How To Increase Energy Through Decreasing Tension In Your Relationship with Eri Kardos

Episode 72:

How To Increase Energy Through Decreasing Tension In Your Relationship with Eri

Kardos and Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 00:07

Hey everybody, welcome back to the energy MD podcast where we're on a mission to

help a million people with chronic fatigue, long COVID Mass Cell activation syndrome, to

take their energy to the next level so that they can have more fun and more success in

every aspect of their lives. So, a lot of what we talk about, we're talking about mind,

body, spirit emotions, and we're gonna be talking about some of that today with our

relationships, such an important part of all this and we're gonna be talking about it with

my friend Arie. So let's learn a little bit about her. So Eri Kardos is the founder and lead

coach of relearn love LLC, and is the author of the best selling book relationship

agreements. A simple and effective guide for strengthening communication, reducing

conflict and increasing intimacy to design your ideal relationship. Every specialty is

helping people elevate their relationships for deeper, more intimate and fulfilling

connections. Her science and somatic based methods spark old and new passion take

you to new places of intimacy and melt away the patterns of conflict. She helps you

learn new ways to communicate and connect so that you can create the partnership you

dreamed of when you started out together. She is one of the most highly referred

relationship coaches globally working with clients across six continents, ranging from

Top 10 Top Tech executives and Hollywood celebrities to ordinary people living

extraordinary lives. She's a former leadership development professional@amazon.com

And she received her MBA in global leadership from the number one international

business school in the world. She is also the mom of two incredible children and shares

a conscious relationship with her husband Jaymin Patel, part of their own love story

featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, the miracle of love, and their family currently lives

in Bali, Indonesia. Larry, thanks so much for joining me today.

Eri Kardos 02:02

My pleasure. I'm so excited to be here with you.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 02:05

And so excited that we're gonna be talking about relationships, right? Because how

much energy time resources do we use on our relationships, thinking about

relationships, stressing ourselves out? Right? So we're gonna be talking about energy

and relationships, how to increase energy through decreasing tension in your

relationship. So why don't you? Why don't you? Yeah, me too. So why don't why don't we

start off by you telling us a little bit about your story? How did you get into the

relationship business?

Eri Kardos 02:36

Oh, great question. Um, so I would say my whole life has been about relationships. So

I'm the daughter of lawyer, hospital executive I have with my father and my mom's a

nurse. And together, they love teaching marriage courses in their church. So I was

around this idea of marriage and relationships are very important. Since I was little. And

then growing up, I followed a unique path of, first of all, being like most other people

have, where am I going? What am I doing? And I joined the military on a dare and then

eventually, like, Nope, that's not the right life path. And found that I really loved sexual

psychology and pursued that for a while. And then somehow, it made sense to me to get

my MBA in international business that did that and ended up pursuing leadership

development or to amazon.com. And during the process of being there, it was really

fascinating because as trust was established with many leaders, I would discover all

these these more personal and tender things were happening in their lives. So to ask,

Hey, can we talk about something that's outside of the office, and they'd heard about my

background, and we would just start hearing things around a lonely they were feeling

whether they were single, and they were just really busy, or they were in a marriage, and

they still felt very lonely? There's just a lot of loneliness going on. And so we started

working on what is it like to be in relationship, maybe we learned all these amazing skills

growing up about how to be successful in our careers but we most of us didn't learn

great skills around being in relationship. So when we started working on that and

learning how you can have healthy connections, I started seeing these huge shifts in

how they juggle work, right? They show up with so much more energy, so much more

vitality, so much more happiness. And guess what I had a ripple effect. Entire teams

were shifted in their organizations within the within the company worship data and I

was like This is incredible. If I can have an impact on the ROI through the bedroom and

not just the boardroom this is even cooler. So I decided to leave my job at Amazon start

my own company and buy the best selling book and begin touring speaking on this

because I think it is so important and I think this is really where most adults that I see

are spending their later you years in life, they're like, What are you investing in learning in

it's personal development, especially around communication, and trauma and how we

connect in our hearts and how we relate with other humans. All the things we didn't get

a great education on growing up.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 05:14

Yeah. So such important work. So let's talk about that tension that you were describing

that was happening in the bedroom and not the boardroom. So tension in relationships,

how does that zap people's energy? Yeah. So I mean,

Eri Kardos 05:29

think about your own experience, or invite other listeners to think about your own

experience, and what has it been like for you, when there's been some amount of

conflict, maybe with somebody's love, maybe it's maybe you're romantically involved

with, or the thought of a human being and in a tense situation, it can just consume so

much of you, you're worried about the future, you're thinking about what happened in the

past, you're just not present, you're so focused on everything else. And usually, that we

find that when our energy is going everywhere else, what happens, we're so they're so

low in what's happening for us right now. So I see over and over again, we get stuck in

these patterns of internal stories and struggle. And when we're in the dories, are

suffering, we're suffering, and it's this knowledge of the time and stories that are

preventing preventing us from moving forward, we just don't know how to get out of our

heads and out of our stories, and move into a healthy form of action to bring resolution

to have, actually, it takes a breath, but you need to have boundaries, to resolve the

tension that there that we just hold it and let it wine and wine and wine, which is the

happiness of all of our energy the entire time.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 06:42

So for our listeners, can you give us an example of what one of those stories kind of

looks like? Huh? Yeah.

Eri Kardos 06:55

I'm going to I'm gonna go back to stories that we all hold first. So there's, there's a theory

that we all have some amount of trauma in our lives, and I'm going to use trauma, kind

of loosely, I'm gonna say traumas in an experience that happened where we just weren't

prepared for for it, we didn't have the resources. Maybe you're relating in your crib, and

you were crying, and your mom walked towards you to pick you up. But then the doorbell

rang. And she turned around to get the door first, and you just saw her walk away from

you in your moment of need. And he didn't have the understanding or the tools or the

resources to deal with that. That moment, it's like, whoa, what just happened. And a part

of us then decides I'm going to protect myself, I never want to feel this way. Again, I'm

going to do everything in my power to make sure I don't feel this hurt again, which is

beautiful. And it's part of our survivors. Now, at the same time, it prevents us, we learn

all these tools that serve us as children that we grow up and they no longer serve us.

And it's like, how can we break out of those old patterns and learn practices that a

healthy adult self can have? Where we can actually lean into saying, Okay, I've got these

stories that I'm holding, that may or may not actually be true. And usually I find that

people have like one or two main themes, theme trauma stories in them in their core

wounds, if you will. So for me, I'll give you just a personal example, my core wound is I'm

not good enough. So if that is the background story playing in my head, and the moment

something comes up to me, my husband, and I doesn't matter what it is. It's probably

the I feel like I'm not good enough. And for my husband, one of his big core wounds

stories is that people don't consider him. He's not he's not important enough to be

considered, who's a little bit different. So I'll give you a quick story entertaining, because

this happened just a couple of months ago for us. So a couple months ago, we were

getting ready for dinner, and he wasn't feeling very well. And I said, Oh, I would be happy

to go out and grab dinner for us. Now here in Bali, Indonesia, we have an amazing dish

called Nathie chomp board, which is basically like a buffet of all your favorite foods on

one plate. And I'll run out and grab them. Babe, what would you like to eat? And he said,

Oh, just give me anything. Now, we've done enough work, and we've been together for

over eight years. I'm like, Ah, we're not playing that game. Because if I know that I might

be triggered in thinking that I'm not good enough and you might be triggered thank you

then I didn't consider you if I get the wrong things. This doesn't ever end up well for us.

So tell me what you want. And I just wrote it down. I texted it to myself like okay, here.

Did I get that great. Take off. I get all the food on my checking it I bring it all back. I'm

feeling proud. I just did it so well and I'm taking care of my sick husband. It's great. We

sit down to eat, and he's all like thank you so much. March, we open our packages, and

you can just feel the energetic wiggle room. You just like, shut down and blocked me

out. And what happens, what used to happen might be something akin to, we would, I

would sink into myself thinking, oh my gosh, I screwed it up, don't a high screwed up, but

I screwed it up. And I didn't do it well enough. And so I'm starting to spin in my own

mental suffering about how we're connecting or not connecting, and just feeling this

tension, but not know what to do with it. And we'd spend, gosh, knows how long hours

days in this in a tailspin. And his died, something happened and he's pulling back. And

you can just feel it. And again, he's probably thinking and spiraling and head thing which

could take him days and hours or days out of our connection. But we learned the tools,

right? And instead, we lean into what is uncomfortable, and we call it out. And I just

lovingly said, Hey, babe, I noticed something just shifted between us. Can you can you

speak in about that just happened for you? You know, and everything in music, like don't

say anything, don't mess it up more. But we but we lean into that discomfort and, and he

is and he just took a deep breath. And you could see this, you know, the sick hurt little

boy inside of him just be like, you know, I'm sick. I'm like, Yes. Like, you know, I need hot

sauce when I'm sick. And I'm like, Yes. And you told me you wanted the red hot sauce.

And I gave you the red hot sauces. Like you only got me one scoop, I need like five. And

this other turning point where it's like, okay, well, now I could take this, you know, I can

get super defensive. You didn't tell me when five scoops I wrote down all of your order,

or you just want a one scoop, you know? Or I could just reflect and let his experience be

valid. And I get to just hold that space for him and say, Wow, you're feeling really upset

and not considered because you you when you're sick, you like a lot of hot sauce. And

you would hope that your wife would know that. And you just didn't get the thing you

wanted. Did I get that he's like, You took a deep breath. He's like, it's like, oh, and the

thing is, and then I gotta turn to talk later on after he was calm after he was out of his

trauma story, right. And I got a chance to say, Hey, I felt really, really triggered to in that

situation. I felt like I wasn't good enough. And I felt like I did everything I could possibly

do to be connected with you and to take care of you in this time when you were really

needing help. And it was just that disconnect. And so for both of us, we could lean into

the stories that we know are there for each other, and not let them consume us and

have them totally take over our lives. Because at any point in a relationship, there's three

phases. There's harmony, disharmony, and repair. And Disney and Hallmark paint this

beautiful picture of we're in we shouldn't be in harmony all the time. So we're not there is

disharmony and there is repair. And we didn't learn about how to move through a pair

very well, or very quickly or very efficiently. So we're stuck in disharmony and is in

disrepair for a long time, instead of moving straight into repair as quickly as possible. So

we can get back to harmony and enjoy it and be in connection and feel the ease and feel

the peace and have the energy again, that's going to all the things we actually want to be

doing instead of being in disconnect.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 13:31

So beautiful, and so conscious. So it sounds like you're kind of slowing things down,

where instead of reacting from that feeling. You're feeling that and is this part of the

somatic work that you do, you're kind of you're feeling it and you're and you're paying

attention. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Eri Kardos 13:46

Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna be a little bit gross here, but I think it'd be. I'm a

mom, but I'll put it this I haven't been gross for a mom. So, it when it comes to emotions,

I feel like most of us haven't learned how to be with our emotions, and we view them as

the enemy. Right? It's like growing up, what were we told, you know, we fall down and we

get hurt what we told us like, stop crying, you're okay. Or look at this shiny thing over

here. We're there distracting ourselves or invalidating experience. Instead of viewing

emotions as messengers. There's a whole thing going on. We are feeling that in our

body, we've got that somatic experience happening. It's just the messenger trying to

come through and say I've got some wisdom here for you can't pause, feel it, allow it to

come through and then we can take all that wisdom and know what to do next. And so if

we don't pay attention to it, what are we going to it gets lost. And so what I see is that

people take two main approaches to their emotional hygiene. Number one, there's just

not a lot of great emotional hygiene. So there are two main approaches that I see one,

there's emotional constipation, where They're like, Oh, I'm feeling something, I'm just

gonna hold it all in there for as long as possible. And eventually we can't do that

eventually explodes all over everyone around us, and it really thinks, and then the other

the other path is emotional diarrhea, right? It's just like, I'm just gonna spew my

emotions all over and over everyone. And it stinks, where to put the emotional labor on

anyone else around us, instead of being with our emotions ourselves. To learn how to be

with our emotions in real time, and how to be with them on a regular basis, instead of

waiting until the crisis moment is such a huge piece of learning how to be in relationship

is first got to be real in relation with ourselves, right? We come back to here and say,

Okay, what's going on for me? And how can I own this experience, really be aware, tap

into those emotions. And then I can bring those golden nuggets to my partner, or to my

children, depending on their ages. But even from a young age, and we've got a six and a

seven year old right now. And with them, we're teaching them a skill that we wish we

had learned earlier. And it's just doing that emotion coaching, which is really a beautiful,

mostly three step process, if you boil it down from the Gottman Institute, and so the first

step is just to witness witness what just happened. So for them, if they're running, they

fall down, I'll say, Oh, you were running really fast, and you fell down, you scraped your

knee. The second step is to name the emotions. And when they were younger than five,

we help them name their emotions, but now they're older will say, you know, what were

you feeling? And then we say, Oh, I was feeling scared and sad. And I'm in pain and, and

then the third step is just to empathize. Like, oh, yeah, when I write and I fall down, I also

feel scared and sad and in pain. And sometimes I even feel really embarrassed and like,

oh, my gosh, did somebody see me. And I, like, I just want to bring into the fact that their

whole experience that they're going through is valid, and their emotions are valid. And

guess what, but when we finish that three step process, which usually takes about 30

seconds, they feel seen, they feel acknowledged, they feel heard, and they're often

writing again, and I get to do the same thing for myself. So something happens in my

partnership. And like, instead of jumping straight into them, I come to me, and I get to do

that for myself first and say, What witness first, what just happened? Oh, my husband's

energetic wall just went up. Something is is happening. He's shutting down, and I'm, and

I'm starting to create stories about it. And then I'm going to empathize. Oh, sorry, I'm

going to name my emotions, I'm feeling really not good enough. I'm feeling scared, I'm

feeling sad. I felt angry even and definitely like defensive. And then I'm going to

empathize with myself. We can empathize with ourselves, we've felt this way before, it

doesn't have to be the exact same time my husband didn't get in the way he wanted it.

You know, last week now, that never happened before. But instead, I can empathize with

that feeling of not good enough and defensive and scared. And we I've totally felt this

way before in my life. And it makes sense to me that I'm here now. Okay, that time I do

that process, like, oh, wow, I'm so much more present. I'm so much more calm, my body

has so much understanding what I need. And now I can go forward and create space, I

hear him or I can create space for making a request for what I need. And I have a way of

requesting that doesn't feel like a demand. So there's so much. There's so much more

joy and ease, it can come from the slowness of being with our bodies and with our

emotions.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 18:37

That's beautiful. I know that for me, I definitely struggle with even naming the emotion.

You know, it's kind of like, well, I guess I can feel sensation in my body if somebody asks

me,

Eri Kardos 18:48

But already, thank you.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 18:51

But sometimes, and that's taken me a long time. But then then there's that next step.

You know, like, gosh, I don't even know what this emotion is. Oftentimes it comes out as

Happy. Sad, right? It's like I don't I struggle with those nuances. Do you have any, any tips

to be able to kind of understand emotions better?

Eri Kardos 19:09

Yeah, I was just saying, there's a couple is a really good resource I'd recommend it's

called the language of emotions by McLaren, Karen. Carolyn McLaren. Last Name,

McLaren. Great book. But I would just say start with start with being really gentle on

yourself and be simple, like, not every but not everyone is really tuned in to their

emotions and the nuances, right? Like, some people see primary colors. And some

people are like, Oh, it's this salmon hue. You know. It's not how everyone experiences

life. So be gentle with yourself. Instead of thinking I should be able to experience or

know what my emotion is like. It's a muscle and we're going to start training it like when

you start to hear the baseline of music. If you've never really paid attention to the

baseline. It's like I'm going to pick it up. Oh, wow. There's so much nuance in there. Okay.

Cool. So for emotions, it's like great, you have happy and sad. Perfect. Now flexing that

more if I'm paying attention to every damn thing just a little bit time noticing. How does

it feel? Right? And then we can get into the primary motions which are usually named as

mad, sad, glad fear, shame and love. And maybe grief, Omarosa seven. Mad, sad, glad,

fear, shame, love and grief. So can you get to one of those? Can you be like, oh, yeah,

this doesn't feel like grief. Does that okay? Maybe it's closer to mad, okay. All right, is

starting to figure out like what is their as a that's just a really good starting point. And

once you start flexing those, then the the next level would be, can you start controlling

your emotions and by controlling I mean, practicing them, we're going to start practicing

and lifting the weights of feeling what you want to feel. Because most people view

emotions of they just happened to me. I was just like, boom, I'm gonna get hit by

something. I am reacting to life, and I'm gonna feel something that I probably don't want

to feel. Or I'll just feel something like, if I see a perfect sunset, I will feel happy, right? But

our emotions are something we can practice. So in the morning, here's your invitation. In

the morning, when you first wake up tomorrow, I want you to try before you get out of

bed or start running through whatever their practices are, just try thinking about how do

I want to feel today. And then bring tread, bring those emotions and try to feel it in your

body. You've felt happy before, you've felt proud before you felt successful before, like,

choose any emotion that you want. And see if you can bring that emotion and you can

hold it for 30 seconds. If you get to eight seconds, your first time, you're totally

successful. To get the two seconds you're totally successful. Just try it. But if you can

withstand that time, you can start practicing with muscle more and more and more so

you can feel happy for longer, you can feel at peace for longer, you can feel energized for

longer, instead of feeling like you're in a sailboat in the wind being tossed around. Now

you have so much more experience here.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 22:12

That's so good. Like so many things. Right? We have to practice them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

that's good. So what's the so? So what's the next step? So people are struggling in their

relationships? And they want to and there's a number of tools that you've talked about

here? So I guess well, I guess my question is, how do you work with people right now?

Eri Kardos 22:37

Hmm, yeah. So my passion is really to go deep with with folks, I've run a couple of

programs in the past. And right now I'm taking a break from the group programs. I just

love doing one on one work. So I work primarily with couples, and sometimes with

single individuals. And I take them on a journey that I call either in love. And this is really

about letting people know it's not their fault that they don't know how to love and be in

relationship in a healthy way. You know that we were just given some crappy tools to

begin with, and saying, Okay, well, let's just learn from the foundation, like how do we?

How do we deal with our emotions? How do we be with our partner and their emotions?

How do we deal with our trauma and these stories, and and then what happens when

there's conflict? What happens when we're triggered, and there's something that doesn't

feel good? Instead of going into our old patterns, which have gotten us where we are

now, which is probably not the place we'd love to be? Then what if we learn a whole new

practice? And so for me, it's taking people on these journeys. And usually I work with

couples for about four months at a time. And my I always say, like, my hope is that you

will not need me ever again, like you will have the tools you need. And if you and you

know how to navigate any of these situations, because so many of them are a different

looking situation. But the same core issues, right. And so we know how to deal with the

core issues, we know how to listen, we know how to be with each other, then you could

navigate anything. And then it and I have a lot of clients who just you know, they want to

keep going deeper and I've had a big I'm celebrating my seven year anniversary with one

set of clients this year in my fourth year with another it's just like and they're becoming

coaches now. And it's more there's always more to go but I love setting people off and

after three or four months together and really in love

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 24:27

and where can people find you? What's your website?

Eri Kardos 24:31

Oh, yeah: www.relearnlove.com

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 24:33

And we'll drop that below. And are you on any social media channels? All of them okay,

not not tick tock. Yeah, I haven't gotten there yet.

Eri Kardos 24:43

We want to be on there.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 24:45

We do. We need some TikToks from you guys with barley in the background so we can

see it amazing.

Eri Kardos 24:53

You can find me on Instagram @coacherikardos. And then I'm also on Facebook and I've

got a private Facebook group that is open for anybody to join, and there's a ton of

different resources in there and links to wonderful podcasts and free resources, though.

I've got lots of lots out there, just contact me if you if you have questions, or you want to

go deeper, and you can't find what you're looking for easily. Hopefully it's all very

findable, but otherwise: www.relearnlove.com. And I'm right there.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 25:21

Awesome. And then you have a free gift for our audience. Can you tell us about it?

Eri Kardos 25:25

Yeah, I do. So one of the biggest questions I get over and over again, is how do we Okay,

but how do we handle conflict? And that's, you know, there's certain things that happen

for each individual that are made things nuanced. But really, it's the same pattern for

most of us. So I created a seven part video series on how to navigate conflict. It's a lot

of it, a lot of thinking from my best selling book, which is chapter five is all about

navigating conflict. But this is like a step by step video and you couldn't do it one, one

section at a time, have one piece by day, and one piece every day, if you want for a week

and be totally through it and have so many amazing tools in your pocket that you'll be

ready to handle conflicts in a whole new way that won't even have you stuck in that in

that tension and that dis ease for so long.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 26:13

Awesome. That sounds super valuable. I encourage everybody to go check that out. Get

those tools. Eri, thank you so much for joining me here today. I so appreciate you

coming on.

Eri Kardos 26:24

It's such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you again.