(00:00) The currency of real connection is becoming ever more valuable. I actually believe we came here to play these characters, the victim, villain, savior. We came here to engage in these zero-sum games and then in certain situations you exit that triangle and your system matures to the extent that you can perceive when we’re both playing a character.
(00:29) I think this is a lot of what psychospiritually underpins the epidemic of thyroid issues. When you can develop your artistry in communicating with a level of realness, the person in front of you may not be ready for that, might be triggered by that. That’s okay because when you’re speaking in this way, it doesn’t serve you to be attached to a certain kind of response.
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(01:52) If you don’t completely love it after six weeks, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. Enjoy. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan, and today I want to talk about a concept that has been swirling around my mind and heart recently, which is something that I borrow from the performance world, from the theater world.
(02:20) So, fun fact, I was very into theater. I was like a theater dork in high school and never so much musical theater, but uh into drama. And I was in high school in New Jersey and our public school theater group was called New Players. And it was very serious endeavor. So most of my spare time was devoted to like somehow memorizing massive amounts of scripted materials and monologues and things like that.
(02:52) So there is this phrase you may or may not know which is breaking the fourth wall. So when a character on stage turns to the audience, it’s called an aside, right? and they might say something to the audience directly about what’s going on on stage. And so that is sort of piercing the veil, right? So there’s this invisible fourth wall and you’re a voyeur in the audience watching the characters do their thing and there’s no indication that the characters know that you’re there, right? So when the characters acknowledge you, there is a breaking of
(03:29) that invisible fourth wall and it’s a very subtle art because as an audience member, as a voyeur, you are there for an experience. So you don’t want the characters to break character too often or maybe even at all. And in the modern day era of content creation, including exactly what I’m doing right now, there is, I think, an ever more complex terrain to navigate when it comes to the balance of authenticity like realness and you know acknowledged humanity and also that I am here to offer you an experience right. So if you were to come
(04:15) to me even as a patient there is a role that I am agreeing to play and if I get too much down on your level so to speak right so so you come to me as a patient I’m in the dominant role you’re in the submissive role that’s part of the agreement it’s arguably part of the alchemy of what makes that kind of diad powerful and even effective Right? So if I were to be, you know, too unprofessional or too familiar, I might compromise the potential that that diad has to actualize and offer, right? And if you can relate to me as a human, if you can
(05:03) see that I am here with my heart, body and soul, there is a connection that becomes available that wouldn’t otherwise be available if I was too aloof and too much in the you know sort of uh discrete bounds of the hierarchy. And I watch today that more and more of us in the content creation space are really feeling our way into how real do we get? How much do we acknowledge what it is that we’re doing? How much do I put a link in my email and say, you know, I get a commission off this link, FYI.
(05:41) Or how much do I make a video for entertainment purposes and make sure that you know that I know that I am entertaining you, right? or I’m providing this content in order to support my business. How directly can I speak to you without compromising the role that I’m playing and the role that you’re playing? And I’ve been considering this concept of breaking the fourth wall as it applies to human relationships because I think the currency of real connection is becoming ever more valuable and you have to have a certain level of
(06:22) emotional maturity and I would even say courage to break the fourth wall in the average dynamic. Right? So, let’s say that you are in a relationship and you have a breakup and you find yourself texting with your ex and you are talking about mundane things, you know, like what you did today and the weather and you’re just sort of like engaging in niceties.
(06:49) Nobody in that situation has broken the fourth wall to say, you know, like, hey, what are we actually doing here? What’s actually happening here? or maybe something more vulnerable or raw or real like, you know, I miss you. I’m thinking about you a lot. This interaction is really, you know, feeling this or that for me, right? In contentious situations, we usually recruit a third party and often, you know, attorneys, right? We often recruit somebody to come in and manage the inability that we have either of us to break the fourth wall
(07:29) and say sometimes just make a phone call or you know request a coffee or whatever and say like hey this is really painful. Can we just get on the same page? Is it possible for us to get on the same page? And instead we will go into all of these, you know, crazy long emails and recruiting professionals to speak to the scary person for us to get them to see, you know, our perspective.
(07:56) I would even argue that sometimes we need to avoid direct and real communication so that we can actually maintain our role as victim. I remember there was one woman in my past who I needed to play the villain. I needed this woman to play the villain. The moment that I actually requested her presence, right? The moment that I actually sat down with her face to face, I saw that she was nothing of what I had projected her to be.
(08:36) Then I actually needed in the greater scope of dynamics that I was involved in. I needed her to be this villain, right? So that I didn’t have to acknowledge other dynamics in my life, right? I needed her to play this role. When I sat down with her and I got real with her, I saw her completely differently and she no longer could play that role and it reorganized in very painful ways other dynamics in my life.
(09:02) Okay? Because she became the repository for this villain energy. And if I were to break the fourth wall with her, that repository disappears and then there are other things that I have to deal with that I didn’t want to deal with. Right? So there are many ways in which we actually want to maybe need to keep in character and the character is broken if we have a real and direct interaction.
(09:31) It sounds like, okay, well, why don’t we just always just say the real thing, like have the real interaction, speak the the subtext, right? The unspoken script, as I like to call it. And I think it’s because sometimes it’s not the time, right? It’s not ripe for that level of authenticity or directness. Sometimes it’s because we actually don’t have the nervous system capacity to engage that level of emotional courage.
(10:01) So I’ve gotten the feedback over the course of my career many many many many times that I am a very courageous person woman right that I’ve done all of these courageous things for humanity and you know speaking out against uh industry and I have never perceived any of my activism as courageous.
(10:24) In fact, I have a whole master class on the shadow of activism and the way that my needs were met through my activist efforts. And I never experienced it. Even when I took out like a $2 million life insurance policy and published a mind of your own, I never ever perceived it as courageous. When I have felt myself to be courageous, when I have had that sense of, you know, my spine strong, my energy reclaimed and my capacity to handle what’s in front of me, you know, really accessible is usually when I’m having a difficult conversation often with family, you
(11:05) know, sometimes with my daughters, and I am willing and able to own something. I’m willing and able to presence something. I’m willing and able to ask for something that otherwise felt way way safer and easier to just avoid and pretend to stay in a certain kind of character. Often that character is you know enjoying a low level of resentment or frustration or disappointment.
(11:37) So when I break the fourth wall in these conversations, there is a holding a containment as I would call it of myself that is asked of me where I am no longer manipulating and strategizing around somebody else’s experience and instead I am speaking my truth whatever that might be and asking for whatever it is that I want to be asking for and I’m respecting the person in front of me enough to hold and handle.
(12:10) This is when I’m speaking to an adult obviously to hold and handle their own emotional experience. So I’m no longer curating a perspective so that I can get a certain kind of response out of them and instead I am just sharing what is true for me and it might be a minor thing in that moment you know like hey this feels like super uncomfortable I just I just wanted to share that you know or it might be a more meta thing a bigger picture matter I’ve never actually shared this with you but I want to tell you that this has been my experience or maybe even sharing
(12:51) that I’ve been avoiding saying this or that or it’s felt really scary for me to just be real about this or this just feels bad or maybe it’s this feels really good, right? So, occasionally I’ll be with a girlfriend and I’ll choose to break the fourth wall and say it feels so good just to be with you right now.
(13:14) historical me would have had a lot of trouble holding and containing myself in those moments because the vulnerability would have felt too exquisite and/or you know in the context of shares that are less so-called positive I might have imagined that there would be punishment or consequences on the other end of it. So, if you followed my work for a while, you know how seriously I take ingredient integrity.
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(14:57) So when you develop enough emotional courage to speak the unspoken script and to perceive, you’ve developed also the awareness. You’ve reclaimed enough of that neurosception to perceive with more sobriety what’s actually going on in the moment. You have the choice to speak that unspoken script or not. you have the choice to break the fourth wall or not and to speak into you know what you actually perceive is happening and that you also perceive that there is utility in acknowledging that in this moment I think this is a lot of what
(15:37) psychospiritually underpins the epidemic of thyroid issues I know that when I was diagnosed was with Hashimoto’s. It was at a juncture in my life where either I was going to go on pretending or I was going to get levels of real that would require the reconstruction of my literal reality and the fabric of my life scape.
(16:09) The thing is that speaking your experience, speaking your yes and no is liberating of energy that would otherwise be required to manage someone else’s perception or to imagine that you can. And this is not even to you know address how much of our life force gets caught up in the zero sum game of you know legal battles and attorney managed communications divorce battles etc.
(16:40) So when you can develop your artistry in communicating with a level of realness, the person in front of you may not be ready for that, not interested in that, might be put off by that, might be triggered by that. And that’s okay because when you’re speaking in this way, it doesn’t serve you to be attached to a certain kind of response or outcome. You’re doing it for you.
(17:02) You’re doing it for you. And there are two pillars to relationship. There’s connection and autonomy. Right? So in this autonomous sovereign moment of I’m going to presence my truth here, my experience in real time, it also is imperative if you’re interested in the relationship to maintain connection, right? Right.
(17:26) So, you’re not just going to like dump, you know, your uninvited experiential editorial on the moment into this person’s lap, especially if you’re not attuned to their interest or capacity to receive that. So that’s why I do think that consent can be helpful even if it’s a little sentence like I wonder if I can share, you know, some of what I’m feeling in this moment or I wonder if I can share my perspective on this.
(17:57) Is it okay with you if I share with you what I’m thinking? Obviously, that’s kind of like a false consent because they can’t possibly know what’s coming. So, how could they possibly consent? And it allows the person’s system to readjust to a new like frequency if you will of information that might be coming. And then when it comes to the basic skills of this kind of communication, I am a big fan of what I one of the things that I share in the Reclaimed Woman which is the appreciation burrito. Okay.
(18:36) So that you especially if you are offering what might be perceived as critical feedback, if you have an audacious ask of somebody that you connect with them first so that you offer appreciation, connection, you allow that person to feel seen in some way before you make your I like to say very specific ask and then you close it with something connecting.
(19:06) And that’s only in the case that what you really want to say is this is not working for me. Here’s what I need. Right? So, let’s say you’re in a contentious situation that’s ramped up over email with a vendor or an employer or an employee or something. Let’s keep it in the business realm just to eliminate many degrees of complexity in romantic relationships and familial dynamics.
(19:31) You might ask to get on the phone. You might get on a call and you might say something connecting like that you can authentically appreciate about the situation. I go out of my way to identify positive intent because I think it’s almost always if not always there, right? That there is some benevolence even if it’s just in that person’s self-preservation defensive tactics, right? those tactics are only being employed to support that person.
(20:06) Right? So everything has on some level down there somewhere a benevolent intent. So you might acknowledge that. You might say, “I really have felt how badly you want this to work or how much of your heart you’ve put into this. I really have felt that you know your efforts are really coming from the best place.
(20:26) And what I need from you is for you to be more reliable, more professional. I need you to respond to emails in two hour, whatever it is. I like super specific asks because that means that you’ve developed some degree of intimacy with what it is that you actually need. And then you close it out with something connecting like I know that we have a lot of potential that is untapped and I think this would be an important next step.
(20:51) Are you willing? So that kind of a simple interaction could sidestep the play of finger-pointing, blaming, then defending your perspective, proving that you’re right about it. And it’s not to say that that’s a problem. I actually believe we came here to play these characters, the victim, villain, savior. We came here to engage in these zero sum games and then in certain situations perhaps at certain moments in our life or perhaps really there’s a more comprehensive shift that happens you exit that triangle and your system matures to the extent that you can
(21:32) perceive when we’re both pretending when we’re both playing a character when we are in a layer of artifice that is socially conditioned. And when you perceive that, you have a choice to break the fourth wall and hold yourself around whatever might come up in that new lane of social interaction or not or continue in whatever it is that is going on.
(22:03) whether it’s a contentious argument or whether it’s a totally superficial small talk about the weather kind of a situation with somebody you know with whom there’s a huge elephant in the room that just hasn’t been acknowledged. So I predict that we are going to see more and more examples both on the public stage on social media in the content creation world more and more examples of those of us who are interested in playing with you know how much to share about what’s actually going on in the moment right like how much video editing are we really going to do and I think
(22:40) that many of us are maturing our systems to the extent that we can begin to have the option to engage this level of direct realness. We can allow the characters to fall away and we can speak that unspoken script in the moment. Sometimes even in dynamics that have been seemingly scripted, right? Where you where you think this is just kind of how we are together.
(23:09) So, especially in family, especially in long-term marriages, you may perceive the choice and you may decide, I can break the fourth wall and it serves me and this person to do that. I’d love to know what you think. [Music] I love you.
