Speaker 1: Arrow dot net a r r oe dot net not
just a podcast. It is a podcast network nineteen different
unique content driven lifestyle podcasts that connect with your life.
For instance, if you love cooking, chefs, cookbooks, and everything
that goes with food, then you need the Foodie Paradise.
It's on Arrow dot net r r oe dot Net.
Enjoy the exploration. How are you doing today, Miss Kate?
Speaker 2: I'm great? How are you doing?
Speaker 1: Very very excited to share a conversation with you because
you're finally covering a subject here that so many people
should have brought up a long time ago. But you've
got the courage to say, hey, look, either mind or
move on that that's just the way that you know.
It's like exactly, It's like my boss wants telling me.
He says, you either like change or there's the door,
just go just get out of here.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Where did you gain the confidence to be able to
have the courage to be able to look at this
generation and say mend or move on?
Speaker 3: Well, I've been a licensed psychotherapist for almost twenty years,
and so I know the clinical work really well. And
I've also experienced this in my personal life, so I
know it from that dimension too, and with enough time
and experience on this, I think it just only makes
sense to help support other people move through it.
Speaker 1: What's really interesting is that we all have our own
interpretation of what a toxic relationship is. I mean, even
Britney Spear is saying about toxic, and the thing is
is that do we really know what it is and
is it really what we think it is?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's a pretty big problem these days actually,
especially on social media, is words like toxic get thrown
around a lot of pop psychology words, you know, they
tend to just sort of go into the mainstream and
people misuse them. So I actually provide definitions at the
very front of my book for what toxic actually means,
what a toxic relationship is, what a healthy relationship is,
to help with the discernment around that, so that people
aren't mislabeled a relationship that's maybe just misaligned or has
expired with one that's truly toxic.
Speaker 1: See I would be that freak that would be standing
right there at Barnes and Noble just to watch people
go through the front part of that book, because that's
how so many people judge it, you know, they want
to read that first paragraph, and man, when you're putting
that kind of stuff up there in the beginning, ooh,
that's a good worm on the hook. Let's go that route.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's important really, especially as a book.
It's all about words, and we have to be careful
with the words we use and intentional.
Speaker 2: So I try to give people a roadmap.
Speaker 3: From the very first page about what to expect and
how to use this work.
Speaker 1: How is it you're able to see us while you're writing,
because a lot of people say, no, I wasn't even
thinking about the reader. And yet I feel all the
way through this book that you did see us, and
that you do feel that we exist.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3: That's a lovely thing to say. I really realize that
this is a global problem.
Speaker 2: At this point.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, nobody can deny that we have
a lot of hatred, a lot of division, there's a
lot of negativity.
Speaker 2: And I really think that when we.
Speaker 3: Work on ourselves and our individual relationships, then we plug
back into the collective from a healthier place, and we
attract healthier relationships.
Speaker 2: And when we raise our.
Speaker 3: Standards, then we model that for other people, so they
can also raise their standards, and that's how we make
the world better.
Speaker 1: You know, you talked about how the word toxic is
one of those words that we tend to throw around,
so our compassion and empathy, because people will go, oh,
I've got empathy, Oh I've got compassion. Well, how come
it's only used as words and words the actions that
should go with each one of those words.
Speaker 3: I actually spend some time defining that as well, and
including sympathy too, because compassion, empathy, and sympathy can get
a little intertwined.
Speaker 2: But really they're different. If you'd like I can explain.
Speaker 1: I would love to, And then I get to explain
to you when you say sympathy like that, that my
wife has grown up on a quote that you may
be familiar with, but I mean it is something that
we live by because of that quote that her mother
gave to her as a child.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would love to hear the quote, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cuss? Is that okay for a sec?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Where do you find sympathy in a dictionary? Between
shit and syphilis? And so. But when you start thinking
of it like that, you sit there and you and
you go, oh my god, and all of a sudden,
you start getting a new definition of it, not just
that word, all words, even compassion and empathy. So for
you to put a definition up there, my god, that's
a brave step that you are really opening up a door.
Speaker 3: Well, I just want people to really understand the language
they're using. So I define empathy as sort of when
when you lose yourself in someone else's experience, you feel
so deeply what they feel that it's.
Speaker 2: In your own body.
Speaker 3: You have your own nauseous response or headache in response
to them.
Speaker 2: Your heart is breaking as though it's happening to you.
Speaker 3: And empathy is a place where we can really drown
with the other person.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of boundaries there.
Speaker 3: It's like a big mushy pile of everyone's feelings altogether,
whereas compassion is sort of like empathy with mindfulness and
with boundaries.
Speaker 2: So you can feel for someone, you.
Speaker 3: Have warmth and love and support for them, but you
also remember that you're separate, you're somebody different. This isn't
happening to you, you're witnessing it, and you're showing up
with warmth. And then sympathy is kind of like feeling
badly for them from a distance where you say like, gosh,
that really that's too bad. I feel really bad for you,
But then you just go on with your life and
it doesn't impact you too much.
Speaker 1: Even with with a sympathy don't aren't those fighting words
in the way of I guess I hear somebody sympathy
and I have been quoted to say I don't need
that right now. I need to figure this out first.
And then if you really think that you need to
use that word sympathy, you don't have to around me.
And so am I creating that barrier of mind it
or move on?
Speaker 2: Well, not necessarily.
Speaker 3: I think every person gets to decide what kind of
support feels the most supportive for them. And really, there's
most people in our lives are not our close most
intimate people. If you think about all the people you're
connected with, right all the people you run into, most
of us have about one hundred and fifty people in
our greater social network, and so most of those people
can probably only have capacity for sympathy. They're not close
enough to you to have the level of care and
compassion maybe dipping into empathy that someone really close to
you would have and that's why we have varying levels
of closeness with people, because we simply couldn't manage one
hundred and fifty deep relationships. So maybe it's okay for
some people to treat you with sympathy, but you know
the people who are in your life closer who you
really would rather have compassion or empathy from, and that
can be a smaller number.
Speaker 1: I love the way you think only because I have
a podcast that's called Defragging, and it's based on ask
yourself the questions and question the answers, and I really
do really hit hard when I say, I didn't say,
go ask a friend the questions that you have, I said,
ask you because your friend has not worn your shoes.
And that's what I love about this book is that
you're giving me the opportunity to see into other people's
lives and to really experience them, you know what I
mean by that. But in the way of that, with
the sympathy, the compassion as well as the empathy, it's
a better understanding of relationship. What are you doing here, Kate?
This is about a relationship.
Speaker 3: Right, and it's not just your romantic relationship, which is
such a common misunderstanding like this goes for family, for friends,
for work relationships, even for those kind of acquaintanceships that
you walk away from and you're like, gosh, am I
better from that? Or am I worse from that? Did
that take something from me that I really needed? Relationships
are everywhere and we really need to be conscious about
them because they impact how well we are in a
psychological and physical level.
Speaker 4: Please do not move There's more with Kate King coming
up next, the name of her book, mend or move On.
We are back with Kate King.
Speaker 1: So now, in your studies to put together mend or
move On? Did you come across anything that took place
before this particular generation. And the only reason why I
bring that up is because it feels like and we
all talk about how families and friends are splitting up
because of political decisions or whatever, whatever, whatever. I don't care.
The thing is is that I believe that this has
always gone on. We just seem to make it more
acceptable to talk about it today. Am I wrong to
think like that?
Speaker 2: You're right?
Speaker 3: I actually think that calling things like estrangement and no
contact a trend is really just an avoidance mechanism because
it's so uncomfortable that social media and the media has
brought these conversations to the.
Speaker 2: Surface, and so we may be seeing them more.
Speaker 3: But this is certainly not the first generation that has
been cutting away and pulling back from unhealthy relationships. And
to answer your question, I mostly try to use current
research in my book so that it's most up to date.
Speaker 2: But I can attest to this.
Speaker 3: In my personal family and my lineage, we have had
multi generational estrangement, and I actually write about some of
my personal experience because this does move intergenerationally through families,
and it's amazing how patterns can really show up. And
that brings up the concept of people who are breaking cycles,
who are doing things differently, teaching their kids new things
that are healthier, new patterns, and sometimes in order to
protect your family and the next generation, you have to
cut ties with the previous generation because they're not willing
to change and they're not willing to look at themselves.
Speaker 1: See that's why I'm kind of freaked out when people say, yeah,
we've been really good friends for forty plus years, and
I want to look at and say, how the hell
did that even happen? Oh my god, I dumb people
forty years ago? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So, sometimes the longevity of a relationship doesn't indicate how
healthy it is.
Speaker 2: It just indicates that they may.
Speaker 3: Have tolerated a lot, they may have looked the other way,
they may be enduring really unhealthy dynamics that they're not
willing to talk about or heal. And sometimes you do
have really long relationships that are healthy, And that's where
we have those nuggets of really knowing that those relationships
probably we have strong boundaries.
Speaker 2: Boundaries are a good thing.
Speaker 3: Those relationships have hard conversations, they're not afraid to tell
each other the truth, and that can contribute to their longevity.
So I would say, you know, before we decide if
someone's long relationship is healthy or not, we have to
ask those questions about like how do you handle conflict together?
How afraid are you of the truth? How honest are
you with each other? And that's how you can really tell.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that starts so with having that honest
to God conversation with somebody and you go, look, here's
the thing. My mind is currently crowded up right now
with all the content and things going on. Give me
two seconds to readjust so I can find my focus
in you. My wall is down, let's talk, let's heal.
Speaker 3: Everyone has to come to the table like that. Otherwise
progress and growth isn't really possible. There's I have these
seven traps of toxic relationships, and one of them is
false ownership, which is when one person takes it upon
themselves to heal the entire relationship and they think it's
all their fault, which is never the truth. But in
many toxic relationships, someone is identified as sort of the
bad one or the scapegoat, and they tend to hold
all the negative projections because the other person won't look
at it. So if you're not able to come to
the table with everyone willing to say, Okay, this is
what I've done wrong, this is where I could do better,
this is where I'm willing to listen and get curious,
you can't get any healing unless everyone has that perspective.
Speaker 1: You're going to think I'm a freak here. But the
very second that Facebook started to take over, with Instagram
and MySpace and all of this social media junk, it's
almost like all of these people that we disconnected from
because we had a no contact rule, all of a
sudden we had to reconnect with them because they said,
you want to be my freer and you want to
like me, and it's like, oh, for the love of God.
But I swear that social media is trying to bring
us back together. But it's going to require more than.
Speaker 2: That, right.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, sometimes you can be in sort of
low contact with a person through social media where maybe
they see, you know, the curated pictures and posts of
your life, but that's not really who you are, and
that's not really who they are. So it's a misconception
in modern society that social media is an accurate depiction
of what's really going on in someone's life. Real relationships
happen outside of the Internet. They happen in people's homes,
over the phone, in coffee shops. So I think I
don't know what the intentions of social media are. I mean, honestly,
I think they're probably pretty insidious. But it is a
challenge for how much can you allow people in your
life on the digital versus in person.
Speaker 2: And that's part of this work too. Sometimes you have
to be discerning.
Speaker 1: You hit something that is so spot on, and I
want listeners to really really be this the plan and
the purpose of adding this book to their life, and
that is when it comes to being curious. I believe
that my wife and I have been together for thirty
three thirty four years is because we always remain curious.
Speaker 3: Curious is my single most favorite quality to bring into
a relationship and into your relationship with yourself as well well,
because if you hold a curious mindset, then you're open
for feedback, You're open to learn more. You ask questions,
you'd like tell me more about that, rather than just
inserting judgment or assumption, which are two traps that can
get us really stuck. So I think curiosity is the
first ingredient that I would really recommend people bring into
their relationships.
Speaker 1: I love sitting down with these people that have been
married fifty plus years and the way that that you know,
it's so funny to watch the older man because you know,
he kind of just looks at the wife and says,
I just did it her way, and I'm going, oh,
there's so much more to that. Oh there's more to
that story, you know, because she gave in to you too, dude.
I mean, it was it was a partnership. They're a
business in the making.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a flow.
Speaker 3: You know, it's never actually fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: It's over the lifespan.
Speaker 3: You would hope that it would feel fifty to fifty,
but really each person has to give and take in
the cadence of the relationships. So sometimes we have a
difficult season, we need to take more, we don't give
as much, but then when we come back into level footing,
we can give more and the other person can receive.
So I'm talking about a concept called reciprocity, where there's
a give and take. There's deposits and withdrawals, and as
long as you have a balance of that, relationships can
really thrive. But you get into troublesome territory when people
give more than they take, or they keep, you know,
taking so much that there's nothing left to give, and
that's really imbalancing for all kinds of relationships.
Speaker 1: Speaking of give and take, Okay, here's something that listeners
may be able to relate with, but I'm going to
hit you up with it, and that is as a
creative person, when you're putting books together, your profession, your
life at home, those right, there are three individual personalities.
How do you give and take to each one of
them and give them the right amount of love so
that you have something like this mend or move on
for a book, because there had to have been that
other side of your personality that said, come on, cage,
let's go bowling, let's go do something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, being a.
Speaker 3: Therapist, I just really want to help, and I think
during the pandemic I became really aware of how much
need there really was. That's when I wrote my last book,
The Radiant Life Projects, which is like a it's like
a general sort of how to master class of self healing.
And I love to help support the greater well being
and mental health of everyone and anyone, but I can't
reach them all in my practice, and so these books
provide that. And so I feel like a lot of
inspiration and spark around writing and bringing together research and
science and creativity and spirituality. It's a very sort of
eclectic personality we have over here, and so the books
give me a really nice place to gel all of
that together. And you're right, I do have to have
boundaries with it in terms of making time for my
family and not just burning the midnight oil and not
showing up well for my clients.
Speaker 2: It's a balancing act.
Speaker 3: But here on my third book, I think I figured
that out at least to the degree where it does
feel pretty good for me.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you, Kate,
Because I do believe that you've got the makings of
a reality show here, and it's like, Okay, I'll patiently
sit back and watch all this unfold, but there's something
going on here, and I want people to support and
love you from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean sometimes it does feel like a reality show.
And I even say, like, my my family should be
a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's not.
Speaker 3: You know, it's pretty entertaining, especially if they're not your family.
Speaker 2: I think it's very entertaining.
Speaker 3: But so my website is the radiantlifeproject dot com.
Speaker 2: That's my hub.
Speaker 3: I'm also on all the social media as My handle
is the Radiant Life Project and I just love community.
I love connecting. So feel free to DM me, to
email me and we'll connect and I can help support
you through this really meaningful work.
Speaker 1: Well that means you got to come back to this
show anytime in the future. The door is always going
to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I would love that this has been a
great conversation.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you you as well, have a great day.