The Reality Between Us

We all have blind spots, and sometimes the person we believe ourselves to be isn't the person we're actually demonstrating ourselves to be. We may genuinely believe we're showing up in certain ways without recognizing that our behavior tells a different story.

That difference matters in relationships. When our understanding of ourselves doesn't align with how we actually behave, it can affect how others experience us and whether they can trust and depend on us. Becoming more aware of those inconsistencies gives us an opportunity to develop greater coherence between who we believe we are and how we show up.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“Do you really know the idea you have of how you show up in a relationship and the reality of how you show up in a relationship?”

“Many times we want to see ourselves in a certain way but we have not formed the skills and the practice to actually maneuver in that way yet.”

“The behavior and the gap is revealing something and it is giving a person a story about us even if we have a different story about us.”

“There is great satisfaction in knowing that who you are is who you are no matter where you are, no matter who you're with, no matter what situation comes up.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack atThe Better Question and read The Fallacy of the Aspirational Self for a deeper dive of this concept. https://ajarutledge.substack.com/

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Curiosity impacts the way we experience ourselves and the people we're in relationship with. But when we believe we already know someone, we can stop asking questions and start relating to the version of them we've created in our minds, rather than who they actually are today.

The same can happen with ourselves. We accept our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors as simply who we are, without questioning where they came from or whether they still fit. Curiosity gives us an opportunity to question those assumptions and better understand ourselves and others.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“... if that's how you've always done it, how do you give yourself an opportunity to do it differently?”

“Just because we believe we show up certain ways in relationships does not mean that's how we actually show up. And that does not mean that that is how somebody experiences us showing up.”

“Do you like the idea of the person? Do you like what this person does for you? Do you like what they bring into your life? Do you like how they make you feel or do you like them?”

“Safety doesn't come because we agree about everything. It comes because we're feeling understood. I don't have to agree with where you landed but I can understand how you got there.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack atThe Better Question for more of what I'm thinking about and exploring. https://ajarutledge.substack.com/

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

How well we know ourselves affects how we show up in every relationship we’re in. Our moods, patterns, needs, expectations, capacity, and the things we haven’t worked through all come into our relationships with us. When we don’t understand those things about ourselves, we may not recognize what we’re bringing into our relationships or how it’s affecting the people around us.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“How are we being in relationship with others when we’re ignoring the relationship with self?”

“How can you sit with somebody else’s thoughts if you’re terrified to sit with your own thoughts?”

“Getting to know ourselves, observing ourselves, being honest about what we do or what the patterns in our lives are or how we maneuver is critical for, one, us to have the life we say we want, and then, two, to be a person in relationship that is healthy with others.”

“There’s so many people out here who say they want things from their parents, they want things from a partner, they want things from other people that they themselves have no ability to offer. The audacity. Why should you expect somebody to offer something to you that you can’t offer to them? Or even, how about, can you offer it to yourself?” t

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack at The Better Question for more of what I’m thinking about and exploring. https://ajarutledge.substack.com/

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Self-trust isn’t something we develop once and never have to think about again. It’s an ongoing practice, and sometimes the places where we aren’t trusting ourselves aren’t immediately obvious.

We can see what is happening clearly, know how something is affecting us, and still override what we know by searching for more information, more understanding, or another explanation. We can also practice self-trust in the smallest everyday moments by responding to what we know we need instead of continually ignoring or questioning ourselves.

The more we practice responding to what we know, the more self-trust becomes something we actually move from rather than something we simply believe we have.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“Why do you need more information? Does it change how you’re being treated right now? Does it change how you feel about how you’re being treated right now? Does it alter the impact that it’s having on you?”

“I trust myself to understand my experience in the world, and I trust myself to know that my experience is just as relevant and deserving as the next person’s experience.”

“Self-trust is not a mind thing. It’s a body and mind thing. You have to get to a place of being embodied because a lot of the time self-trust is going to show up in your body.”

“There are opportunities presented to us daily to practice that self-trust muscle, and whether it’s the tiniest opportunity like I need to go to the bathroom so let me get up right now and go, or a big opportunity like this relationship is not for my highest good and I need to walk, it’s all still a practice.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack at The Better Question for more of what I’m thinking about and exploring:The Better Question

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Shame can be shaping our lives without us even realizing it’s there. Unlike feelings we can easily recognize, shame can sit underneath our reactions, our beliefs about ourselves, and the way we interpret what is happening around us.

It can turn a mistake into evidence that something is wrong with us. It can change what we hear when someone brings a problem to us. And it can influence our relationships, the things we allow ourselves to receive, and even the things we say we want.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“Shame is like one of those emotions that you really don’t know it’s coming into play. You really don’t understand the impact that it’s having on you.”

“Shame is what creates this perception of all-encompassing versus this one little issue that somebody addressed.”

“When you can question what you perceive reality to be, to quote-unquote fact check your reality, you can see if what you’re perceiving is adding up to.”

“Shame can direct your whole life.”

Resources / Further Reading

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack at The Better Question for more of what I’m thinking about and exploring: The Better Question

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

We can avoid our feelings, refuse to talk about them, or convince ourselves they aren't affecting us. But that doesn't mean they've disappeared. Our feelings are still showing up in how we behave, how we respond to other people, and what happens between us in our relationships.

Feelings also give us information. And when we don't take the time to understand what they're telling us, we can end up responding to the person in front of us for something that isn't entirely about them.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“A person who cannot hold their own feelings cannot hold your feelings. And that is not a dig. That is not shaming anybody. That is the truth.”

“Instead of him sitting with his own discomfort around that, he kept trying to fix my quote unquote problem. But I didn't have a problem. I had a feeling and I was willing to feel the feeling.”

“Feelings are always giving us data. And when we refuse to look at the data, we can use what is coming at us and put it onto people around us when it really doesn't have anything to do with them.”

“Just because somebody did something that initiates a feeling within us, doesn't mean they're the problem all the time. So we have to be able to process the data so that we can be more accurate with ourselves and we can engage relationally with those around us in a more accurate, caring and kind way.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack atThe Better Question for more of what I’m thinking about and exploring. https://ajarutledge.substack.com/

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Attachment styles have become part of how we talk about relationships. We hear about anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, secure attachment, and often use those labels to explain why someone behaves the way they do.

But attachment is more complicated than a label or what happened between us and one primary caregiver. Our nervous systems learn how to find safety within much larger environments, and those adaptations can continue operating beneath our awareness, shaping not only how we move through relationships but what happens between us and the people we're in them with.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“It's also about how the child receives it and what your nervous system learns is the easiest, fastest way to get to what feels safe for you. That doesn't mean that's what is safe. That is not the same thing as what, in a securely attached person, would deem as safe. It's saying what is safe for you.”

“There’s this really false binary narrative out there that says if your primary caregiver was horrible and critical and this and that, then you have this attachment style. And it’s not that simple. It’s not that black and white.”

“Many times what is happening is it's a cycle that something in their attachment style triggers something in your attachment style, which makes you escalate, which then makes them escalate to pulling back, and now it's this whole big thing where we just keep escalating. So it's playing off of each other.”

Resources / Further Reading

I don't usually include resources with episodes, but these are a few of the books that have informed some of the connections I'm making here. They explore different pieces of how our early experiences, environments, nervous systems, culture, shame, and other influences can shape us. They aren't necessarily talking about attachment in the same way I'm connecting these ideas here, but they offer more context for some of what I'm drawing from in this conversation.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Safety is one of those things we think we understand. We know what it means to be physically safe, and we may even know what emotional or psychological safety is supposed to look like. But knowing what safety is and actually feeling safe aren't always the same thing.

Our experiences teach our nervous systems what to recognize as familiar, and sometimes what feels familiar isn't actually safe. Those experiences can shape the environments we're drawn to, how we respond to the people around us, and even which versions of ourselves are available in different relationships.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“Your brain is always going to find what it knows. That doesn’t mean it’s what’s best. It’s just what it knows. And your nervous system is going to attune to what it knows until you do the work to teach it something new.”

“It’s wild how we perceive safety on a level that we are not even fully aware of. And how much that if we are in an environment that is quote-unquote not safe to us, we will go recreate our safety, or we will leave that environment to go find what is comfortable.”

“Safety dictates how you show up. And so sometimes, you know, we want to be quick to be like, ‘Oh, this person has the attitude’ or ‘Every time they come over here, they’re super closed off.’ And we think that’s them. And sometimes it is, but also there’s times where it’s you. It’s you who has created an environment where they don’t feel safe. And so they show up in a way that’s protective. That’s not who they are all the time. That’s not how they move through the world. That’s not how they are when they feel safe.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Hope is usually seen as a good thing. It keeps us going. It gives us something to believe in. But sometimes hope can also keep us in situations when everything happening right now is telling us something different.

Sometimes we see people's behavior clearly and still hold onto who we know they could be. We explain things away, focus on the good moments, and keep hoping that eventually those moments will become the norm. But at some point, we have to be willing to look at the actual data.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

"Hope can become dangerous because hope will keep you there when there's no evidence telling you that you should be staying there."

"Some people might have potential, but that doesn't mean they want to exercise the ability to get there."

"Your toxic hope overrides the data that's telling you whether they want to do that work or not."

"Sometimes the behaviors or the data tells us a story we really don't want to see. Sometimes it tells us a story that's really hard to sit with but that doesn't mean that it's not happening anyway."

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Wanting a relationship doesn't mean you're equipped to have one.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the relationships we want, the kind of people we want in our lives, and what we want those relationships to give us. But how often do we stop and consider what we're bringing into them? Wanting the thing is the easy part. Being able to create and sustain it is something else.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

"Just because you want a thing doesn't mean you are equipped to have the thing."

"Do you consider what the experience of you is to others? Like do you ever sit and ask, hey, what's it like to be my friend? What's it like to be in a relationship with me? What's it like to be my child?"

"I think everybody deserves healthy relationships. I think everybody wants them and that's fair and everybody deserves them and that's fair but everybody is not ready."

"Relationships are major decisions and we don't treat them as if they are. We treat them as if they're experiences we get to jump into and jump out of when it's convenient for us."

"The thing is you can leave some relationships but what trail are you leaving behind you?"

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Validation and agreement are not the same thing.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that if we acknowledge another person's experience, we're saying they're right. But what if validation simply means making room for their reality without abandoning your own?

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

"Validation absolutely does not mean I agree with what you're saying. But it does mean I hear you. I get that's where you are."

"I do think people are protecting something...and it's getting in the way of mutual relationship and being able to repair and move forward."

"The way forward is through repair."

"Challenge yourself to see the situation from the other person's experience, not through your lens, because those are not the same things."

How many times have you been absolutely certain you knew what someone meant...only to find out later that's not what was happening at all?

In this episode, we're exploring how the state we're in changes what we think we're seeing. Because sometimes we're responding to what's actually happening. And sometimes we're responding to the lens we're looking through. Learning the difference can change our relationships...and ourselves.

In this episode

Episode Thoughts To Sit With

"You and the person are literally in two different realities thinking you're in the same reality."

"The state is the way you perceive the world."

"Don't observe yourself and then chastise yourself or criticize yourself. We're literally just observing."

"Sometimes they are too activated in their own stuff...that doesn't mean you have to be."

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

People often ask whether someone is the right person for them. But we don't spend nearly enough time asking whether that person has the capacity to meet us where we are.

In this episode, we explore why understanding another person's relationship with themselves tells us more about the relationship that's possible than what they say they want. We look at how to recognize emotional capacity, why people can't meet us in places they can't meet themselves, and why accepting where someone actually is can be one of the kindest things we do, for them and for ourselves.

We explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

"We need to understand where other people are so we can understand what type of dynamic we can have with them, so that we're not beating our own heads up against the wall. So we're not trying to create something that's not creatable."

"It's important to know where you are with that because it is also unkind for somebody else to be looking for depth from you. And if you can't give it, it's unkind for you to act like you can... We have to have the self-awareness to assess where we are, assess what our capabilities are, and be honest."

"It is unkind of us to expect someone to be able to meet us in a place where they can't meet themselves."

"Sometimes in relationships, no one is to blame. People are just where they are."

"It's kinder to say, 'I see where you are. This is where I am. These places just don't align at this time in our lives.' I respect that, and I hope you can respect that too."

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

We use the word care all the time. We say we care about people. We tell people we care. But what does care actually mean?

In this episode, we explore why care is more than a feeling; it's a way of moving and being in relationships. We look at why someone can genuinely feel something for us without actually caring for us, how care is demonstrated through behavior rather than words, and why learning to care for ourselves changes what we're willing to accept from others.

In this episode, we explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

"Many of us don't actually know what caring is. Many of us don't actually have the experience of being cared for."

"Your words alone do not create a sense in my body of being cared for, especially if your words are saying one thing and your behavior is saying another."

"Care translates to behavior. Care translates to holding one in esteem as much as you hold yourself in esteem."

"People need to be able to feel what we say we feel about them. They need to know it, not because we say it, but because they can feel it."

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

People tend to think that if their intentions were good then that should settle it. But relationships don't happen inside intentions. They happen in the impact we have on each other.

In this episode, we explore why intent and impact aren't competing ideas; they're two sides of the same coin. We look at why good intentions don't always lead to good outcomes, how trauma and survival mode shape what we give and receive, and why repair starts with being willing to hear another person's experience, even when it isn't what we hoped to hear.

We explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Communication is one of the first things we point to when a relationship is struggling. But what if communication isn't the place to start?

In this episode, we explore why communication is only as healthy as the people participating in it. We look at how trauma, nervous system activation, internal safety, and our need to be understood shape what happens long before words are ever spoken. We also explore why explaining yourself over and over isn't always a sign that you need to communicate better—it may be a sign that something entirely different is happening.

We explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

The following are direct excerpts from this episode.

"We're talking about communication, but there's pre-work we gotta do to get to the thing."

"You have distorted what is happening in the room into what is happening inside your body. And you don't even know it."

"You must come into the space regulated. You must come into the space grounded. You must come into the space safe in your own body."

"They caught what the fuck you was putting down. They just didn't give a damn about it."

"You're creating safety to be safe for you."

"We skip all the pre-work and then wonder why shit blows up within minutes every time."

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

Before we talk about relationships with other people, we have to understand the relationship we're having with ourselves.

In this opening episode, I share the experiences that shaped the perspective behind this podcast and why I believe healing isn't just about understanding trauma...it's about rebuilding the relationship with yourself. We explore self-compassion, self-trust, boundaries, over-functioning, and the role they play in every relationship we'll discuss moving forward.

We explore:

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

The following are direct excerpts from this episode.

"The primary relationship is with yourself."

"One thing that people really don't talk about around trauma is how it is a relationship of getting back to you..."

"If you're only doing your part and nothing goes forward, that's information."

"Even if the problem is them, it's still your work to determine why are you here? Why are you engaging with it?"

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

To connect, ask a question, or share your thoughts, email: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.

New here? Start here. In this short introduction, I share what The Reality Between Us is about, why I created it and the conversations we'll be having about relationships, self-awareness, conflict, connection, and the hidden dynamics that shape them all.

If you're ready to look a little deeper, start here.