Why We Push People Away | Dr. Laura Dabney

Laura Dabney: [00:00:00] You can make changes and you can make yourself healthy. You can go to the gym, you can eat well and everything. But if you don’t have a partner by your side, it’s just it’s just much less enjoyable. And again, the studies show that it’s not really as healthy for you.

Peter Bowes: [00:00:22] Hello again. Welcome to the Live Long Podcast. I’m Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the art and science of living long and well.

Laura Dabney: [00:00:31] When I say intimate relationships in our world, intimate relationships mean close relationships with adult children and friends, other relatives. Perhaps it can. It can have or not have physical intimacy. But that intimacy is nourishing. I really believe, to our bodies, our souls, however you want to put that. And that nourishment can lead to new adventures, new ideas, new ways of learning things. It inspires people to create, to enjoy, to travel, to accept other cultures and other people.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:08] Now, how long we live matters. So does the quality of life that we share with other people. Our relationships can be a source of comfort and connection, but they can also leave us confused and exhausted when that connection is no longer strong. Doctor Laura Dabney is a psychiatrist based in Virginia Beach. In her book, I Need You Now Go Away, she explores the nature of difficult relationships. Why do we sometimes push away the very people we want to be close to? Laura, welcome to Live Long.

Laura Dabney: [00:01:44] Thank you so much for having me.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:47] And this is, at least to my understanding of it, quite a complicated area. And with that in mind, I’ll just mention the full title of your book to illustrate that point. Here’s the book I need you now. Go away. Reclaiming your life when you or someone you love has a personality disorder. So I’m curious. Right at the top. What do you mean by personality disorder?

Laura Dabney: [00:02:12] Well, people there are people who have consistent, unconscious emotional patterns that impact their relationships in a negative way. And because they’re unconscious, they’re unaware of them and they’re unaware of them. And it’s a way for them to handle a discomfort. There’s actually people who want closeness, but they get uncomfortable, overwhelmed when they get it. So they enter this push pull pattern. And how they do that push pull are the different types of personality disorders. So we know about the drama. They do it with drama. That’s borderline. If they do it with haughtiness, it’s narcissist.

Peter Bowes: [00:02:52] And the ‘you’ in the title of the book, that could be your partner, your spouse, your child, your parent, or a long standing friend. It pretty much applies to everyone that we have close relations with.

Laura Dabney: [00:03:07] Exactly. So I was very important for me in the book to point out that you can have this problem, but a lot of people recognize it in the other person before they recognize it in themselves. And so in the book, I want to state and help people who either recognize these patterns in themselves or in someone that they love.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:28] Exactly. And in fact, I was going to ask you, therefore, do we all have to some extent, personality disorders?

Laura Dabney: [00:03:34] No, we all have personalities and we all have traits that are probably in this book or in personality disorders. And sometimes we have them temporarily. Sometimes we just have a few of them. But in order for it to be a personality disorder, it has to be a persistent and consistent push pull. I want it’s just like the title I … People don’t come into me and say, I’ve got a problem with my emotions. I’ve got a conflict with my emotions and it’s causing relationship problems. They say, I want this closeness. I want a long standing, intimate relationship. But something keeps happening. Either I I’m causing a problem and keeps sabotaging it or my part. The partners I pick keep sabotaging it. And it’s that persistence in the relationship problem that makes it a disorder.

Peter Bowes: [00:04:25] So before we dive a little deeper into that, let’s just backtrack a little bit. You’ve been a psychotherapist for some 25 years. This is an issue that you have been dealing with for a long time. But what prompted you to write the book? Why did you want to put down onto paper some of the issues that clearly in your practice, you have experience and you’ve been dealing with every day?

Laura Dabney: [00:04:45] Well, mostly to address the pejorative messages and labels that have been put on these people out out there. And I was a little distraught to hear that and then have all kinds of people repeating that, because saying that they can’t be helped and saying that they’re hopeless or that they’re terrible people is so inaccurate. It became a it used to be something we could just say that somebody has. We could say, well, I think you have a personality disorder, and here’s what we can do to help you with that. But I could no longer say that in my practice because people would get offended. They’d sometimes would walk out, they wouldn’t come back because it became so linked with something so terrible. So I wanted to set the record straight, essentially, that these people are not terrible people. They are dealing with a problem in the best way they know how.

Peter Bowes: [00:05:41] Right. And when you say people, are you dealing mostly with men or women, or do we as men and women equally need perhaps some assistance in this respect?

Laura Dabney: [00:05:52] Men and women have this equally have personality disorders. Equally, there is a some studies out there that are some studies out there that state that more women have borderline more men have narcissism. You know, I don’t know how really accurate that is, but in general, women and men have personality disorders. I deal mostly with men because of this is I’m aging myself now. I put an ad in the paper beginning of my practice saying I was dedicated to patient privacy, that I didn’t have even a receptionist. It was just me and my answering machine initially. And so all these super successful men who were so embarrassed by the fact that they could excel at everything but an intimate relationship came some parked down the street and walked. They wouldn’t even they’re so embarrassed to need help with this. And so I, most of my practice became these very successful men who wanted to figure out how to get that success at home.

Peter Bowes: [00:06:54] And that is because those men that you’ve dealt with privacy is ultimately hugely important to them. But perhaps it’s more than that. Is there an embarrassment factor that they need to talk to someone about this?

Laura Dabney: [00:07:06] This is a terrible embarrassment. These men in general have had such underprivileged backgrounds. These aren’t the people that came out of wealthy families and then became wealthy. These people worked through high school, sometimes putting their siblings through school, often having one parent not at home, and they’ve overcome everything and thought they had the answer to everything. But what works at what works in financial success and work? Success isn’t the same thing that we use to get personal success in a relationship.

Peter Bowes: [00:07:40] And these are issues men and women that ultimately bring or potentially bring a considerable amount of unhappiness to their lives. And just going back to my introduction, we talk on this podcast about living long, healthy lives. But if great swathes of that life are unhappy that it does pose the question is there any point in living a long life? The goal is to live a long, healthy and happy life for as long as we can, especially those key years, those mid-life years when it seems as if those are these are the kinds of problems that are affecting people.

Laura Dabney: [00:08:20] Exactly, exactly. There’s that Harvard study that has been following men and women since 1938, and they found exclusively that the men and women who had the happiest, healthiest relationships lived the longest, happiest lives. And that’s been proven in all other kinds of studies as well.

Peter Bowes: [00:08:45] Exactly. And so that’s one of the reasons that one of the big reasons I wanted to talk to you and this book caught my eye. I also asked about men and women because is it the case that hormonal issues play a big part in this, in terms of our dealing with other people.

Laura Dabney: [00:09:01] Hormones and their impact on women and men has been a big topic lately. I am very good friends with Jed Diamond who wrote, the book Menopause. And how about men have hormones as well and how that impacts their lives. But most women get that, that label as well. But yes, there have been a big impact on their moods and that of course, our moods, emotions and relations are intertwined. So, so, so yes, if their emotional emotions are having a problem, then the relationship is having a problem. But the personality disorders are a little different. They are based on unconscious conflicts about certain emotions. And they get these ideas about these emotions of conflict with emotions throughout their childhood, and they just. That’s why it’s unconscious. They don’t even realize they’ve developed this, these conflicts and they just bring them into their adult relationships. The best example I have is with that is anger. Many, many people feel extremely guilty about being angry, enraged at their loved ones. They don’t realize love and anger come together. It’s like when two different sides of one coin and they tried to bury it, and it’s the burying it that causes all the relationship problems.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:30] And that, I think goes to the heart of what this is about this book. And I’ll repeat the title, I need you now. Go away. So I was wondering if you could give me some more examples of that kind of dynamic where you need that person who is close to you, whether it’s your spouse or whether it’s your child and a parent – children relationships change over the years to the point that you’re saying to that person, go away, I don’t need you. So just give me a couple of examples of the kind of dynamic that you’re referring to here.

Laura Dabney: [00:11:04] Yes. So let’s take the anger. So you have a conflict with anger. In our practice, we call them the enemy emotions, anger, sadness, neediness are the three most commonly conflicted emotions that people have. And so if you have a conflict with anger and you want to be in a close relationship, or you are in a close relationship, and you can’t tell that person you’re angry because you feel so guilty about it. You, for example, would bury it and just pretend you’re not. But then maybe be passive aggressive, you know, then you start maybe being staying at work a little longer or you sabotage whatever it is you’re angry about. Maybe your partner wanted to buy something. You weren’t. You were opposed, but couldn’t say it and somehow sabotaged that. So you’re you’re you’re with somebody. But to stay close to somebody, you have to be able to state your emotions, even if it causes discomfort or tension, because that is the verbal intimacy. You’re opening up and saying, I’m on a different page. I have a negative emotion about this. I need you to know. And then that person knows that about you. And if they’re on a different page, the idea is to talk it through to your, you know, find some common ground. And then that is a very good feeling that people miss when they can’t be, when they can’t reveal all the feelings that they have.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:39] What about a scenario where the I need you situation is genuinely changing? So parents and younger children that grow up and move home and move from home and go to college. Or indeed your relationship with your elder parents is that I need you is oftentimes a very practical sort of I need you. Yes, there’s an emotional element to. But it genuinely changes as the individuals change. Is there a difficulty in acknowledging that from both parties?

Laura Dabney: [00:13:12] Oh, well, definitely from the parents. It’s very hard for parents to feel less needed by the children. But you’re absolutely right. It’s a very good point. The children’s needs don’t disappear, but they change. They go from needing guidance to be told what to do, how to do things. The more what we call invasive guidance to support for their ideas, you know, more of a, you’re more of … in the background type of support, maybe just an ear to listen, but no longer to tell them how or when to do something. And it’s easy if you’re a parent. I’m a parent. It’s very there’s a lot of grief involved with that being pushed away. I don’t need you as much. And we have to go through that grief in order to reconnect with them more as adult to adult relationship. Otherwise, if we keep trying to invade them with that earlier childhood type of neediness, then you’ll lose them, then it’s not going to want that and going to pull away from you.

Peter Bowes: [00:14:24] I heard quite an interesting take on that dynamic, talking to a guest a few weeks ago, Phil Williams, and he said to me, and he’s got a couple of young children now that he’s actually looking forward to the day that the children leave home, because it will give him and his wife an opportunity to do what they used to do. In other words, go on adventurous holidays and do the kinds of things that they’re unable to do with relatively young children. He’s looking forward to the children being independent to give him and his wife a, I suppose, a new lease of life.

Laura Dabney: [00:14:57] That’s ideally how it should go. You grieve, but you also have this lovely oh my gosh, I’ll be free of that concern as much about what they’re doing, what trouble they might get into. Yes. So that’s a very healthy response to children getting older and moving on.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:16] I’m wondering when there is a relationship, whether it’s with with children, with friends, with, with a spouse and things are clearly not right and there are difficulties, to what extent people are able to acknowledge the external factors in their lives that might be having a bearing on this. So pressure at work, whether there’s some grief involved, the loss of another friend or the loss of a parent or a relative sort of sadness eeking into the relationship that is proving difficult for them.

Laura Dabney: [00:15:46] Well, as you remember, sadness is another one of those emotions people get very conflicted over. I’ve had patients who are crying and I’ll ask them how they feel and they they can’t say the word sadness. They’ll say, I think they were wrong. I think she was mean. I think these things. I’m like, that’s a thought, not a feeling. But if I say if someone next to you was crying, what feeling do you think they would have? And they’ll go, grief, sadness, sad. So it’s really interesting how they can apply it to themselves, because a lot of people mistake that for being babyish wimpy. Some men will say effeminate. And so they won’t be able to admit that they’re sad. So grief can get in the way. And that’s why it’s so important. Grief can get in the way of how you’re interacting with other people in your life. And that’s why it’s so important to be able to say, I think I’m just grieving the loss of so and so. I’m just not up for going here or there or being involved in this. You know, I need a few days to get myself through this. But if you don’t say that, people start taking offense or start worrying and start wondering what’s going on. They don’t understand. They feel confused. And that’s the pushing away part, right? You’re you’re holding something to yourself. There’s a wall they sense. So you’re pulling back. And I don’t need you. I don’t need to talk about my grief with you.

Peter Bowes: [00:17:07] This is the Live Long podcast. Our guest is Doctor Laura Dabney, author of I Need You Now go away. I wonder how many people, presumably I’m thinking of the people that don’t actually call you, but people who just put up with the situation and think, well, these difficulties, this awkwardness in my relationship is going to pass one day. And the the mode of operation is just to put up with it for a while and see what happens. My, my gut, my hunch is that a lot of people and a lot of men just probably do that and live awkwardly with it.

Laura Dabney: [00:17:41] Yes, exactly. And that’s the people. A lot of the people come in. Those are the people who say they never fight. We never argue. We never, never have a sad moment. We’re always having fun. It’s all therapists cringe when we hear that because it’s not possible and it’s not really describing a close relationship. A close relationship isn’t people who never argue or never have difficult conversations or never grieve. Close relationships are people who can share, a couple who can share those feelings, and that pulls a bond and gets people closer. And they often. It’s a shared experience because someone. If you say, I’m grieving the loss of my mother or my aunt or whoever, it’ll remind them of a grief they had. Oh, yeah, I remember when my mom died, it was an awful thing. So then it becomes a shared experience. And that’s what people who are afraid to talk about their negative emotions miss out on.

Peter Bowes: [00:18:37] The phrase walking on eggshells comes to mind as a kind of status quo that I imagine a lot of people almost take as being normal. This is just the way it is, and it’s going to be maybe indefinitely, but hopefully things will improve.

Laura Dabney: [00:18:53] That’s exactly what we were talking about. Same thing that walking on eggshells is what we call a destructive way, destructive passivity. There are times to be passive. There are times you may not want to bring up a difficult topic. Doesn’t mean you never bring it up. But there’s a time it might not be the best time, such as if your spouse is grieving. You may want to hold off on that topic until another time. But people who use destructive passivity, they shut down. They don’t want to say what they really feel because they don’t want to get the wrath or whatever they’re afraid of is going to happen. So they step back and they try to pacify or soothe the person, instead of being honest about how that person’s mood or reaction is affecting them, how it’s bothering them.

Peter Bowes: [00:19:41] Is there a way that people can deal with these situations without necessarily speaking to someone like you. Seeking professional assistance. What kind of advice would you say to that individual who, for whatever reason, simply wants to try to deal with it within the family?

Laura Dabney: [00:19:58] Yeah, that’s a great question. I talk about that a lot in my media. So when if you’re having a relationship problem, a lot of people, what they do is first try to change the other person instead of doing that. Look at yourself and go through your past experiences with that person. You will find a pattern there. A lot of people think it’s this argument. Then it’s this argument. They’re all separate. But your reaction, your actions in that argument are often the same. So if you explore what you do, for instance, like you were saying, if you get passive, do you just walk on eggshells? You shut down. Do you stay quiet? Do you not say anything? Try the next time something comes up to say what you’re really feeling. See what happens in that situation. I talk about mental health and therapy as being experiment. People will say, well, what should I do? Doctor Dabney, I don’t know. Let’s talk about what’s the next best step and see what happens and then bring it back. And does it help? Does it not help? Do you feel better? Did something happen? It’s about looking at that. The other. If. If so, if you tend to withdraw, try expressing yourself more directly. But the other problem we see a lot we haven’t really mentioned here yet is the person who tries to take over. The other person tries to get them to think like me, do like me, and that’s a way of pushing someone away. And if you do that, try simply saying, this is how I feel. You don’t have to convince the other person to feel the same way or to do the same thing. That’s that’s where you draw. That’s where you step over the line. Simply said, this is bothering me. Can we talk about a way to do it differently and stop and see what happens? So make a change in the pattern of how you deal with conflict. See what happens.

Peter Bowes: [00:21:54] Is there something do you think about modern day life that influences these feelings, these difficulties in relationships that perhaps wasn’t present as recently as, say, 5 or 6 years ago? But I’m thinking more historically 10, 20 years ago. Our lifestyles have changed so much. Just before we started recording this conversation, we were talking about technical difficulties involved in modern day life, and that’s the kind of conversation we wouldn’t have had at one time. But I’m just wondering, do our lifestyles and the way, the hurried way that we live our lives these days sometimes impact the way that we’re relating to the person, that our loved ones.

Laura Dabney: [00:22:35] Is not so much involved with how the life our lives are changing. I mean, I’m old enough to remember how the TV. Oh, that was going to impact us and ruin us. Our eyes are going to go this way or that way, whatever. People are watching TV instead of talking. So there’s always a lot of anxiety around changes like we’ve been seeing these days with AI and all, but really the what’s changed in our society is, one, a better acceptance of emotional health and mental health. That’s been a huge change. I think that’s made an impact on how people relate to each other, is so much more common for men to be able to understand, appreciate and explain how they are feeling. This is this is so new. Way back when I was first starting, I told you people would come to walk down the street and they wouldn’t need to see me. That’s much less talked about. Some people actually brag about the fact that they have a therapist now, and that’s just a really great thing to see. Also women’s roles, gender roles in general, I guess have changed a lot. Women now are not only accepted to be in a evolve with the financial role in the family and the father parent father is now expected to be a part of the parenting. Parenting responsibilities. They’re more of a partnership now that’s accepted as opposed to the old gender stereotypes that was more divisive.

Peter Bowes: [00:24:07] Interesting. You talk about mental health. I think it is very fair to say that that mental health conversation, especially in the the corporate workplace, just wasn’t a thing. I don’t know what it is. Ten years, 15, 20 years ago, we just didn’t have that conversation and we didn’t have the resources that that many employers offer people these days. Do you think there is still much more we can do that we can go further in terms of making mental health issues and an understanding of what they mean to us, even more present for people.

Laura Dabney: [00:24:43] Yes. In fact, I think what we talked about all along here with personality disorders is one of those last bastions of, yes, you have to be sort of alienated or shoved out of someone’s life. If you have a personality disorder. That still reminds me of the history, which we all learned in med school and my residency training of Bedlam, the first psychiatric hospital, and how they were really imprisoned there and mistreated, and how we’ve come such a long way from that. But this was sort of like a fallback to me about how we’re, you know, throwing out of our society symbolically, these people. And that’s really bothered me. So I do think, again, that this acceptance of us and I and I see this changing to not just my book, of course, but other people have been now starting to talk about how, okay, the Walking on Eggshells book and everything. How to deal with these disorders. There is a way to deal with them and work with them without just pushing them out of your lives completely.

Peter Bowes: [00:25:48] I was actually just going to ask you, what sort of reaction have you had from people who’ve who’ve seen the book and have seen your writing on this issue? Maybe even people who have spoken to you previously and had a sort of 1 to 1 relationship, but does being able to pick up a book like this and and read about these issues? How is that helping people?

Laura Dabney: [00:26:07] I’ve had I just feel so privileged to have had the most amazing feedback from friends and strangers, people who’ve heard about my book when I’m on trips or what have you. And the, the most, my most favorite compliment is it’s so readable. I really want it to be readable. And then the action items that are in there to help you or your loved one, because I just can’t stand when I read a book and it’s telling me, okay, now I understand it, but now what? And that’s not really there. So that was very important to me. So when I hear that people say that they’ve got some help from the book, especially in understanding that they didn’t have, that’s that’s just music to my ears. And that’s been really great.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:52] Oh, that’s good. That’s good to hear. And this is, as I mentioned, this is a podcast about longevity. It is about living long and well for, for the most part, looking to the future and perhaps imagining the kind of life that we’ll be having in ten, 20, 30, whatever our age, years, time. Is this something that you a) think about from your own perspective, but also, is it part of the conversation that you have with people looking forward and imagining how things could be?

Laura Dabney: [00:27:23] Definitely. In our conversations, especially with my older patients, about how their relationship can change and morph into a lifestyle change. Again, you talk about how you you can make changes and you can make yourself healthy. You can go to the gym, you can eat well and everything, but if you don’t have a partner by your side, it’s just, it’s just much less enjoyable. And again, the studies show that it’s not really as healthy for you to have. And when I say intimate relationships in our world, intimate relationships mean close relationships with your adult children and friends, other relatives, perhaps it can. It can have or not have physical intimacy. But that intimacy is nourishing. I really believe, to our bodies, our souls. However you want to put that in, that nourishment can lead to new adventures, new ideas, new ways of learning things. It’s inspires people to create, to enjoy, to travel, to accept other cultures and other people. It’s the most remarkable thing in my work is when I work with one person, a lot of I treat a lot of couples with just one person. And so when that person comes in and they make the changes, it’s unbelievable. Without. Without them saying anything or teaching anything, the people in their family or their immediate vicinity change too. It’s like they pick up on this other way of communicating or dealing with a problem, and they start doing it too. And they, we talk about how that they have changed a lifelong family pattern because if their parents didn’t teach them, their parents didn’t learn either. So this, you know, pulling this conflict with emotion or an inability to say you’re angry or sad or needy, they made that change and that going forward. They’re all the all the generations from then on will not have that problem.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:25] Yeah, it’s interesting to me. I’ve been doing this podcast almost ten years now. It’s interesting how the emphasis on what you could describe as the pillars of longevity has changed during that time. So the early days talked a taught a lot about exercise, nutrition, sleep. But in more recent years, this issue of partnerships of loneliness, which is, I think, far better understood now as part of our everyday lifestyle and the impact of having someone in our lives, as you just referred to you, that’s really acknowledged now. And that the downside, especially of loneliness, which can be devastating indeed, it can be life threatening for many people.

Laura Dabney: [00:30:07] Right? Covid taught us that also work and money were big, big part of especially men’s wellbeing. You have to work hard, work long endeavor and ever and ever and earn a lot of money. This generation after us, that’s they have a whole different story and a whole different way of looking at that. And I think that’s so refreshing as well. They travel now is more important. Definitely relationships are more important. And they’re not buying that old version of what makes you happy.

Peter Bowes: [00:30:43] Was there a plus side to Covid? The lifestyles, it almost forced us into even spending more time at home and then potentially spending more time with our partners.

Laura Dabney: [00:30:55] I definitely think it helped us realize we can live without work, or we can work in ways that incorporate home life and work life. It doesn’t have to be so separate and so extreme. Even in medical school where we’re supposed to be learning about healthy habits. We were we were told we had to be up. We had, um, every third night full call. And so we were up all day working all night and all the next day. And I happen to have a child in med school and a child in residency, which, uh, which was kind of crazy, but I was missing out on that time of bonding with my new family and so, and that’s changed. My son’s in medical school now and they have vacation times. They, the call is much less and, but it took people, patients dying essentially in New York state for them to start a lawsuit to get that all changed. And it’s just, it’s great that it’s changed. It’s just a shame it took that kind of mistreatment or unintended effects to get there.

Peter Bowes: [00:32:01] It is, I think, perhaps gratifying that we have actually seemingly come quite a long way in the what, depending on the data, when you imagine it started 5 or 6 years now out of that pandemic, and it’s almost a distant, horrific memory for a lot of us, what we went through during that time. But I think it is important, as you, as you’ve kind of outlined, to look at the positives and how we’ve changed our lifestyles.

Laura Dabney: [00:32:24] Yes. And to hopefully, again, continue that with our children. A lot of my friends will say something along the lines of, oh, our grandchildren, our parents are parenting our grandchildren so much better than we did. And that’s how exactly how it should be. You know, that we should be able to pass on the things that have worked and are working better than our parents generation, and to see that happening, be able to see that happening is a real gift.

Peter Bowes: [00:32:52] Just in closing, Laura, is there one thing, 1 or 2 things that you would particularly like people to take away from your book having read it?

Laura Dabney: [00:33:00] I would like people to understand that if you have a chronic relationship problem, first of all, it’s not bad luck. It’s not that it’s not your partner’s, it’s there. You are able to look and see these patterns. There’s a pattern involved. They’re either unable to accept all of your emotions as being normal, or you’re unable to state them in a way that’s effective. But you can spend time examining your life and how you deal with these things without needing me or necessarily therapy and make those changes and keep a little notebook, you know. How did how did when you did this way when you did it that way? What changed? What didn’t? And you’ll be surprised at how much of an impact you can make on relationships just by making a small change.

Peter Bowes: [00:33:49] The book is called I Need You Now Go Away. It is a fascinating topic, doctor Laura Dabney, thank you very much indeed.

Laura Dabney: [00:33:58] Thank you very much.

Peter Bowes: [00:34:00] The Live Long Podcast is a Healthspan Media production. I’m Peter Bowes. You can contact me through our website, livelongpodcast.com  where you’ll also find show notes for this episode.