"The Silent Strain: How Fear Fuels Tension"

Bryan: 0:01

Have you ever wondered why you do the things that you do, why the decisions that you make, the actions that you have, the way you respond to your family, the way you respond to your husband or to your wife? Do you ever wonder why you do those things? Sometimes our decisions are so driven by fear Fear of change, fear of the unknown. Fear, fear, fear. That's what we oftentimes are making decisions and living our lives based out is fear. We want to touch on that for the next little while and we're going to give some practical solutions about what it means to deal with fear in the relationship.

Natalie: 0:57

Welcome to another episode of Amplified Marriage. I'm Natalie.

Bryan: 1:00

And I'm Bryan.

Natalie: 1:01

I'm going to say this every podcast. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, gravity, grab a coffee, grab a seat on the couch, warm, cozy blanket. We're so glad you joined us for our chat today.

Bryan: 1:12

Absolutely. If you missed it, which has been a little bit a while ago we actually were uh, want you to go back and take a listen to our last one, which is talking about the physical effects that tension has on the body and tension in marriage and how just holding that stress is a constant issue in the body. We laid out all kinds of things. So, if you missed it, go back, listen to the one about tension and, uh, if you have any comments or anything you want to add to it or say or just challenge us on, please email us and we'd love to hear from you. What are we talking about today?

Natalie: 1:44

Today we're talking about sort of what causes the tension. So I think we started backwards in the last podcast where we kind of went through um the physical manifestations and some of the things that you might be feeling as a result of tension in your body. So now we're going to break down, uh, in this series that we're bringing forth now, what are some of the reasons? Some of the um, big ticket items, I guess you could say that contribute to that tension that you might be feeling right in your marriage and relationship.

Bryan: 2:19

Absolutely Even what I said in the opening. I just I think back to when we were early married, just how everything was based around financial fear. Like we had no money. Um, how are we going to pay for rent? How are we going to pay for food? How are we going to pay for gas? Um, then we started having kids. How are we going to pay for diapers? How are we going to?

Natalie: 2:39

and so fears didn't go away because, we're 22 years married in and we're still fear still tries to grip us in the area of finances, in the area of job security. Um, what was the other one that you had mentioned?

Bryan: 2:57

Dipers children.

Natalie: 2:59

Well, and children? Right now, our children are getting older, so then there's, you know, vehicles, and there's post-secondary education. So I don't think the fear ever goes away, in my opinion, I think we just learn ways to cope.

Bryan: 3:13

So probably doesn't take over, right.

Natalie: 3:16

So I wouldn't say that. You know. You know, fear the unknown. You know we've been in our current city for nine years. There definitely was a fear of the unknown when we moved north, down south here.

Bryan: 3:28

So well, and moving from an extremely cheap city versus an expensive one. Oh yeah, so like this isn't just something that is like oh, in the beginning of the relationship, no, no, this is something that we battle constantly constantly for it not to take over and influence every decision, like and for us to be emotional about how we're going to make a decision about our kids, and whether it's finances or what's happening next with the kids or their school, or what's happening at church, there's always options for us having experiencing some kind of fear. Right, and so, even as we are we, this is what our attention is. We have what we think is going to be a four part possibly longer series on just dealing with fear and relationships, and as we had started researching this, we realized that some of these topics are big and they're going to require a bit more, a bit more detail, a bit more digging into and even as we were reading, like studying on this, you know, like you know, we went through the laundry list of things that are fear and some of the traumas and some of the like. We've experienced this one. We've experienced this one. This is one that we've we're struggling with now. This is and you're just going through this and you're like man, how and and just. We want to offer solutions and practical tips of how we're going to, how to get away from that and some misconceptions about fear that we want to deal with. On the very, very last episode.

Natalie: 4:54

That's right. And also these are things that you know, I think we can all relate to. As we break this down in the podcast to come and tonight, we've all experienced Some. We might not be currently experiencing or you might find yourself in all of them, but the goal is not, you know, to appear like, oh, you know, we don't ever start with any of this. We hundred percent I I'll speak for myself I 100% have struggled with all of these that will be Covering and some more often creep up. Yeah and so our hope is that, by bringing it to the light, by bringing it to the surface, where we're not hiding behind shame and guilt, yeah, yeah and regret. Let's just face our fear head-on and deal with it right, and hopefully this will spark a conversation or or Kind of a self-introspective look on like hey, I actually fit in this category right. And I'm not alone. I think that's the greatest thing to know is that you're not alone in feeling a fear of the unknown.

Bryan: 6:14

Yeah and yeah, absolutely, and Just understanding that us going into this fear this next series actually is so deeply related to tension in marriage.

Natalie: 6:26

Oh, these will cause all sorts of opportunities to be tense in your marriage and like and and you know we went through last time what happens physically physically in your body when you don't Deal with attention and you don't deal with conflict in a healthy way, how it builds up. So Go back and listen to that one, if you've missed it. Today we're talking about fear of the unknown in regards to what does that produce Within us? And so we I feel like we talk about this almost every podcast anxiety and stress, anxiety and stress, and it's so Prevalent. I think a lot of people Struggle in this area, with anxiety and stress over their mental health. Absolutely and specifically the area we want to focus on tonight is all the what-ifs.

Bryan: 7:23

Natalie is the what-if queen. Way less, way less now Then you ever were, but I just remember there is way less, or I just talk about it less.

Natalie: 7:35

I feel like it's not way less.

Bryan: 7:37

No, no, no no, you're not wrong, because your personality is okay. Here's, here's the thing. If you're an enneagram follower, she's a six and that just means the loyalist. But what that also means is that if she walks into a restaurant and has a dinner for the very first time at a new restaurant, she has already planned out her exit if something was to happen. She's planned out my exit. If something was to happen, she plans out what would happen if the food was bad. She's planned out, if the food was good, what she would say. She would plan out if there was a dirty fork. Every aspect of that night or Endeavour has already been played out in her mind. All the worst-case scenarios and we went to Disney with the family, she thought about. Every worst-case scenario is up to hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, gang violence well, let's be real here.

Natalie: 8:25

I already know there was no tornadoes where we were going.

Bryan: 8:28

Yeah, but it already looked it up. I like how you say that like that actually stops you about worrying about these things.

Natalie: 8:33

But here's the thing I was just saying this to Brian before we sat down of, like, all the worst case scenarios, all the what ifs, all the scenarios in our relationship that I've not conjured up because they were actually really.

Bryan: 8:46

they were real scenarios to somebody out there, not to us, not even to me, not even to the situation at hand.

Natalie: 8:53

sometimes, but in my mind, and maybe you can relate, playing the what if? Game, what if you just up and leave me? You abandon us, right? Well, I know, when I read one time blah, blah, blah, not realizing the absolute turmoil, I was turmoil turmoil.

Bryan: 9:15

I don't know what turmoil is turmoil?

Natalie: 9:18

all the scenarios, all the stress, all the anxiety, all the tension.

Bryan: 9:24

I was putting upon myself in an unrealistic situation, not when you had given me no reason to fear that cave, then then would you also agree that in that situation you're also putting undue stress on me, 100%, like, just like adding this fact that somehow you think I do remember when we went to the it was a Shaw Center or the Rogers Center in Edmonton we were at a conference, a church conference, and we had gone there and Natalie was on. We were pregnant. How many months pregnant? Like seven or eight months?

Natalie: 9:55

pregnant. I would say this is in February.

Bryan: 9:59

I like how you did. Okay, that was girl math right there, so you were six, or with our first baby, with our first baby and we've talked about all the cray cray. I was yeah, okay, well, the cray cray really didn't. It wasn't that bad up until this one time where we went to this, this place, and my workshop was on the exact no, no, it was in the same building but it was across the far side of where we were opposite to each other. She went to see a famous singer.

Natalie: 10:27

I would say Carolyn Arren. She did a songwriting workshop and it was brilliant, okay.

Bryan: 10:31

and I went to see some guy teach me how to play guitar and while we were there we made. She said to me you don't leave me. I'm like, well, I'm not going to leave you. She said it as we're driving in. She said it as we're going downstairs. She said it when we were standing there and so we had, like B sectioned this big pole, that this is where our muster point was at the end of everything. We were going to meet here with our group and I was, but she was convinced that hold, she left her workshop early to see if I had gotten to the muster point early. I'm like no, I hadn't left yet because mine wasn't finished. Then mine went long by, only like 10 minutes, but it was like a five minute walk to this thing and by that time I found her crying next to B poster, b area, crying sitting on a bench. No one, everyone else is still in their workshops because theirs went long too. And she's crying by herself on this thing, convinced that I had left her. And this, I'm like I, and that's the thing is that you had created a situation in your mind that was not real. That's right and and convinced yourself that this is going to happen. But it was in your family, that was something that had actually happened to your sister, and so there was a part of you that was like, well, he's going to do this to me too, even though we had a healthy relationship ish.

Natalie: 11:50

Yeah, it was nothing, nothing at all like that situation. But it's funny how, when you find yourself like triggers right, and being pregnant was a huge trigger for me but not realizing, and some some of you might be like, oh, it was just pregnancy hormones, no, no, no, I'm sure that played a part into it, but I would not say that that was the only soul contributing factor. I wish listeners that we could say to you that it was that it was pregnancy hormones is not not in my case, maybe for you, but the amount of energy that that took in a scenario that wasn't real and and I had no there was no landing point for me to distrust that you would actually show up because you had always showed up, so I had not even a scenario to hold over your head. And even even if I was late, I still showed up you still showed up right and very rarely were you late, because you value being on time, so there was no reason for me to distrust your word.

Bryan: 13:02

Well, let's go back to the you value. You know why I valued being on time? Because I valued being on, because I married you.

Natalie: 13:08

Right. So um the all that to say the emotional. I mean, I had a headache after I was mentally exhausted, I was emotionally exhausted, in a situation that wasn't even done to me, but one I had. I had gone through the mind of he's not here. So all of my worst fears have come too past now, and then can you imagine the trauma, the trauma I created for myself when he showed up.

Bryan: 13:39

Yeah right, I thought you left me. I'm like I had to go to the bathroom.

Natalie: 13:44

Exactly.

Bryan: 13:45

Right, and here's the thing, is that the what is that you created early on in the relationship, it caused tension.

Natalie: 13:51

It caused fights, undue fights for nothing.

Bryan: 13:53

Well, at that end I I at the beginning, we said, well, maybe you're not, you're way better than you were, Right Like now we have 22 years of me just showing up, and so there's a part of you has like all right. And you've also grown and matured and we've grown together in this and this is quite the same issue. But the what ifs for quite a few years and early years probably six or seven or eight years of relationship were crippling sometimes, that's right.

Natalie: 14:18

And here I just want to say that when you showed up it wasn't like I can't believe you're crying. I told you I was, I was coming sometime.

Bryan: 14:26

No, no, no, no, like. Let's be honest, but half the time I bet you was like this are you kidding me, like you know that I'm going to show up and it in my response. Unfortunately, sometimes it was triggered by how, how hard you would come at me with where were you? Why were you late? I can't believe you didn't tell me that's right Right. And and just coming, coming on, glued sometimes and that didn't happen all the time but I would get upset and frustrated, I mean, like I've never given you any reason to think I'm going to leave you. No, and so 50,. I know I appreciate you trying to give me props. It will 50% of the time I'm not responding super healthy like either.

Natalie: 15:03

No, but you have also you um what's the word?

Bryan: 15:10

I don't know what you're trying to say, so I think, validated how I was feeling in the moment.

Natalie: 15:14

Oh yeah Is what I meant to say. Like you didn't just diss like squash.

Bryan: 15:20

That doesn't sound like me at all.

Natalie: 15:22

My fears in the, in the moment, right, Right afterwards, when I could rationalize maybe laugh a little logically come to a healthy conclusion of of working through that. Um then it was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe that I responded like that or that I was that way far down that path. But here's the thing. You know, one of the things we'll be talking about down the road here is self sabotage, and how many times can our what ifs that we play out in our minds actually lead to a physical ramification of pushing your spouse, pushing your partner away to a point where it's like you have already categorized me as leaving you and eventually you get fed up with you. I'm not speaking like you personally, but hypothetically the person gets fed up of always being the bad guy in a situation that they were not the bad guy to begin with. Does that make sense?

Bryan: 16:24

Right.

Natalie: 16:25

And you create an actual distance between you and your partner and you and your spouse.

Bryan: 16:30

Yeah, which just creates more and more distortion Right. Which then?

Natalie: 16:33

eventually, you know Cal's surprise he may walk away.

Bryan: 16:38

Right.

Natalie: 16:39

Does that make sense?

Bryan: 16:40

Absolutely, because there's only so a precursor. Well, that and like. Sometimes people may just take, take and take the abuse. Like I think that once we got, once we got a little bit healthier, we just kind of we become a bit more brutally honest over the years, Just like that hurt my feelings. I don't like what you said, Um and not hold back, but that's also personality thing, Partially because you had to learn to adapt to my personality. Because I hate Um you're a straight shooter. Yeah and but. But I don't like is you know that thing? You see, you see all the time in like romantic comedies. Well, if you don't know what's wrong with me, I'm not going to tell you. Oh, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, but that's what people actually do.

Natalie: 17:30

Yeah.

Bryan: 17:30

And for the longest time. That's what you did. The what if? Scenario would happen and that's how you responded, and nothing enraged me more Like I. I even with my kids, with my staff at the church. You know that if you dance around the issue and I find out before you tell me I'm going to be some upset, yep, and I need you to be straight with me, like and when, even like, even when it comes to my feedback. Just be a straight shooter with me. So what you did a lot of the times was you would dance around it instead of just saying, hey, this is what's going on and expected me to know, based on a feeling or the way you gave me your cold shoulder shoulder or how you responded to a situation. I'm not one to roll over and just take it, but there will be people, men and women, that will just constantly let that pile up on each other and, instead of dealing with it, they end up having that. That what we call like. Our pastor says this all the time. Now it's like my. One of my favorite things when I'm preaching is to say um, distance creates distortion, and the way you create distance is by letting things pile up on each other, compound on each other and hypothetical situations what? ifs that aren't even real to your current situation. It's like you see in the movies or you see on memes all the time. Right now, we should do a whole um like video episode, combating all those stupid relationship videos that you see on online all the time. But the one that that's all the uh you see all the time right now is is that exact one. If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you and how the woman responds, and you're not a mind reader.

Natalie: 19:00

And how can you be a mind reader to hypothetical pretend situations I've made up in my head?

Bryan: 19:04

or the other meme that you see that this one's kind of funny is is all the time is when, uh, the wife is upset at the husband because he did something stupid. Instead of coming with me, you went to play poker with your buddies and your buddies happened to be dogs or whatever it was, and she's actually upset with you about something you did in the dream.

Natalie: 19:23

Oh, oh, that's a whole lot, a whole nother thing. Those are real funny and that I attribute to a pregnancy.

Bryan: 19:31

That that was not a real experience at all, folks.

Natalie: 19:34

Not only stress and anxiety in the, in the way that we think of stress and anxiety, but this is a whole different spin, a whole different maybe not spin cause it's. It's legit.

Bryan: 19:44

Yeah.

Natalie: 19:45

A whole different perspective on creating unnecessary stress and anxiety due to playing these what if? Scenarios.

Bryan: 19:53

Well, and what I? There's a quote out there. I wish I could remember what it was. But worry kills you before it kills the other. Ooh, I don't think that's the actual quote. That's just what I said right now.

Natalie: 20:03

Well worry, yeah, that's right.

Bryan: 20:05

Worry kills you before it will kill the other, because I I know you're worried, but that's like a worry enough for everybody but that worry doesn't like I'm I get. This is the thing. There's not one person on the planet. There's probably one person on the planet that nothing will bother.

Natalie: 20:21

Right.

Bryan: 20:22

I am not bothered by a lot of things, but I'm that doesn't mean how to say this. I'm not bothered by a lot. Well it will. I will lose sleep over it. You know what I mean. Like, I can handle a lot. My shoulders are big. I can take, I can take a beating, I can take a lashing I can take. I can take a lot. That doesn't mean like and and not. A lot bothers me, but that doesn't mean sometimes I'm not carrying the weight of those things.

Natalie: 20:46

That's right, you just, you just process it differently. Yeah, I just yeah, I process it by replaying it over and over and, over and over and over, and, in certain yeah, in certain scenarios, with certain people, I will do the same thing. And it's, it's awful. But here's, like um the, the precursor to the next one. We want to talk about all these what if? Situations. So we talk about, like I'm creating these escape plans, I'm creating these um fake scenarios and having a way, should there be an emergency, of how I'm going to self preserve the life of myself. You, my children, my friends, whoever I'm with, stems from a feeling of loss of control, which is the second one.

Bryan: 21:31

How often just be told just as have you felt in control and in.

Natalie: 21:36

In my life.

Bryan: 21:39

Well, in plans that we've made together, Was it? There's a military saying said plans are plans Don't survive contact with the enemy. Literally.

Natalie: 21:50

Am I the enemy? No, you're not.

Bryan: 21:51

No, you're not. Well, depends on the day, it depends on the what if scenario. No, I mean, like this is the thing. We've made all kinds of plans we're going to. We're going to plan this, we're going to save money. We're going to in three years, this is what we want to do.

Natalie: 22:07

And it's never.

Bryan: 22:08

I shouldn't say never because I don't want to quantify but I would say 75% of the time the plan adjusted and changed from what we originally thought it was going to be.

Natalie: 22:15

And it's so maddening.

Bryan: 22:18

And here's the here's the difference between you and I is that I adapt really quickly to change and I do not.

Natalie: 22:24

And I know that about myself.

Bryan: 22:25

You do not. In fact, sometimes I'm dragging her over to the side of change, quick kicking and screaming with vehemence and violence and she just is like I do not want to change. And she's so routine, based like bed, at the same time, same routine when she goes to bed.

Natalie: 22:44

You know who I'm like. If any of you have seen bugs, you've seen bugs life, the part of bugs life where all the ants are going in a row and a leaf falls and the leaf goes and falls between, oh, the two ants where they were in their chain. One section continues going and the other section is in a sheer panic because there's a leaf blocking their way. We don't know what to do, we don't know where to go, and then, and then there's this whole big thing about just go around. That is me, that is me.

Bryan: 23:16

That is the most apt description of how it is for you.

Natalie: 23:20

Um, and I'm a creature of habit, and I'll be the first to say that that is to my betterment, but also to my demise because there comes a sense of feeling, uh, a loss of of control in the situation. Honestly, the only thing I can control is myself.

Bryan: 23:35

Yeah, and you can only control your response to that loss of control.

Natalie: 23:38

Should I react? I'm in control of that. What I choose to say, what my thoughts are, those are the things that I can actually control. But if fear is steering the ship, um, it's, it's going to. It's not going to lead to a feeling of stability right. And in in our marriage it has led to okay, well, if I've got everything planned out right Emergency plans, emergency procedures um, feeling a loss control means that we're steering in uncharted waters, um into like a big fog. If you're a visual person and you cannot see if you're going north, south, east or west, where's the path back, where's our, our? Um like landmarks that we can fixate on. Okay, this is the way we get back. Feeling of of loss of control is that very thing. There's no sure way.

Bryan: 24:38

You know that you just stole my analogy without me you knowing I was going to use it. I did yes. Well, come on. The analogy I was going to use about fear is is that, um, when you begin to experience fears, when you leave the harbor, where the harbor is calm and relaxed and it's familiar, and there's peace there and you're about to go? out onto the and secure and you're going to. Yeah, you're tied to the dock. You know nothing's going to happen to you here. You know that your boat doesn't have any holes because it's sitting in the water Right. And then you get into the boat and you go out to the sea and you don't know what's out there. You can't see northeast, west or south and you just are like and you can see oh, there's dark clouds over here. What's coming my way?

Natalie: 25:21

That's right. We just went on a cruise last year, was it last year? This year I?

Bryan: 25:26

don't know.

Natalie: 25:27

In the spring it was this year, okay. So we went on a cruise in that whole same thing. I do well in water where I can see the bottom. I do not do well in water where I can't see the bottom. Cause again, remember, I have a vivid imagination. I want everyone there are 37 great white sharks clearly swimming right below where I'm swimming.

Bryan: 25:46

Yeah, obviously.

Natalie: 25:47

I want everyone to understand that water.

Bryan: 25:50

She can't see the bottom of is almost every place that we ever swim at in in Canada. Wherever we see, you can't see the bottom, so you fear all of those places.

Natalie: 26:01

All of the things. I fear some great suction. I fear a giant fish swallowing me like there is.

Bryan: 26:07

Cause the seaweed is live, it's going to wrap under your right and I'm in.

Natalie: 26:10

I've seen Jaws. Come on now.

Bryan: 26:14

You know Jaws was fake, right.

Natalie: 26:16

Well, the movie was fake, but the, the actual shark is very real. We're side barring. We're side barring, okay.

Bryan: 26:24

Back, back on top.

Natalie: 26:25

Talking about unchartered waters. You are at the mercy of the captain of that ship.

Bryan: 26:31

Right.

Natalie: 26:33

And in our relationship, the captain of our ship is Jesus, and so, when we are in a state of losing control, we have a choice we're either going to to set anchor in in the Lord, or we're going to flounder in the unknown. And and we've we've been in in both situations and let me tell you that the the situation where you're trying and I'm trying to do it on my own and I'm trying to be so calculated, and all of that Um, you don't prepare for, or you think you prepare for. All of the um, the anomalies, all of the little things that could be like wrenches in the spokes, so to speak. You can't ever fully prepare for any of them. No, you can't, right, because creating a hypothetical situation and then being faced with the actual reality of that situation, are vastly different, absolutely.

Bryan: 27:28

I think that what we want to do with the ultimate end of this is actually provide some um, like name, name, some fears. You know like it's like when you see, when you name something, you take away the power of it.

Natalie: 27:41

Remember when we were talking about?

Bryan: 27:43

uh, we, we had read a book by Chris Voss and he's a FBI negotiator and he said, when he goes in negotiations, um, with someone and I use this with Natalie sometimes, as she'll come in and she looks agitated and be like hey, you look like you're a bit agitated right now and it just gives some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some. Lot of that gives the name to something and like permission for that to be dealt.

Natalie: 28:04

Dit marinag na peide stabila vorela and well, and for me to acknowledge you're right I am agitated right, or hey, I'm really mad right now.

Bryan: 28:10

I'm just feeling sad or whatever it is, and so we want to name these fears, talk our way through them, give you some accounts of the things that we've actually struggled with in our own life and Just kind of walk through them with you and just Provide an Understanding that you're not alone, that it's not just you, that well, we're here to help, we're here to pray. We want to give you some more tools, for the toolkit to see you have the most success that you possibly can have in your relationship. So we just want to say thank you for listening. If you do happen to like our podcast, which I know that you do, it Does mean a lot to us when you share it and let people know about amplified marriage. You can follow us on Instagram and on Facebook and again, we say this all the time and we do get some questions and we're actually looking at a new segment as part of the show moving forward. But you have a topic or question. That's the gonna be the new thing. You send us a question. We're gonna actually read it online. If you want your name read, please do, and we will do that for you. If not, we'll keep it anonymous, but if you have a topic or a question or anything you want to ask us or even just challenge us on, please email us. An amplified marriage. I'd email calm and, as you have heard us say many times before, we believe that your marriage can be reset, refreshed be charged and restored.

Natalie: 29:21

Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon, you, you.