My podcast guest, Linda Carroll, is the author of Love Skills: The Keys to Unlocking Lasting Love and Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love. While she has worked as a therapist and couple’s coach for over three decades and has acquired numerous certificates and degrees along the way, she says her own thirty-five-year marriage is the primary source of her knowledge when it comes to the cycles of love.
In S2 EP 8: Linda Carroll – Love Skills for Wholehearted Loving:
- Learn the difference between love as a feeling and loving as a skill
- Hear how Linda and her husband, Tim, resolved one of their stickiest issues
- Why it’s crucial to remain vulnerable and compassionate in our relationships
- Uncover the skill of ‘pillow talk’ (hint: it’s not what you think)
- How to become wholehearted in all arenas of life
- The keys to intimacy and joy
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Audio for Love Skills
Video for Love Skills
What is a woman of value to you?
I understand my imperfections and vulnerabilities. I keep going because of them. It’s about being rather than getting somewhere. It’s so hard to get to in our culture.
“As we lose a part of ourselves, we grow another part that’s more potent, or we just stay in that loss forever.” Linda Carroll
Taking time to grieve losses
It’s so important to pause and go into loss (even though it’s painful and not fun), in order to be able to release it, or it gets stuck somewhere and keeps coming back.
The moment she realized she needed to step into her value
She and her husband were in a power struggle for 45 years around doing the dishes. It was cute at first, but they were stuck in a loop. The issue is so seldom what the real issue is. It’s not about the dishes, but about ‘you don’t respect me’.
They had dinner guests, and they brought their issue around the dishes to their dinner guests. They were stricken, and Linda suddenly saw that they were so lost in the power struggle, she was mortified. Their ability to pause was missing. She realized she can’t change him. She’s not leaving. She needs to do something different. She began her own exploration about what got triggered in her. They still don’t agree, but now they can laugh about it. They changed their reaction, not their belief. It’s about emotional regulation and stepping into your own wellbeing.
The power of learning our parents’ story
In the book, she describes a man who knew his father loved him, but he didn’t understand him. They did a genogram, and he learned his father was in a POW camp during the Vietnam war. He had PTSD and was dissociated and depressed. He cared about his kids, but you can only care as much as you’re alive inside. Once he learned that, he had so much more compassion for his dad. That was when Linda realized the power of learning our parents’ story.
Developing empathy and compassion
21:50 Our mother’s daughter’s workshop. This is a fascinating way to develop empathy between mothers and daughters. You can do all the exercises in the book on your own. It will still help create more space to make clear choices about what to do in any relationship.
“The black belt of a relationship is being able to talk about what’s threatening to each other and stay connected.”
What draws you together becomes what drives you crazy
She tells a story about a vacation she and her husband planned, where it was raining, and she wanted to change where they were heading at the last minute. He said, “Do you have to be so impulsive?” She said, “Do you have to be so rigid?” Over time, they were able to work through their differences with humor and compassion.
What she’s doing in the world today
She travels to meet couples in their home town and spends two days with them. It’s highly effective.
Her other passion is just1atatime.org, an organization with Peter Yarrow (from Peter, Paul and Mary) that brings humanitarian aid and hope to the most vulnerable people in Mexican border towns and to support the volunteers who help to provide those in need with basic necessities, education, and life-affirming opportunities. Linda believes you have to be involved in something bigger than yourself.
She’s creating an online course, and she presents workshops 10 weeks every year at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico.
51:00 A mistake she made that will make you laugh! (Hint: it involved a steamy sex tape).
How would you like to be remembered?
“I’d like to be remembered as somebody who helped normalize people’s imperfections, made them laugh, and gave them the belief in themselves to figure out what they’re here to do.”
Connect with Linda
Website: https://lindaacarroll.com/.
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LindaCarrollBCC/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/Lovecycleslinda
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lindacarrollofficial/
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/LindaCarrollBCC/
