Ep 409: Connect Deeper With Your Partner in 4 Minutes or Less – With Dr. Glenn & Phyllis Hill

Feel like you’ve lost connection with your partner? Find little things become big arguments more often than not? Couples therapy not helping like you’d hoped?  Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill had the perfect relationship till they got married.  After spending decades of disconnecting from each other Phyllis discovered a clue that set them on a path to restore their connection.  Inspired by the results of their clients, loads of research and Glen becoming a marriage and family therapist as well as a clinical sexologist these two have teamed up to create Connection Codes, a program designed to reconnect through core emotions. In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill on their story and how you can get started reconnecting today.

Resources From The Show: 

• Connection Codes Masterclasses 
• Masterclasses – 20% of “healthfix”
• The Connection Codes Book
• The Connection Codes Podcast

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Podcast Transcript

JANNINE: [Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds and fit physics or life. Hey, health junkies, Dr. Jannine Krause here. I am looking for some help from you all. And what I’m looking for is some inspiration, some inspirational stories that I can share of men and women, defying aging and defying it by crossing things off their bucket list that maybe they thought they could never do, maybe coming back from an injury, starting something new, like skiing at 40 years old. Whatever it may be, I want to know about these stories and I want to interview folks. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone you know. Doesn’t matter. I want to help inspire folks out there that you don’t have to follow social aging norms. You can defy stuff. You can get better as you get older. You can make so much progress at any age. You can build muscle at any age. You can have a stronger heart at any age and you can crush all those things you want to do on your bucket list. Just because your older doesn’t mean you have to give up on yourself and your dreams. And this is something that I want to share and inspire folks with. So if you have a story or someone you know, email us at info@doctorspelledout. So d-o-c-t-o-r-j-k-r-a-u-s-e-n-d.com https://doctorjkrausendcom. Let’s spread the word about how amazing life can be as you get older and all the cool things that you can do. Alright, health junkies. I’m counting on you. Let’s get some emails in and let’s get some awesome stories on the podcast. Hey health junkies, on this episode of the Health Fix podcast, I have Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill on and we’re going to be talking about connecting. This is a big issue that happens with relationships and possibly should be introduced in the dating realm too. So Dr. Glenn and Phyllis are going to share with us how to connect on a deeper level using the eight core emotions. And this is something that they are doing within their business called connection codes and we’ll talk all about that, how it works and how you can connect better even with yourself right after this podcast. So let’s introduce you to Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill. 

Hey health junkies, I have a fun episode today for you. I’m going to be talking to Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill. We’re going to be talking about something that I think every relationship could use a little boost of and maybe it’s like part of we create this movement where it’s part of dating. You just go through this connection process and really work together to truly understand how you can connect on a deeper level. So we’re going to be diving into that today and I’m excited to introduce Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill. Welcome to the HealthFix podcast. 

DR.GLENN: Thank you. 

PHYLLIS: Wow. Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s so fun. Of course, we love meeting new people and then we just love talking about all of this as far as relationships and how to be more intentional, more authentic, go a little deeper in your relationships. And I even love that you brought up dating because man, for us, if we had had this stuff when we were dating, wow, it would have changed so much because you know, now we’ve been married 41 years. So go back, right, go back to the 1970s when we met and married in the early 80s and it’s like for us, we thought we had it all together. We had good jobs. We had just bought our first house right before the wedding and so on paper, it looked fantastic. And then after the wedding, it was like we were kind of shell shocked trying to navigate life and live under the same roof. And we learned a whole lot about each other really quick that wasn’t good and it was really painful in all of those days. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, we just had no clue what to do and how to do it. 24 hours before our wedding, we were excited about happily ever after and 48 hours after our wedding. We were like, oh crap, what have we done? We just signed the 70 year contract. I figured at that point I’d die when I was 90, although I was hoping it’d be sooner. It was very much mutual. We just didn’t have a clue. We had no idea. We didn’t need better intentions. A lot of modern marriage therapy, especially talks about, have better intentions and make more effort. We were trying our hardest, literally, for years and years and years. We just missed and missed and missed and we had no idea how we were missing because that’s not what we experienced when we were dating and we had no idea what to do now. So we very much wish we had had these tools back then. It would have made a huge difference. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. And part of our beginning, we thought it was all logistical. And I would say Glenn was the stronger personality for sure back then. It was kind of like everything was presented in. This is the right way to do it. So this is the right way to put away the dishes. This is the right way to do laundry. I really didn’t have a voice. So I was like, okay. And I would try to learn all of his systems and pretty quickly realized, I can’t keep up with that. And it doesn’t come naturally to me. And so we fought so much over what we would say would be logistics and we fought over sex too. I mean, that was a pretty hot topic for us where we didn’t understand each other in that arena. And so, you know, it was just pain. It was pain upon pain and really a lot of confusion because we really did like each other. So it was like, what in the heck? And then it kind of led, I would say, us down a road of, we got to figure this out. And Glenn is the researcher, scientist always has been, I’m not. And so he would read like every book out there. And again, just as your readers remind, like this was in the early 80s. So we felt pretty limited and there was no Google. You know, there was none of that. So it was really go get a book and read that whole book to see if you can learn anything. And our friends didn’t talk about it. And you know, there weren’t podcasts. There was just nothing like that. So if you weren’t learning it on, let’s see, Oprah Winfrey show or who was the late night guy? David. 

DR. GLENN: David Letterman? 

PHYLLIS: Yeah, David Letterman. Yeah. If you weren’t learning it on those shows, “Or Good Morning America,” then you were kind of on your own back then. And so we really did think that it was just, if we got the logistics right, then we would be happy. And it didn’t stop the conflict. And so I think that’s just a big part of our story is that after sadly decades of doing things the same way, just trying to kind of avoid the trigger topics and be polite. We thought we would be okay. But you know, we weren’t deeply connected. I mean, we were living life and raising children and you know, owning businesses and stuff like that. It was like, “Wow, who are you? What happened to the guy that I fell in love with and had fun with when we were dating?” And rarely were those occasions a part of our story anymore. And so we’ve come a long way, obviously, and a lot of it is through research and through time of just discovering these things. And one of our favorite stories we call the dishwasher story, which happened about 20 years in our marriage, where again, we’re in the kitchen. I was about to start dinner. I thought the dishwasher was full. I opened it. It’s not. It’s empty. So Glenn walks through and I say, “Oh, babe, thanks for unloading the dishwasher.” And then he did his normal, which was… 

DR. GLENN: Well, I just said, “It was not like it’s the only thing I’ve done today.” And she said, “I didn’t say it was the only thing you did today.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know why I have to make this too big a deal about it.” And what we didn’t realize is that I live with one of the most productive people on the planet. She lives with one of the lesser productive people on the planet. I’m fun to have her around, but I struggle getting things done. And loading the dishwasher for me is a 45 minute endeavor, whereas for her, it’s about three minutes. So it felt to me like she was making fun of me, like, “Oh, to miracle, Glenn, is something useful for a change? Let’s have a party celebrate, call the internet.” So I was offended that she would say that. Of course, this poor girl is like, “I was six words.” I said, “Thanks for unloading the dishwasher. Talk of that possibly be a conflict between us.” And then one day, she slowed down and she didn’t have to do this. This was out of kindness and gratuitousness. And she said, “Babe, what happens for you whenever I say that?” And I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “Well, what do you hear me say whenever I said that?” I said, “I hear you say what you said. I didn’t use the B word, but I thought it.” And she said, “Yeah, but what is the message?” And again, at any point, she could have walked out and rolled her eyes and she was like, “This is ridiculous. He’s so absurd, which should have been correct.” And it said, “She stayed curious and found out what was happening for me.” And whenever I told her, the three paragraphs that I heard in those six words, that was the big, big beginning of a huge evolution in our relationship. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. Well, for him, I think what I heard on that particular day and what came out, like in those two or three paragraphs, was even stuff about his childhood. Like the messages that you’re not good enough, you know, you never do it right, you’re, you’re a joke, you’re a failure. And so in me saying, “Thank you,” that is what he experienced. And for when I heard all of that, I was, it was like this light bulb moment for me that I’m like, “Wow, there is so much going on behind the scenes that I am so unaware of.” And the curiosity of my question opened up a whole new world. I didn’t even know existed. And we’d been married for 20-something years. And so it was like, “Wow, this is what I’m missing. It’s not the logistics of the words I’m saying or the logistics of the action or, you know, whatever. It’s what’s going on inside of him or inside of me. I mean, the same, you know, this is just what happens in relationships. This is humans, right? We assume a whole lot about each other that we don’t know. And that moment in time was such a huge shift for us that I began with that curiosity often. If Glenn responded in a weird way to me that, or at least a way I thought was weird, I would say, “Okay, what’s happening? What’s going on? You know what’s happening for you? What are you hearing me say?” And then he began to trust me more and more with what was going on behind the scenes. And it just changed everything for us, which led Glenn down the road of, you know, pursuing his, going back to school, you know, doing all this research, getting his, his masters and then going on and getting his doctorate because that one thing changed everything for us. DR. GLENN: Yeah. Because I wanted to figure out, how is it possible that this couple who 24 hours before their wedding were excited about happily ever after? How is this possible that they could get that lost that fast? We are very intelligent people. We’re gifted talented people. How is this possible? This can’t be. They’re not just dummies that, you know, well, you’re so stupid that, you know, they lost each other. And again, they lost each other so fast. So, and again, that just fueled my curiosity to be like, how is this possible? That these two intelligent people could be dumb as bricks, could be so clueless, just completely lost from each other. And I always say that I’m the educated one, Phyllis is the smart one. All the benchmarks in our relationship were from things that she figured out. I do all the research and the theoretical stuff. And then she figures out what actually matters, how you implement this. And when I went back to school and she made me quit working, which I just think is stunning that she made me quit working to go back to school. But and she built her business and then that allowed me the freedom. You know, there was no financial stress. So, that allowed me the freedom to just research and research and research and just observe interactions and try to figure out how do these two people. And it doesn’t even just, you know, partner pairs. It’s not just marriage. It can be, you know, a mother and a daughter. Well, I’ve never met the parent when the baby’s born. They’re like, I hope I, we grow apart. You know, I hope that we have a lot of, you know, bitterness between us. Some day, I’ve never heard that. So, nobody wants that. But that’s where the vast majority of relationships end up. So, I was like, I got to figure this out. And then we finally did scientifically what causes people to disconnect. Again, that was my theoretical part. And then Phylliswill said, “well wait. Finally, what causes people to disconnect is no great accomplishment because whoopdy doo is we walk around and we go, you’re doomed, you’re doomed.” And she said,”what if we found out what causes people to connect? What if we reverse, we switch it around are those same, same things, the things that cause people to connect”, and she was correct as usual. And so now we know scientifically how to get to humans to connect and deep relationship. 

JANNINE: I mean, fascinating, fascinating because let’s put it this way. Your story is not one that is uncommon. 

DR. GLENN: Oh absolutely.

PHYLLIS: Yeah, yeah. 

JANNINE: I mean, as a doc, I have many people who will come in and a lot of my patients joke that sometimes it’s a therapy session because a lot of our internal issues that we have health wise. Let’s put it this way. This is one of the number one and being a very deeply rooted connection issue with a loved one with family member, like you mentioned, you know, or it is a significant other. And I can see parallels even within my own relationship too. You know, there’s very like I said something. He takes it completely, you know, something completely different and you’re like, what the heck? So this is so fascinating. This is so fascinating. So you went back to school, you learned all these things, you go, all right, now we got to connect, not disconnect any further. You created the connection codes framework and of course we’re going to get to that in a little bit. What were some of the things that you guys were doing in terms of playing back and forth to to figure out where were these points of connection and and give me a little bit of background in terms of what happened from you get out of school. Phyllis goes, hey, you know, we need to help people connect, not not disconnect further. What kind of experiments did you guys go through to get to the connection codes? This is the one I’m had it. 

DR. GLENN: Well this part’s a little embarrassing. I get my master’s degree open my private practice and I’m so now I’m sitting in groups of therapists as well. We call it staffing cases. And the vast majority of therapists that I would talk to would say, I don’t know for really helping that much. I mean, literally I would talk to people who would say, I’ve been in private practice for 18 years. And I don’t know if I’ve ever really helped to marriage much. You know, I mean, I listen to them, you know, maybe they, you know, meander through the forest and find something to eat, but I don’t know. I don’t have a good plan to help them. So I’m just getting so disillusioned by this. And then I’m experimenting. I mean, I’m experiencing that same thing in my private practice where I’m like, nothing all these theories that I learned in school aren’t really working. And again, I’m not saying they don’t accomplish anything, but they don’t really accomplish what we’re hoping that they will accomplish. So I, after a while, just said, okay, I’m just going to start from scratch. And I literally got to just a blank piece of paper. And I did three columns connect, neutral and disconnect. And I just started observing interactions. When does she move away from him, other geographically or relationally? You know, when does she cross her arms? You know, when does she turn her head away from him? When does she roll her eyes? You know, when does he turn his back? When does he put his hands up? And go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. So what are the disconnectors? So I just started charting what was happening. And initially I didn’t even know it would just be phrases, but eventually I learned that, okay, whenever he asks her why, she moves away from him. And again, this is over two and a half years. So we’re talking about thousands of interactions that I observe. And so then I start looking at pages and pages and pages of this. And I’m like, oh my gosh. But the phrase why never connects people. It doesn’t always disconnect them. There are lots of neutrals. But it net like I’m just looking at the chart. Like there are no check marks in the connect column. How is this possible? And I remember the day I came back— came home and told him, I said, I’m like, babe, I think I figure something out here. We should never ask people why. Because number one, they don’t know why. And that was the great miss of Freud, as he thought if we figure out why we’ll solve the problem. Not really. But we find out that it’s because of what happened to me when I was seven. Okay. So what? Now what we’re going to do. Because all that matters is now. And then after we accumulated all that, and then we spent two and a half years feeding people the phrases that were successful, the phrases that had, they’re all or mostly check marks in the connect column or at least the neutral column. And then we figured out if he asks her what happens or her, they connect. Not always, there are lots of neutrals, but they never disconnect when he goes, babe, what? What happens for you there? And then we figured out the phrase, I missed it. If he can add in that, I think I’m missing something. Could you help me catch up with what happened for you? Because I missed it because I just, and you’re really important to me. And I just messed up sometimes. Then they always connect. It was stunning to me. The data on it. I’m thinking is it really that simple? And it actually is. We humans are incredibly complex and pretty darn simple at the same time. 

PHYLLIS: Well, even going back to the dishwasher story, if you put in that very thing, if I turned to him and say, after I’ve said, thank you for allowing dishwasher and he would have a snarky response, if in that moment I say, why do you do that? That never goes well. 

DR. GLENN: Why do you respond to that? 

PHYLLIS: Why do you say stuff like that? Why can’t you just say you’re welcome? That never got us connected. But that day that I got curious and I turned to him and I said, what happens for you? I actually got to see behind the scenes. And it’s like he wasn’t defending himself anymore. He let the guard down and he let me in to a really private part of his psyche. So those are the things I think through having a private practice, having time to do research and continue to research because you definitely started that in school as far as just that whole idea of, wow, I can spend time researching. I don’t have to just make ends meet. And so… 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, I was married to a very wealthy woman. 

PHYLLIS: Well, I got there, but it wasn’t that in the early days. So just for him to have that time and then you just see it play out. Right? Which is such a cool thing about research. And that was a big one. Why versus what happens? You Know? Those were simple things that started making such a difference. And then I think it led you down really further into the whole topic of emotions and how emotions happen to you and that your brain fires emotions for all of us. There’s none of us that can opt out of emotions, even if we think we can or want to. It’s not true. If we were all hooked up to brain scans, we would be shocked how much emotion is happening for us at all times. And so that’s…I would say that was the next chapter. That was where you went into after all of that.

DR. GLENN: Yeah, initially, that’s what I began observing is that whenever, whoever, whichever partner, whichever individual is able to convey what we now recognize as core emotions, you know, when he’s able to say to her, “I just felt hurt by what you said.” Again, and even the wording of it for him to say, “You hurt me.” Well, now we’re in an accusation mode. That’s a whole different animal. Whereas if he says, “I just felt hurt.” Then I started studying emotion. Let’s wait a minute. This seems to be a constant theme, either the connection or the disconnection if they present the core emotion well or if they don’t process the emotion. So I just started studying emotion and then realizing how incredible…again, very complex, but very simple this is. There are five neural regions that house emotion. That’s true for every human on the planet. There’s not any humans on the planet that breathe ice cream. We all breathe oxygen. It’s just true. Sorry. It’d be fun to breathe ice cream. You just don’t get to. You breathe oxygen. So all of us have the five neural regions, anger, fear, disgust, pleasure and pain. We divide two of those up to come up with the eight core emotions. So then we start, again, feeding people those to say, “Could you just tell her what happens for you there?” And he’s like, “What do you mean?” I’m like… That’s where we eventually develop what we call the core emotion wheel. What we found was humans connect through core emotions. It’s true for every human on the planet. When we can get people to the core, to the authentic self. Then I started realizing, “Wait a minute. This is how we’re coded from birth. All babies are authentic. Every six month, old, eight months, twelve month, fifteen month, old is authentic. They never hesitate. They just convey what’s real for them, even at three o’clock in the morning, which is overwhelming for the parents. Because they’re like, “Didn’t you wait until seven to tell me about your fear you experienced the three?” So we’re coded. We’re hardwired from birth. We’re faith-based. We think there’s a designer up there somewhere. But even if there’s not, it’s still the human condition. This is just how humans operate. We all breathe oxygen, whether God designed us to breathe oxygen or not, we all breathe oxygen. So we all experience these emotions, whether you’re faith-based or not. So, again, as we initially observed it, and then began feeding people, and then developed the core emotion will and saw the power of that simultaneously, this would have been in 2014, Phyllis is running a kick ass business. I mean, just levels I’d never reached running my businesses. And so she’s just wide open, 364 days a year. She insisted on taking Christmas day off. I don’t know why, but she did. She’s just blowing it out. Well, then her mom gets cancer and is dying. But now she has all of this sadness and all of this pressure, which we later realized was fear, running her business. So she’s ping-ponging between those or pinballing, I guess, between those. But she didn’t know what to do with it because she had been raised to not have emotions. It’s just get stuff done. And for many, many years, what she still says, that Glenn’s the emotional one, Phyllis doesn’t do it much. She doesn’t say anymore because she realizes, no, you don’t get that option. But I looked so emotional. And again, I didn’t know what to do with the emotions. I just looked emotional and she was just so task oriented, task driven, which is amazing. I mean, she, everybody wanted her own their committees and projects because she was phenomenal at getting stuff done. Again, I was fun to have around, but she was the one that actually made it happen. And so eventually that pressure built up, built up, built up, and she quit sleeping for six days. And the human organism cannot do that. You cannot not sleep. And so that finally got her attention because I had been talking to her all along, you know, about my research while I was learning. She’s, you know, she’s half hearing me. She’s like, hey, I got to get back to work and I got to get back to getting stuff done. And then when she quit sleeping, her whole body would berserk, her psyche went berserk. So she’s like, okay, fine. Let’s talk. 

PHYLLIS: Well, I was definitely a good, at this point in his research, I was a really good lab rat because all of that that he was learning is, you know, at this point, I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing. He had a private practice and I was just focused on my company. And so, but when I started going through a health crisis for the first time, it really shifted like, whoa, what he, he was really tuning in to me. And then he started talking about all this research, just how emotions affect the body. And I just was like, this was like a foreign language to me. Because at this point in my life, I, you know, I was in my 50s and I was healthy. And so it was like, oh, I never had what I would call health issues. So now all of a sudden, for the first time, I have health issues. And when he was talking about the emotion side of it, I was like, well, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. First of all, I don’t have emotions and second of all, emotions don’t affect your body. Or that doesn’t make any sense, you know? Well, he knew better because he was doing all the research and then it was like, I was desperate enough because I didn’t want to just go on sleeping pills. I was desperate enough to listen to him. And so he just started teaching me about emotion and that my brain houses emotion and brain fires, my brain fires emotion. I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Why did no one ever teach me this? Like, why was this not in science class? And what in the world? How can this, why is not everyone talking about this? And you know, when I started to understand how much emotion affects your body, how your body stores emotion, if you don’t process it, it was mind blowing to me. And as soon as I was not, I’m actually, I’m telling the side of the story because I’m giving myself a lot of grace in this story because I was not easy. I resisted for sure the information.

DR. GLENN: She was a difficult case for sure. 

PHYLLIS: I was difficult. I was difficult until I tried it. And so for me, when, when Glenn was  teaching me about core motions and he was like, almost kind of like, I felt like I was getting the baby steps of the message and, and that’s what I needed. I’m like, I’m not going to read any research. I’m not going to read a book about it. And I need you to bring this down to the simplest way possible for me to understand it. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, because I would bring stuff home in research and studies and I would be like, “Babe, you should read this 37 page, you know, research paper.” She’s like, “What? I don’t have time to read them. I’m like, “Yeah, it’s really good.” He’s like, “I don’t think so. I can even get her to read the abstract.” So she said, “You simplify it and I’ll look at it.” 

PHYLLIS: Well, but in those days that I wasn’t sleeping, of course, I was even more like you can’t understand anything. So I was like, “Please just simplify.” And that’s when he brought just down to the eight core emotions and brought it to me in a way that I was like, “Okay, so if I tune in, because like the sad, I would say, I don’t have time to be sad.” And he said, “But your body is firing sad.” So you’re storing that somewhere in your body. 

DR. GLENN: And I always tell her, I’m saying, “Babe, I’m not trying to get you to be sad.” Right. You are sad. You’re best friends with your mom and she’s passing away deteriorating, you know, week by week by month by month. So I’m not trying to talk you into saddest. You already are experienced. 

PHYLLIS: Well, and my dad died when I was only 25. So my body had that memory and I was a total mess when I got that phone call. It was like I could barely get out of bed for a whole year after my dad passed. So I’m thinking, or my body is keeping that memory, right? And so I’m resisting the sad, which made sense to me later that, “Oh, you were resisting so much because your body’s going now. Remember, you’re going to be in bed for a year when your mom dies and now you’re running a company and who’s going to take that over?” And so I was like, “I’m not even touching sad. I’m not going to mention the word. I’m not going to tell anyone I’m sad. I’m not going to talk about sad.” So of course, my body is storing the sad. And once I understood, and fear was the other, which I never knew, I was running my company with the core motion of fear as my everyday thing, fear failure, fear making the wrong decision, fear of workers not showing up, fear of contracts going awry. 

DR. GLENN: But that was not a pretty moment when I said it. It seems like maybe now we know this is very dangerous to conjecture another human’s experience. But it seems like maybe there’s some fear for it. She’s like, “I’m not afraid of anything. I thought she was going to rip my head.” And I was like, “Ooh.” And now we realize that it’s just brain chemistry. It’s just what’s firing in the brain. It’s not a matter of being afraid. It’s just a matter of experiencing fear. PHYLLIS: Right. And so in those, it’s like, I feel like it all happened within a day where once I understood that I needed to acknowledge what was happening with me emotionally, my psyche calmed down. It was like my limbic system went back into alignment. I was so dysregulated, that’s why I wasn’t sleeping. And so it was like a simple exercise of conveying the emotion and what was connected to it, cleared out my limbic system. And it was crazy how instantly then I went back to sleeping well. And so then I was convinced. Like, it was like that was proof to me that I needed to understand more about emotion and how the body gets affected by the emotion that we have. And so it was a life-changing experience for me. I often tell people now, I said, “This whole thing saved my life, both are in our relationship.” These tools, it’s like, “Wow, we don’t have to live in conflict all the time.” And we can just communicate what’s happening for us. We can just say, “Ooh, I felt hurt there. I felt sad.” And it’s that simple. And that’s what we love about what we do with the connection codes, because it’s not just our own story. It’s thousands of other people around the world who, you know, we get emails from on a regular. And just that are saying, “Wow, these simple tools actually work.” And they take the conflict out of our house and our relationships. And they bring deep connection. And it’s like, “Yeah, and your health, right? It’s crazy how people will say, “This has completely changed my health journey, because I am learning how to just tune in to myself, ask myself, “Well, what’s happening?” And then going through the eight emotions, the eight core emotions. And I know there’s a lot of talk out there about emotions, but sometimes we complicate it horribly. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. That is something that I do see, you know, where do we go with these emotions? And it’s kind of turned into now, I’ve seen, you know, all different directions of folks, you know, specializing in the certain emotions even. And I think that really, like you said, it’s, yes, it’s there. And then, you know, you recognize it and how fast you were able to turn that emotion around. I think that is where we’re lacking. We’re dwelling too much on the emotion for too long and not moving through that process. And that’s kind of where I would definitely love to hear from you guys in terms of the speed of moving things through you. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah. The human coding is to process emotion in 19 seconds. In research projects, the last couple of years have said that we just don’t experience an emotion for more than 19 seconds unless it’s reactivated. Of course, there’s lots of things that can reactivate it, including another person. So in other words, if I say to Phyillis, as I felt hurt by what you said, she said, “What? No, you don’t need to feel hurt. I didn’t mean anything bad about that, was she just reactivated the hurt from a good intention. I’m not even criticizing her motive in it, but it actually makes it worse, not better. It sounds like it can make it better.” You know, she’s like, “What? No, I didn’t mean anything bad about that. You shouldn’t feel hurt.” Well, I wasn’t trying to feel hurt. I just did feel hurt. Whereas, and this is what we call the “ew.” The “ew” is just an audible response. And the “ew” leads the other person into the three phrases. So for her to just go, “Oh, so wait, what happened? Or are you there? What did I miss?” No, she missed it. Not because she’s dumb. She missed it because I haven’t told her. Yeah, but she can say to me, “You’re not making any sense. You need to explain yourself.” Well, that’s not really this connection. Whereas, if she goes, “Hey, could you help me get what I missed?” Because I just didn’t get what happened for you. Help me catch up. And so now I’m going to process that emotion literally in 19 seconds, which blows my mind. Because if you had said that to me 25 years ago, I would have thought you were making fun of me. If you had said, “Hey, dude, you know you could process this in 25 seconds with your partner.” I’d be like, “Shut up. Don’t be a jerk.” These things take three to five hours and sometimes three to five weeks. Now, who knows? And to now, and virtually all of our tense moments now are 30 seconds or less. That blows my mind. To this day, I’m 62 years old. To this day, I’m still like, “Really? Is this a thing?” This is because I remember. I remember all the long drawn out. And again, I’m not talking about minutes or hours, literally days and weeks, where we were disconnected, where we wouldn’t even speak to each other for days on end. I remember that. And now that we process through things in 30 seconds, I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Is this a thing?” And it is. It’s pretty cool. 

PHYLLIS: Well, it is mentioning the 19 seconds. I mean, I love that research. Because it makes so much sense when you see it play out. Which some people simplify that by going, “Okay, so you’re going to teach me how to be a really good listener?” It’s like, “Yeah, okay. That’s a good way to say it.” Like, we don’t, we’re not good listeners. We want to give someone advice. We’re super quick about that. We want to, you know, kind of inject our own story. Like, somebody walks in and says, “Oh, man, I just, whoa, I feel so much anger towards my mom. Oh, girl, I get you. Me too.” And then you go off telling your own story. Well, the other person is just standing there going, “Oh, I’ve just been disregarded.” And so the anger stays. It doesn’t move past. It doesn’t flow through the body. It gets almost stuck in the body. So often by how other people respond to us. And, you know, even with something as simple as saying, “Oh, I felt hurt by what you said.” For the other person that go that whole thing of, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” Believe it or not, that just reactivates it. That reactivates the hurt. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, it makes it worse, not better. And it’s from a good intention. And that’s, you know, with a dishwasher story. That’s what Phyllis did so many times. You know, I would say, “Well, it’s not like I said the only thing I did all day.” And she’d say, “I didn’t say it was. I didn’t say anything negative to you at all.” And it actually reactivated the hurt and the shame that I was experiencing. Which she didn’t know. You know, I’m not blaming Phyllis. I’m not criticizing her. She had no idea what was happening for me. But also, Glenn didn’t know what was happening for Glenn. I had no idea that, “Oh, I get punched in the face with shame.” Whenever she says that, I was drowning in shame and I just wasn’t even aware of it at all. And now I’m able to say that to her literally instantly. You know, she’ll say something. I go, “I feel some shame.” When you say that, again, I’m not blaming her. I don’t, we don’t use phrase like that. Makes me feel shame. You caused me shame. I don’t know if she caused it or not. How the heck do we figure that out? You know, we call it the court case. I can take her to court. Well, higher attorneys and then private investigators. And we’ll figure out, you know, was Phyllis 53 percent responsible for that? Or not? We don’t know. But what I do know is I felt shame. And so we just start there. And I just conveyed that to her and literally processed it through in 10, 15, 20 seconds. And then we’re rolling. And to, again, to this minute, we do stuff like that. And I’m just looking there like, “Really? That’s what we just did.” Because 30 years ago, that was a three-day conflict and all of the tension, all the stress, all the pain. And even at times trauma from that. It’s just amazing to me that it actually is. So, and that’s a big thing about the connection goes, “Is there incredibly simple, incredibly implementable, and incredibly directional? I want people to know what to do next. I want them to know what to do, not in three weeks, literally in the next hour. I want them to know what to do when they leave a session with us. They’re getting the car and they know how to drive home together. They know what to do this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow. And most people, again, they just need better tools. They don’t need better intentions. I don’t know anybody that marries with the intention of being in pain for the rest of their lives together. I’ve never met that couple. Every couple at their wedding, we go to a lot of weddings. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve had a little love of a lifetime. This is so beautiful. And then, whatever, six months later, two years later, they’ve dissipated into some level of blahness. And then our cultural directive is, “Well, just here, buy that on this stick and endure it for the next 30, 40 years, because that’s just kind of what marriage is. And it’s not supposed to be. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can see it from the statistics out there, you know, on marriages, where things go. And you can also see it in health where a lot of, you know, my clients, I see, are suffering because of this and putting the emotions down further and further. And yes, this concept of trauma, you know, is big now, a lot of trauma-informed, you know, statements, things of that nature. But really, a lot of it, if we could resolve it quickly and not keep adding to our pile of trauma, this is incredibly intriguing to me, but also, I think a lot of folks are thinking, “Wow, okay, so Dr. Glenn & Phyllis, what? Tell us more. What is the next step?” You know, tell us about the connection codes. Can we do a little demo on it? Can we talk through, you know, and go through it?

PHYLLIS: Absolutely. And again, if you remember my story, I needed it to be simple. Like, I’m like, I don’t have time to make it complicated. And so one of the tools that we have is called the core motion wheel. And it simply is, I mean, there’s different forms and we have it for your listeners where they can just download it and print it off if they want to. But we also have them in cute emoji versions and we have them so that they can be a magnet and you can put it on your fridge. But once you learn the eight emotions, then you can go, “Okay, so we’re going to keep it simple. We’re going to do this in a way that you’re just tuning into yourself every day. Like, what’s happening for me?” And sometimes, I know in the beginning of all this, and depending on what’s happening in your life, like, if you’re in really a situation, right now for us personally, Glenn’s mom is 95. She lives with us and she’s at the end of her life right now. And so we have a lot coming at us. And so I find myself doing this exercise many times a day. What’s happening with me? And it teaches you to tune into your body. Like, I feel it when I get, you know, that tightness in my chest or like what we call a pit in my stomach. You know, I go, “Whoa, what’s happening with me?” For me personally, I feel it as if it’s like somebody’s pushing on my body. So I feel it more in my shoulders and like someone’s holding me down and I’m like, “Okay, something’s happening and I need to tune in.” And then I go, “Okay, what’s happening?” And I look at this point, I know the eight words. So I visualize them and I go, “Okay, anger, anger. What’s happening in anger?” And then I pull all kinds of stuff out and I feel like I’m, it’s, I visualize it like it’s literally coming out of my body. I’m releasing it out of my body. So I’m because I’m, I’m not storing this. Like, I’ve already been, I lived that life for 50 years. I’m not storing it anymore. I’m going to be healthy and tuning in to what’s happening with me. But this is an exercise that what we encourage is that you do it with another person. So if you’re in a relationship with, or you have a partner, you’re married or whatever, you do this with another person because it’s more powerful. It’s co-regulating throughout your day with another person. DR. PHYLLIS: A lot of research on the power of co-regulation versus self-regulation. Sometimes we have to self-regulate, but it uses up so much less energy to co-regulate than this self-regulate. But also we did a lot of research on this time and the core motion wheel is designed to take four minutes for two people and the research showed that four minutes was the magic spot. If we told people this was a 30-minute exercise every day, they wouldn’t do it like zero. The time would do it every day. And even if we told them it was five minutes, in five minutes equals 20 minutes for most people. And so if we said it, took five minutes, there were 43% is likely to do it as if we said it was four minutes. So we’re like, what the heck? Four minutes. So we, that’s the way we designed it. And there’s eight core emotions, eight times 15 seconds each is 120 seconds, which is two minutes per person. And so if we can get people to do this in four minutes a day, because that’s our goal is to get them to do it every day. Because it’s an emotional muscle exercise. For most of us, our emotional muscle has atrophied so much that we don’t even recognize. You know, for Phyllis, she had no idea she was experiencing fear. She refused to believe that she was experiencing sad. Well, she was, but she didn’t recognize it for me. I had no idea that I was getting hit with shame when Phyllis said, thanks for letting the dishwasher. I didn’t even recognize it. My emotional muscle had atrophied so much that I didn’t know what shame even looked like, what it felt like. And so we’re helping people to work out the exercise of starting to recognize, tune in to themselves, what’s happening to them, all the effects that has on the body, on the gut, certainly on their health. So we’ll do the core motion. We’ll experience assignment. You can time us. Jannine. 

JANNINE: I have a quick question before you get started though. What time of day do you do this? Like, is there a certain time of day or is it during a certain conflict or just whatever just to do it? 

PHYLLIS: So what we encourage if you’re doing this with, you know, with someone else is that you kind of know your routine, like over coffee in the morning. That may be the best time. You know, maybe this is someone you meet for lunch or have lunch with. So there’s not a magic time. It’s more of making sure you do it every day. Then there are times where you do it multiple times a day as I shared a minute ago, like I’ll be in the car and that’s a good thinking time for me. And I’ll be like, okay, what is happening with me? And then I just go through it. And that also tunes me in to be able to communicate it better to my partner because I’ve already been mindful of it during the day. But and then I like doing it with friends. I mean, it’s just such a cool way to connect with a friend instead of spending an hour chit chatting and then you really didn’t connect like, well, I hadn’t really heard your hurt or your sad. So. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, we start every session with people— 

PHYLLIS: Yeah, in our private session. I mean, In our private practice. 

DR. GLENN: —Doing the core emotion wheel because it tunes them into themselves and then it lets us know what’s happening with them because the psyche always goes to what’s pressing. The psyche always goes to what matters. And so again, we can say how you do it and they say, oh, well, you know, I may get a promotion at work. Well, that may matter to them, but it may not. That may be just they’re just talking about logistics. Whereas if we find out that, oh, your, you know, your mom is dying. Oh, okay, I feel a lot of sadness about that. And again, the core emotion wheel is an exercise, which it’s a training exercise to do. It’s actually irrelevant. We’re just trying to train people to do it in real time. So that this afternoon, fellas can turn to Glenn and say, babe, I felt some hurt a minute ago when you said that thing. I responded to the three phrases every time I go, Oh, what happened with hurt? What did I miss? She tells me because we’re trying to meet needs. We call that the 4th phase. So once she processes the emotion, then I go, so what do you need? And she says, well, maybe if you wouldn’t say that again, and then you have to ask, we have the right of requests, not the right of demand. And she says, could you not say that? Whatever the that is. I’m not calling her Patty instead of Phyllis. I forgot her name there for a minute. So, you know, she just feels some pain. She just needs to tell me that, and this is still an example. But, you know, whatever it is, I’m just trying to meet her need. I’m trying, and sometimes I can’t. I mean, there are needs that I’m not able to meet. But at least we know what the need is. And we’re trying to figure out if the need is possible to meet. And if it is, how we can do that. Okay. 

JANNINE: Awesome. 

PHYLLIS: All right. I can go for first.  You want me to? 

DR. GLENN:  Okay, Great. 

PHYLLIS: All right. I’ll start with guilt. I feel guilt that we have not sent all of our stuff to Canada. Probably feel some shame in that. Just that I don’t feel like we’re prepared or organized like we need to be to be heading out of town. I feel lonely in that whole process that there’s a whole lot to do before we leave to go out of the country and feel like it’s all up to me to get it done. Let’s see. I feel fear that your mom will pass away while we’re gone. Definitely that leads me into sad. I feel sad for what she’s going through right now. And just, yeah, the struggle that she’s in at this point. Let’s see. Hurt. I felt just hurt earlier when you were quick to jump to correcting. I think I said the names wrong. I got them backwards or something and you’re quick to notice and quick to correct me. I felt hurt in that. Let’s see. Anger. Oh, yeah. Definitely. I felt a lot of anger. It really came out yesterday towards your family and just the criticalness of me and the caring of your mom. A lot of anger about that. Let’s see what’s left. Joy. Oh, my word. I love traveling with you. I’m so excited to be going to Canada and to get to speak all over the place about connection codes. So a lot of joy. 

DR. GLENN: Ah, love it. Thank you. So for me, yeah, tons of joy just traveling, doing anything with you is a thrill. But getting to travel is just so amazing. Getting to meet people, connection coders is all around the world. It’s so fun. Getting to do what we do is just thrilling. Yeah. A lot of anger with some of our family dynamics, just to can’t believe what’s happening here. We already had plenty honest. And now all that’s been added in the last number of days and so much anger in that. I feel guilt just that you have so much on you. You know, you really are my mom, but you’re the main caretaker for her. I feel guilt in that. I don’t know how to fix it really. But I feel guilt just seeing how much you have on you in addition to all the other stuff in life. And sometimes shame in that too, you know, how could I be a better version of myself? How could I handle stuff better? I just feel like I miss with that sometimes. I fear just the whole situation with mom. You know, we don’t know. Dr. said she is on a downward slope and we don’t know what that means. Days, weeks, months, we have no idea. So there’s fear in that loneliness in that at times. Just with my family that they don’t see us. They don’t recognize what we do and the degree to which we’ve taken care of mom for over a decade. And just the criticalness is startling into me. Lots of sadness just at times with our endeavors and our efforts to get this message out with the connection codes because it’s so powerful, so needed. And the times just feels heavy like, how can we speed this process up? How can we do better? Do more, do it more effectively, more powerfully? Let’s see, hurt was the last time I felt hurt. I guess just with my family, it seems to be a theme. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. 

DR. GLENN: You know, just being criticized and viewed poorly when where the ones for over a decade now are the ones that are always there from mom. You know, she lives with us and we’re we and you especially have done it all. And then, you know, they’ve got stuff to criticize and nitpick about. It’s just very, very sad, very, very hurtful that it plays out that way. Yeah. 

PHYLLIS: Well, thank you. 

DR. GLENN: And that’s the wheel. How did you check the time, Jannine, were we four minutes? 

JANNINE: You were, I didn’t get the exact time, but just looking at the there, you were probably under, it was almost about, I’d say three minutes if I was like, looking at that one there, I think I’m not fast enough. You know, what you guys are talking about is something that I hear a lot about, especially taking care of parents and taking, you know, and family dynamics around that. I think a lot of people do have health concerns that happen for themselves as caregivers. I mean, the hardest time of life. So just hearing you both speak to each other about it, I think that’s huge to be able to use this tool even, you know, and for a lot of folks at this stage of life who are dealing with taking care of an elderly parent because there is so much judgment on other sides of the family. And I mean, everything you mentioned, I’m like, these are, these are all real life things that I think are relevant as a whole. And just something that sharing between a couple is is incredible or sharing between just friends. I think, or family members, I’m imagining like, you know, brother or sister, or someone else, you know, and then there would be a lot more communication that could come about. Because I think a lot of families, I mean, having had this experience myself, seeing families kind of torn apart by taking care of someone and who does want all the resentment and you name it feels with it. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah, yeah. Well, I do have to interject just because again, it’s one of those things that were, I’m the educated one, Phyllis is a smart one. Because, you know, I’m a marriage therapist. That’s my training. That’s my experience. And so I’m thinking marriage, marriage, marriage with all of this. And then one day Phyllis said, babe, this isn’t just marriage. This is human. This is every relationship. This is, you know, parent, child, this is neighbors, this is friends, this is work. And now we’re starting to see that. Once again, at first, I was like, well, well, well, well, no, you don’t misuse this. This is designed for marriage. But now we hear companies that are literally the first 10 minutes of their day. You partner with somebody and you do the core motion wheel. And the research shows that the typical person working is operating at about a 36% capacity. So, and that’s because they’re so flooded with emotion. So they had a crappy morning. They’re so crushed with emotion. So they’re going to be about 36% of their capability that day. And if we can get them to clear off the limbic system, process through the core motions, literally their productivity skyrockets. And that applies in every situation, every relationship. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. And we want to make sure that your listeners know a way to get this core emotion wheel just kind of get started. And so if they go to connectioncodes.co/healthfix, they will be able to download that core motion wheel. They’ll get a video with the directions. They’ll get written directions. So they won’t be able to. 

DR. GLENN: Let me miss that opening because there are rules of the wheel. A tool—

JANNINE:  —dealing with taking care of an elderly parent because there is so much judgment on other sides of the family. And I mean, everything you mentioned, I’m like, these are all real life things that I think are relevant as a whole. And just something that sharing between a couple is incredible or sharing between just friends. I think or family members. I’m imagining like, you know, brother or sister or someone else. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. Yeah. 

JANNINE: And then there would be a lot more communication that could come about. Because I think a lot of families, I mean, haven’t had this experience myself, seeing families kind of torn apart by taking care of someone and who does want all the resentment and you name it, that’s what it is. 

DR. GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do have to interject just because again, it’s one of those things that were I’m the educated one. Phyllis is a smart one because you know, I’m a marriage therapist. That’s my training. That’s my experience. And so I’m thinking marriage, marriage, marriage with all of this. And then one day Phyllis said, babe, this isn’t just marriage. This is human. This is every relationship. This is, you know, parent child. This is neighbors. This is friends. This is work. And now we’re starting to see that. Once again, at first, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, don’t misuse this. This is designed for marriage. But now we hear companies that are literally the first 10 minutes of their day, you partner with somebody who do the core motion wheel. And the research shows that the typical person working is operating at about a 36% capacity. So, and that’s because they’re so flooded with the motion. So they had a crappy morning. They’re so crushed with the motion. So they’re going to be about 36% of their capability that day. And if we can get them to clear off their limbic system process through the core motions, literally their productivity skyrockets. And that applies in every situation, every relationship. 

PHYLLIS: Yeah. And we want to make sure that your listeners know a way to get this core motion wheel just kind of get started. And so if they go to connectioncodes.co/healthfix, they will be able to download that core motion wheel. They’ll get a video with the directions. They’ll get written directions. So they won’t be able to.

DR. GLENN:  Let me [inaudible] because there are rules of the wheel. A tool very quickly becomes a weapon if it’s not used appropriately. So you got to follow the rules and use the tool the way it’s designed. 

PHYLLIS: And then if they’re interested, if they get on our website and just start seeing other things that they would like to, we have master classes. They can put in healthfix and get 20% off of any of our other things, which is great. And we do have a book. Our book is on Amazon called “The Connection Code.” So there’s a way to connect with us for sure through a lot of free material on our website. But we just love these opportunities to be able to share our story. And just to share this one simple tool because I know as we’ve already said with you that there’s a lot of talk about emotions. But a lot of times it doesn’t lead us to know, okay, well, what do I do? What do I do? And how can I actually clear out my limbic system? How can I actually get this stuff out of my body? And so this is an incredibly simple way to do it in four minutes or less. 

JANNINE: I love that. I love that. Everybody is definitely going to be like, oh, four minutes. That’s all, that’s all it takes. That is something that you guys definitely tapped into what people are looking for versus long and drawn out types of things. Plus also the multiple use that you can use it through for relationship, but also connecting with yourself too. I think that’s huge. And yeah, I’m like, I think folks who are in, I look at this and I go, where were you guys when I was like 15 and trying to figure out the dating world? I’m so. 

DR. GLENN: Same. Same. Yes.

JANNINE: So incredibly helpful as well. And I know that folks are really going to like this. Now you had mentioned you’re going to Canada. I’m curious, you know, what, what provinces are you going to? Where, where will you be? Because a lot of my listeners are in Canada. So I don’t know if it’s too late for folks to join in on the fun or whatnot. 

PHYLLIS: No. And then I think Ottawa, we go to first. So we have an event this weekend and that’s open to the public. And then we go to Toronto and then we go to Stradford. So and we’ll be speaking at all those different locations. So yeah, we’re excited. 

JANNINE: Very cool. And I’m guessing more, more to come in different different areas as you as you expand. I’m guessing. 

PHYLLIS: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. 

JANNINE: Awesome. All right. Well, connectioncodes.com is the main site for folks to look at. Are you on Instagram, Facebook, any of the other places? 

PHYLLIS: All the social platforms. We also have our own podcast and it’s on everywhere, YouTube, all the different apps where you can listen to. 

JANNINE: The Connection Codes Podcast. Just so folks can hear that again. So you guys could find these too as well. You can kind of, I mean, multiple areas of support. And then you also have you said the one on one that you have as well. Tell us a little bit about that. 

PHYLLIS: Well, private sessions. And of course, yes, it’s in person, but it’s also through Zoom, which is incredible. And that’s also on our website that you can just go simple, look at it, you know, book a session, get a consultation, just kind of see maybe this would be a good fit. So yeah. 

JANNINE: Well, thank you, Dr. Glenn and Phyllis. You guys, this is great, great information for folks. You’re doing great things. I love it. And can’t wait to share this one. Gosh, great stuff. Safe travels and all of that. 

PHYLLIS: Thank you guys for coming on. I appreciate it. 

DR. GLENN & PHYLLIS: Absolutely. Thank you. 

JANNINE: [Outro] Hey fellow health junkies. Thanks for listening to the Health Fix Podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please help support me to get the word out about the podcast. Subscribe, rate and review. And just get that word out. Thanks again for listening. (uplifting music)