The Upper Limit Problem (Katie Hendricks, PhD)

Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“The whole sense though, of the Upper Limit Problem, is instead of feeling good and then feeling bad, which is how we think it's supposed to work. You know, you feel bad, you feel good, and then you forget to go to your yoga class and then you start eating things that aren't good for you. And pretty soon, you know, you're off binging and you know, that's over. And in partnership, I'd say, The most common Upper Limit Problem is to criticize the other. Criticizing also gets over into contempt. So when your partner expands and you don't support that expansion, but you criticize them and then they come down again or you forget an agreement.

I think those are the two most common is that people don't do what they say they're going to do and they get into criticizing. And we really have seen that criticizing blame and criticism are really relationship killers. But what's underneath that is our fear of expanding and our fear of going out into the unknown, because even the Upper Limit Problem, if you're expanding, you are going to go into the unknown over and over, and we can stay safe and miserable in our familiar patterns, of you'll eat too much, and I'll drink at night, and we won't challenge that in each other, and that way we'll coexist, and many relationships are that way.”

So says Dr. Katie Hendricks, the co-founder of The Hendricks Institute and the co-author of 12 books, including the bestseller, Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment. Katie and her husband, Gay, have been leading seminars and workshops for individuals and couples for decades—moving them from their definition of co-dependence into co-commitment. We touch on it in our conversation, but their definition of co-dependence is the only one I’ve heard that makes sense to me as they suggest co-dependence at its simplest is when your behavior is determined by someone else’s—when you are adjusting yourself around someone else in a way that is a disservice to the relationship. Instead, they argue for co-commitment, where everyone takes complete responsibility for their own actions and their own lives. They coach a lot of tools that I love to talk about on this podcast, including the Drama Triangle, and they also coined the concept of the Upper Limit Problem, which is our tendency—just when things are going really well–to self-sabotage. That’s a big focus of our conversation today.

MORE FROM KATIE HENDRICKS, PhD:

Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment

The Conscious Heart: Seven Soul-Choices that Create Your Relationship Destiny

The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks, PhD

The Hendricks Institute

Foundation for Conscious Living

Follow Katie & Gay on Instagram

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