This week on the podcast, I have something special for you. I got to interview Doctor Emma Smith and talk with her about what are the silent killers to our relationship.

Now I wanna share with you a little bit about her before we get into this episode. Doctor Emma is a licensed professional counselor in a certified trauma and sex therapist. She's dedicated to helping professionals and couples rebuilt their trust, deepen their intimacy, and embrace meaningful change. She's got expertise in evidence based practices like EMDR and the gotten principles, and she pairs her clinical methods with a unique philosophical approach to foster growth and alignment. Doctor Emma is based in Nashville, Tennessee and provides both in person and virtual sessions tailored to her client's unique needs.

It was such a pleasure to interview her and to just hear her perspective and point of view on some of these silent killers that are really impacting our relationship. And I know you're gonna enjoy this episode. So go grab a warm drink, maybe pen and paper, and let's get to it.

Welcome to Relationship Reset, Reignite, Reconnect, rebuild, the podcast for high achieving couples who want to transform their relationship from surviving to thriving. I'm Katie Russler, a relationship coach and counselor with over 15 years of experience helping busy, overwhelm couples rebuild connection, trust, and intimacy. If you've been together for years and feel stuck on autopilot, disconnected and frustrated by constant miscommunication, you're in the right place. Each week will explore practical tools, relatable stories, and strategies to help you reignite the spark, rebuild your bond, and create the relationship you've always dreamed of. Because no matter how long you've been together, it's never too late to hit reset. Let's dive in.

Welcome back to the podcast. I have Doctor Emma Smith today, and I'm gonna be honest. I had snooped on her Instagram and found these 7 silent killers that can lead to divorce. And I was like, I'm here for you, Doctor Smith. I wanna know these things. Because I know my listeners wanna know these things. So we decided to condense it to three because 7 is a lot for one podcast episode.

Today we're gonna be discussing what are those three silent killers that you and or your partner may be doing in your relationship and of what we can start doing. She's gonna give us a practical tool at the end of what we can start doing to start to shift those things.

So Doctor Emerson, thank you so much for being here and sharing your words of wisdom with us.

Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure share a little bit more about yourself and how you got into the world of explaining things like this to couples and individuals.

Yeah. So I grew up in New Jersey and originally I was a high school English teacher actually. And then I decided to make the leap into mental health and I got into trauma and I worked with a lot of survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual trauma and that kind of work. And I loved it. I mean I just got to work with some of the most wonderful people that you could ever possibly imagine.

But when I was working in the Guild of trauma, you know we had all these great tools, right? We had EMDR that was coming out and we had cognitive processing therapy and just, just wonderful, wonderful tools, right? But what happened, I noticed that when people you know when we brought people in, we would minimize their symptoms, which was great, right? And then when we kind of got them back to neutral, we would say, okay, go out into the world, right?

But I think because I had been working with people who had an intimate partner wound or a sexual wound, sometimes people would come back and they would say, you know I just don't feel in my body or I can't I can't connect with my partner, right? Even if they had moved on into a healthy relationship or they were single when their trauma happened and then they got into a partnership and suddenly they're like, my partner is wonderful. Why am I being triggered? Right?

And so we would do some additional work, but then I was like, you know we really gotta get into embodied pleasure. Like why don't we why don't we stop treating that as a luxury item for survivors of trauma? And so that's how I got here. And so when the pandemic hit and, you know people were making their sourdough and I'm terrible at all of that apparently, I went back to school and I got my PhD and I also became a certified sex therapist.

And so now I have a practice in Nashville, Tennessee, where I mostly see individuals and couples who are working to reclaim their desire and their relationship to pleasure. And sometimes for the first time.

I love that. The failure of the sourdough bread was like the calling of I gotta go get my PhD and then sex therapy certification, like, is like, no, not for me. Okay, let's go university again.

I mean we're all stuck inside. Why not? But I truly to go and realize, like, hey, I wanna start really exploring and better understanding what's going on with couples, what's going on with the trauma work and how we go beyond baseline for our clients.

I love that. Well, let's dive into how did this come about the 7 silent killers that can lead to divorce, like what inspired you and the work that you've been doing to wanna bring those to the forefront.

Well, I think that sometimes we, we treat divorce like kind of the same way that we treat. You'll hear people talk about infidelity, right? But like it just happened. And you're like, no, it didn't. Haha, no, nobody trips and falls into somebody else's bedroom, right? Like it, right, not, there are things that happen.

And truly, there are so many on ramps and off ramps on this road, right? And I'll be honest with you, I've been divorced, right? And so some of this is even from my own work where I'm going back and I'm looking at it and going like, oh yeah, that probably would have been good to know that that's it. That's oopsie did that one back, you know and so and having the humility.

And I think, you know one of the cornerstones of my work is being real, right? Cause when I, you know my parents, they're so funny because they're like, you know do you just talk about all the things that aren't polite to talk about? Like haha, are you trying to do that? You know so, and I'm like, no, but I can see how you got that impression, right? They are very proud of me. Some of the topics I talk about are challenging for them, right? They are there wrapped in shame and guilt and that feeling of failure.

And I think that's why we hide a lot of these silent killers and we try to stuff them down and go, no, no no, it's not there. But they do. Like he said, oops, the divorce happened. Like, right?

Yeah. And there's so many different things. I mean I've watched people work through pieces of trauma or pieces of relationship conflict that I'll be honest, like if I'm like, I was in their shoes, I don't know if I'd be able to do this. So I think that there's so much hope and we just have to have honest conversations about what are we dealing with, right? If you're willing to do the work, a lot of the times I've watched people salvage things that when they first came in, I went, oh, haha. Alright, well, let's see how this goes.

You know I'm so, but we just have to talk about it well.And you just brought it up like when they're willing to do the work, you know dear listener, when you listen to what these three silent killers are, understand if you're willing to do the work, you can reverse it. Yes, it's not like there's the nail in the coffin. Truly you can reverse it, but it takes work. When they talk about marriages, hard work or even any serious relationship is hard work. It's mainly cause it's about you doing your own work, yes, and your partner doing their own work, and then the relationship starts to have a rhythm because you're doing the work.

So, okay, let's pick three of the silent killers. I wanna hear your first one, and I know you have a great story to go along with it. Okay, so I think the first one is contempt. So when, you know the gottmans who are very popular, they talk about the Four Horsemen, the one that seems to be kind of like the Lynch pen or all of the other ones is contempt. And I think that contempt is kind of like the equivalent of a slow leak in a relationship, right? It's one that starts to seep in over time.

And so if you think about it, like you watch people who are down the road when their relationship has a lot of contempt, it's this disdain, it's this condescension. We just have to recognize like if you don't do something about that, slowly you are gonna end up down the road with a flat tire. It just drains the relationship. It drains connection because the types of relationships that we, you know hope to support our clients and having are not rooted in disdain and disgust. They are rooted in friendship and love and respect and mutuality and building a life together.

So what does contempt look like? Because that's one of the questions I get when I explain the Four Horsemen. They're like criticism. Figure that out. Yeah, you know defensiveness. Got that. And I say contempt. And they're like, it, can you explain that one? Yes. Yeah. So share with us what is okay. So contempt is sarcasm. I rolls subtle digs when I, and I think I was saying this to you before we hit record and we were talking about, you know working with couples and I work with a lot of same sex couples, right?

And one of the things I realized is that working with my gay lesbian couples has made me a better therapist for my straight couples because there are certain things that we let members of certain genders get away with that, you know it's just kind of in our I don't know, in our social upbringing, the fabric, right? We allow, I think that a lot of times we don't allow to have men to have a lot of emotion or we allow them to not be very expansive in their, you know expression even in couples therapy.

And then sometimes we allow women, the female partner to be very expressive and sometimes shoot those barbs at their male partners, right? And not catch it. And so, but when you have two women, they're shooting barbs at each other, right? And what happens when, you know when a guy gets hurt like that? Sometimes they, like, shrug it off, cause, you know men aren't allowed to cry, but the female partners, right, and my lesbian couples, they will cry, right, they will. And it's ouch, that hurt.

And so what I realized is, oh, look at that, I have to I have to be more mindful of my own biases when I'm when I'm working with folks. And so a lot of times I end up stopping a session and challenging the man to dig a little deeper and just like their emotional content, right. And sometimes I challenge the women about, hey, like, think about how you're saying that, you know what's that about?

Definitely I find it also shows up in the, no one else thinks that way, even our kid could have figured that out, right? Like, it's, it's in those passive aggressive and then overtly aggressive ways of putting the person down. And you'll hear never always, you know kind of what's wrong with, it's like you're shaming them and contempt, I agree with you. It really is one of the silent killers because as you said, it's that slowly, but when it starts, it's hard to patch that tire.

It is so hard to reel that back in cause you've given yourself permission to speak that way to your partner. Yeah, and it's very hard to change that. Do you find the same I do I do I find that it's not gonna course correct by accident. And I don't know if you're familiar with the term negative sentiment override and positive sentiment override, right?

And I think that when we see contempt, you know there's so many different things that we do in our relationships that on the surface are neutral, right? It is a neutral act, I forgot to put the milk away, right? Inconvenient, but not a moral failing, right, right. Okay. And so, you know when my partner comes into the kitchen and sees that I forgot to put the milk away, what is their thought? Is it going to be, she can't even, you can get a PhD, but you can't put the milk away?

Like, what is wrong with you? Or is it going to be, oh, she's like working so hard and trying to do all these things, like she didn't even get have a chance to put the milk away? Like, let me, you know what, I'm just gonna die. I'm not even gonna say anything, I'm just gonna go get new milk. Right? So the first one is that negative, right? Uh.

It's the, anything that can be anything anything that we can categorize with that kind of, uh, sound is, oh, I'm a negative sentiment override, which probably means that I am at least flirting with contempt, if I'm not already there, uh huh have a such a great example of like the, uh, okay yeah I know that one, right? What would you say then is our second one. So we now know that contempt is one of them.

What would be the second one that you say is like, yeah, this is a silent killer leading to divorce?

This one is one of my favorites to talk about because I live in the South right now where everybody is very polite. And so, the second one is conflict avoidance.

Oh my gosh, yes. One of our favorite topics here on the podcast. Yes.

So, conflict avoidant—there is space, and I think that part of being happy in long-term relationships is, yes, learning to let things go. And there's nuance to that, right? It’s letting the little things go, but also knowing and having the skill set to be able to bring something to your partner’s attention when you actually need to. So, you don’t actually get to choose not to if you don’t have the skills to do that thing.

And so, a lot of times you’ll see that people, you know, stuff their emotions. They suppress them. And maybe they start kind of layering on some of the other horsemen, right? So like, they don’t have the skills to engage in conflict, so they criticize their partner for unrelated things. Or they don’t have the skills for conflict, so they just give their partner the silent treatment, right?

And so sometimes the partner, you know—I don’t know if you’ve ever had a couple who says, “And I tried to apologize, but apparently I was apologizing for the wrong thing because I didn’t even know what I did.”

Yeah.

Right? And so learning: how do I engage in talking through problems? And, you know, conflict doesn’t mean screaming. Conflict means you and I are standing on opposite sides of any given topic. But it doesn’t mean that we have to go at each other.

And I think that we think of it like stepping into a boxing ring, and it doesn’t have to be that way. It just means, “Hey, we’re in tension.” And sometimes, honestly, like, you need a little conflict actually.

Honestly, to polish one another—you know when they talk about like polishing stones, right? In a tumbler, there’s all this grit that is going around. The stones are bouncing across one another. You can tell I’ve been—my Instagram algorithm—I have a lot of stone tumblers on my Instagram right now.

(Laughs)

Right? But I’m fascinated by it because all of these bumpy, jagged rocks go in, and they just rub on each other, and they come out beautiful, right?

So I think that sometimes conflict can actually force us to refine our positions. And it’s healthy for self-discovery. I think it’s healthy for growth, to keep discovering your partner as this whole separate other human being. That can be great for many reasons.

But we don’t necessarily think about conflict as a vehicle for that.

Absolutely, I agree. But I think a big part of the avoidance also is—and I’ve talked about this in the podcast before—is the inability to sit with the uncomfortable, right? There’s a frustration tolerance you have to have.

And if you have a background of, as you shared in the beginning, like trauma or negative history with relationships and communication, you’re going to have a hard time with tolerating the uncomfortable emotions that come in conflict.

And I love how you reframed it as like, this is actually a really great tool for connection. So don’t shy away from that. Don’t be afraid of that.

When you notice sort of the conflict avoidant person in session, what does it look like? How do you go, “Yep, okay, we know we need to pull this to the forefront”?

Yeah. So sometimes they actually physically withdraw their body from their partner. That’s one that I see a lot, you know. And they don’t even necessarily know that they’re doing it. Or they will have been looking at their partner and suddenly they start looking down, right? And they just seem to—a lot of people who use avoidance as their method of conflict, I think try to make themselves smaller in those moments.

I would agree. I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. When that kind of look down or look away to the side—and you’re right—they make themselves smaller.

It is like—I always say it’s like the adult was in the room and then all of a sudden the little kid came. Or the pissed-off teenager, if you start crossing your arms, right?

Yes.

But you know, you shift—

Yes. to a different mode of being.

Okay, what is your third silent killer for us?

My third silent killer is unresolved trauma.

Yes. Oh my gosh. Speak to this for us. We need to better understand—one, what trauma means, because everybody will say, “Well, it wasn’t that bad. Other people have it worse,” and they don’t understand what trauma really means.

And two, what does it mean that it’s unresolved? Because we kind of think we understand, but there’s a book, The Body Keeps the Score, there’s—so there’s a whole different level to it. So explain what trauma means and what it means for it to be unresolved.

Yeah. So when I think about trauma, what I think about is an overwhelm of somebody's coping mechanisms, right? An ability to self regulate at the time an event occurred, and so, you know it's going to look different for everyone, right? And so when I, I used to work for the Marine Corps, I was not in the Marines, but I used to work for the Marine Corps. And they would talk about, you know people who experienced a firefight, right, in combat, cause this was back in like the, you know 2,000, nine, 2,012, like time frame, right? And they were talking about, you know people experiencing combat and one person, they could have been standing right next to each other. One person came back and really had a lot of time, like dysregulation and ton of issues, and then the other person seem to almost like shrug it off or and was expressing like relief that it was over and that they survived and then seemed to kind of move on. And they couldn't figure out like, why is this? You know so it's very individualized. So we can't go, oh, somebody else had it worse because it doesn't matter, it happened to you. That's No. 1. And then, you know with the unresolved piece of it, it's, you know I kind of tell people, it's like we're never going to make something egregious that happened to you, not egregious, but what we wanna do is be able to turn down the volume. So that should a reminder come up, or should you find yourself thinking about that thing that you're able to stay in the driver's seat of your own life, right? That you're not going into an activated brain where you're into fight fighter freeze. We want you to be able to stay grounded. We want you to be able to stay in the present and go, yeah, that sucked, right? Like that's, I think that that is healed trauma is like you, when you look good at that memory or something like that, you get, yeah, it was awful, right? But it doesn't do anything to your body in the here and now, you know right? So if you're arguing with your partner, if you're in conflict and all of a sudden you feel this like, whoa, what is this coming? You're not conscious, usually of it. Like you're like, but your partner's like, where did that come from? This feels like bigger emotions than what happened. The milk left on the counter. Yeah, that's a good indicator of what you're talking about. There's something unresolved and depending on the magnitude of the emotion, can be trauma related. Yeah. And, you know the things that we think about as trauma, it's really the experience. So the milk on the counter, I did not plan this, but this is a great one because food insecurity is actually one that I hear come up a lot as this kind of I don't think that we have been taught to think about food and security as trauma, but, you know the milk being left on the counter and the one person's like, whatever, it's, you know $5, we can go get another one. And the other person is like, how could you do this? You know and the number of times that there was a disparity in socioeconomic status growing up between these two people and the milk on the counter, it's not about the milk, but it's about what it meant. Yep. Right. What does it mean to have to throw something out that shouldn't have otherwise been thrown out, right? Yeah. What does it mean to have waste? What is your relationship to waste? And sometimes that has some really deep wounds. And so I think that when, when we can bring people in, we can slow down conversations to be able to draw that out. Well, now we're not even talking about the milk anymore. We're talking about a little kid who maybe made a mistake and somebody else had this big scary overreaction that overwhelmed their coping strategies as a kid, right? And created this disconnection of relationship. And that's really, you know trauma is about disconnecting and being disconnected from our home, you know and home is in relationship. I really do believe that, yes, absolutely. So as we look at contempt, conflict avoidance and unresolved trauma, you know there's probably listeners like, oh no, like I see it. Check, check check. Or they might be doing what many of us do. Oh yeah, my partner, oh yeah check, check check, right? So much easier to see them than ourselves. Hmm, what would be step 1 for them to do in response to this? Like, okay I see it, I have this problem with contempt or my partner does this. What would be the first thing you tell a couple in front of you that is like, now we're scared, we're worried. Are we going towards divorce because we do this? Well, I mean if they're if they're sitting in front of me and my boy, you're here. So you got step rule. Step 1 was recognizing that there was a problem, right? Something was something was a miss, so this is great. Step 2 is realizing that like this is figure outable. I mean when we talk about predictors of divorce, we're talking about things if they don't change yep, right? If they don't change this is probably where this is going some people, you know and we say predictors of divorce, but like there are people who are super committed to staying married, right? And they will just be miserable. They won't get divorced, but they will be really unhappy. And so even in those cases, we're just kind of like hey, but, but change is possible. There are so many on ramps and off ramps and this is there is an off ramp and here's what we do and the best way to get off this trajectory is together. So, right? That like that would be the easiest, that's really would be the easiest if we do this together. Okay? If somebody's listening him says, I need to talk with my partner about our patterns. Can you give us kind of a good even example of like how to start that conversation and how to approach it? I feel like that's always key. It's like how we approach it says so much more than sometimes than the words that we say. Yeah, I mean I think that approaching something with curiosity is really important. I think that sometimes instead of an accusation, we can say, you know I've noticed I've noticed that we don't feel as connected. You know one of my magic phrases that I say to folks is, I feel far away from you, which is kind of it's an I statement, is not accusatory, but it is sending up kind of a flair saying like, I am feeling this disconnection from you and I would like to do something about it. I love using podcasts as examples. Hey, I was listening to this thing and they said, would you listen to it too? Or can I tell you about it? I wanna get your thoughts on this. Like approaching it with curiosity and inviting the other person in. It's amazing how many of my couples who are in distress stopped doing that. They stopped inviting each other into, into community with whatever it is that they're engaging with, whether that's a podcast or a book or a Netflix series, whatever and saying, what do you think about this? I think that is so important because often we have thinkers and feelers, right? We're attracted to each other and usually the feelers, the first one who's gonna pick up listening to the podcast, that reel on Instagram, that blog post, that video. And the thinker is gonna be like, well, you're putting your feeling stuff on me. I don't want this. But if you say, what do you think about this? What's your opinion? You have struck the cord that they like to answer. Oh, well, I do want to share my thoughts and opinions with you. Let me do that. But first I have to listen to be able to share that. So I love that you added that key piece. Yeah. What do you think of this? And they may you know they may come up with something completely different and then you get to say, well, this is for it made me go. You know I was thinking about how we used to be, or how much fun it was when we could XYZ, you know and stop, like, not necessarily focusing on the negative pieces, but if you think about it, we're talking about two people who at one point probably couldn't get enough of each other. Uh, huh right, cause most of us are in arranged marriages these days, right, right, you chose this person, and at some point you thought that they were pretty great, right? Totally, yes. Yeah, what was that about? You know and can we go rediscover who that person is? I think what's really important, cause I, so many of the couples I work with are together for 10+ years is the reminder that even though you've had the same person in front of you almost every day, you don't really know who they are because you both have grown and change unless you're taking the time to ask curious questions to get to know each other. And that's where I do see the contempt, the conflict avoidance, the unresolved trauma really start to creep in even more. It's when we stopped taking the time to get to know our partner, cause we assume we know them. Yes, and you don't. I even think, wow, I'm still discovering so much about myself. There's no way my partner knows all these things. It's absolutely a journey, and we forget to go on it together absolutely. And, you know in my realm, in the sex therapy realm, right, we talk about, you know familiarity breeds connection and intimacy, right? That's lovely. However, eroticism requires mystery, and I always tell people, you know we, we like unwrapping presents, yeah, right, I mean somebody can give you something, and that's, that's great, right. But if you get to unwrap it, like, that is part of the experience, right, is unwrapping this thing and discovering. And so in relationships, sometimes when I have couples who come in and, you know they say, you know maybe there's contempt in the relationship, there's conflict avoidance. They're not talking. Well, guess what's also not happening. They're also not having good sex or at all sometimes. And one of things that we talk about is like when you start to like discover your person again as a whole separate human being, some of the mystery comes back too. And that can reignite and then, yeah, that reignites desire and then that can create more connection, which can breathe the closeness. And then the cycle goes on. So, yeah, it's important for that part too. Definitely I agree. Now, I feel like you did a good job of peppering some tools in throughout each one of these, but I know you have one really big kind of homework assignment for us to do that I love and I think it's such a great perspective. I've not heard someone use this in a long time to make you go, okay, stop the way you're thinking and let's think a little bit differently. So will you share with us the homework assignment you have for us? Yes. So the homework assignment is, I want you to picture your partner standing in line at, you know a coffee shop, Starbucks, whatever, whatever is near you, right? And somebody walks in behind them and this person is attracted to your partner. And so as they are standing in line waiting patiently for their coffee, they are noticing something about your partner. And so what I ask people to think about is, what is the story that this person behind your partner is telling themselves about your partner in this moment? What are they imagining they're listening to? What are they interested in? How would they start conversation with that person? You know how would they keep that conversation going with that person? I mean if you think about the things that we used to do, I was talking to one of my clients earlier this week. It was talking about how silly flirting is nice. Like yes, it is silly, but your brain is on drugs when you're doing it the first time, right? You're just like all of this oxytocin, so you're willing to do the silly thing. And we ended up truly like belly laughing over the fact that both of our partners are really into coffee, right? And all of the ridiculously specific questions that we were enthralled about asking about coffee, you know also which, you know which roast do you think is the best? Right? And I have like, you know personally never cared, well, I couldn't tell you what the roast is on my coffee now, right? But we are just like, I mean we are enthralled and we are gonna grasp it, anything. And believe me, this person behind you would be doing the same thing, right? Because they wanna know. And so wouldn't that be interesting if we saw our partner through those new eyes sometimes, yeah, change our perspective and see them as that attractive person in front of us that were like, how do I talk to them? Like, oh, I like their watch. Oh wait, oh, I noticed they said this. Oh, they're reading that newspaper. Oh, you know like how I get in their world? Yes, right? But, I mean people talk, people ask about phone cases, people ask about clothing items, people ask about, you know I don't know, oh, have you lived here long? I'm new in town, right, like, there's just all of these things. I think about that people say to one another when they're trying to get away in to talk to somebody that they want to talk to. And that person that you, you know may wanna rediscover is like, in your living room right now, absolutely, absolutely just thinking like, you know oh, you sound like you're from a foreign country, you know living in Europe. Everybody sounds like, oh, tell me about where you're from, but you're right there in your living room. So what types of questions would you like to ask? How would you like to be connected with that person? You know how many dates do you wanna have before it goes to the next level, like having that again that playfulness, I'd love that. Our homework is to be playful in that way, yeah, and just see this person differently, right, cause somebody else can do that right now. And I'm not saying that in like a foreboding way, but it's just kind of this idea that, like, it is actually possible because somebody else could do it right now, right? Cause you did it you did it yeah, yeah, you know and if you stood in line behind somebody else, it's, you know at a coffee shop, like if you yourself and looked at the person in front of you, you know and started telling a story about them, like you could do it. So this is not like a stretch. This is just putting on a different pair of glasses, right? And seeing, seeing our partner in that new way. I love this. Thank you so much. Okay, if people wanna connect with you, if they want to read more about the Silent Killers, I'll make sure the link to that blog post is below. But if they wanna connect with you and learn more about what you teach, where can they find you? Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at Emma Smith PhD. And so I post reels and talk about these kinds of things a lot. I also have a substock called The Intimate Philosopher, and so you can go there and subscribe for free. And if you go there, I have a downloadable kind of gift that is all about finding good quality therapists. And it's called swipe. I think it's swipe left, swipe right, whatever on whichever one's the, the negative one. So it's about being able to differentiate between finding a good therapist who's gonna be a good fit for you. And maybe there's a script in there about how to break up with your therapist if this isn't working for you. So hopefully that will be helpful for folks. And then I, you know I have little essays on presence and passion and intimacy and relationships all on there, so that's how they can find me. Thank you, that's excellent. We'll go and check her out on Instagram, go check out her substack and definitely get that list. I'm so glad to have. I know we talked about this before the recording, but it's so important for people to learn how to find the right therapist and what are the red flags, how to know when these are not, you know these are signs that there's an issue. And also it's okay if you need to break up with your therapist. I think we often, you know think like, oh, no, they hold the power. No, actually I'm in therapy. It was very important to me to find the right therapist and I have not let her go for years. Like I don't see her every year, but when I need her, I'm like, I'm coming back cause I'm not about to go on the hunt again. Cause it is a challenge. And as a therapist, I can say it is a challenge. I get it. So, so good that you've got a resource like that for people. They definitely need to go check that out. I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes again so they can get in touch with you and connect. Thank you Doctor Emma Smith for being here for teaching us, you know some things that are uncomfortable to talk about. And if your parents listen to this, she is wonderful. And yes, it's uncomfortable to talk about it, but it so needs to be because we need to realize we're not alone. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed this so much. Good and dear listener, can't wait to see you next week. Thanks for tuning in to Relationship Reset. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend who might need it too. Don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It helps more couples discover these tools to rebuild their connection to. And be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode. It's gonna be a good one. Your relationship is worth the work and the rewards totally worth the effort. See you next week.