What Real Love Feels Like After Trauma | with Rick William

Michael Unbroken: One of the biggest struggles that I think people have today, and honestly they probably have always had when coming from a background of trauma, is learning to not only fine, but to accept, to give and to receive love, to have the thing that we seek the most in life as humans, and that's companionship and someone on the journey to walk down the path of life with.

Uncovering the path towards being able to connect with another human is arguably one of the hardest things that we do. When we've learned that the baseline framework for love is detached, is pain, is suffering, is loss, is competition. And so I'm very excited for today's episode with my friend Rick William, as we're gonna talk about this journey, not only of love, but of healing and what it means to be someone who is truly unbroken.

That said, Rick, welcome to the show, my friend. I'm excited to have you here today.

Rick William: Absolute pleasure to be here with you. Michael,

Michael Unbroken: I'm curious, before we jump in, why should anyone listen to our conversation today?

Rick William: Well, if I was tuning into this today, knowing what we're gonna talk about, if you are a person who has been walking the healing path and desires to.

Learn how to walk this path more skillfully. And I think there's some things that me and Michael are gonna get to share that hopefully, illuminate or if even give you a nugget or two that are gonna allow you to, deepen your capacity to be able to, to love and to, as Michael said before, to give love, to receive love, to maybe find the motivation for actually walking this journey of the healing path, which can be, difficult journey at times.

You know, if you're in that, dark night of the soul moment when you're going through it, it can be difficult and it can be like, why am I doing this? Why did this happen to me? And. My hope is for you that our conversation can, maybe bring some light or some hope, or maybe some tools that are gonna support you in actually being able to, walk the path and integrate in such a way that is gonna have your, life transform in your relationships transform.

Michael Unbroken: Powerful. Yeah. You know, i think Rick, at the end, we all want love, but I think that starting as odd as it may sound with defining love might be helpful. It took me a long time to realize that the way that we use attribute words to our life when we've actually defined their meaning, carries far more weight than when we're arbitrarily using words because we think we're supposed to.

And I'll never forget, I sat down one day and I just started writing down definitions for words that mattered in my life. And, and love was one that I didn't know how to answer. Like, I didn't know what it meant. And it took me a long time to be able to get to this place where, for, for me personally, that definition is to show up in vulnerability, to give and to receive and to do so without judgment.

Knowing that no matter what happens, I am allowed to have the experience in filling that other people have. And it took me a long time to get to that 'cause I used to be like, Love's not real. This is nonsense. Whatever these Hollywood movies are selling us, I'm not buying it and then I realized like part of the journey is you have to allow yourself to get to that place where not only you allow it, but it's also beneficial to self define. So I'm curious, Rick, what's your definition of love?

Rick William: Firstly, I love your definition. Beautiful. Well, my first definition of love is I believe now that it's the fundamental fabric of life itself. And that would be at an absolute level. I think it is all love. We are love the lessons that I've been through fundamentally, or to teach me how to love the trauma or pain experiences that I've been through my life. Although I wouldn't wish them for anyone at this point, they have taught me how to, to love the unlovable, to love parts of myself that I found were unlovable. So I guess my deepest belief and understanding of love is, is that for me it's the, it's the, the fabric of life itself. It's the gift that is this precious human birth.

So that would be like an absolute level at a relative level. It is like a personal level. It is the gift of giving inside of this life. That could be music, that could be words, that could be poetry, it could be food. but it's also the gift of receiving. It's the gift of receiving and seeing and witnessing another, and appreciating being of this being inside, of this dance of life together as well.

So there's this giving and receiving of, the preciousness of life and in all its forms, right? That can be music, poetry, work, a podcast. it could be, you know, the way that you speak to a stranger or look at a stranger or speak to the clerk in your local store. Just the, the, the sharing and recognition of this human journey, this journey that we're all on together.

I think it's fundamentally all love, and my belief of life itself is to teach us, has been to teach me how to actually love, how to love myself, how to love another, how to deal with the fact that no matter what, at some point, if I open my heart fully to another, a friend, my wife, at some point it's going to end.

And also seeing that as love, you know, seeing the fact that, there is passings, there is cycles, and, being able to come to terms with all of that is, is for me being the journey of love. And I'm very much, a student of this path of love too. but yeah, I'm, I'm curious what you would add to that and for anyone at home. I'm curious as you're listening to both of us, what your definition of love would be?

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, I mean, that's great. And I think at the deepest core of it, It's allowance. Like if I were to like to parlay it with just another singular word, it'd be allowance, right? To you just said it, to open yourself up. I mean, 'cause you are on this journey, you probably will get hurt, right? You probably will feel pain, but you'll also feel joy. You will feel what it means to know that somebody cares. But man, it's so difficult, right? And I wanna walk this path a little bit more and we're gonna go deeper. But within this frame, now that we understand the definition, I wanna understand you a little bit more. So, Rick, tell us, tell us about your journey and what has led you to where you are today.

Rick William: My experience of love through this life experience, through some difficulties that happened when I was growing up had an abusive stepfather and had to, you know, flee the country. By the time I was like nine or 10, we had to leave to Spain and there was a lot of difficulty and, and, and kind of challenge growing up and had a lot of difficulty at school. And, you know, looking back, I could actually see there was love there, you know, through different family members and, you know, moments of love and moments of appreciation.

But my experience of that at the time, felt difficult. I felt fearful. I felt like I was unlovable. I felt like there was something wrong with me. I felt like, I felt like life didn't make sense. You know, I would wake up most nights having nightmares, like horrific nightmares. And that continued for throughout my teen years into my early twenties. And there was a lot of fear in my nervous system there fear of connection, fear of intimacy, and ultimately all of these things were at first led me to suboptimal solutions, which might've been through, different survival strategies, which I think are all beautiful in their own unique way.

But, you know, I guess like drugs and alcohol were ways of me being able to, you know, numb the pain and being able to feel confident enough to express myself to another. I'm sure we've all had those moments where maybe we've had a drink or two, extra and you feel, you know, you feel like that inhibition to be yourself is gone but not necessarily the most supportive way.

Right? There are ways we can be in relationships where you can actually just be yourself. I didn't know that there was ways to feel love where it didn't require MDMA or Ecstasy, right? It's like, but I was. Unconsciously trying to find my way to intimacy, to connection. Connection to myself, connection to my heart, and connection to others, which led me to the, the path of transformation in all its ways.

At first through books, through learning, through coaching, through therapy, through shamanic work, through the Buddhist path, through psychology, through all of these different forms, different, internal technologies, if you will, that can support us in transforming our relationship with, with ourselves and with one another.

And fortunately, I've been blessed to have some incredible people in my life and been blessed by life itself to have certain experiences that have had me come to a place in my life where I feel truly blessed. And I'm able to have really supportive brotherhoods and friendships with men. And I'm able to have a great relationship now with my father and mother, and I'm able to have a, you know, incredible relationship with my wife, where we don't argue and fight and throw things anymore, which were things of my past.

Instead, we can have conversations and we have the skills and tools to be able to, to transform whatever challenges we might be working with. And, what I've come to learn on my journey is that actually these are skills, the internal, the internal way of, of, of being and loving ourselves and the way of being in relationship and fact is a series of small skills that are actually learnable.

And because I was able to have some great mentors and teachers and coaches, I fell in love with this path, which had me end up long story, long story short, being here in, in, in this, this moment right here with, with you, Michael.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. It's fascinating me that, I mean, our journey is very, very similar, obviously. And when I look at, you used this word fear a minute ago that is the most closely associated emotion that I would probably attach to this idea of love till I was 30. Right? Where you're just like, everything that we learn is something that we take in as data, right? And so if you learn that relationships and love and connection are actually yelling, screaming, fighting, hitting, breaking things, disappearing, being a wall. You know, if we were dating, I was in a relationship and you and I got an argument, I just disappeared like, almost immediately too 'cause it's the dissociation. And you mentioned that at this is about skills. I agree with you, and actually entirely I agree with you. And that's because skills have utility, this is what most people don't understand. The skill of learning. What I teach my clients is the peace is in the pause. Meaning take that 10 seconds, that a hundred seconds before you react and think about your decisions and your choices. And we want to rebuke the pain that we feel immediately with anything else.

And it's like, well, if you learn the skills to cope with it in a healthy, productive way, man, it just f*cking changes you. Like, I distinctly rem how many potential friendships, relationships, whatever, could have been saved had I had more skill. And it's weird because I don't know if this was your experience, but you know, I'm heading to 40, I'm very close. It's literally around the corner. And in my late teens and twenties, one of the things that I would constantly do is anytime I'm in disagreement with people, it's, f*ck you. I'm outta here, dude. I just wouldn't deal with it. And that's disastrous, that's not how you live. But I also had this deeply rooted connection to if there's any turmoil, there is inevitably going to be violence.

And that's what I experienced as a kid. I didn't know anything else. And so our behavior patterns dictate what our life is, right? And so my behavior patterns created this life where I would sit across from the woman I love. So I'll tell you a quick story, and I'm creating context because I have a question for you that's very specific that I think's gonna help a lot of people.

When I was 26 years old, I was sitting across for my girlfriend. We at the time had been together for five years, four or five years, and this had to be easily the 50th time that I was sitting in silence. She's bearing her soul to me, and out of everything she says to me, my response is, well, what do you expect?

And Rick, I learned something now in hindsight, obviously, that I wish I would've known then. And that's that this idea of the wall that we put up that we think is to protect us is actually destroying our potential for human connection. The skill of communication through vulnerability because communication and communicating and truth are not always the same thing as you know. And so I'm curious for people who are listening to this and they're like, Rick, I get it. I would love to not argue and scream and fight with my wife, Michael. I get it. I would love to be able to sit in vulnerability and communication. Where do they start? Like if we were to map this from A to Z and someone is on this journey of just transforming a skill. First question is, what is the most important skill that they should be thinking about? And then what are the steps to start to make that skill a utility that actually serves them a function and purpose in their life?

Rick William: Great question, and I'm gonna speak from my experience of this, and just to preface what you're sharing, if we rewind the clock 200. Yes. So just think back 200. Yes. 90% of humans in the world didn't have the capacity to be able to do basic math.

In English, most people were illiterate 90% of the world illiterate just 200 years ago. So think of the, you know, huge span of human history, you know, through civilizations, tens of thousands of years old, depending on which history books you read. So we've been developing for a long time, and only in the last 200 years did we learn as a species predominantly.

Now that over 90% of us illiterate, that's incredible in 200 years now. I also believe that the skills that we have been blessed to learn in this life that have transformed our relationships, Michael, are also skills. And I believe that we're in this moment. And, you know, just appreciating everyone here that's listening to this podcast where we're learning how to do this maybe for the first time as a species, because we have the internet, because we have podcasts like this that are allowing us to democratize the information because we all have access to it. We're all online, we're all connected. So the information that actually works can hopefully find its way into the ears of those who need to hear it. So I believe, and I'm excited that we're here having this conversation, and that those that are listening are also here because each of us that learn this gets to bring that into our life, gets to test it, you know, don't listen to anything me and Michael are saying, you know, these are things to be tested, right?

Like, try it out, test it, learn it. So with that said, how I learned the skill and, and the way that I also teach it with my clients is well, I'll start with the difficulty actually. If we just go straight into communication training and we go there straight away and you haven't done. Any of the interior work to regulate your own nervous system, to create, you know, greater metacognitive capacity or greater awarenesses around the aspects of the arising of your own experience.

Right. We're always in our own experience and we're not experiencing life. We're always experiencing the life we're focus on. So we're not experiencing life, we're experiencing life we're focused on. And in order to do that, it means like what we're focusing on and how we're focusing. So the first skill that I would teach someone before going to communication training would be how to relate to yourself and your experience, how to relate to yourself and the triggers that are arising in your experience. How to relate to the different parts of you. That could be from the past patterning that you grew up with, that could be 3-year-old parts, teenage parts, 20-year-old parts that could be arising in the present moment as a historical pattern of the past that maybe not having you either clearly see what's in front of you.

It's like we can be with someone and because we're bringing the history of that trigger, sometimes. I've had the experience where I've almost made my partner do something 'cause I've seen them that way. Have you ever had that experience where you're kind of like being mean or angry at someone, or you've seeing them in a certain way and you kind of bring that side out of them, but then you see them with a friend and they're totally different. It's like what? They're totally different with that person because we're always in these relationships. We're always in these dynamics. So before actually learning the skill of communication, what I did and what I would do would be to learn the interior skills of how to relate to yourself. So, on the healing journey, skillset tool set, you would have parts work, inner work, IFS, these would be kind of like the core modalities that are creating methodologies, if you will, of how we just relate to ourselves. Which is, I dunno about you guys, but there's a narrative, there's a voice that, that goes on in our head and there's different parts of our experience that arise.

And when we can stop to relate to ourselves in a loving way, in an honest way, in an empowered way, in a caring way to whatever's arising as opposed to pushing it down or hiding from it or saying it shouldn't be there. Like you were sharing before Michael, about just acceptance. Acceptance of what's arising and learning how to be that loving father, mother figure that you needed to learn how to be that, force of security, of safety, of love, of protection that every single child in this world needs to grow as a healthy, thriving, functioning human being. And if we didn't get those patents from mom and dad, we gotta learn how to be mom and dad inside of ourselves. And if I heard that when I was 20 years old, I would like shut the fuck up. I'd be like, totally.

This is just some nonsense. While you talk you gotta pretend to be someone to yourself. Whatcha you talking about? I wouldn't have been able to receive it. But the truth is, you can do that. I've seen it myself. I've experienced it myself. I see it in my clients all the time. We can transform our relationship because what I said before, you're not experiencing life.

You're experiencing the life you're focused on that means if something arises, in my experience, whether it's shame or guilt or anger, if I say, f*ck, that shouldn't be here. Get away. That's wrong. This shouldn't be here. I'm, I'm rejecting my own experience. As I do that, what I resist persists. So I just end up in this cycle whereas if I can turn towards whatever's arising, my fear, my doubt, my not enoughness, and say, Hey, I'm right here with you. Fear. I'm right here with you. It's okay to be afraid. Makes sense. You're afraid I know what you've been through. It's okay. You're feeling shame or guilt around this. I know that sucks.

I know what you've been through. I'm right here with you. I'm right here with you. I got you. I'm right here with you. And if we can be that voice, the voice I needed, if we can be that voice for ourselves and we can lovingly, powerfully attuned to and be with the arising of our phenomena. When we learn how to do that in ourselves, we learn how to self-regulate. We learn how to regulate the phenomena of our experience. We learn how to regulate our nervous systems. And then from that place. That makes that your ability one to empathize with another is going to have increased your ability to be able to, regulate your nervous system inside of a potentially, quote unquote triggering conversation or difficult conversation or clearing conversation is gonna be increased.

And then from that place, the skill of learning how to have those skillful, commun, skillful communications and the way you bring information, I found tends to be a lot more effective that way. I mean, you've been through this journey too. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. Well, you know, I think it is a journey. It's a continual journey. There's a continual unlocking for me, there's deeper levels, you know, I mean, I go look at my background and my frame for understanding love and human connection is about as horrible as it could be for anyone. you know, many people know my story.

My mother, drug addict, alcoholic, she actually cut off my finger when I was four years old. Super abusive stepfather, very similar to you, just a f*cking monster of a human, you know, would put me in the hospital. Grandmother racist. I'm biracial, black and white. My grandmother was racist. So obviously having identity crisis, pretty much most of my childhood and everything that I saw in connection to this idea of love and family, the base framework for how we build civilization is pain and suffering and hurt and loss and stealing and lying. And dude. I did all of those things. Like it is wild, man. I don't know if you ever sit back and you look at the person that you were and you're like, wow, that's crazy that I was that person. The crazy part about that is that person that's still in you, you just learn how to tame that person. I don't, I don't think they ever go away. And so like, learning how to tame that person and be cognizant of it, what you're talking about, the experience that you're choosing to focus on is your life that made me have to, continue to go deeper into the work and to understand what it meant to be human. Because when I think about like the emotion of love, like it is an emotion, it is a feeling. It is something that, I mean, dude, if you're even at a party and you know that your person is in the room with you can feel them. Like it's wild to me how connected and interconnected that we are. But the allowance of it, that's the hardest part. And that's why I started there. I have this thing called the AAA. It's very simple. It's about looking at and assessing and taking a step towards building life in the way that you want it, right?

And so the first, is about awareness. You have to have awareness. Like you have to be like actually aware that life is happening to you. What's so difficult about that, if you're dissociated, being aware is almost impossible, right? So again, your point about regulating the nervous system, spot on.

So you go from this awareness to then what? Well, in awareness. Now you're cognizant. Now you have to go through acceptance. Like looking at it and being like, yes, this is my reality, Rick. Yes. I cheated on the girl I was supposed to marry. Yes. I hooked up with so many people that I lost count. Because I was seeking love. Yes, I did this. Yes, I did that. Now you hopefully can do that nonjudgmentally. However, sometimes you do need a little bit of judgment. And what I mean by that is sometimes you have to kick yourself in your own ass and be like, yo, are you really gonna do this again? And then that leads to that third a is action. Because like there is an action required. Like you do have to do something, you have to do something, you have to do something differently. Perhaps it's like, man, I don't wanna fuck this relationship up again. Maybe I'm gonna go to therapy. Maybe I'm going to hire Rick to coach me. Maybe I'm going to listen to this podcast and just start the process.

So yeah, man, I think you're spot on. But you know, one of the things I think we so often struggle with, especially when people have backgrounds like us, which are the people listening to the show, is that place of learning to love yourself. We live in, dare I say, the most self-masturbatory era of time. Humanly possible. Self-love is the narrative. Self-love this, self-love that. My, my opinion, 90 ish percent of it that you see online is nonsense. It's not self-love, it's just more disappearing. I'm curious, two part question. One, how do you define self-love? Two, how do you love yourself?

Rick William: Both. Great questions. And I love that framework awareness, acceptance, and action. I mean, I think that's also true. It's like we cannot intervene in a world we cannot see. That's right. So from seeing there, we have choice, right? We begin to have agency upon which then behavior can be transformed and we can have the potential to come into a new way of relating. We have the potential to transform and to integrate, like you were saying before. I think there's a way of integrating our experience that has us be able to transcend it and include it. There's many difficulties with many different tools of the path, especially more on the spiritual side that can have us be able to transcend our pain but not necessarily relate to it and integrate it.

So there's lots of meditation techniques say that can have you be able to create enough disassociation from your pain, but it can actually have you disassociate from the, the experience of your life itself. So, I mean I did that on my journey. There was parts of my journey where I was using the tools to just continue the disassociation that had already experienced was it a step up from where I was before? Absolutely. but was it the solution? No, because what I had to learn how to do, and this is coming back to answer your question, I had to learn how to love the unlovable. That's a difficult thing to learn to do, to learn how to love the unlovable. And if we hadn't learned how to feel and be given the experience of love through our parents, because of how we'd experienced the world, if there was trauma, if there was difficulty growing up, we might not have got the role models to understand what receiving that experience feels like.

Because children who do have that learn how to do that themselves, they just inherit the patterns from mom and dad. 'cause there was a sincerity of care and love and safety and trust and protection, which are the ingredients, the soil, if you will, to create a person that has a secure, healthy self-construct their own nervous system that is able to, say, yeah, I'm gonna go after this in my life because I'm worthy of it. Not that I need it to prove that I am worthy because it's an inherent sense of I am loved, I'm a respectable human being. I'm connected and have the capacity to be able to be with your experience.

Right? That's what can happen inside of relationships. We'll all know people in our lives who have had that, and I think it's beautiful for those people that do I celebrate them? Might not have celebrated them growing up. I might have been envious of them, but I think it's a beautiful thing that there are people role modeling what healthy relationships and healthy lover, those people are like angels in this world.

So I think that's a beautiful thing that in itself is a service to humanity, because if we could imagine. 90%, 80%, 70%, maybe even 60% or a hundred percent of the world had parents like that, had loving beings in their life who sincerely CAD and showed up and communicated, be a very different world. Right. So my sense is us being here, listening to this podcast, me being here in this conversation with you, we're a part. Are we desire to be a part of that change? And what I had to learn to do was to find a resource of loving connection 'cause there were moments of it in my life. My grandfather was an incredible role model, incredible loving human being. He was able to role model that for me. My grandmother who was there when my mom wasn't able to in my kind of early years 'cause she was always working. She was a really loving being. And I had moments, I had moments of what real love felt like real care felt like, just glimmers. And then I learned how to focus on those and to feel those in my own heart to get this sense of like, wow, that's what love and connection feels like, huh?

Okay. And then from that place of love and connection, then learning how to bring up the parts of me that I was afraid of, that I was ashamed of, that I felt sometimes discussed for. And learn how to be that grandparent, to be that loving being that could unconditionally, unconditionally accept what was what, what I had done, what I had experienced, what I was going through.

And I had to learn that. I just had to learn how to be with that. Now, that's simple, not easy. And in the process of doing that, I had some great mentorship. I had some great therapists, I had some great coaches who supported me in role modeling, how I could actually internalize that myself. And that was a process and.

It was a messy process. Sometimes it was working, sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes I was like, is this even gonna work? Is this nonsense? But I just stayed with it. I sensed there was something in me that sensed that if I just stay with this, eventually I'm going to get it. Eventually I'm going to start to be able to build the patterns inside of my own body, nervous system, psyche and soul, that would have to have me relate to myself in a way that I desire to be related to. And I learned how to be that parent, that mother, that father that I needed. And I learned how to internalize that myself and give myself the love and respect. And there's two sides to this, right?

It's like love is a big topic, but there's also like fatherly love too, right? I had to learn how to, like my dad left when I was six months old and my stepfather was, similar to yours. He was a monster drug dealer. And you know, he got put in prison in the end. I had to learn how to be the type of protective, like, I got you son. I had to learn how to be that protective choosing father. 'cause I, I grew up not feeling chosen and therefore I would be in relationships right. Of the, a topic of relationship and not be choosing the other person either. I, I didn't know how to fully choose someone 'cause I didn't know how to fully choose myself.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. I mean, you sit in that and it's such a mind f*ck man. You know, it really is. You sit in this, you used the word envy a little bit ago 'cause you'd look at these other relationships and I, I relate to that so deeply where I would just look at happy people, we don't know the inside.

Right. Outside looking at you. Look at happy people, happy relationships, happy families. I'd be like, what the f*ck is this? Where is this for me? Why do I not get it? And this is a feeling that I think a lot of people have, Rick, that we are looking at them. We're like, why do they get this?

Yeah. Why is it that I used to be like, why is God punishing me? And it felt like that, which is very f*cking reasonable by the way. Right. And you look at that and then you add on and parlay it with now, oh my God, dude, I couldn't imagine. I could not imagine being in the window of 18 to 25 when my life was really a fucking shit show in the age of social media and sitting and looking at everyone being happy all the time.

Because social media is the biggest lie in the world. People are not all happy like that. I can promise you, I'm certainly not. I know you're not and, and I think there are a handful of those that are a little bit more vulnerable about it. I know that's certainly true for myself, but the idea of like trying to find this space of looking at life as loving the unlovable as you said, man, that's what this is about.

And it's so difficult because you've always been told you are not lovable unless. Right. There's always been a caveat. There's always some. There's always something that you must attain to feel love, right? Whether it's grades or appearance or sports or whatever that thing is. And if you come from a household with drug addict, alcoholic parents, if you come from a household where a parent goes to prison, if you go from a household where parents are always at work as a child, you don't understand that. And so we internalize this idea that we must not be good enough. And that's why they're never here, that's why they do drugs. That's why they went to prison. And that's why all of these things. And so now you're in this again, mind fuck of this experience of here I am at 26. Every relationship's the same. Everything ends in a disaster. Here I am at 34. Same thing. Here I am at 55. Again, same. Why? Because we haven't yet realized what you talked about, which I think is so important, that you have to love those parts of you that deem yourself worthy of your own respect.

And sometime deeming yourself worthy of your own respect is actually looking across at the person that you're with and then asking yourself this question, which this will really f*ck you up. Am I dating my mom or dad? Mm- Because when you get into that, whew, man, now you're playing this game where you really have to start thinking about who it is that you are and what you're doing with your life. But people so deeply fear, true connection and true intimacy. I know I certainly did for a long time. I'm not talking about sex. Sex is easy, dude. Sex is the easiest thing on planet Earth. In fact, all of us can do it. It's pretty ridiculous. Love, connection, intimacy. When you come from that, feels almost impossible. And yet, I hear a story about Rick not fighting, yelling, screaming, throwing things with his wife. I look at my journey. I can sit down and have a hard, brutally uncomfortable conversation and not disappear. There is a path to this, but I think that path begins again, this internal conversation we're talking about. It begins with yourself. But it's like testing a skill. You can't see if the skill is working until you're an association with another human being. Because people, this is just like entrepreneurship, man. People read all the fucking books and they'll never talk about their products. So let's look at this. This whole conversation is about this idea of facing the fear of deep intimacy and connection. You can only do that with another human. So how do you do that?

Rick William: Well, the first thing that's coming through is actually just to quickly rewind a little bit, 'cause what was coming through as you were sharing about being 25, 26 in those relationships? You know, I had the moment of the patent repeating where it was just like, this seems like the same fucking dynamic over and over again.

So anyone listening, if you've been in those moments where it's just like the partners change, the face has changed, but the patent is the same. So if you relate to that, maybe this next bit's gonna be supportive for you. So changing the patent, like any patent requires repetition. It requires, it's like, I like to imagine it, like you can't see when you're emotionally out of shape.

If we could, it would be helpful if it was like, you know, like some photograph you could take and you could show before and afters of your internal transformation. It would probably help this work, take off a little faster. But here we are. And I think of it in the same way, right?

It's like if you're a hundred pounds, 200 pounds overweight, we know that's not good for long-term health. We just know that it's, it's there, there are going to be issues and challenges you're gonna face, and therefore, if you wanna change that, you have to go on a journey. And there are certain skills that you're gonna have to learn around, what calories and fats and proteins are, and how they impact your health.

What micronutrients are, what the right exercise regime for you is so that you can, you know, continue to build health because as you know, mammalian beings, we have to move these bodies to, to keep the lymphatic system going and so on and so forth, right? There are certain skills that you have to learn.

You might have to go to the gym and learn the different machines. There are skills here that we also have to learn. We have to learn how to regulate our own nervous systems. That would be the first skill. The second skill would be to learn how to be with the arising of our phenomena. So that would be, you know, learning how to be with the aspects of yourself.

That come up when you're triggered and learn how to be with that and come into greater levels of awareness. So remembering Michael's tool on awareness, acceptance, and action, being able to come to that internal awareness, this is a part of me that's arising in this relationship with my beloved that is actually coming from this historical pattern of me not feeling safe in relationship.

Okay? So knowing that I have to be the one to be able to internally resolve that. If we want to be sovereign beings, if we want to have, a level of security and confidence within inside ourselves, then we have to learn how to give that to ourselves. We have to learn how to give ourselves the things that we needed.

So then each trigger becomes a cue for your liberation. Each trigger becomes a cue for you to become more aware, more loving, and to take more action. Towards the life and relationship that you actually want. And when you get those two down from there, you start to build some confidence. You start to build some momentum of, okay, cool, I can do this.

I'm starting to see some benefits. I'm less reactive with my partner. Cool. I'm less reactive at work. Cool. You start to build some momentum and then from there you may start learning other skills. So the skill of communication. If you want an amazing relationship, essentially, no one told me this. You need to be a masterful communicator.

You need to learn the skills of communication. You need to learn how to bring something to someone without it being an attack. An example of that would be, if I was to say, Michael, you are this, Michael, you're a piece of ***. Right? Instantly, Michael or anyone, their trigger would go off. You're making a direct personal attack on the, the core identity of, of the individual.

And that always creates a reactivity. So you have to start to learn, okay, cool, don't do that. But we can talk about behaviors. Hey, if I said, Hey, that behavior that you do really upsets me or really hurts me, very different conversations. So we can start talking about behaviors that are in the relationship.

We can start bringing it up in a way that allows us to, skillfully move through it to, to clear what might be in the way of deeper levels of intimacy. Because often we can get into relationships and things are good for the first six or seven months, you get to experience the, the hormonal cascade of serotonin and oxytocin.

It's a beautiful journey. And then seven months down the line that comes down, back into baseline, and then those triggers are still there. And if you don't deal with those triggers, if you don't deal with the internal. The external will repeat itself. And that's then the opportunity to be able to learn how to love the unlovable within yourself.

How to even better love the unlovable in another person. I think that's the beauty and benefit of relationship when we can come into and love the other in places that they can't because we love them. And I believe that's what love is. I believe love actually is unconditional. It's without conditions. It's no matter what I'm here and I've got you and I'm gonna show up. I don't know how we're gonna get through this, but I love you. That part of you, I love you. That part of you, this behavior I might not like, but you. I love you. I love, and that's pretty radical in our world. And the reason why people, for example, love their pets and love their children is why? What's that love? Unconditional, right? No one's gonna take your pet away from you. And your child is generally tied to you from that familial parental bond for your life. It's a really deep bond. So this, the certainty there that relationship is gonna stay and therefore people show up differently. But when we can start to think of people as, oh, we can just X them off, we can just leave them, we're not gonna show up. Then it makes relationships turns into something transactional versus something relational. And relationships can be challenging at times and it can be hard to love people. But that's again, where we come back to learning how to love the unlovable, learning how to love the unlovable in ourselves and learning how to love the unlovable in other people.

And the caveat for this is we're not saying, I'm not saying to tolerate unsupportive or dysfunctional patterns of behavior in other people. It's not what I'm saying. But to create an actual healthy relationship, you do have to be able to. To love and, and, and to love, I believe means all the way through.

Michael Unbroken: Powerful. Yeah. And I agree, and I think loving someone with their flaws is so incredibly important because, unfortunately, one of the things that happens in relationships is people tend to think that they can change someone. Nobody's changing for you. It's just literally never going to happen. If they do in any capacity change or transform, they'll do it because they're choosing to for themselves. And I think you made a very, very good point at the end about recognizing that, you know, you don't have to accept that the, the abusive parts, you don't have to accept the deeply negative parts.

You don't have to accept the hurtful parts of people, you know, and that's why I think that question of like, are you dating your mom and dad is such an important question when you're looking at the relationship, you're in. You know, because I didn't understand this. Like I was with someone. I've shared this before.

Obviously, I won't go to names or anything, but I was with someone for a very long time in my twenties. She never hit me ever. but the verbal abuse mm- Mutually, by the way, I am very guilty in this. I'm not, not taking myself out of the equation. Brutal. The verbal, the mental, the emotional abuse. And one day, man, I'll never forget this, I was driving home after spending time with her. I was like, I fucking hate her. Like, I f*cking hate this person. She's just like my mom. And it was like, it was really a locked in, cute in holy shit kind of moment where I was like, oh. This is making more sense now. This is happening again. Right? And so if we look for patterns, kind of to your point earlier, there's a lot of freedom that comes on the backside of that. But here's, here's the interesting thing, because I see a lot on social. even a lot of psychologists talk about this, and it's something I don't necessarily agree with.

I mean, it's contextual, but it's this idea that you shouldn't go and be in a relationship or seek love and that you should stay single until you're perfectly healed. Like every, I just keep seeing this everywhere, and I contend it really is more about like getting to a sustainable place and then going and being willing to go play the game. I don't think because dude, I'm 17 years into this game, I'm not fully healed, you know what I mean? Like, I'm still a f*cking train wreck. Sometimes that's a part of it. And what am I supposed to do? Get to the point where I never have a problem for what a month, a year, five, 10, and then I go and find someone?

I don't think so personally. I don't think that, I think that you get to this place where you're sustainable, where the nervous system gets reregulated and you go and be with someone, go explore it. And again, I think contextually it's different for everyone, but with that narrative being spun so frequently of like, don't go and be in a relationship until you fully heal. How you ever singularly define fully heal. But also don't know that a timeline is a necessity. So I'm just really curious about your thoughts?

Rick William: I mean, it's kinda like saying don't go. Don't mean a relationship until you're fully healthy. Don't be. I mean, it's kinda ridiculous. I mean, it's nuanced and I mean, everyone's gonna have their own journey with this. So as we're sharing about this, you thinking of what feels most supportive and true and real for you. And I come from the school of believing what is heard in relationship is healed in relationship.

And I also believe there are, baseline skills. In fact, me and my wife call it base camp. So if you're gonna go to climb Mount Everest, there's a whole path, there's a whole journey that we can go on in our psychological, emotional, relational, spiritual development. And there's many mountains to climb, but there is base camp and there is the kind of basic skills of self-regulation, of communication, of looking after our lives in such a way that allow us to create enough of the conditions to allow for love and intimacy and connection to occur. So, knowing that also means you could choose to be in a relationship with someone who's also on a similar journey that is supportive of the journey you want to be on, just like if you were on a health journey and you went out with someone who really wasn't on a health journey and was into eating junk food all the time, that might make your journey a lot more difficult. So being with someone who's on a similar journey as you then can be a really beautiful dance.

Whether you guys stay together for a month, a year, or a decade or a lifetime, you guys can come into it with intentionality of, Hey, like we're on our healing journeys. And we're also learning how to be into relationship together. Do you wanna do this together? I like being with you. And I think from in inside of that, really beautiful things can emerge because you get the opportunity to actually get to be in the arena.

Because again, like you said before, whether you're an entrepreneur in this game of, of healing and transformation, if you're just reading the books, you're not in the arena. So we have to be able to bring this into our relationships. And if your choice is that you don't want an intimate relationship right now, well then you bring this into your friendships.

You learn how to heal your friendships. You learn how to be a better friend. You learn how to be a more intimate friend. You could learn how to heal relationships with family members. You could learn how to have transformative, healing, clearing conversations with family members, in such a way that bring intimacy and healing and connection, back to you and to others.

And then those same skills could then be used in relationships. If your choices that you don't want to be in relationship right now, there are other ways of being in relationship that can support the learning of that skillset equally. If you wanna find someone who's on the journey too, I think that can also be a beautiful thing. So yeah, that would be my take is, the skills to be learned. And these skills really have to be applied in relationship.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. The point that you made about bringing them into your friendships is phenomenal, by the way. And the reason why I said that is. We are always in relationships, always all like literally always friends, family, coworkers, employees, the guy next to you on the bus.

You know, as odd as it may sound like, we're always in a relationship, but always exist. We are always coexisting with other human beings. And sI think that's such a valid point because I mean, even like I look at my friendships now as opposed to 15 years ago, 10 years ago, even, dude, they are so deeply intimate and like the most healthy, beautiful, vulnerable way.

I twofold, I could call my best friends right now. We could hide a body or we could talk about the breakup. You know what I mean? And that's something that like most people really don't have. And I would encourage people to open up more vulnerability in their relationships of all capacity because it matters.

Sometimes I think the path to getting there is to let go of the fear. And so I want to come full circle. I wanna come back to where we kind of started. Fear is this overarching enemy in this hero's journey of love. Fear is this thing that just, it shows up in the little inklings of, of night. It shows up in the, the moments where everything is going well and your brain goes, but what if fear is ultimately a reason why some people even leave relationships? They're so scared because the intimacy and the love is too deep. How do you navigate fear in this conversation? How do you get through fear to allowance and just let it exist?

Rick William: Well, I'll speak about my way, which is also welcoming fear as a teacher. So allowing fear. So the allowance of fear itself, that fear doesn't have to be something that also has to be pushed down that the fear itself, we can welcome it. Hey, fear my old friend. Okay, cool. Soon as you do that, you're now in relationship with it not being taken from it. Because as soon as I say, Hey, fear my old friend, I'm right here with you buddy. Fear no longer has the grip. Fear no longer is in the driving seat. I'm in the driving seat, and fear is in the passenger seat. And from there we can create new relationship. So it's not just what's happening in our experience, it's how we're relating to what's happening. I'm gonna say that again. It's not what's happening, it's how we're relating to what's happening. That's also the past. The healing journey is learning how to relate to your past in a new way, not cognitively, I mean in your heart, your body, where you're transforming the relationship with the past in the present moment.

You can't ever erase the past, but you can transform your relationship to it. It can become a lesson. It can become a blessing. It can become something that deepens your compassion and your love and your understanding. Those things are real. So remembering that it's not what's happening, it's how I'm relating to what's happening.

So if fear is arising, I can welcome fear as a friend. Hey, fear, I know you. I'm right here with you. I've been afraid. I know what fear feels like, and I'm here with you in this, and right there. You're being the friend to yourself. You're being the friend that you were just referring to before that would be right there with you to bury the body or to talk about the breakup, right?

It's like it's also being that friend for the arising of, not some phenomena, not some parts of our experience, but all of our experience. The fear, the shame, the guilt, the ugly stuff, the beautiful stuff. But sometimes that can be a shadow too. Your brilliance, your beauty, your goodness, your gifts, your talents. Also welcoming those and allowing this to come into a more authentic and whole relationship with ourselves to all of us, right? To the beauty and the darkness and challenge. And then being the, being right in the center, the person right in the center, learning to be with it all. Learning to be in acceptance with all of it. For me, that's what's worked.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. I love that. If somebody is listening and they're taking just a ton out of this and they're thinking to themselves, okay, well where do I really begin? Because obviously we've talked about regulating the nervous system. We've talked about, you know, this idea of this allowance, acceptance action. We've talked about like taking inventory of the relationship. We've talked about so many different things. But let's say somebody's already in a relationship and things are not working, and they want to fight for this person. They want to fight for their flaws. They want to find a path. They have chosen them, they have done as much as humanly possible to try to make it work, they're willing to do one more thing, right? Before they walk away and they throw in the towel, maybe they tried a couple of different things. They sit, they chat, there's a disconnect. Something here is foundationally not working. Where do they start? Like, what is something that a couple could do? Let's assume, by the way, Rick, 'cause I think we have to make this assumption. Let's assume both parties have mutually agreed that they're willing to figure it out. Because if it is one sided that you, that you're doomed, there's nothing you can do about it.

So let's go into this and assume that both parties have mutually agreed, Hey, I love you. I love you too. I will walk this path to the point of irreconcilable differences, right? Which I have experienced before. That is a thing. I get it now. I used to be like, what? But now I understand it. But sands that outside of that, they're willing to do whatever it takes. What do they actually need to do? What must they do to actually fix that relationship?

Rick William: That's a beautiful place to be. If anyone is in that scenario or you end up in that scenario, that's a beautiful and powerful place to be 'cause you have two individuals who are willing to show up and inside of that.

If you are willing to go on the journey and they're willing to go on the journey, you could do what we just shared before that healing is done in relationship, that what is heard in relationship is healed in relationship. So it's a beautiful opportunity. And inside of that, we're gonna go back to what we said.

It's like, I might sound like I'm repeating myself here, but sometimes we have to repeat the basics and we repeat the basics until it's done. You repeat the basics. If you're learning music, you know you have to repeat the basic keys until you get it down. And then eventually you learn how to play a song inside of fitness and health.

You have to learn the basics, and eventually you get those down, and then it be you become un unconsciously competent in any skill set. It's the same here. So I'm gonna bring it back to the same thing we've been talking about today. You have to learn how to regulate your own nervous system, to be with the arising of the phenomenon of your experience, your triggers in such a way that they transform, and then learn how to communicate in relationship and build a healthy vision with that partner.

Learn from other people, whether that be in a group, whether that be a therapist or a coach that can support you and support you in, making that journey, more skillfully, more effectively, right? Because you could go read the books and go to this workshop here, or go to that workshop there, and that might be your journey.

If you don't have the resources or resourcefulness to get people in your life that can support you, you might have to go learn it here, and then put it all together yourself. But if you can find a group, whether that be, you know, the unbroken community or whether that be someone that Michael can, you know, recommend you or whether that be myself.

Find someone who can kind of guide you guys on the journey and to learn those skill sets that we've been talking about. Because when I learned those skill sets, my life transformed. And I had the moment of just like, why did no one teach me how to do that sooner? 

And it was like a beautiful moment, 'cause it's like, yes, okay, cool. This is possible. And also like the frustration at the same time of like, fuck, like why is it taking me 30 something to figure this out? So, that would be my advice would be just to, just like any skill, you know, if you want to get fit physically, mentally, you know, emotionally hang around with people who are a few steps ahead of you so that you can learn from them and integrate that into your life, that's what's helped me. 

Michael Unbroken: Having somebody like you, Rick, in my corner, probably would've saved a lot of friendships, relationships, business partners like a lot, you know? And I think that's one of those things that you don't know until it's too late. And if we can mitigate the risk by getting people like you involved in our lives sooner, I mean, it'll save you just a huge headache.

I think the biggest lie we tell ourselves as humans is the notion that the same ideas and thinking that brought us into this mess will get us out. And we need an outside perspective. You have to, because same for me. My life, my life did not change at all one bit with the books with the online education.

We didn't really have podcast then. It didn't change with any of the anything. Tell I got in connection with other human beings who had done the thing I was trying to do. So encourage you, if you're listening and you're like, man, I could use some more help on this. I want you to come and find Rick. Speaking of Rick, before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you? Where can they learn more about you and where can they connect you? 

Rick William: Yeah,great question. There's two places. The first place is my website, rickwilliam.com, that will give you, kind of all the other ways that we can connect.

If you're on social media or email, we can kind of connect that way. But what I would say for anyone listening, if you want to have more of an experience of what I've been talking about here in regards to the skills, I have put pretty much everything we've been talking about here into a free app called “The Toolbox” that's on Google Play and on Apple. So if you write in Rick William the toolbox, that will take you to that app, and inside of that there is a seven-day challenge. There are different practices that will allow you to begin to have some deeper experience of what it is that we're talking about here. And you know, then from there you can know, can kind of join our communities and the kind of other men and people that are kind of doing this work together. So that would be my recommendation. And for anyone from the unbroken community it'd be a pleasure to have you.

Michael Unbroken: Beautiful. And of course guys, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com to look up this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Rick William: To be human. I'm gonna keep it super simple. To be unbroken is to remember our humanity and the preciousness and gift that is this life. And including all of it, the broken and the unbroken and learning how to love it. I think that's what being unbroken means to me, is to learn how to love all of it more and more.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And the most to air is to be human, comes to mind. My friend, thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation, my friends. Thank you all so much for listening. If this brought you any value to your life, please share it with a friend because I can promise you someone in your life could use this episode.

Thank you for being here. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

And Until Next Time.

Be Unbroken. I'll See You.