunge. Like, you cannot You're just it's gonna be so unrealistic.

And if you do go into the cold plunge for three minutes the first time, you're probably holding your breath and freaking out and, like, just wanna show off for your friends. It's probably not sustainable. But you have to practice. I actually think a lot about cross training here, and I think about mapping this onto other relationships. And, like most of us, what we're doing is we're training in the hardest environments possible when both of us are super triggered.

And we don't we're not training outside.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Are you are you saying that people should learn tools to help regulate their nervous system, like with their breath or separating till you kind of are resourced and regulated. Because you talked about how if you're not resourced and regulated, it's not a time to have a conversation Yeah. Or fight.

Baya Voce
But sometimes but this is what generally happens. Of course, it's not the time to have a fight. But what do we do? For some of us, it feels good to expel. And so we just say the thing because in the in the heat of the moment, it's like, there's just like an, that felt really good.

Or it feels safe to close down. And so this is what I mean by the window of tolerance. But if we don't know what our physiological cues are before we go into the place of complete shutdown or before we say the thing that we might regret, it's gonna be really hard to train that at 90% arousal. Right? So absolutely, this is physiological.

And I think what the relationship space is missing right now is a lot of the conversations are around the communication skills of repair and less about the physiological. To me, repair is actually not first and foremost a communication skill. Repair is a capacity skill because we are going I mean, I could say this a million times over, and it probably won't be We're gonna lose our skills. We're gonna lose the tools in the moments that we need the most if we're not training, if we're not actually building the capacity. And this is what I mean by cross training.

This is what I mean by setting ourselves up for how we actually practice repair when we don't need it. Instead of practicing repair, instead of me giving you a laundry list of scripts here about what to do when you're fighting, because you're gonna forget them. You're not gonna use them.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So how do how do people navigate to to build the capacity?

Baya Voce
Why I use a gym, which I know is kinda cliche, but but it's just easy for all of us to understand, is because we know we have to start with lower reps, lower weight to build if we don't wanna get injured, to build

Dr. Mark Hyman
Start with the easy stuff.

Baya Voce
You have to.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like the dishes.

Baya Voce
Exactly. Exactly. You start with the things, or you so so say your partner sends a okay. So here's what I want you to do for your audience. I want you to think about right now your hardest relationship.

Maybe it's your romantic relationship. Maybe it's a relationship with a parent or a sibling or a boss or a coworker. And think about something that they do that if you're talking about on a scale of one to ten, ten being, like, the highest trigger, it's like a five or lower for you. That could be something like the dishes. It could be something like they leave a mess on the counter for you to clean up.

It could be that they send a text that that, you know, usually they use an exclamation point and an emoji, and today they didn't, and you don't know why. Now you're in your head.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So I

Baya Voce
want you to pick one or two of these. Do you know? Do you know?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I text trauma. It's like a thing now. It's like a new thing. I don't worry about it, but I get it.

Baya Voce
It totally exists. If you say if you say good morning and it doesn't have an exclamation point versus good morning with an exclamation point, like, we read into that. That's language now. That's, like, the way we communicate. If you do one heart and not four hearts, you know, this is What

Dr. Mark Hyman
does that mean?

Baya Voce
I mean, this is real language. This is how we're communicating. To start actually practicing, so you know that the the so I'm asking everybody to think of the thing right now and think of it for you too. Like, what's a five or below? For me, it's something it actually would be something like a like a text where oh, no.

You know what? It would be for me. It would be my wife comes home, and she's on her phone when she walks in the door. It's like a five or to me, transitions are really important, and I get really impacted by like, how did we wake up today? How are we coming home from work?

And did something happen, and is it about me? And, anyway, I'm still in my own work. But but so it would be something like she comes home. She's on her phone, and she doesn't immediately say hi. And she doesn't look up, and she's kind of distracted.

So what I might do is all of a sudden, like, my my kind of initial response might be to in my head, it's not it's not actually something I would say aloud. It would be like, ugh. Great. Something happened at work, or what did I do, or now we're gonna be here all night. That might be my automatic response.

It's not necessarily towards her, but it's a thought for me. Maybe for you, it's something physiologically that happens. It's like you're you can feel your heart start to race, or you can feel yourself start to sweat a little or you get cold or you start to

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like a shallow breathe.

Baya Voce
Right. So you start to track these little responses. If you don't know what they are now, you literally, from this moment on, you start to track what's that little thing. So for me, the cue is, ah, I can feel this thought loop coming on. So the goal is this is a five or under, and now I start to disrupt the pattern.

So instead of instead of, oh, that thought is wrong, now I'm saying, okay. What's my one practice? For me, it might be literally breathing for thirty seconds. Extending my exhales and starting to just calm for thirty seconds, maybe sixty, maybe ninety if I'm lucky.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's powerful when you do that.

Baya Voce
And I don't think we understand. I think we've I think we because we're starting we've the conversation for so long has been about trauma and about using eye language and what's the thing we're gonna say, and it's not actually what's our physiological response that is going to completely derail the conversation after this?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, what what what you're talking about is is very specific, which is when we have a stress, and it could be, you know, you think your partner came home half an hour late because they were having an affair with somebody. Or maybe they were on their way to buy you flowers.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Totally.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But like you're gonna have the same physiologic response regardless of the insult if you have an interpretation of that as danger. Right? It doesn't matter if it's a real or an imagined threat. It could be, you know, really, you know, a tiger chasing you, or could be you think, you know, your partner is having an affair because they stayed late going gut to find something Absolutely. Beautiful for you to Right?

So, like and it's the same physiology. And so the stress response is what you're talking about when your heartbeat quickens, your breath becomes shallow, your chest tightens up, your gut tightens up, you you can't think clearly. And all of a sudden, you know, it's like you're in this acute stress response. And that's what we're actually engaging in relationship with, and that's that's very dangerous because in that's when we we are hijacked by what we call our amygdala, which is our fight or flight or fear or feeding or fawning center in our brain that keeps us stuck in these ancient limbic lizard like relationships that aren't very mature because they don't allow us to sort of wake up to what it's like to actually be in a sort of an adult awake person. You're in this sort of hijacked state.

So I think you're you're talking about is is asking people to stop when they start to feel those sensations and tune in to those sensations, and then do something to interrupt that pattern.

Baya Voce
That's right. That's right. Breath. Because the the the thing is we probably won't be able to stop the physiological response from happening. That physiological response, maybe it get it decreases over time, but get used to it.

Like, make that response your friend because that that's not necessarily going anywhere. What we do after is the thing that we can control. Now maybe it goes away. Maybe our partners can repair with us, and all of a sudden, like, over time, that that

Dr. Mark Hyman
Or you do Ivy game.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Mark's favorite topic these days.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I did it. My wife did it. It changed everything in our in our conversation. Our and our ability to regulate in a conversation is really dramatically. It was like so noticeable for both of us that our ability to stay in a grounded resource state in a conversation where maybe we wouldn't have been able to before really it was interesting.

It was like a nervous system reset. I don't know if it'll last, but it's good while it lasts.

Baya Voce
Well, it's such I mean, this is part of why psychedelic therapy is such an interesting modality to explore. Right? Is I listen. I don't think it's a panacea. I don't think it's for everybody.

I have a whole, you know, I I do a lot of research in that space, so I'm not but but I also I think I I, you know, I have my qualms about it. But, you know, we have this critical window that opens up, this critical period that opens up after different psychedelic experiences. And I'm pretty sure and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I Ibogaine has one of the long

Dr. Mark Hyman
The ninety days. At least that's what they they stop measuring after ninety. So who knows how many it is. Yeah.

Baya Voce
Yeah. So with something like MDMA, it's two weeks. With psilocybin, I think it's a little longer. But this window is what allows you to start to retrain habits. And so it would make sense that you're able to practice regulation in a very different way, and then the hope is that translates over time not because you did this one time peak experience, but because you've integrated it and then practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

And then it becomes habitual. And this is, I think, a really big piece here is that the goal so the goal of healthy relationships is not to fight less. It's not to not fight. That's not the goal. The goal is how do you come

Dr. Mark Hyman
back together. Fight dirty.

Baya Voce
That's right. How do you come back? How do you learn to come back together? Because most of us are fighting and not actually coming back.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, let's talk about this, because you do talk about this whole repair framework that you used to approach with your own relationship and with your clients. And and there I think there's some really powerful things in there. Like, a friend of mine once said, you know, only one crazy person in the room at this at a time. Yeah. That's great.

That's kind of the first one. Like, one person at time. Talk about that, and and what is that? And, like, take us through this framework.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Yeah. The the one person at a time, I think, is again where a lot of us get into trouble. Because think about how many fights you have gotten into where they're talking and you're talking over them, and you just want them to hear you. But, obviously, they just want you to hear you too.

Like, they're it's like a it's a hot mess. We know that doesn't work, but it's really hard not to do. So and we're not gonna be able to do it if we're not regulated. That's just the truth. So the the first step I actually talk about is to do nothing.

That's where we're practicing. We're practicing with a five and below. We're literally starting to expand our tolerance for tension. Then we get into a at some point, we're gonna have to come into a conversation and start to passion some things out. I learned this from my teacher, Terry Real, and colleague Terry Real, who's a fantastic couple therapist.

And what he talks about is one person goes at a time And why this is so important, which it it is critical, is because if both of us are going, nobody's listening.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right.

Baya Voce
No one's listening. But we have to this is I'm just gonna go back to differentiation and the power struggle because what's happening here is if somebody is speaking something that hurt you, right, they might not be using eye language. I actually I actually have the more I understand repair, the more I think it's a one person job. I used to say, okay. So your partner has to talk to you this way, and you then you go back.

It's like kind of the frameworks that that that we hear about. Right? Which is you talk this way. You speak you speak from the eye perspective and without blaming. And listen.

In an ideal world, that's what we're doing. We're speaking without blaming. We're talking from the eye. We're but, like, we're not living in an eye world. And if you're talking to your boss or your mom, the idea that you're going to say, hey, mom.

Will you use eye language with me? And that's gonna work is, zero. And you're not gonna hand your boss a worksheet and say, hey. Let's practice nonviolent communication. Like, that's just totally unrealistic.

So I've started to think about it

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, maybe not a bad idea.

Baya Voce
Maybe not a bad idea, but most of us are probably not gonna have the luxury to do that. So if you're just a normal average everyday human like most of us, and that's just not on the table, then I like to think about repair as a one person job. Again, hopefully, partner shows up for this. But if they can't, you're owning your side of the street. So first step, one at a time.

Right? You have a speaker. You have a listener. There are many frameworks that that people talk about. You can use Imago.

You can use Ellen Bader's developmental model. You can use Terry Reel's RLT. Like, there are lots of ways that you can have this conversation. So the idea of what I'm talking about is you could basically map what I'm talking about with any tool, skill set that you already have. One person goes out of time.

What does that mean? That means one person

Dr. Mark Hyman
By the way, I only most people know how to actually properly listen to somebody.

Baya Voce
Oh, I think it's a it's a totally underdeveloped skill. We'll talk about why. Well, then I'll get there because it's it's real it's it's not because we don't want to, by the way. It's because it is freaking hard. So I'll I'll talk about that.

So one person is speaking. We'll call and the other person is listening. We'll call the speaking partner the hurt partner. Not that you're not both hurt. You just it's just for right now.

Just for right now. So you'll both get a turn, but you're not gonna go at the same time. So the hurt partner is speaking. The hope here, if this is you, the skill that you are building is you are building enough differentiation, and I'll talk about differentiation in just a second, to be able to say, here's what's happening from my perspective. Here's what's happening over here in my world.

In order to do that, I'm not blaming you because I am different than you, because I am literally differentiated. I am saying to you I'm saying I'll just use Emmy and I as an example. We'll use the the night out thing. What I used to say is, hey. It's really hard for me when you go out because I don't trust you.

Right? That would be, like, kind of undifferentiated. Now I say, it's really hard for me when you go out because I actually feel quite lonely. I've now done the digging inside of myself to say, like, we're different. I'm responsible for what I'm feeling and experiencing over here, and you can help me.

Like, you can you can help me with that if you want, but ultimately, we can't control another person. The other person's job, the listening partner, this is critical and hard. To your point, most of us don't know how to actually listen. Part of why it's hard to listen is because if you're not differentiated, it's very hard to not take what your partner is saying personally.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what do you mean by differentiated?

Baya Voce
The idea of differentiation is that we are two eyes. We are two individual people, and we're also caring for the we, which is very different than individuation, which is I'm gonna do what I want. I'm an autonomous human who can who can is gonna make my own choices, and it doesn't actually matter how that's gonna land on you or how it will hurt you. Or I I'm just like, I'm gonna do what I want. That's independence.

I'm gonna do what I want. Codependence is that merge phase. Right? Then you don't have to call it code but that's like just to help kind of identify.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Where you do what the other person wants.

Baya Voce
Yeah. So 100%.

Dr. Mark Hyman
A friend of mine called and said, say, knitters become skiers, skiers become knitters. Mean, it's like if you're a skier, you know, like to knit, but your partner skis, you're gonna wanna ski. I said, where's the until you're done with that, and it'll be over.

Baya Voce
That's exactly right. So differentiation would be, I'm my own autonomous human, and I care about you. In fact, one of the one of the highest predictors of relationship satisfaction is the ability to accept influence from your partner. So if I say to you, hey, Mark. When you talk to me like that when you talk to me like that in that tone, it's really hard for me to hear.

And you might be thinking in your head, what tone? Like, I'm not talking to you anyway. But instead of saying that out loud, you can think it all you want. You can be like, you're crazy. You say, okay.

Here. Let me let me actually try and change that. Not because you agree with them. This is where also we get into a lot of trouble. Not because you agree with them.

You might literally be in your head like, that person is crazy. My tone is fine. But because you love them. Because you love this person. And so what do you do?

You shift for them. You accept their influence so that you're building a relational habit and foundation here. Now when we think we have to agree with our partner, this is again the listening person. When you think you have to agree with them, So they come home they come home, and they say, we just went to dinner tonight, and you made fun of me in front of all of our friends. And you're over here being like, what are you talking?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Baya Voce
I definitely didn't like I I didn't I I don't even remember what I said, or I said that, and I didn't like you totally took it the wrong way. You're not saying that out loud. You can think it. Think it all you want, but you're look you are listening to the person like you're a researcher being like, or like they're an alien. I like actually thinking about them as an alien.

Like, You're an alien creature who is so different than me, who I would never think the same as, and who's who like like, I would never get hurt by that thing that you like, if I said if you said that, I would literally never get hurt. But if we assume sameness, which is agreement, if we assume we need to agree, we're on losing ground. We're on losing ground. So if I know I don't need to agree with you, and I can literally look at you like you are a full on alien from another planet and be like, what's that like to live in your alien planet

Dr. Mark Hyman
over there? I think that's a really useful construct that you you you've written about, which is this idea of perspective over perception and how to become an anthropologist of your partner's inner world. Yeah. Which is getting curious. Well Like, you like, you don't have to agree that you wanna, you know, be a cannibal and eat, you know, dead people, but you can be curious about that culture that does that.

Right?

Baya Voce
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so I think I think that's a really important framework because, you know, most of us are operating from these automatic childhood wounds and patterns and our traumas. Big traumas, little traumas. And so we bring that into the relationship and the conversation. And unless you get curious and listen and realize, well that person's really just in this moment of being a wounded five year little girl or a 10 year little boy. And you can have compassion for that and know it's not about you.

Baya Voce
This is differentiation. Literally, this is that's the work of differentiation, which in order to do that, we have to expand our tolerance for tension. We have to expand our capacity because your partner might be saying some stuff about you that you really don't wanna hear.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I wanna share an example.

Baya Voce
Okay. Great.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Because this it's happened to me, and it was like a magic trick. I was my ex wife and I, we're still great friends, and we we, you know, we went to my best friend's sixtieth birthday. Now she didn't know a soul. And she said to me before, Mark, would you please make sure that you introduce me to people and include me in the conversations and do all this? I'm like, sure, no problem.

Now I had just had heart surgery, and I had an atrial fib and under ablation, and I was a little uncomfortable, and I was on a pain pain pill. So I was like a little gonzo. And we walk in to the to the party, and my best friend's girlfriend at the time rushes up to to me. And I was like, kind of overwhelmed, and I just like my wife was standing there, and I didn't stop her. And after like five minutes, I did, but by that time, was too late.

My wife was just so upset. And she went out of a 10 out of 10 reaction, and probably triggered by something, you know, not being taken care of by her family or father, who knows what was going on there underneath the surface, but it didn't really matter. She was entertained she like stormed out and went to the parking lot. So I I was like, oh, shit. This is my best friend's birthday.

What's happening? And and so I I and I obviously didn't do what she asked me to do. And so I I understood that I kinda screwed up. After a few minutes, I went into the parking lot and really found her and we sat on the curb. I said, so I said, okay, tell me everything.

Like, what are you feeling? What's up for you? Like, I'm here to listen. And I just let her rant and like, you didn't do this and you didn't do that. No.

No. Just like just it was intense. And I had to sit there and I had to take it. And not take it personally, but just receive and hold my presence and breathe and stay grounded in my body and not

Baya Voce
You were able to do this?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm. Not be like, my my point of view or Yep. God, don't be such a you know, don't be so annoying. This is my best friend's birthday. How could you do this?

Like, what did I all this stuff, you know, I could've

Baya Voce
said That's going on in your head, probably. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like like, come on. Like Yeah. Get your shit together. She was crazy. Like, and and but it but she legitimately felt that way, so I wasn't gonna say, don't feel that, and I just listened.

And then after she was done, said, is there any more? Is there any more? I let her get it all out. And then I and then I just said, let me get this right. Let me see if I understand.

I didn't do this, and I heard you this way, and I did this. I just kinda laid it all out, and she's like, yeah. And the next minute, she was in my lap, and I was like, wow. And so I was like, oh, this isn't a magic trick.

Baya Voce
It is a But magic

Dr. Mark Hyman
it took it took an enormous amount of, like, I would say like lifting weights. Like, is that the same analogy? It's like, it was hard to hold myself still and just listen without having my own narrative of trying to argue with her in my head while she's talking. But actually, to just listen to her and be the anthropologist to like, what the hell is going on with you? And all people want is to be seen and heard and understood.

And if you get that, it's like.

Baya Voce
It is kinda like a magic trick.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Kinda like a magic trick. I

Baya Voce
love that you shared that. I I love that you said that. Part of what you were doing that you probably didn't know you were doing at the time, this is from former CIA agent Andrew Bustamante, and you mentioned it a little earlier, which is the difference between perception and perspective. So most of us spend all day in our own perception. We are looking out of the world from our eyes through our lens, and, like, I'm over here thinking, okay.

Is the mic working? Is it am I thirsty? Right? Those are those are things. And we are not spending even a fraction of time visiting perspective, which would be, what's it like over there for you?

How are you feeling? Is temperature okay for you? Right? That's another muscle to train. That's actually what you were doing when you were able to be like, it's not like those thoughts go away.

It's not like you're not thinking, this is crazy. This is my friend's birthday. How could you be doing? You're thinking those thoughts. You just don't say them out loud.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I didn't say them out loud. And I was like, they don't really matter because she's having her experience, and I'm not gonna convince her otherwise. So all I could do here is just, like, listen to what she's suffering with.

Baya Voce
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Because I love her, and I don't want her to feel this way. So I care about her, and I know she's having a moment. And it no. Yes, I did something that I said I wasn't gonna do. I didn't include her.

I didn't introduce her. But I was, like, you know, on drugs and out of it and kind of overwhelmed, I just lost it for a minute. But it didn't matter. Like, all she needed was to be seen and heard and felt Yeah. And to not have me even I didn't even I I didn't even need to present my point of view.

I was like, okay, now I need you to get me and hear what my perspective is, because it didn't matter in that moment. And then then we went back and had a great time at the party.

Baya Voce
I mean, this is this is one person goes at a time. And maybe you never maybe you never need her to hear a perspective. But for some of

Dr. Mark Hyman
us No. Actually, we probably listen to the podcast.

Baya Voce
For some of us, we will want our perspective to be heard. So the key here is your perspective matters. You're putting it over to the side just for a minute while your partner gets to do exactly what I mean, this was such a good example, Mark. And then you get a turn. It's just not at the same time.

And if you start to lose your capacity to be with the other person, to be in their perspective, to be like, oh, this is making sense to me. I mean, I don't agree with it, but, like, cool. That makes sense given your world, your history, your traumas, your wounds, your patterns. It makes sense that that would hurt you. If you start to get out of that, right, you're now getting out of your window of tolerance.

This is what I mean by starting to track it at like 20% versus being at 90%. So here you are. You're starting to like, you know, maybe she's she's saying all these things and instead of Totally.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Ground. I literally had to just, like, force myself into the earth.

Baya Voce
But you have you have to train that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Baya Voce
Not all of us are Jedi ninjas like that, Mark. Like that

Dr. Mark Hyman
Trust me. This wasn't I had practiced this skill. It was something we have practiced, but it was it was like in a 10 out of 10 environment. So we we practiced it in in moments where it wasn't so activated, and that's easier. Yeah.

But when it's so when it's a 10 out of 10 emergency, you know

Baya Voce
Lights are off. Yeah. Yeah. SOS. SOS.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so I, you know, I think what you're what you're talking about in terms of this this this ability to actually regulate and to get your nervous system in a place where you actually can have these conversations and then do the repair is so critical. And it's physiological first, and then it's psychological.

Baya Voce
Yeah. That's exact but we've been taught The opposite. The opposite. Exactly. And I just wanna say just to wrap that up, for people who who are starting to lose stamina in those conversations where you're the listener and your hurt partner is saying some shit that you're like, okay.

That that stung. Like, I don't know if I can be here anymore. Your training ground is how can I start to notice when I'm starting to get dysregulated? And then you set boundaries. This is what I mean when I mean repair can actually be a one person job.

So if your partner is talking to you in a way that doesn't work for you, what do you do? You say, hey. Can you actually say it this way? That would be really helpful. There's no way you're gonna be able to do that if you're dysregulated.

You won't be able to say that. But if you're regulated, you can actually help your partner help you. Yeah. If you start to lose it. If your partner's talking and you're just like, okay.

This is way too much for me, then this is where boundary practice works. So either you're in repair work or you're in containment work. You're in you're in nervous system regulation or you're saying, hey. I actually need to go practice. I need to contain.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What does that mean?

Baya Voce
So you you set a boundary. We get boundaries really wrong. We think boundaries

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, okay. Let's go into boundaries.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Well, we think boundaries this is gonna be pretty simple. We think boundaries have to do with someone else changing. Like, I'm like, hey. Stop talking to me like that.

That's my boundary. Right? But, actually, my boundary is you're gonna talk to me like that no matter what because I can't control you. Again, if you care about me, hopefully, you won't, but I can't I can't ultimately control you. So if you keep talking to me like that, I'm gonna like, hey.

This conversation so far, I haven't been I'm like, I'm about to hit my edge. I actually need to leave the room, and I need ten minutes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And I'll

Baya Voce
be back. And I'll be back. But that's a boundary. The boundary is a way to take care of yourself. It has nothing to do with what you do Asking over

Dr. Mark Hyman
the person to change. Yeah.

Baya Voce
As if we have way more power in repair than we think we do, we have it doesn't our partner it would be great if our partner can show up. Yes. But if our partner can't, we can make requests. And then if they meet those requests like 70% of the time, that's pretty good. If they can get you and attune to you like 70% of the way, that's pretty good.

I like the 70%.

Dr. Mark Hyman
68?

Baya Voce
I don't think 68 is enough. You know? I'm not like the Gottmans. You know? 69 is just not gonna cut it for me.

I like a solid 70 heuristic here. So you're I you're literally either practicing expanding your your capacity for tolerance, extending that window, or practicing boundary work, and none of this requires the other person.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's what I found in that in that moment. She didn't have to do anything except vent and be, you know, completely activated, and I could just hold space, and that's that was enough. And that's and it and it even though in my mind, I can think she's wrong, it doesn't matter who's right or wrong. Like, someone said to me, do wanna be right or do you wanna be in a relationship?

Baya Voce
Yeah. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares?

Dr. Mark Hyman
And we yeah. We get in this sort of rigid view that we have to be right, or we have to convince our partner about the rightness of our perspective or our opinion or what they didn't do or what they did do. And there's just kinda no point in that. It doesn't serve anything.

Baya Voce
There's there's another great line by Terry Realhoo. I just think I think he nails it with this one where he says, there is no such there is no such thing as objective reality in a relationship. There are just two subjective truths happening at any given time. So there's my experience over here, which is, hey. That thing that you said at dinner really hurt my feelings, and that was messed up that you said that.

I can't believe you said that. And then there's the other person who's like, I just made a joke. I did like, there was nothing personal about that. That meant nothing. Nobody's right.

And as long as we're fighting for that, we are going to get nowhere. There is no quote, unquote truth in that experience. There's no and but if you're on that plane, if you're fighting on that plane, you're both gonna lose. Because by the way, if you win and your partner loses, you both lose. You have to go to bed with them that that night.

Like, you're both losing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right. So in this repair process, like, the first step is sort of one person at a time. Second

Baya Voce
step Well, do nothing. Do nothing is actually the like, you wanna just you gotta regulate. This is the capacity building. This is where you're not you're not bringing anything until hopefully you're regulated. So then you regulate it.

You come back. One person goes at a time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, then the being curious part.

Baya Voce
Then then there's

Dr. Mark Hyman
the apologist part.

Baya Voce
That's right. This is where you're literally practicing differentiation here. You're practicing. You are a separate person with separate ideas, beliefs, values, wounds, traumas, and because of that, I can look at you like an alien species because we're very different from one another, and I can learn to not take that personally. In order to do that, I have to expand my capacity for tension because you might say some shit that doesn't feel good.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Baya Voce
Right? And if you say that, I want to be able to to either be with that and have it kinda roll off my back or ask you to say it differently, or maybe that hurts so bad and it just pinged something in me that I can set a boundary, and I can walk, and I can pause, and I can come back.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, it's I I when I was 18, I don't know I ever told you this story, but I I I was bullied a lot as a kid. And, you know, I was this sort of nerdy kid who read a lot of books. Served me well in the end.

Baya Voce
I I hate thinking

Dr. Mark Hyman
about you as bullied. But it was fine. I'm good now. When I was I was traveling out west, I was 18, and I was camping in this kind of campsite outside of Banff, which was like this little town in in Alberta in in the Canadian Rockies. And there was this British guy, kinda older, probably forties or maybe early fifties, who was just kind of a dick.

And he kinda was making fun of me. And I was like and I just kinda felt initially, I'm like hurt and upset. And then I had this insight that really helped me navigate my life, which is when someone is saying shit to you, that's mean, or hard, or difficult, or whatever it is. It's either one of two things. Either it's their issue and they're projecting onto you and they just, you know, you can have curiosity and compassion for them.

Or two, maybe there's some nugget of there, even though it's coming out in a messy package that is worth you looking at yourself for. So it's always a gift. In other words, like it's always a gift, and it's hard to hold that. You know, but but, you know, what you you kind of start out early on talking about this, that relationships aren't this kind of fairy tale. They're a place for growth.

So they're a place where we evolve, where we wake up, where we learn about ourselves, where we can't do it on our own. And we can be very happy alone, but then that you, you know, are in a relationship, all of a sudden, you kinda have to deal with things that you haven't dealt with. And I think that's that's the beauty of it. It's also the hard part of it. But it's actually it's actually what makes relationships so amazing is that they're a vehicle for waking up.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean you're just gonna stay together, but it means it's a vehicle to wake up and help each other evolve and grow. And if if that could be your North Star as a couple, I think then you you have an anchor that you're both working towards. And it's not me against you, it's we're holding hands together, walking towards a place that's better for each of us, either together or alone.

Baya Voce
It's so beautifully put. I mean, this is to just make a real roundabout way here into the third the third stage of relationships. Right? You have the merge. You have the honeymoon stage.

You have the power struggle. I mean, what you're painting a picture of is interdependence. This is this is it's so hard to get to that stage, that place of I can exist fully, and we can exist fully. I don't lose myself in you. I can appreciate you for your differences.

I can allow you to have the freedom that you want while also feeling the safety that's here. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Baya Voce
That's interdependence. That's the stage that most of us never make it to because we get so stuck in the power struggle. And my hypothesis here is part of why it's hard for us to have that North Star and make it there is because we aren't practicing capacity building, which is the thing that allows us to get there. It's the thing that allows a really shitty fight to end up with, okay. Wait a second.

I can self reflect. I can take ownership that is mine, but not more than what's mine, and I can see the value in it. That's hard to do. We have to have healthy enough self esteem that we're not pointing the finger and blaming outward or we're or we're not pointing the finger inward and blaming ourselves in order to get to a place where relationship to your point earlier around Auntie La la's dojo, right, this relationship dojo, in order for a relationship to deeply be a dojo, we have to be able to look inward. And then we also have to be able to say, just as much as we say, my neighbor's shit stinks too, we have to also say, and I'm I'm human just like the rest of us.

Like, we have to be able to hold both of those pieces in order to get to the place where we can actually fulfill on that North Star.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it's it's something, you know, that just we don't have any guideposts for in the society. And and I'm kind of excited for your book to come out because I think people are are gonna eat it up.

Baya Voce
I hope so. I mean, the the hope here is that we normalize how how hard relationships actually actually, let me let me just say what I actually wanna normalize. Another another colleague and mutual friend of ours, Jennifer and Brian Russell, they have a line that I think is phenomenal, where how they hold relationships is that it's not that we we we always say relationships are hard, but it's not that relationships are hard. It's that our personal work is hard, and we get to do that inside of

Dr. Mark Hyman
our relationships. That's right. That's right.

Baya Voce
And I think that's such a beautiful way.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's an opportunity versus a burden.

Baya Voce
It's and so many of us won't actually be fortunate enough to find somebody who to do this work with. There are people who are looking all over and haven't so if you're fortunate enough to be in a relationship and to be in it with somebody who's willing to do the work with you Mhmm. That's a gift even if it is a pain in the ass. It's also this deep gift. And so I really wanna normalize that it's okay to be in the thick of it.

That is part of relationship. It's not outside of it. It is part of what love is.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So just getting kinda looped back up for a minute on this capacity piece because this seems like a core skill. Like Yes. It's like if you wanna be in relationship, it's like if you if you wanna go and run a marathon, you have to actually train for it. You know, you don't have to do this many miles every day, and it's it's like there's a whole thing to build the capacity to be able to do that. How do you build the capacity to be in the heat of a relationship and to do the work without causing more harm and actually both of you progressing towards waking up and healing?

Baya Voce
So we talked about two critical pieces today. One is building these I call them kind of micro repairs, which is building a space where you're a five or below Mhmm. Where you're practicing this daily. You are literally like something comes up that just kinda stings, and you consciously start to take a few breaths or notice what your body does or take yourself on a walk or do what you need to do to start to take care of yourself to be able to come back. You do those daily reps.

And it doesn't need to take long. But, like, if you do those daily, you are in I mean, that's huge. Breaths. Great. And another way to practice is perspective versus perception.

So your partner is talking to you. They're talking to you about their day. They're not even bringing something that that you know, you're not in a fight. They're talking to you about that. This is your practice ground where you're like, What would it be like to think about my boss that way?

I've never thought about my boss that way. That's what would it be like to think about my mom or my dad or my sibling that way? I get along really well with my sibling, but if I were in their shoes so you're literally practicing putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. If you practice just those two things, you are in really good shape. And then what I'd like to add on to that is once a week with your partner, set up a time where you two are literally practicing doing this work together where one person is the speaker or the her partner and one person is the listener, and you're doing it outside of a level 10.

You're bringing up something that's, like, once a week. Like, again, we're in the middle of the scale here, something that's around a five that's not nothing, but isn't you're this you literally consider this practice so that when the inevitable big fights hit, you're not sitting there being like, I have no idea what to do, and now all of your mechanisms take over.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But I imagine I imagine being like, if you do this consistently in a relationship over time, that that the whole volume comes down and everything. Yes. And then your capacity to do this much more fluidly, easily, quickly without the level of activation, without the nervous system getting out of control, without your amygdala hijacking your entire body and brain, that that actually even though these little maybe irritants or things won't go away, how you navigate them changes, and and it becomes almost kind of like just very a soft part of the relationship, not like this thing you're just fighting against every day.

Baya Voce
You will come you will completely change if you take this on. This is if you take on building your your expansion for capacity, you will be more confident. You'll be more self assured. Things will more easily roll off your back. And I don't mean roll off your back like you're rolling over, and you're like, this is that's not this because you're also learning to set boundaries.

Right? Also because you're building the capacity to be brave enough to actually say something out loud that you would never say before because you're too scared of what they're gonna think Because you don't think you can handle them leaving or them you're building all of this capacity. This there is not to me, nothing more important.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, there's also something in here that you're we haven't really explicitly named, but I think it's so important, which is honesty in a relationship. Because it's those small things that get buried, never get said, never get shared, that eat away in a relationship. And even if they're a little bit sticky to deal with in the moment, that ultimately, that brings more clarity and connection by actually being honest.

Baya Voce
This is this is why you take one day a week to practice. So you're literally you're like it's like you're cleaning the dust off of a table Mhmm. Every week. Right? Once a week, you both go.

Do it on different days, And it's a ten minute conversation. You keep it short. You keep it time bound. So for my avoidant friends or my people who don't love to process as much, you still

Dr. Mark Hyman
Naming no names.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Naming no names. No names. That that you can actually stay in your window of tolerance, and you're not thinking this is gonna go on forever. Mhmm.

So if you create a structure where it's time bound, one person listens, one person's response, the only job of excuse me. One person speaks, one person listens. The only job of the person who is speaking is to just name what hurt and try and own your side of the street. The only job for the listener is to get their world, understand their perspective. And, you could put any framework inside of this if you already use a framework.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's not just listening and being silent. It's actually letting the other person know that you've got them.

Baya Voce
Yes. And here's the thing. If we're practicing, sometimes we're starting at square one. Sometimes we're literally starting at I can listen and I can repeat back your words, and that's about all I can do.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Baya Voce
Like, that's some people we're just starting there. That's not bad. That's just lack of practice.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Baya Voce
Some people are gonna be able to repeat back your words and do it with some chutzpah. Right? Like, you can actually feel them, and you're like, oh my god. I get where you're coming from. Some people, it will sound like you're regurgitating.

It's gonna be terrible. It's not like, it's not gonna but you're this is a practice ground. This is literally a practice ground where the hurt partner says, hey. Here's what I'd like from you. I'd like for you I'd like you to repeat back.

I'd like for you to ask an open question. I'd like for you to, give me a hug after. I'd like for you to respond with one thing that makes sense to you. Right? So you can think about what you want and ask for it in a conversation.

Dr. Mark Hyman
This is such a beautiful reframe of relationships from the fantasy love story, live happily ever after, Disneyland kind of romance, to understanding relationships as a vehicle for growth and evolution of our souls and our and our emotional psychological state. Right? And and that ultimately is gonna get us happiness. This other thing just kinda hijacks us, and then we

Baya Voce
It doesn't exist.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Doesn't exist. Right? It doesn't exist.

Baya Voce
It doesn't exist.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so we have this fantasy, and and that's why we're always struggling in relationships. This is such a beautiful framework. I wanna spend a couple of minutes now after we've sort of gone through the this this repair framework, and there's a lot more to come, everybody can we're gonna talk about how to find more about it in a second. You you also work in psychedelic assisted couples therapy. So people understand about anybody who's watched How to Change Your Mind on Netflix or read Michael Pollan's book understands that there's a lot of therapies out there that are being used to help people deal with trauma one on one.

But you're talking about relational psychedelic therapy, which is a very different understanding of how to use these compounds to help change dynamics. And Rick Doblin, who is a friend of both of ours and you work with, said to me, I wouldn't still be married if I didn't do MDMA therapy with my wife.

Baya Voce
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So can you kind of talk to us about what this promise is of this potential, what the limitations are? I think it's going to be probably soon approved by the FDA as a therapeutic modality for trauma and maybe for relational therapy. I don't know. But talk to us about, you know, the promise and the the pitfalls.

Baya Voce
Yeah. So to clarify, I do MDMA assisted couples therapy research, and I do that with in in conjunction with Columbia University and MAPS. Right now, a lot of what's been researched is MDMA for PTSD and trauma. And what we're looking at is what's happening in the underground and which is the practitioners who have been doing this for many, many years, some of whom have been doing it before it became illegal. What practices are they using, and how can it actually benefit couples?

So we're looking in the underground to give us some answers about what are best practices, what are protocols, what are how are people dosing, how are people using the therapy process within a couple's setting. The hope is that I mean, listen. What we understand about MDMA, and I and I do research with MDMA specifically, what we know about MDMA is that it takes away our our amygdala's response, which to your point earlier, is gonna be the response that is putting us into fight, flight, freeze, etcetera.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Puts a lizard in a cage.

Baya Voce
That's a great yes. Yes. Especially for people with entrenched really tough relational dynamics or trauma, if we can just get a little space from that, if we can just get our amygdala quieted just a little, it helps us do everything that we talked about today. It helps us listen to the other person's perspective, which puts an entirely new lens on what's happening relationally. It can it can change an entire dynamic.

So what we see is because because MDMA lowers the amygdala response and it's dumping all these feel good chemicals, the hope is that what we're starting to see is that couples can use this in a one to three time session. And with the right integration that they can actually reset their relationship and then start to new learn new patterns. For some of us, the work that I'm talking about today, it's just it's too entrenched. It's too hard. Mhmm.

Our brains just cannot and so for those people, NDMA assisted couples therapy when it's legal, like, it will be an amazing resource. But, again, I wanna say it's not a panacea, and I have seen many people. I know so many stories about people who do it, and then they go back to their patterns because they think that they do the the drug once, and all of a sudden, it's gonna everything's gonna be and I've just seen it over and over

Dr. Mark Hyman
working. But in a way, it allows you to be in that dynamic conversation that we're talking about for repair in a way that's down regulated. And it sort of it's sort of physiologically changes you so you can actually be present Yeah. And be curious, and have an open heart, and not shut down, and not go into your reaction, and not go into your fear. And that that really helps with understanding, and compassion, and healing, I think.

Baya Voce
100 well, so and and if you can do that in a couple session and you start to bring to light, you sort of lift the baseline where now you can now you can see each other a little bit differently. You have a different understanding of the patterns that have been happening in your relationship before. If you can do that and then you layer in practices, tools, integration, right, then all of a sudden, like, we're in a different place. And so there's a clinic out of San Diego called Enamory, and they're working on a protocol right now with Rick around doing a pilot study to put couples through six to 12 couples through a protocol for this so we'll start to understand a little bit more. I mean, we don't have a lot of couples research.

The only person really researching it is Anne Wagner out of there's a couple more, but but she's done a lot of research. But right now and she's out of Canada. But right now, a lot of the research is focused on PTSD even in a dyadic approach. One person has come in with PTSD and or only one person, the PTSD partner is the one taking it. And so we haven't done this with quote unquote healthy normals, which what does that even mean?

But Yeah. With somebody who who is undiagnosed. And that's the the hope is that this can also translate to people who don't have to have a diagnosis.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And who can just wanna enhance their dynamics or enhance their understanding of each other or improve their relationship. I mean, there's so many ways that this can be used. And I think, you know, I'm glad we're starting to have these tools because, you know, historically we just had to, you know, white knock.

Baya Voce
Totally.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Which is what we've been talking about, breath and it's it's hard to know your mind. It's hard. I mean, that's why I think meditation is such an incredible tool because most of us think we're our thoughts. And when meditation's a simple practice where you sit there and you observe your thoughts and you try to quiet your breath and quiet your mind, but inevitably thoughts come and go and you realize, wait, they're just like clouds floating on the horizon. These are just just chatter that isn't so substantive.

It's not real. And so we de identify with our thoughts, and that's a very powerful thing. I remember when I was eight 19, did a ten day meditation retreat. And we meditated for like twelve, fourteen hours a day. And at the end of that, you know, I just realized, wow.

You know, like like there's my whole inner world that I constructed that I thought was, you know, concrete and real. But it's just it's just like clouds, and I don't have to attach to them. I don't have to believe them. My friend, Daniel Amon says, don't believe every stupid thought you have.

Baya Voce
That's great.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's great. You know? And I think, you know, that's the power of of these practices. So when you're talking about capacity, there's lots of tool like meditation or other things that can be helpful, or even like psychedelics can be very powerful.

Baya Voce
Absolutely. Yeah. There are so many ways to build your capacity. Meditation is a great one. Mean, all what you're doing is, again, putting more time in between stimulus and response.

And you're practicing that out of a level 10 trigger, outside of a level 10 trigger, which is so unrealistic for us to be able to do anything inside of No. Do anything differently inside of.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So I imagine people are saying, okay, this sounds great. I don't know how to do this. Help. The good news is you've created a a web app Yeah. That allows you to take people through a process.

So to unpack what you've done, what you've created, and what you've made available to people, because I think everybody's flailing around searching. I mean, if you look at Instagram, it's like all this relationship advice. It's like, I don't know how much of it's good or bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I I tune into your Instagram, which is

Baya Voce
Bea Voce. At b a y a v o c e.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. So everybody check that out. Follow Bea. But in addition to that, she's got and by the way, she does these amazing little brilliant clips that are just like little nuggets of gold that you could listen to in a very short time and feel better afterwards.

Because I certainly do, and I know you're my closest friend. I still, like, listen to them like, wow. That was good. Is this is this person actually my friend? She's so cool.

Baya Voce
I love you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And then and then and then tell us about this platform that you created for people.

Baya Voce
So it's called The Repair Lab, and the idea is I do listen. I was getting so many DMs being like, help. What do I do? And I was like, I need to figure out how to work with more people. My private practice is full.

I need to figure out to work with more people. And so I I launched this this membership program where you do we do monthly q and As where you can literally write in, and I'll answer questions. We'll go live, and we'll talk about it. And then it also has a platform that will have all this content about the foundations of repair, around practices, around boundaries, around forgiveness, around all these tools that we need to build to build our capacity to learn repair. And then I've developed a repair AI app so you can literally get on at any time, and you can if you're in the middle of freaking out, you can be like, what do I do?

And it can help you. And that's built off of my, you know, my work, a lot of other professionals' work, and I just kind of combined it into this repair app to help you. Because what I found was that, you know, maybe you don't have therapy booked until next week or, you know, and so in the heat of the moment, it's really hard. You just need something to so you can call it or text it, and it will help you get through. And and it's a membership program, and we're launching it right now.

So it's brand new. So it's exciting because the people who are getting in on the ground floor, like, I'm getting feed we're Yeah. Like, you're helping me build it because I wanna know how to build it with you. Yeah. So you can just go to ba y a v o c e.

Dr. Mark Hyman
How do they find it again?

Baya Voce
So you go to my website, ba v o c e, and you can find it and sign up.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And we'll put it in the show notes. We'll put the link. And, your website has a beautiful quote on the front which is, we're taught how to fall in love, but not how to stay there. And so if you want to stay there, check out Bea's work, check out her repair lab, check out her Instagram and her new book, Stay Tuned because that's coming out. It's gonna be a blockbuster, I know it is.

And hopefully she'll let me write the forward. Right. Anyway, love you. Thanks for being on the podcast. And hope you all listening got some useful information about how to stay in love, not just fall in love.

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