Ep. 168 (Part 1 of 2) | Integral psychologist Keith Witt can’t get enough of the magic and beauty that happens in relationships as people begin to develop what he calls “a post-issue consciousness.” He explains that when our executive self, our wise self or witness, kicks in and forges a caring connection with the places where we hold our hurt and our traumas, then integration and healing start to happen, eventually with almost no conscious energy expenditure. “My job is to help people develop the witness,” Keith says, so they can observe their defensive or destructive states and reach for compassionate understanding, for themselves, for their partner, and for others.

Keith tells us the three foundations of the modern marriage are friendship, a love affair, and an ability to resolve issues that come up, and says the shift to a post-issue relationship happens when all three facets become intentional. “Post-issue couples don’t let things get in the way of their love,” he says. Throughout the conversation, Keith shares a goldmine of therapeutic wisdom on the subject of relationships, including the client/therapist relationship, and in true Integral fashion, he includes perspectives from all sorts of interesting angles, such as our evolutionary development, neural development, and moral and spiritual development. This discussion is warm, friendly, cheerful, lively, and chock full of useful information and insights. Keith’s excitement about the evolutionary directionality of human relationships is contagious and inspiring. Recorded August 16, 2024.

“Evolution in humans is characterized by deeper consciousness and more compassion . . . evolution has a directionality—and it’s toward unity.”

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1

• Introducing Integral psychologist and prolific author Dr. Keith Witt (01:00)
• What is a post-issue relationship? (03:11)
• What happens when couples develop emotional intelligence and are able to love each other more? (05:48)
• Example of an argument in a post-issue relationship (07:35)
• How complexity and therapeutic parts work figures into it (08:47)
• How do people grow internally? How do we integrate? (10:01)
• A healing cosmology came to Keith after he learned about Integral Theory and all the systems came together (11:59)
• It helps if couples have a sense of evolutionary development (14:24)
• Egalitarian relationships that came online in the last 50-70 years brought along new potentials for love and problem solving (18:33) 
• What happens when we go into defensive states? (19:21)
• Evolution has a directionality toward deeper consciousness, compassion, unity (22:56)
• Liberating ourselves by not cooperating with the argument (24:20)
• How does the long time it takes to raise a human child affect our social learning? (25:38)
• Humans are ultra social: 90% chimpanzee/10% bee (28:01)
• Resilience and trauma programming are actually memory systems (30:57)
• How do people move towards a post-issue relationship? (32:44)
• The key is making it an intentional relationship (35:38)
• Self awareness: we’re often crippled based on a history of trauma (38:42)
• Leading couples therapist John Gottman teaches what works for happy couples to unhappy couples (39:58)
• Physiological arousal—once people are escalated to a certain point, they can’t think (41:58)
• What couples should not do: make negative comparisons (43:38)
• Can Keith tell if a couple will stay together? There’s a certain magic to some couples (44:49)

Resources & References – Part 1

• Dr. Keith Witt’s website: https://drkeithwitt.com/
• The Dunbar number
• Keith Witt, From Trauma and Transcendence (free eBook)
• Keith Witt, The Gift of Shame: Why We Need Shame and How To Use it To Love and Grow*
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) Institute
• Von Economo neurons
• Joseph Chilton Pearce, Model Imperative (Kindred Newsletter)
• Bert Parlee, Ph.D.
• Keith Witt, Waking Up: Psychotherapy as Art, Spirituality, and Science (free eBook)
• Susan Johnson, The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection*
• John Gottman, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Dr. Keith Witt is a Licensed Psychologist, teacher, and author who has lived and worked in Santa Barbara since 1973. He has conducted over 75,000 therapy sessions and published ten books, including Loving Completely, Shadow Light, and Integral Mindfulness. His books Waking Up and Sessions were two of the first books on Integrally informed psychotherapy. In presentations and classes around the U.S. and internationally, Keith has explored love, therapy, interpersonal relationships, and development from multiple perspectives, weaving neuroscience, Integral theory, wisdom traditions, and numerous forms of psychotherapy into a coherent cosmology of love and healing.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell